Employment Law

Reducing bureaucracy in labour law

At the end of the 2024 calendar year, the Bureaucracy Relief Act IV (BEG IV) in particular created the necessary steps to enable HR departments to further advance digitalisation in aspects relevant to employment law. As of 1 January 2025, the BEG IV provides for some long-awaited simplifi­cations, e.g. in the German Act on Evidence (NachwG). There has been a move away from the strict (manual) written form towards the (digital) text form, which also allows e-mails, for example.

While the NachwG until recently prohibited employers from handing over the essential terms and conditions of employment to employees in electronic form, this has been permitted since 1 January 2025, provided that the minutes are drawn up in text form (Section 126b of the German Civil Code) and transmitted electronically, the document is accessible, storable and printable for employees and the employer provides the transmission to the employees with a request for proof of receipt (Section 2 (1) sentence 2 NachwG). However, at the request of the employee, the employer must continue to provide the proof in the conventional form.

The strict written form - handwritten signature - also remains the same for fixed-term agreements in accordance with the Part-Time and Fixed-Term Employment Act (TzBfG). However, there has been a step towards simplification in the context of so-called fixed-term employment. The agreement, which provides for the termination of the employment relationship upon reaching the standard retirement age, can now also be made in text form in order to be effective. Section 14 (4) TzBfG does not apply.

By Dr. Nicole Elert