Remote employee: what qualities should an ideal freelancer have to earn trust from employers? Features of the design of remote work.

Applicants and current employees are increasingly expressing a desire to work remotely; some employers greet this offer with a smile, while others are wary. The article discusses the opportunities that remote employment opens up and what consequences it is fraught with. The question is very twofold: in the USA this way of working is highly popular, but in Russia it is only gaining momentum.

What is remote work

The official definition says that it is an employment relationship between an employer and an employee in which the latter performs his duties outside the office.

Remote worker has a free schedule and is not always bound by an employment contract. The concept of “freelancer” is becoming more and more common - it is a synonym for “remote employee” abroad, essentially hired for hourly or piecework.

The Civil Code contains the concept "home worker", which indicates the legitimacy of this format of interaction.

Who is suitable for remote work?

It is important to recognize that home-based workers are not suitable for every task and, before deciding to switch the office to remote work, it is necessary to evaluate whether the decision is feasible. For some professions, remote work will serve as an impetus for development, while for others it will destroy them in the bud.

Often such a schedule attracts advertising specialists, designers and editors. In short, those professionals who are not always able to maintain a stable workload and full-time employment. In addition to creators, remote work is of interest to marketing workers, analysts (including financial ones), and experts in psychological and sociological research. As a rule, such employees perform project tasks and are much more effective at working from home.

Increasingly, adherents of the IT field are choosing to work remotely, because... There is no need to organize workspaces within the office walls. With the help of the progress of information technology, software developers and webmasters, system administrators and many others can easily cope with tasks without leaving home.

It is convenient to transfer copywriters, artists, proofreaders, translators and journalists to a home schedule. Professionals in the opposite field of activity can also work from home: stitching, packaging, assembly and other similar work.

Working from home opens up opportunities for hiring disabled people and women on maternity leave. This category of people is characterized by high motivation, works efficiently, but does not have the opportunity to get to offices and work eight-hour workdays.

Conventionally, depending on the volume of tasks that fall on specialists, 3 areas of remote work can be distinguished. The table shows an example of how representatives of a particular profession are more often hired.

1. Remote workers.
They do not need an office to work, since tasks can be remote or traveling in nature.
For example: sales representatives, sales managers, employees of remote regions.

2. Freelancers.
They will perform a one-time task or be suitable for hourly loading, drawn up under a contract or service agreement. .
For example: translators, proofreaders, tutors, copywriters, lawyers, recruiters, business trainers, designers.

3. Remote workers.
Perform full-time office tasks while at home. For example: editors, creative specialists (designers, artists, etc.), marketers, researchers, IT specialists, analysts, accountants.

Such an example does not limit the hiring method; it all depends on the workload on the person and the specifics of his functionality.

Economic efficiency

This format of interaction with an employee saves about half a million rubles a year. This can be verified by a simple calculation using average figures (they may vary in each region).

Cost of an office worker for a company

For example, the task is to hire a designer. The average salary for this position is 35 thousand - 30 thousand rubles per month, provided that the person works in an office. As practice shows, wages account for approximately 40% of all office staff costs. The employer pays contributions, say, 13 thousand rubles, equips the workplace for 27 thousand rubles (rent, office equipment and its maintenance, stationery, utilities, telephone, benefits package, Internet, cleaning and much more). In total, keeping an employee in the office will cost 75 thousand rubles per month.

And if you also equip a workplace, then the amount can be safely doubled.

Costs for a remote employee

When calculating the costs of a homeworker, the financial side is much more interesting for the employer. When hiring a designer for remote work, the average salary is 25 thousand rubles per month. If we talk about official employment, then contributions here will cost approximately 8.6 thousand rubles. There is no need to spend money on a workplace; they have computers, roofs over their heads and the Internet. There is a possibility that the costs of stationery and communications (including the Internet) will have to be reimbursed, but this is much cheaper - 1.5 thousand rubles. Thus, the designer will cost 35.1 thousand rubles per month.

