Should an employer provide remote employees with equipment?

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Remote work has become the norm. Last year, when everyone switched to remote work en masse one day, almost none of the employers understood how to act correctly and what rules to follow. In the summer, the government developed a draft amendment to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, which was supposed to put everything in its place. The package of amendments hastily passed all readings in the State Duma, was approved in December, and entered into force in January 2021. For several months now, employers and employees have been dealing with "official remote work" and reaping the fruits of poorly developed legislative initiatives.

If an employee slips and breaks their arm while working from home, will this be considered uruguay whatsapp list an industrial injury? How should remote employees exchange personnel documents and work reports? There are many questions. We tried to answer the most common ones and those that we encountered ourselves. The article will be useful if you work remotely or on a hybrid schedule, want to avoid conflicts at work and claims from tax authorities and the Labor Inspectorate.

The term "remote work" has existed in Russian legislation since 2013. What has changed this year?
Federal Law No. 407-FZ of 08.12.2020 supplemented Chapter 49.1 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation on the specifics of regulating the work of remote workers. The amendments adjusted the existing rules: instead of five articles, there are now nine. Remote work is still considered to be work outside the location of the employer or outside the zone of his control, using the Internet or other public access networks.

The new amendments have put an equal sign between remote and distance work - now they are synonyms. A remote employee has been equated to an office worker, so the conditions for providing annual leave and temporary disability leave have remained the same. It is also no longer possible to reduce wages because a person works from home.

Should an employer provide remote employees with equipment? 1

If previously an employee could work remotely only by agreement of the parties, now the employer can send him to work remotely without consent. We are talking about temporary remote work in case of force majeure and in exceptional circumstances: epidemics are just such circumstances.

Is it necessary to indicate in personnel documents that an employee works remotely?
If you hire an employee for remote work, then this condition is immediately specified in the employment contract. If the transfer to remote work is temporary, but is regular, it is also specified in the contract with an indication of the period: for example, "during the grain harvest - from August 1 to 15 - the accountant works remotely." The same applies to mixed remote work, when an employee works in the office for several days and from home for several days. There are no time limits in this case.

When an employee is transferred to remote work on a one-time basis and such a transfer is not provided for in the employment contract, an additional agreement is signed with him. For example, "in connection with the replacement of electrical equipment in the office, employees are sent to work from home for a month." After the agreed period, employees return to the office. A temporary transfer cannot last more than six months, but there can be any number of such periods.

You can record the fact of remote work not only in the contract and additional agreement. This can be done in the employment agreement, when it comes to a one-time transfer with clear deadlines, and in the internal labor regulations (ILR). But it is not necessary to specify working hours in the documents - the employee can independently regulate the work schedule. But if it is necessary for him to be in touch at certain hours or sometimes come to the office, it is also better to specify this in local regulations. They are more "flexible", the conditions in them are easier to change than in the employment contract or agreements. The following phrase will be enough: "On Fridays from 15:00 to 18:00, the employee in the office makes a report on the results of work for the week."