Three routes to setting up telework

An employee teleworking two days a week may receive 22 € a month as an allowance, with no receipts. That still supposes telework was set up through one of the three routes the labour code opens, and not through a tolerated habit.

One definition, and two boundaries

Telework is a form of organisation in which work that could have been done on the employer's premises is carried out away from them, by a willing employee, using information and communication technologies.

The second boundary is willingness. The employee must be willing, and a refusal to move to telework is not a ground for terminating the employment contract. That is the principle, and it carries one exception named further down.

Three routes, and seven points to set out

Telework is set up by a collective agreement, by a charter drawn up by the employer, or, failing both, by an agreement between employer and employee. The three routes produce the same status, not the same requirements of form.

Where there is a collective agreement or a charter, the text must set out seven points. It is a closed list, and an incomplete text exposes the employer to a challenge on the conditions under which the arrangement was organised.

• The conditions for moving to telework, notably during a pollution episode, and for returning to on-site work
• How the employee accepts the terms, and how working time or workload is monitored
• The time slots during which the employer may usually contact the employee
• How disabled workers, pregnant employees and employees caring for a relative gain access

Failing an agreement and a charter, employer and employee may agree on telework at any moment and record it by any means: a contract clause, an amendment, or otherwise. Writing remains preferable, if only to head off disputes.

That last column deserves reading before choosing the route. Without an agreement or a charter, the employer may explain a refusal without being bound to; with either one, the refusal must be reasoned where the post allows telework.

Two requests escape that flexibility. One from a disabled worker and one from an employee caring for a child, a parent or a relative call for a reasoned refusal, even absent any collective agreement or charter.

Consultation, places and frequency

In undertakings with more than fifty employees, the works council, where one exists, must be consulted before telework is set up. Consultation comes before the setting up: holding it afterwards does not put things right.

The place is not necessarily the home. The employee may work in any place defined by the agreement, the charter, or authorised by the employer: home, a telecentre or shared office, or anywhere else for employees who travel a great deal.

Frequency comes in two forms, and both are named by the official page. Regular telework brings a settled pattern into the timetable, one or two days a week for instance; occasional telework counts instead in a few days or a few weeks spread over the year.

One exception cuts across all of the above: in exceptional circumstances, the threat of an epidemic for instance, or in a case of force majeure, telework may be imposed without the employee's consent.

That exception is narrow and lends itself to no extension. It targets situations where being on site becomes impossible or dangerous, not a reorganisation decided in order to cut down on office space.

Outside those cases, moving to telework is built both ways: the employee may refuse with no consequence at all on the contract, and the employer may refuse an employee who asks for it, under the conditions recalled just above in this module.