Employment contract in Denmark: written terms, probation and hours

Danish law does not prescribe a standard employment contract. What the law on written terms, Ansættelsesbevisloven, does require is that the essential terms reach the employee in writing on a set timetable. The current version took effect on 1 July 2023 and covers every employee whose average week, measured over four weeks, exceeds three hours.

You can meet the duty with a signed contract, with a separate written statement (ansættelsesbevis), or with both. The document can be on paper or electronic, provided the employee can save and print it and the employer can show it was sent.

The Act sets the floor for information. The content of the terms themselves comes from other statutes: Funktionærloven for salaried staff, the Holiday Act, the Working Time Act, the Employment Clauses Act for restrictive covenants and, where one applies, a collective agreement (overenskomst). A good Danish contract pulls those threads together so that the employee can read the whole deal in one place.

The Act splits the information into two batches. The first is due within 7 calendar days of the first working day:

• the names and addresses of employer and employee;
• where the work is done, and a description of the job, title or category;
• when the job starts and, if it is temporary, how long it is expected to last;
• any probation period and its conditions;
• pay, including how it is made up, and when it is paid;
• the employee’s usual hours per day or week, together with the overtime arrangements and overtime pay;
• for work patterns that are largely unpredictable, the details of how and when work is scheduled.

The second batch is due within one month of the start:

• entitlement to paid leave, including holiday;
• notice periods for both sides, or how they are calculated;
• any right to training the employer offers;
• which collective agreements apply, if any;
• the social security institutions that receive contributions, such as ATP.

Later changes need written notice too, by the date each one takes effect at the latest. That covers, for instance, a salary increase, a changed title or reduced hours. Postings abroad lasting over four consecutive weeks trigger further information before departure, covering the country, currency, related benefits and the terms for coming back.

Probation (prøvetid) in Denmark is governed by two statutes at once, and the shorter one usually decides what it is worth in practice.

The Written Terms of Employment Act caps any probation at six months. For a fixed-term job it can be no longer than a quarter of the contract’s length, so a one-year contract allows at most three months.

For salaried employees, Funktionærloven adds its own rule. Within a probation of three months or less, the employer may end the employment with 14 days’ notice. Once three months have passed, the ordinary employer notice applies, which in the first six months is a single month expiring at a month end, even if the contract describes a longer probation.

The upshot for a salaried hire is simple. Agree a probation of up to three months and state it in the contract; the short 14-day notice is available only within that window. A review meeting before the end of month two gives both sides time to decide.

Take a salaried hire who starts on 1 March with three months’ probation. If the fit is wrong and you decide in April, 14 days’ notice ends the employment. If the decision comes in June, after probation has run out, the employment continues until the end of the following month at the earliest, which is a meaningful difference in salary and in time.

Danish law sets no maximum length for a single fixed-term contract. The control is on repetition: renewing a fixed-term contract, or signing successive ones, needs an objective reason, such as covering an absent colleague or completing a time-limited project. Without one, the chain falls foul of the Fixed-Term Employment Act.

A fixed-term employee is entitled to the same treatment as a comparable permanent colleague, and pay and benefits apply pro rata. If the person is salaried, Funktionærloven applies in full during the term, including its rule on renewals. Probation for a fixed-term role follows the one-quarter limit above.

Write down how the contract ends, by a date or a defined event, and decide whether either side can end it early with notice, then write that into the contract. For roles you expect to last, a permanent contract with a probation period is usually cleaner than a series of fixed terms.

Since 1 July 2024 every employer in Denmark must run an objective, reliable and accessible system that records each employee’s daily working time, and keep those records for five years. The duty comes from section 4 b of the Working Time Act (Arbejdstidsloven). Employees who largely set their own hours, or who hold managerial roles, can be exempted, but the exemption has to be written into the contract.

The time limits sit around that record:

• Average working time, overtime included, may not exceed a 48-hour week over a four-month reference period.
• Daily rest must be at least 11 hours in one unbroken block within each 24-hour period, under the Working Environment Act.
• Once a week there must be a 24-hour rest day, joined to a daily rest period and placed on Sunday where possible.
• Anyone working more than six hours in a day is entitled to a break.
• Night workers, at least three hours a night as normal or 300 night hours a year, are limited to an average of eight hours per 24 and are offered free health checks.

The Written Terms of Employment Act puts overtime arrangements and overtime pay in the first batch of information, so decide them before the offer goes out. If you expect occasional extra hours to be absorbed in the salary, say so plainly.

For staff who work from home or flexibly, the recording system still has to capture daily hours. A simple timesheet in an HR tool, filled in by the employee and visible to the manager, can do the job; what matters is that the record is objective, reliable and can be produced for the five-year retention period.

Beyond the statutory list, a handful of terms are much easier to agree at the start than to add later.

Start with the place of work, since it belongs in the 7-day batch anyway. For someone based at home in Odense or Aarhus while the rest of the team sits abroad, name the home address or the city as the workplace, and say in the same clause who supplies the laptop, phone and desk equipment and whether any running costs are covered.

• The 120-day clause, under which 120 days of sickness on pay within any 12 months open the way to dismissal with a month’s notice. Without the clause in the contract, the route does not exist.
• Restrictive covenants. Non-compete and customer clauses carry conditions, among them six months’ service, written terms and compensation worth 40% or more of monthly salary for as long as the clause binds, and a non-compete also needs a particularly trusted position; our guide to non-competes and IP in Denmark sets out the conditions.
• Pension. Beyond ATP, any pension contribution is a contractual promise, so write down the rate and who pays it.
• Side jobs. Under the Act you may not stop an employee taking other work unless it is incompatible with the job, for example on health and safety grounds, because of trade secrets, or due to a conflict of interest.
• Training. If you make a course compulsory, the employee pays nothing for it, the hours count as work, and it belongs inside normal working hours wherever that can be arranged.
• Bonus and expenses. A salaried employee paid partly through a bonus or profit share who leaves mid-year is owed a pro-rata share, and necessary work travel costs fall on the employer, with reasonable advances. Draft bonus and expense clauses with both rules in mind.

Two employee rights are worth knowing too. After six months, and once any probation has ended, an employee may request a working arrangement that is more predictable and more secure, and the employer must reply in writing within one month, or three months if it has fewer than 35 staff. And a salaried employee may opt, ahead of the holiday year, for 12% holiday allowance in place of paid holiday plus the 1% supplement.

Hiring for the first time? This step-by-step guide to a first Danish employee covers what comes before the contract.

Where the job is done from home, read our note on home working rules for Danish staff before the contract is signed.

An employee who does not receive the required terms is entitled to an award of as much as 13 weeks’ salary, or 20 weeks when the breach is aggravated. For an omission that was excusable and caused no harm, the award is capped at DKK 1,000. Disputes about the information duty go to the employment committee of Ankestyrelsen, the National Social Appeals Board; other contract disputes go to the courts. An employee who asserts these rights is protected against dismissal for doing so, with the burden of proof on the employer. Retsinformation publishes the Act in full.

If Employer of Record Denmark is the employer, the Danish contract and the written terms go out from us as the legal employer, and we send the 7-day items within the statutory deadline. The role, the salary and the first day are settled between you and the candidate; we turn that into a document that meets Ansættelsesbevisloven and Funktionærloven, and update it in writing whenever something changes. Each version is kept, so there is a clear record of what the employee was told and when, which is exactly what matters if the information duty is ever questioned. The full scope is on our EOR services page.

Where the contract sits in the wider onboarding sequence is shown in the route from signed offer to first Danish payslip, and the exit side of the same contract in our guide to notice and severance under Funktionærloven.