The calculation clearly demonstrates monthly savings of 39.9 thousand rubles, translated into a year - this is rounded 480 thousand rubles. Even if you have to spend more than the specified amounts on something, for example, installing the Internet, the employer’s benefit will still remain impressive.

Pros and cons of remote work

Despite the obvious savings, it is important to objectively assess the advantages and disadvantages of this type of cooperation.

Benefits for the employer:
— Reducing the cost of maintaining the workplace.
— Payment for actual results and hours worked.
— Savings on tax payments.
— The ability to retain a valuable employee during a crisis.
— Reduced costs for social benefits.
— There is no need to purchase and maintain office equipment.

Disadvantages for the employer:
— There is no way to quickly transfer the task that has arisen.
— Difficulties with control of work.
— Less team responsibility and collective influence.
— Risk of lowering the company’s authority among clients due to a virtual office.

Benefits for the employee:
— Ability to perform several jobs simultaneously.
- Free schedule.
— Reduced travel costs.
— Saving time on the road to work.
— Preserving space in a crisis.
— Possibility to do personal affairs in parallel with work (flexible employment).

Disadvantages for the employee:
- Unstable loading.
— There is no team spirit and belonging to society.
— The risk of ending up with an unscrupulous employer.
— Distribution of workplace content among employers (calculations).
- Distractions.
— Reduced guarantees from labor legislation.

As the analysis shows, a coin always has two sides and each person determines the most significant factors.

How HR can work with remote employees

In the absence of stable personal contact, the need to form a loyal attitude towards the company and work does not decrease. To do this, it is recommended to choose communication channels by telephone or via the Internet. Key goal: to constantly be in touch with a colleague so that he understands his value to the company and belonging to the corporate culture.

Homeworkers tend to be self-motivated and self-disciplined. At the same time, as noted above, they have enough reasons to be distracted. The ability to unite remote workers into working groups, the results of which are assessed based on team indicators, helps to cope with this problem. Thus, 2 issues are resolved: team spirit, communication with the team and involvement in the work process.

Working remotely requires a certain percentage of maternity employees. It is important for HR not to neglect building contact with this category of personnel. If the interaction is completely satisfactory for both parties, then there is a high chance of subsequently transferring the effective colleague to the office on a permanent basis.

Organize monthly or quarterly meetings, round tables, allowing you to share results and unite as a team.

No matter how attractive the prospect of remote work may be, it is important to act consciously, thinking through every step before making a decision. To understand how suitable it is for the company, start by hiring a small group of people and testing a new format of work for the company. After which you can try to develop the project and expand the remote staff.

It will not be surprising if after some time most companies switch to the considered format of cooperation, because in addition to savings, it has the effect of novelty, which opens up interesting prospects.

Today, remote work (or, in the language of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, home-based and remote work) is a very common type of relationship between employee and employer. In this regard, questions constantly arise related to the possible reaction of tax authorities to certain aspects of such relationships. Let's try to consider the most relevant of them.

Remote compensation

Remote workers typically incur certain costs associated with performing their job duties. Including in connection with the use of personal property for these purposes. Can an employer reimburse its employee for such expenses? What problems does this arise? If we turn to Articles 188 and 310 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, we can conclude that the parties to the employment contract have every right to independently determine the procedure for reimbursing such employee expenses. Moreover, the amount of compensation must correspond to the degree of wear and tear of the property owned by the employee. The Russian government makes one exception to this rule: depreciation of an employee’s car. If the parties to the employment contract decide to stipulate in this document other grounds for reimbursement of the employee’s expenses, then in accordance with letters from the Ministry of Finance of Russia dated April 11, 2013 No. 03-04-06/11996, the availability of relevant documents will be required that will confirm the presence of wear and tear on the property, but ( attention!) with differentiation of the degree of wear and tear for the use of property for work and personal purposes. Thus, tax authorities have certain opportunities to challenge such compensation. Controversial may be those expenses of an employee that are difficult to differentiate according to their purposes: to separate depreciation as a result of using property for personal needs from depreciation when the owner performs his professional duties. For example, any employee can use Internet access both for personal purposes and for professional activities. And the proportion of its use for certain needs can be difficult to establish and, accordingly, questions arise regarding the payment of such expenses.

