A freelancer is a remote employee who fulfills his labor duties being away from a work place.
According to labor regulations, remote work is fulfilling of labor functions by an employee who is located not at the office of a company. Work duties are being fulfilled by using of the Internet or other free to access information nets. Effectiveness of work of a remote employee can be monitored by means of a time tracker.
Remote work in the Internet is defined by following of three basic conditions:
- Labor activity is provided according to an official labor contract
- Implementing of work tasks will be provided remotely and, consequently, control over an employee’s work cannot be provided. An exception to this is using of special solutions, such as time trackers or other tools for monitoring
- Cooperation with an employer and labor of a remote employee itself is provided by means of common communication networks
Making of a labor contract definitely restricts labor cooperation between an employer and a remote employee. Often programming specialists, journalists and other specialists in the sphere of IT-technologies provide their work on the base of civil service agreement or a contract of work and labor which can be recognized as a labor contract in case of origin of a dispute. In this case a remote employee should prove performance of employment duties in full and in time.
Recruitment of a remote employee
Recruitment of a remote employee starts from submission of documents in digitalized form; in particular, an employer has the right to require a copy of passport, a work record book, copies of academic certificates, etc.
A freelancer has the right of a self-selection of work and rest schedule. This condition is not written in a labor contract. A remote employee should discuss his work and rest schedule with an employer before setting to work in order to minimize problems and to provide a correct time tracking of work time.
Remote work, as well as a full-time work, expects a duty of an employer to provide safe work conditions with studying of labor protection norms and rules. Besides that, remote labor contract stipulates conditions about procedure of granting and duration of vacation.
Some employers use time trackers to monitor effectiveness of work of a remote employee. In this case, a labor contract also should include information about time tracking and conditions of monitoring of work time of a remote employee. It is important to set working schedules for remote employees and to set certain amounts of time needed for implementing of different work tasks. If a wage is calculated according to time tracker data, it is also necessary to point out the algorithm of calculating in a labor contract.