Out-Law Analysis 1 min. read
05 Jan 2022, 10:48 am
Many UAE businesses adapted well to the workplace challenges of the pandemic. The shift to global remote working arrangements provided opportunities for both UAE-based employees, who were able to adopt flexible working patterns, and employers, who successfully reduced office lease costs and increased operational efficiencies during this period. All our UAE-based clients have adopted some form of agile working over the past two years and many of those clients intend to maintain some form of agile working within the UAE in future. The regional and global advantages to agile working include a boost to productivity levels, an increased collaboration with international colleagues, and a more versatile workforce.
However, there is widespread acknowledgment of the advantages of knowledge sharing and social interaction to be derived from workers being in the same physical space with colleagues. Each employer has to consider their own approach to remote working individually, with reference to their commercial objectives, organisation culture and structure and industry norms. There are further practical and legal issues to consider too.
There are a few practical aspects that all UAE employers should consider in the context of implementing a long term remote working arrangement:
This is a non-exhaustive list of issues that should be considered. Another significant element to factor in is the need to adapt and modernise employee performance evaluations, traditional goal settings, and reward frameworks to motivate employees in a remote context.
In the UAE, unless an employee is expressly permitted to work remotely by their employer, their rights to do so under the current legislative framework are limited. An employee’s work permit and the applicable labour laws do not extend to anything more than allowing the employee to work from the employer’s registered office address. Beyond any pandemic-related stipulations, there is no legal right for employees to insist on working remotely. As a result, UAE employers have discretion to determine whether and to what extent employees are permitted to work remotely or are otherwise required to work from the office.
Unless the employee is party to a part-time visa, employees are only permitted to work for the employer which is the visa sponsor from a regulatory perspective. It is therefore important that employers permitting employees to work remotely ensure that the employees do not work for other companies or work from other companies’ offices.
Notwithstanding that employment laws in the UAE are being updated, with a new legal framework being applicable with effect from February 2022, the UAE Labour Law as it stands provides that an employee’s absence from the workplace without a valid cause for more than seven consecutive days or 20 non-consecutive days constitutes an act of gross misconduct, whereby an employer is permitted to dismiss the employee immediately and without prior notice.
Despite a return of some pre-Covid workplace norms, the pandemic inspired the UAE government to digitise some of its processes. Some transactions have become entirely electronic as a result. By way of example, the notarisation of legal documents and the attendance of court hearings is now facilitated remotely. The UAE has also relaxed its licensing requirements and allows the public to use videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority previously blocked.
Another positive post-Covid shift that was introduced by the UAE government is the issuance of remote work visas, which allows individuals who are not employed by entities licensed in the UAE, but by employers outside the UAE instead, to live in the UAE.
While the “virtual working program” is subject to certain conditions, including a minimum salary of USD $5,000 per month, the changes represent a great shift from the old immigration regime which required foreign employees to obtain a work permit and residency visa through an employer, which had to an entity established in the UAE, in order to legally work and reside in the UAE.
Businesses should consider whether and to what extent their workforce are required to work from the office or permitted to work remotely to maximise cost efficiencies and business operations.
Once the business has determined its preferred working arrangements, we recommend considering the practical and legal issues that will further influence their desired approach. It may be necessary to make amendments to HR paperwork to reflect the new working arrangements, including updating employment contracts, introducing remote working policies and amending any supplementary policies that may be affected by the remote working arrangements, such as performance metrics and IT and confidential information policies.
Co-written by Ayah Abdin of Pinsent Masons.