Are “remoteness” and “isolation” the same thing?

Is being a homeworker in the office a business trip?

How to correctly account for the results of remote work as expenses in the form of salary

Article 312 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. General provisions (extract) Remote work is the performance of a labor function determined by an employment contract outside the location of the employer, its branch, representative office, other separate structural unit (including those located in another locality), outside a stationary workplace, territory or facility directly or indirectly under the control of the employer, provided use of public information and telecommunication networks, including the Internet, to perform this job function and to carry out interaction between the employer and employee on issues related to its implementation. Remote workers are considered to be persons who have entered into an employment contract for remote work. Remote workers are subject to labor legislation and other acts containing labor law standards, taking into account the specifics established by this chapter. If this chapter provides for the interaction of a remote worker or a person applying for remote work and an employer through the exchange of electronic documents, enhanced qualified electronic signatures of the remote worker or a person applying for remote work and the employer are used in the manner established by federal laws and other regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation. Each of the parties to this exchange is obliged to send in the form of an electronic document confirmation of receipt of the electronic document from the other party within the period specified in the employment contract for remote work.

The general rule is that the costs incurred by the employer to pay employees are confirmed by the relevant provisions of employment contracts and job descriptions. Consequently, no additional reports or other evidence of the employee fulfilling his job duties. There is also judicial practice on this matter (see, for example, the resolution of the Federal Arbitration Court of the North-Western District dated 04/17/13 No. A13-6626/2012). At the same time, clause 1 of Article 252 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation states that expenses (including wages) require documentary evidence. For office workers, such confirmation is provided by personnel records, including information on how much time the person actually worked. And established in Art. 312.4 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the right to independently determine the working hours for those who work remotely does not at all cancel the employer’s obligations to record the actual time worked. Since there is no corresponding data for the “remote workers,” please provide other evidence. There is no discrimination, but only a forced reflection of the specifics of this type of labor relationship. One way to solve this problem is to stipulate methods for recording time worked directly in the employment contract. As such methods, you can use printouts of control telephone conversations. This is not a troublesome matter, but it will help in the future to save the employer from unnecessary disputes with the tax authorities.

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Remote work according to the law: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a document amending the Labor Code. Now new rules for regulating remote work will come into force in the Russian Federation. At the same time, previously there were practically no special rules regarding remote workers. This area was a complete “blank spot” in the legislation.

The new law makes changes to both the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and the law “On Electronic Signatures”. According to the new legislative definition, remote work is recognized as “work in which the employee is located outside a stationary workplace controlled by the employer personally or through representatives, and communication between the employee and the employer is maintained using public information and telecommunication networks, including the Internet.”

The legislator did not indicate when to rest and when to work for remote workers: they will figure it out themselves. That is, the working hours and rest hours are set by the employee at his discretion. Another innovation is the ability to conclude even the employment contract “remotely”. To do this, you will simply need to send all the usually required documents (passport, individual personal number from the pension fund, work record book, education diploma, military registration documents, etc.) to the employer in electronic form. Based on them, he will be able to conclude an agreement, a copy of which must be sent to the new employee by registered mail with notification within three calendar days. In this case, formally the place of his detention will be recognized as the location of the employer.

If the job for which a remote worker gets a job is the first job in his life, then the legislator obliges him to take care of obtaining an insurance certificate of state pension insurance. By agreement of the parties, a work record book may not be issued to him at all. In this case, the main document certifying the fact of employment is a copy of the employment contract.

The law, signed the day before by the president, had been in development for a long time. The State Duma considered it in the first reading on October 16, 2012, and since then its text has been changed and supplemented more than once. That is, legal work was carried out on the law, and it was not adopted immediately in three readings in one day, like some normative legal acts. Such acts, as a rule, turn out to be “raw”, imperfect and require immediate revision, or even cancellation.

