GEO 192 / 2020: Telework or Work from Home Become Mandatory
Publication: ZRVP
On November 6, 2020, Emergency Ordinance 192/2020 on Mandatory Organization of Work from Home or Telework during the Entire State of Alert became effective. The Ordinance amends Law 55/2020 containing measures for prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic effects. At the same time, Government Decision 935/2020 also amended and supplemented annexes no. 2 and 3 to the Government Decision 856/2020 on the Prolongation of the State of Alert in the Territory of Romania as of October 15, 2020, as well as the Measures Applying during the State of Alert for Prevention and Control of the COVID-19 Pandemic Effects.
New Adopted Measures
- During the state of alert, employers shall decide in favor of work from home or telework, where the business specifics allow it. Thus, work from home and telework become mandatory and only if there are objective reasons not allowing the conducting of business by telework or work from home the measure shall not apply.
- Employees of the private sector, the central and local public authorities and institutions, regardless of their financing and subordination, as well as autonomous companies, national companies and wholly or majority state-owned or administrative and territorial unit-owned companies, with more than 50 employees, must organize their working hours by telework or work from home. If one cannot conduct its business by telework or work from home, for the avoidance of agglomeration of public transport, the working hours shall be organized so that the personnel be divided in groups that start and finish, respectively, their activity as a difference of at least an hour.
- The new amendment to Law 81/2018 on the Regulation of the Telework Activity provides expressly that any employer and any of their teleworkers may agree by means of a written agreement on the use, by the teleworker, of their own means related to information and communication technology and/or work equipment necessary for work performance, specifying the terms of use.
Recommendation
Given that any Employer may implement both telework and work from home, we recommend you to implement telework.
Advantages
- Telework is a flexible measure involving the possibility to perform any activity specific to any job, both outside the place of work organized by the Employer, and within it.
- The measure may be considered feasible also after the end of the pandemics, this means of performance of work being considered a prospective means of work, being in line with the evolution of the information technology.
- In the past, the Romanian state granted patrimonial advantages only to employers that had implemented telework, and not also to employers that had implemented work from home (by GEO 132/2020, the Romanian state granted employers financial support of lei 2,500 for the acquisition of packages of technological goods and services necessary for the conducting of the activity in the form of telework for the employees that had worked as such during the state of alert).
How do we implement?
- According to the Guide on Conducting of Activity as Work from Home/Telework/Individualized Work Program, issued by the Labor Inspectorate, the measure may be ordered by any employer’s decision. At the same time, the measure may be ordered also by addendum concluded for the purpose of provision of the activity as telework, and may be signed also by the use of the qualified electronic signature, both by the employer and by any employee.
- The instituting of the telework measure shall be transmitted in REVISAL, the individual employment agreement becomes an individual employment agreement with telework clause. For the transmission of these data one should use the functionality Contract Amendment and shall operate the change of the value Agreement Type from Individual Employment Agreement to Individual Employment Agreement with Telework Clause. The registration of the date as of which the telework clause applies shall be made by fill-in of the field Effective Date.
Implementation Term
It is preferable that companies should institute telework possibility for a period of at least 6 months (estimated period for overcoming the pandemics).
Implementation Formalities
- Labor health and security training (SSM) for the conducting of the activity as telework, by assessment of the risks at the actual place of activity performance;
- Communication to employees of the set of measures that must be complied with for labor health and security protection when performing activity as telework;
- Adopting, at the Company’s level, of a telework policy, which may stipulate:
- the conditions in which the employees may use the logistics (ergonomic chair, laptop, desktop etc.) provided by the employer for the conducting of the activity as telework;
- the conditions in which the working hours performed as telework are recorded;
- the conditions when the employer may request that the activity be performed from the office and/or from other locations;
- employers’ obligation to provide transport to and from the location where telework is performed of the materials that the teleworker uses in its activity, as the case may be.
- Policy should be adopted and also communicated to employees in the same conditions like the internal regulations;
- Tailoring of the measures for data and information security, including by conclusion of a confidentiality agreement with the employees for the conducting of the activity as telework.