Remote work in Denmark: the rules for staff working from home

Remote work in Denmark is not governed by one dedicated statute. There is no general telework act. Instead, the ordinary employment, working-time and safety rules apply to someone working from a kitchen table in Vejle just as they do in an office in Copenhagen, with one targeted set of adjustments for work done at home.

Those adjustments sit in an executive order under the Working Environment Act, BEK nr. 597 of 29 June 2026, which came into force on 1 July 2026 and replaced the previous order from 2022. It does two main things. It switches off the chapter of the Working Environment Act on how a workplace must be designed and fitted out, since an employer cannot rebuild an employee’s flat. And it keeps the screen-work rules switched on wherever screen work makes up a regular, more than trivial share of working time, which describes almost every remote office job.

Hybrid staff fall under both regimes in the same week. On office days the full Working Environment Act applies, including the design rules for the workplace; on home days the adapted order does. The contract and the remote-work policy should make clear which days are which, or at least how that is agreed.

Everything else stays as it would at a desk on your premises: the contract, the salary, holiday, sick pay, the limits on hours and the employer’s general duty to look after health and safety. For a foreign company hiring its first person in Denmark, that is reassuring. A fully remote Danish employee is an ordinary Danish employee who happens to work from home.

Every Danish employer must carry out a written workplace assessment (arbejdspladsvurdering, APV) under section 15 a of the Working Environment Act, and the Danish Working Environment Authority (Arbejdstilsynet) enforces it. A team that works mostly from home still needs one, and home working belongs in it.

Because the screen-work rules still apply at home, the assessment should look at the things those rules care about: a screen that can be adjusted, a suitable chair and desk, light, and regular breaks from the screen. In practice that means asking each remote employee how and where they work, rather than assuming.

• Ask for a short description of the home set-up when the person starts, and again if they move.
• Decide what equipment you supply, and say so in writing before the first day.
• Record psychosocial risks too: isolation, unclear working hours and the pressure to answer messages late are as relevant to a home worker as posture.
• Review the APV when work patterns change, for example if a hybrid employee becomes fully remote.

Keep the assessment in writing and dated. It is an employer record like the time log or the payroll file, and it is the first document anyone will ask for if a home worker reports a strain injury or burnout and the question becomes what the employer knew.

You can read the home-work order in full on Retsinformation. It is short, and worth ten minutes before you write a remote-work policy.

A remote employee’s day must be recorded like anyone else’s. The Working Time Act obliges employers to keep a daily record of each employee’s working time, and the obligation contains no carve-out for people working from home. Since July 2024 that record has to come from a system that is objective, reliable and accessible, and it must be retained for five years.

The limits the record is meant to show also follow the employee home:

• a rest period of at least 11 hours in a row every day, under the Working Environment Act;
• one full 24-hour rest day each week, attached to a daily rest and falling on a Sunday where that can be arranged;
• an average week, overtime included, capped at the 48-hour mark over four months;
• a break once the working day passes six hours.

Remote work makes these limits easier to breach without anyone noticing. A product manager in Aalborg who answers a colleague in another time zone at eleven at night and starts again at eight has broken the 11-hour rest rule, even if the total hours look normal. Agree core hours, set expectations about messages outside them, and make sure the time record reflects real working patterns, not a standard template.

The exemption for employees who largely decide their own working time can fit senior remote staff, but it has to be stated in the contract and must match reality. Our article on Danish employment contracts and written terms covers what else the contract should say.

The home-work order deals with safety, not with who pays for the chair. That question belongs in the employment contract or a written remote-work policy, and it is best answered before the employee starts.

Typical points to settle are which equipment the employer provides and owns (laptop, screen, headset, desk chair), whether there is a contribution to internet or other running costs, who insures the equipment, and what happens to it when the employment ends. Where a collective agreement applies, check whether it already covers any of this. Add a line on data security as well: where work files may be stored, whether personal devices may be used, and how equipment and data come back when the employment ends.

Travel is different. When a salaried employee has to travel for work, for example to visit a client or attend a team week abroad, section 9 of Funktionærloven puts the necessary costs on the employer, with reasonable advances where needed. Build that into the budget for remote teams that meet in person a few times a year.

Reimbursements and benefits can have tax consequences for the employee, so run them through payroll rather than paying them informally. Anything that counts as pay is reported through eIndkomst with A-skat and AM-bidrag withheld in the normal way; our guide to the Danish payroll process explains the monthly cycle.

For an employee who lives and is taxed in Denmark, working from home changes nothing about how payroll works. A-skat is withheld using the employee’s tax card, AM-bidrag of 8% is withheld on all pay, and the employer reports both monthly. What the home address does change is the employee’s municipal tax rate, which the tax card already reflects.

Rates vary noticeably. In 2026 Copenhagen charges 23.39%, the lowest in the country, Frederiksberg 24.50%, Aarhus 24.52%, Odense 25.50% and Aalborg 25.60%, against a national average of 25.05%. A remote hire who moves from Copenhagen to Aalborg on the same salary will see slightly less net pay, but the employer’s cost does not change. In the DKK 660,000 worked example used across this site, that move costs the employee roughly DKK 10,900 a year in extra municipal tax, a little over DKK 900 a month.

Employees who still travel to an office can claim the commuting deduction, which was raised temporarily for 2026: nothing for the first 24 km, DKK 3.17 per km from 25 to 120 km, and DKK 1.59 per km beyond that, with DKK 3.51 per km above 25 km for people in outlying municipalities.

A person who lives outside Denmark but works for a Danish employer is a different case. Someone with limited tax liability pays a fixed 25% in place of municipal tax, and cross-border commuters who earn at least 75% of their income in Denmark can choose to be taxed more like residents. Settle the person’s tax position at the offer stage, while the start date can still move.

Remote work invites requests to spend a month at a family home abroad or to join a spouse on a posting. The Danish rules say little about the employee’s right to do so, but they do say what the employer must tell the employee if the stay is long. Under the Written Terms of Employment Act, work abroad for more than four consecutive weeks requires written information before departure, covering the country, the currency of pay, any benefits linked to the stay and the conditions for returning.

The other consequences depend on the country and the length of the stay. Tax residence, social security cover and the employer’s position in the other country all need checking case by case, so it makes sense to set a written cap on working days abroad and to ask for requests in advance.

Holiday spent abroad is a separate matter from working abroad. The written-information rule is aimed at work, so the request to watch for is the one that turns a summer holiday into several further weeks of working from the same place. If someone wants to move abroad permanently, that is a new hiring question, not a remote-work one.

A remote hire in Denmark may never set foot in an office of the company that pays them. Employer of Record Denmark employs them on a Danish contract, names their home or chosen workplace in the written terms, runs Danish payroll and keeps the working-time record and the workplace assessment in place. You decide the work, the hours that suit your team and the equipment you want to provide.

The start for a remote hire looks the same as for anyone else in Denmark. The person needs a CPR number or personal tax number, a tax card from Skattestyrelsen and a NemKonto for salary; the written terms go out within the statutory 7 days; and the first pay run follows on the agreed date. Equipment is easiest to ship once the start date is fixed, so it arrives before day one.

If you are comparing providers, ask how each one handles the APV and time recording for staff who never come into an office; the remaining questions are covered in what to test in a Danish EOR. For a wider view of the employer’s duties, see our overview of employing in Denmark.