03-10-2023
New benefits and guarantees for employees during remote work (home office)
The possibility to work from different locations, outside the employer’s premises, or the so-called “home office”, was principally envisaged in Bulgarian legislation even before the COVID-19 pandemic

Nevertheless, due to gaps in the legislation, applying this work regime in practice created (at times) uncertainty in the legal relations between the parties to the employment agreement.

 

In order to overcome these inconsistencies, the draft Act for amendment of the Labour Code lays down that, in addition to the main elements of the employment relationship (working hours, remuneration, amount of paid annual leave, etc.), the individual employment agreement shall now mandatorily stipulate:

 

- the place of work (when outside the employer’s premises), and;

 

- the periods of work “on the spot”, in the employer’s premises, and remotely when the so-called “hybrid” regime is agreed upon. 

 

It is the employee’s responsibility to provide an off-site workplace, suitable for remote work. The employer must be provided with information in writing on the characteristics of the workplace elected by the employee.

 

The employee must immediately notify the employer, the immediate supervisor or other authorised person of any accident at the workplace in the order and the manner agreed upon in advance. The employer, in turn, must adopt rules concerning the procedure for assigning and reporting remote work. By virtue of the proposed amendments it would be possible for this to be done entirely digitally - via an automated information system.

 

In today’s working environment employers are often in contact with employees at any time of the day. The draft also lays down that this may lead to a violation of workers’ statutory right to rest. This deficit is explicitly addressed by providing the so-called “right of exclusion”, i.e. the right of the employee not to communicate electronically with the employer during the regulated inter-day and inter-week breaks.

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