Policies and procedures for telework once the business reopens.

• As of today, despite recommendations from the Government to implement teleworking whenever possible for reasons of health precautions, there is no “right to teleworking” in Luxembourg. In fact, employers may refuse employees requests for teleworking.
• Employers may however impose teleworking on their employees for health and safety reasons, if possible and compliant with their functions and employment contract.
• Different rules are applicable whether the employee is working from home on a regular basis or only occasionally. If the employee works from home on a regular basis (for example the employee is working every Friday from home would be a regular regime), an addendum to the employment contract must be signed and the employer should respect a certain number of obligations governed by the legal provisions of a Grand-Ducal regulation dated 15 March 2016. Therefore for occasional teleworking (which was applicable during the Coronavirus crisis), no specific arrangements need to be organized, apart from the respect of the confidentiality and data protection points. It is however recommended to communicate some common guidelines/a policy to the employees working from home on an occasional basis; this is relevant from an insurance perspective if the employee has a work-related accident while working from home. Ideally, the employee should confirm his start and end time of a working day spent at home (by e-mail (sent to the line manager), via the clocking system etc.).
• It is important to note that as in Luxembourg many employees are cross-border workers, working from home (i.e. from another country) may have tax or even social security implications for them leading to a possible loss of salary, if the duration of work performed from home exceeds a certain number of days per year. Although the Luxembourg government managed to negotiate with France, Germany and Belgium for the non-application of the usual tax-regime during the state of crisis, it is unclear as of today what would be the tax implications in the future once the business reopens.