The topic of the third webinar within The European Pro Bono Week 2020 was Employment Relationship in a Public Organization. During the webinar, lawyer of Kyiv office of the largest international law firm Dentons Oleksandra Piskun shared her experience in drawing up employment agreements in the COVID-19 pandemic and told about nuances of cooperation between public organizations and individual entrepreneurs. We have brief notes of main points in her lecture.
- An employment agreement is often termless; however, if a person is hired for a particular work, for example, implementation of a program with the term of 2 to 3 months, it should be specified in the document.
- An employer is entitled to assign a probationary period which shall last up to three months for office employees and one month for manual workers. In exceptional cases the term may be increased with must be written in an agreement. An employee cannot be dismissed by the reason of “failed to get accustomed to the team”; the reason should be sound, e.g. lack of competence.
- If an employee works remotely, from home, the agreement should include the address of residence; otherwise you will not be able to prove, say, absence from duty. At the same time, a hired person should keep a close eye on actual and working places to be the same as specified in the document (legal address may be differ).
- An employee should be provided with a job description (it is importance to ensure that an employee is aware of their direct duties to be fulfilled). The best way is to specify duties of a hired person in an employment agreement.
- An employer must provide safe labour conditions. Current unusual epidemic situation requires for written evidence that you have provided your office with face masks and sanitisers, as well as notified the employees in advance of protective measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
- It is recommended that an employment agreement would either specify that an employee may not accept gifts from customers or impose proper limits (see The Code of Ethics of Public Organization webinar).
- If an employer works irregular hours, it must be included in the document. Beside a standard paid vacation of 24 calendar days, such an employee is entitled for additional 7 days-off.
- It is advisable that time during which an employee must notify an employer of their temporary disability to be explicitly written. It is usually provided that notification of illness or other circumstances should be given by an employee up to 10:00 AM.
- Salary or wages should be paid to employees at least twice a month, in a time period not exceeding 16 calendar days and at latest 7 days upon expiration of the reporting period.
The speaker pointed out that all those nuances should be considered, otherwise outcomes might be unpredictable. For example, if an employee established to the satisfaction of the court that they were dismissed illegally (it would be easy to do with improperly drawn up agreement), an employer would be obliged both hire them back and pay for the time they were out of work.
At the end of her lecture Oleksandra Piskun answered questions of participants of European Pro Bono Week2020 in Kyiv.
We remind of the free lecture of The Agreements of a Public Organization scheduled for today (26 November) at 4:00 PM and lecture of The Code of Ethics in Public Organizations scheduled for tomorrow at 2:00 PM. The speakers will be experts of law firms Dentons and SPENSERS.
Communication will be provided via ZOOM Platform. You can check in for the lecture via the link.
The First European Pro Bono Week was held in November 2019 in over 10 cities including Paris, Madrid, Milan, Frankfurt, and Brussels. Its organizers in Kyiv were MO PILnet backed by the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation and Pro Bono Lab Program of the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge.
Topic of current week is Pro bono in Response to Global Crisis. We should point out that experts of many law firms currently tend to help public organizations while they understand their social responsibility and importance of supporting each other in the Covid-19 pandemic.