Only those who know their rights can exercise them. With this in mind, the legislator has enacted a posting requirement for certain employee protection regulations. What this means and how best to deal with it in practice is summarised briefly and succinctly below.

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Why and for whom are there posting obligations?

Every employer is required to make a set of laws available to its employees for permanent reference.

Behind this is the legislator's sensible idea that only those people who know and understand their rights can exercise them. The posting obligations are therefore part of the principle of employee protection enshrined in labour law.

Even if the exact selection of the laws that must be posted depends on the industry and other specific features of the company, the obligation basically applies to every employer from the first employee onwards.

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What are the penalties for violating the posting obligation?

Violations of posting obligations through non-fulfilment or through inadequate provision methods are considered administrative offences. If this is determined by competent authorities, a fine of up to 2,500 euros may follow.

As a rule - if there is insight and good will - the authorities are required to point out shortcomings or issue warnings first. After all, the purpose of occupational health and safety is to ensure safe working conditions, not to harass employers.

If, however, duties are repeatedly not fulfilled or are not fulfilled in an obstreperous manner, then the catalogue of fines will be exhausted.

In addition, employees are entitled to claim damages from the company if they were unable to exercise the rights to which they were entitled due to a lack of information (due to a lack of notice).

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What criteria apply to the correct fulfilment of the posting obligation?

It is crucial that the notices are available to employees immediately - not on demand.

The obligation is fulfilled both by a notice in the literal sense and by the display of brochures and law books. The documents must always be placed in a suitable place in the company.

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Suitable bodies are usually considered to be, for example:

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• a break room
  
• the canteen
  
• central staircases and entrance areas
  
• if available, a works council office
  

On the other hand, it is not sufficient for employees to be able to request the laws from certain offices such as the human resources department. Since this involves some form of monitoring or supervision, it runs counter to the idea of employee protection.

In addition, the laws must always be available in the latest version. The posting obligation cannot be fulfilled with outdated texts.

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Attention: If a company has several locations, posting obligations must be fulfilled at each location. In buildings with multiple floors, the appropriate material must be provided on each floor.

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Can posting obligations also be fulfilled with digital solutions?

Yes, because there are no formal requirements for laws that must be posted.

It is therefore permissible to publish the legal texts on a digital intranet, regardless of whether it is a web-based system or, for example, a smartphone app.

Here, too, it must be possible to view the contents unattended (attention: this means without recording the retrieval!) and they must be available in an up-to-date version. In addition, it must be ensured that the legal texts are available in an unchangeable form, e.g. as a PDF file.

If these prerequisites are met, nothing stands in the way of a digital solution.

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In fact, there are good arguments for a digital solution:

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• Location-independence: The notices are available regardless of location, if necessary also for employees in the field or home office.
  
• Simplicity: No need to think about where and how often to place notices.
  
• Flexibility: Updating to new versions of the legal texts takes place in a time-saving manner, digitally with just a few clicks. There is no need to physically exchange paper documents.
  
• Verifiability: A digital system can provide audit-proof proof of the employer's compliance with the posting obligations. For this purpose, employees must explicitly confirm that they have taken note of where the files are stored. This does not run counter to the criterion of unsupervised inspection, provided that the files can be retrieved as often as desired after confirmation without recording.

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On our own behalf:
With our Sawayo employee app, we provide a system that makes it easy to fulfill posting obligations digitally.
With just a few clicks, employers distribute documents to their employees, who confirm them via smartphone using a digital signature. The documents are then available to employees in an archive at any time.
To try out Sawayo free of charge and without obligation for 14 days, you can create your user account here.

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Which laws must be posted?

Unfortunately, the legislator does not provide a clear list of the posting obligations that employers can now simply work through. Rather, many laws contain individual paragraphs and subsections in their course, with which they declare themselves to be subject to posting requirements - partly generally applicable, partly under certain conditions.

In this way, the legislator creates many a surprise and unfortunately complicates what is in itself a simple subject for employers. In a first step, some laws can be identified across all industries as being subject to posting requirements. In addition, there are laws, ordinances and regulations whose posting requirements - in full or in part - may result from specific company characteristics and industry affiliation.

The following table gives an overview:

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It can be seen from this that it is not necessarily the laws with the greatest significance for practice that are also subject to mandatory posting.

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Where can employers get these legal texts?

The good news is that all laws and regulations can be accessed free of charge on the Internet, for example at https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de.

However, keeping all the necessary notices complete and up to date means considerable administrative effort. For this reason, there are various providers who publish a collection of the current laws requiring posting at regular intervals. These are usually available both individually and by subscription.

A compilation of current laws requiring posting is included in our Sawayo platform for every customer. We also provide the channels for the mandatory distribution to employees including reading confirmation in our employee app. The question of where exactly and how often a physical notice must be posted in the company is no longer an issue.

In addition, the documents are available regardless of location - even for employees in the field and home office. Sawayo automatically reminds employees to read and acknowledge notices and provides you with neatly documented proof of compliance with your duty.

To try out our platform for 30 days free of charge and without obligation, you can create your user account here. Independently of this, we will also provide you with our compilation of the laws that are generally required to be posted here without a user account.

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