Works rules

What it means

Works rules are an internal regulation in which the employer spells the Labour Code out for its own operation: start and end of working time, how absence is reported, entrusted property, use of company equipment. They create no new duties; they only pin down what the law leaves to the employer.

They are not a contract: the employer issues them unilaterally and they bind everyone. They are not the internal accounting directives, which govern the books and the flow of documents, nor the employment contract, which settles one person’s terms.

An employer does not have to issue works rules; the law does not require them. Without them, though, matters such as the working-time schedule, how absence is reported or the use of a company car have to be settled in each employment contract separately or by separate instructions, which is hard to keep consistent as headcount grows.

How it works in practice

Where employee representatives operate at the employer, works rules can be issued or amended only with their prior consent; without it they are invalid. Where there is no union and no works council, the employer issues them alone.

The rules must be accessible to every employee, and the employer can rely only on what the employee was demonstrably acquainted with. Anything stricter than the Labour Code or the collective agreement allows has no effect.

When a firm grows from a handful of people to several dozen, we help the client align the rules with how work is actually done: who approves overtime, how working from home is reported, the date by which attendance records are handed in. The deadlines in the rules then tie into the payroll close, and pay is not calculated from incomplete data.

What to watch out for

The expensive mistake is a dismissal for breaching a duty that exists only in rules nobody ever showed the employee. A court declares the termination invalid and the employer pays wage compensation for the length of the dispute: the first twelve months are the employee’s by law, and the court rules on anything beyond that.

A second problem is rules left untouched for years while both the law and the way of working changed. People follow actual practice, such as overtime ordered only by word of mouth, and in a dispute the employer finds that its own regulation says something else and counts against it.