Clients Dos and Don’ts (Employer of Record)

Changes in the employment conditions

Including (but not limited to)

Changes to the benefits offering, increase or decrease of the salary, leave of any type, change of working hours, modifications and changes of verbiage on a clause in an employment agreement.

• Do not communicate changes to the employee without confirming with us if the changes are feasible and compliant beforehand. 
• Do not send employees amendments by using your own company template.
• We are the legal employers, therefore any change to the employment agreement that is not done by Remote, is invalid. If you are unsure about whether the changes impact the employment relationship or not, please confirm with us.

Disciplinary situations with the employees

If you encounter a disciplinary situation with an employee, please inform us as soon as possible. We are here to support you by assessing the situation, providing guidance on potential solutions, and outlining any associated risks to ensure compliance and a smooth resolution.

• Do not take any disciplinary measures without consulting us first.
• Do not enter a performance improvement plan (PIP) without our permission/authorization, we should always be consulted first, and we will provide you with guidelines in accordance with the local law
• Especially when dealing with difficult and conflict-prone individuals, it is important to ensure that the handling of the situation is optimal, since a poor management of the case can lead to potential high risk litigations. Any disciplinary action that is not taken by Remote has no legal effect.

Tracking/Requesting time off

Any time off (related to any kind of leave) should be requested, documented and approved in our platform.

• Any time off requested by anyone in your workforce hired through us, should be requested and approved in our platform.
• If they are using your company’s software, please ensure that you mirror the information in our platform.

• Do not forget that is the employee’s responsibility to record their leave on our platform. Please make sure to remind them when they inform you about this. If the leave is not requested and recorded in our platform but it was done in your own software, please ensure to mirror that information.
• Remote’s platform serves as our source of truth, from which we extract the necessary information to determine the concepts that need to be paid to employees. It also allows us to identify if it is necessary to notify the relevant authorities of a country about a specific leave and how this affects tax contributions, among other aspects. Some countries also require us to prove that mandatory leave was taken and will otherwise issue fines. If the information on our platform is in accurate, this will affect how we provide our services to you and the employees, which can also cause problems during terminations and final payment settlements.

Termination of an Employee

If you are thinking about terminating anyone from your workforce hired through us, whatever the reason may be, you should inform us as soon as possible.

• Inform us as soon as you want to initiate a termination. Each country has its their own complexities and termination process. Each termination will be carefully analyzed on a case-by-case basis by our expert teams, as every case requires careful consideration.
• If you are unsure about a termination but want to explore the options available or actions you can take, our experts will share the information upfront.

• Do not terminate nor inform (not even verbally) anyone in your workforce without obtaining approval from Remote first.
• Do not send any termination letter without our prior approval.
• Do not decide the type of termination without consulting Remote first. What is applicable in one country or in one circumstance, might not be applicable to others.

Terminations are sensitive and complex. A mishandling of the termination process could lead to high risk litigation.
Moreover, since we are the legal employers, Remote should process and issue a termination, otherwise it won’t have any legal effect and will increase your co-employment risks and we will have to continue paying the salary of the employee.

• If we are unaware of repeated single days off, we are unable to assess possible employee protection or disciplinary action to monitor an employee correctly.
• This can lead to issues during termination processes, as an employee may suddenly be considered protected due to repeated illness or we may not be able to adjust disciplinary measures to review illnesses.

Time Tracking

If you have your own time-tracking system, please ensure that this is mirrored in the Remote Platform.

If we are unable to prove working hours of an employee they may be able to claim overtime and overtime payments. Some countries have shifted the burden of proof on the employer to show that the employee is not working overtime otherwise it is assumed that the employee is working overtime. This can lead to higher payments.

 We will gladly work with you to see how we can accommodate both business needs and working hour regulations.

Whistleblowing / Harassment

Sometimes an employee may raise concerns with your organization. Please reach out to us, when such a matter occurs.

• Do not conclude investigations without informing Remote.
• Do not ignore requests of this sort as they can be later used in court claims to increase payments to the employee.