The fact that remote work activities will be clearly and thoroughly regulated is certainly a positive thing. The measure seems extremely timely: remote work is becoming increasingly popular both in Russia and throughout the post-Soviet space. Thus, according to the research center of the International Personnel Portal hh. ua, 91 percent of Ukrainians would be happy to work remotely. And 60 percent of office workers already have such experience behind them. Only six percent of respondents reported that they would categorically not want to work remotely, including as freelancers.

Among the advantages of remote employment is the opportunity not to be away from family (which is especially important for citizens with small children and sick relatives) and the opportunity to plan your day and spend time more effectively than sitting for eight hours in the office, often with nothing to do. In addition, supporters of remote work note that with such a system it is easier to combine two jobs.

Among the disadvantages of remote work, as a rule, is the lack of sufficient guarantees for the employee. In particular, wage guarantees. If remote work is carried out in the form of freelancing, then it has another drawback - inconstancy.

In addition, the disadvantage of working remotely is that it is simply not applicable in a number of areas: in manufacturing, construction, retail trade and others. There are also traditionally “office” professions in which there is no place for remote workers. For example, the banking sector.

Meanwhile, despite the growing popularity of remote work, its legislative regulation has so far been almost absent. The new law is designed to correct the current situation and make remote work safe for the employee and as convenient as possible for all parties to the labor relationship.

Today, many businessmen have realized that maintaining a remote employee is much cheaper than maintaining an office employee. There is no need to rent a room or set up a workplace. In addition, when the pool of candidates is not limited to just your city, you can hire a truly high-quality specialist and vary the amount of payment significantly. Do you know how to officially hire a remote employee and properly formalize the relationship with him?

So, according to current legislation, a remote worker can be registered in two ways:

1). By concluding an employment contract(and then all relationships between them are regulated by the norms of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation)

2). By concluding a civil contract(then the relationship will be regulated by the provisions of the contract, or contract for the provision of services, or contract for the performance of work, etc.).

The general recommendation is this. If you need an official employee for a large-scale but one-time project (for example, creating a website), then it will be more convenient to conclude a civil contract. The subject of such an agreement must be a specific result. Upon completion of cooperation, a certificate of completion of work (or services provided) is drawn up. The act confirms that the work was delivered by the contractor, accepted by the customer, and it is the basis for payment for the work performed under the terms of the concluded contract.

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For the purpose of long-term cooperation, to perform ongoing ongoing tasks, it is more convenient to register a remote worker in accordance with the requirements of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. Just last year, a new chapter 49.1 was introduced into the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, regulating the work of remote employees. The law called them “teleworkers.” The basis of the relationship between the employer and the remote worker is the exchange of electronic documents. Via the Internet the following is carried out:

Send the candidate a copy of the employment contract (already signed by you) by email, or using other electronic document management options and receive a signed and scanned copy from the candidate. From the moment you receive an electronic document with two signatures, the employment relationship is considered formalized.

Within three calendar days from the date of receipt of the signed agreement, you must send to the employee a completed copy of the employment contract on paper by registered mail with acknowledgment of delivery.

Familiarize the employee with the internal documents of your organization by sending them electronically and receiving mandatory confirmation from the employee that he has read them.

Resolve with the employee the issue of entering information about remote work into his work book. Entry into the employee’s work book is entered at the request of the employee. If the remote employee insists, the work book is sent to the employer by mail.

Lawyers advise remembering that many conditions for remote work are not directly stated in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, but are subject to agreement between the employee and the employer. Therefore, it is very important to draw up an employment contract correctly and as completely as possible. We recommend that the following conditions be included in the employment contract:

• The nature of the work is remote
• Procedure for using equipment for work (whether it is provided by the employer or the employee’s personal equipment is used)
• Various employee compensations (payment for communications, Internet traffic, etc.)
• Terms, size, payment procedure for work
• Procedure for granting leave to an employee
• Requirements for the employee to use certain software and hardware, special equipment, encryption tools, etc.
• Working hours (as a rule, the working and rest hours are determined by the employee himself, but the parties have the right to provide for other conditions in the contract).