Hybrid work has become routine — but for many employers, the attendance policy stayed at the office. The result: home days recorded as a "flat 8:00", overtime nobody counts, and arguments at month end. Here's what the law actually requires when the employee is at home, what an employer may ask for, and how to build a policy that holds up.

The starting point: the recording duty doesn't stay at the office

Amendment 24 to the Wage Protection Law requires the employer to keep an accurate record of working hours for employees covered by the Hours of Work and Rest Law — and that duty makes no distinction between the office, home or a café. Working from home doesn't automatically make a role a "position of trust": anyone entitled to overtime at the office is entitled to it remotely too.

And when there's no record? The burden of proof in an hours dispute shifts to the employer. An employee who later claims they worked long evenings from home — and an employer who kept no record will find it very hard to refute.

How to clock in from home — three levels

• Real-time digital clock-in. The employee clocks in and out from the browser or the app, just like at the office. This is the recommended level: the record is created in the moment, not reconstructed at the end of the week.
• Self-reporting after the fact. The employee fills in hours at the end of the day or week and the manager approves. Legal, but it opens the door to reconstruction from memory — and to gaps.
• "Flat day". Automatic recording of a standard day with no real hours. Risky: it doesn't reflect deviations either way, and in a dispute it carries almost no evidential weight.

Evening overtime: the sorest point

The big risk of working from home isn't employees who work less — it's employees who work more, with nobody recording it. An email at 22:30, a presentation finished at midnight: if the employer required the work, or knew about it and didn't stop it, that's paid overtime, at the usual tiers of 125% and 150%.

That's why a good remote work policy states explicitly: overtime only with prior approval, and any work outside hours gets reported. This protects both sides: the employee gets what they're owed, and the employer doesn't discover a debt that quietly built up.

Oversight without crossing the line

An employer may know when the employee worked. Beyond that, the privacy slope begins:

• Clocking in and out — legitimate and required.
• Location verification at home — unnecessary in most cases. Define "work from home" as a location type without GPS, and keep verification for actual work sites. We cover the rules in the guide GPS attendance clocks.
• Screenshots, keystroke monitoring and cameras — a serious invasion of privacy that will almost never pass the proportionality test. If you need this to know the employee is working, the problem is managerial, not technological.

A remote work policy — what to include

• Who may work from home, on which days and to what extent.
• Clock-in duty: in, out and breaks — from the same system as at the office.
• Remote overtime — only with prior approval, and reported.
• Availability: during which hours availability is expected, and when it's OK to disconnect.
• What is collected and what isn't: an explicit statement that there is no screen or location monitoring at home.

It's worth having the policy signed as part of the employment documents — in RayClock you can send it for digital signature and keep it in the employee file, so when a new employee joins, the policy is signed before their first day at home.

Bottom line

Working from home doesn't mean giving up on recording hours — if anything, it makes it more important. Digital clock-in from the browser or phone gives the employee a simple way to report, the employer a record that complies with the law, and both of them an end to arguments about "how much did you really work on Tuesday".

The information in this article is general and is not legal or tax advice. Collective agreements, industry extension orders and personal agreements may set different, sometimes more favorable, arrangements, and the rules themselves change from time to time. For any specific question, we recommend consulting a lawyer who specializes in labor law or an accountant.