Home office

What it means

The Labour Code separates occasional work from home by agreement from teleworking, which is regular and must be in the employment contract. The employer’s duties follow from which it is.

A home-office employee keeps every right: working time, breaks, premiums, the right to disconnect. The employer must honour them even without seeing the person.

Home office is about the place of work, not the hours. It often comes together with flexible working time, but these are two separate arrangements: someone working from home can have a fixed schedule, and someone on flexitime can come to the office every day. The contract should deal with each on its own.

How it works in practice

Teleworking raises the question of compensating higher energy and internet costs. A flat amount can be agreed; at a reasonable level it is deductible for the company and exempt for the employee.

Health and safety applies at home too: the employee confirms the workplace is suitable, the employer keeps training and time records. An injury at home is assessed for whether it happened at work.

The right to meals continues when working from home: for every shift that meets the statutory conditions the employee gets a meal voucher or a meal allowance in cash. We therefore record home-office days in payroll exactly like office days, and we need attendance records from the client, not just a count of days worked.

What to watch out for

Without a written agreement on the place of work, travel allowances become uncertain: if home is the place of work, a trip to the office is a business trip and must be reimbursed.

An employee who moves their home office to another country changes more than an address. Longer work from abroad can shift the country where contributions are paid and where the salary is taxed, and some activities create the risk of a permanent establishment of the company abroad. Work from abroad therefore belongs in a written agreement made in advance.