In September 2020, draft amendments were developed on remote work (the Draft Law).

The Draft Law proposes to exclude Article 138 on remote work from the Labor Code and to add to it a separate set of rules as a new Chapter 12-1 under the title “Specifics of the regulation of remote work”. In this new chapter, it is proposed to set out the norms on various aspects of the regulation of remote work, temporary remote work, and combined remote work.

Specifics

In addition to the existing conditions of remote work (RW), the Draft Law contains the following new provisions:

1. When hiring an employee on the basis of a RW regime, the employer must establish a procedure of employer-employee interaction that allocates a specific time for performance of work duties and a separate time during which the employee can respond to telephone calls, emails and address the employer’s inquiries. 
2. The above interaction procedure must be acknowledged by and agreed with the employee. Otherwise, the employer would not be able to hold the employee liable for a delayed response to the employer’s inquiries. 
3. In order to protect the employer’s confidential information in the RW format, an agreement for protection of the confidential information would be signed with the employee. 

Temporary remote work

As follows from the current Labor Code, transfer of an employee to RW is executed by an additional agreement to the employment agreement.

This requires compliance with the procedure of amending the employment agreement, namely: a) notification of the employee on the changes, (b) receipt of the employee’s consent. 

At the same time, during the period of quarantine restrictions, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population of the Republic of Kazakhstan allowed transfer of employees to RW by way of an issue of a unilateral employer's act as an exception. 

The Draft Law proposes to permanently establish the employer’s right to transfer employees to RW by a unilateral decision for the duration of emergencies (temporary RW). At the same time, salaries would be paid in full in exchange for maintenance of a full workload, as agreed in the employment agreement.

Combined remote work

It is proposed to also introduce a concept of “combined remote work”. According to the Draft Law, this will require an additional agreement to the employment agreement. 

Adoption of the above listed amendments will allow employers for the period of RW to control performance of work and protect confidential information, as well as transfer employees to RW unilaterally based on the internal order for the duration of emergencies.

In conclusion, the readers should note that the above information is based on the current edition of the Draft Law, which is still a work in progress and may be further amended.