This content is from: People & Culture
Slovak Republic: Dividing line drawn between remote work and homework
Daniel Grigel and Zuzana Steklacova of Credis Law explain how Slovakian authorities have defined and created distinctions for work completed outside the office
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The COVID-19 pandemic
has caused work processes to change and mandatory employee presence in the
workplace to be re-evaluated. As a result, the Slovak Republic has updated its
rules for carrying out remote work, including telework, in order to draw a
clear distinction between the frequently used home-office forms of work by
employees.
As of March 1, the
dividing line between ‘remote work’ and the occasional and more flexible
‘homeworking’ will be drawn, depending on the regularity of work performed off
the employer’s site.If an employee is working from home but there
is no element of regularity, it will be deemed ‘homeworking’ and not remote
work or telework. Homeworking will therefore be reserved for special
circumstances requiring the employee to temporarily work from home, such as
when there are technical problems in the workplace, an extraordinary childcare
situation, or other unplanned situations, including temporary homeworking due
to the pandemic measures put in place by the government.
Regularity as a feature
of remote work and its distinguishing from occasional homeworking will also not
necessarily mean that employees should work from home the entire five-day work
week. It can also include an agreement to work remotely for a specified number
of days during the week, such as one or two days.Also, remote work can be
performed in any location off the employer’s worksite and is not restricted to
just the employee’s home.
Unlike from agreeing
on a home office even informally between the employer and employee, arrangements
for remote work or telework will have to be agreed by the employer and employee
specifically in the employment contract. The employer will not be able to unilaterally
require the employee to engage in regular remote work.
For remote work, the employer
can either set out fixed or flexible working hours or let the employee manage
their own working hours, in which case there is a deadline by which work must
be delivered and the period of time during which the work is carried out is
irrelevant.The employee will ordinarily not be entitled to
overtime pay, holiday pay or weekend and night allowances unless expressly
agreed under the employment contract.
The employer will be
required to provide work equipment to the employee for remote work or telework,
but the employee and employer can also make arrangements for using the
employee’s own equipment.The employer will also be required to cover the
employee’s increased costs associated with the work, such as electricity or a
high-speed internet connection, if necessary to perform the work.To
avoid the social isolation associated with remote work and telework, the
employer must allow the employee to enter the workplace, if possible, to meet
up with their colleagues.
One of the obligations
of the employee will be to promptly report to the employer any technical
problems associated with malfunctioning equipment and software, internet
outages, and other similar issues that prevent them from working from home.Under
the new rules, even employees engaged in the more flexible ‘homeworking’ will
be required to report these issues to the employer.
The ‘right to
disconnect’ will also be introduced from March 1 for both remote work and the more flexible homeworking. It will
represent the so-called right of the employee to disconnect from work-related
tasks outside working hours and the right to not use work-related equipment
during their free time when working from home.If an employee refuses to
perform work or carry out an instruction outside working hours during periods
when the employee is remote working, teleworking or homeworking, it cannot be
considered by the employer as misconduct.
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