Remote work in the Czech Republic: what the law requires

It requires a written agreement. Zákon č. 281/2023 Sb. inserted § 190a and § 317 into the zákoník práce with effect from 1 October 2023, and § 317 odst. 1 makes a written dohoda o práci na dálku the instrument that puts an employee at home. An internal policy does not do it. Nor does a handbook page, a manager’s email or a line in an offer letter. If the agreement is not in writing, the arrangement is not what the statute contemplates.

The agreement sits alongside the pracovní smlouva rather than replacing it. The three things that must be in the contract itself stay where they are under § 34 odst. 1 zákoníku práce: druh práce, místo nebo místa výkonu práce and den nástupu do práce. Because the place of work is one of them, a permanent move to home working is a change to the contract as well as a new agreement, which is why the two documents are normally drafted together. Our post on Czech employment contracts covers what belongs in the contract itself.

This is where foreign employers are caught. In most of the places our clients hire from, home working is a benefit a manager grants on Monday and withdraws on Friday. In the Czech Republic it is a bilateral written agreement with its own rules for ending, and those rules bind the employer at least as tightly as the employee.

Everything in the chain is written. The agreement is written, any notice ending it is written, and any variation of the notice period is written. There is no oral version of any of it.

Either side may end it on 15 days’ notice, for any reason or for none, with the notice period beginning on the day the notice is delivered to the other party. That is § 317 odst. 2 zákoníku práce, and the symmetry is deliberate: the employee can walk back to the office on the same terms the employer can call them in.

The agreement may also end by mutual agreement on an agreed day, which is the cleaner route when both sides want the change and neither wants to wait out a notice period. The parties may agree a notice period that is longer or shorter than 15 days, provided it is the same for both sides, and they may agree that neither side may give notice at all. That last option is worth knowing about: an employee recruited specifically to work remotely, from a town nowhere near the employer’s premises, has a reasonable interest in an agreement that cannot be revoked at a fortnight’s notice.

What an employer cannot do is announce a return to the office with immediate effect. Fifteen days is the statutory floor, it runs from delivery rather than from the end of the month, and it applies however good the business reason is. Plan the date backwards from the day you want people at a desk.

Ending the remote-work agreement is not ending the employment. The employment relationship continues on the contract, and the separate statutory routes out of a Czech employment relationship are set out in our post on terminating employment in the Czech Republic.

Only in one situation. Under § 317 odst. 3 zákoníku práce an employer may order remote work where a measure of a public authority under another act so provides, for the strictly necessary period, where the nature of the work allows it and the place where the work is to be done is fit for it. Outside that narrow case, remote work is agreed or it does not happen.

The same provision gives the employer a preparatory right. On request, the employee must designate in writing a place where remote work may be ordered, or state that they have no such place. That is a useful thing to ask for at the start of employment rather than in the week a public authority measure lands, and it costs nothing to include in the onboarding pack.

The practical consequence is that the direction of travel in Czech remote work runs through agreement in both directions. An employer cannot impose home working, and an employee cannot demand it, because § 317 odst. 1 makes the written agreement the gateway in either case.

Because the agreement is negotiated rather than issued, it is worth settling the operational detail in it while both sides are willing. In practice the agreements we sign cover the place the work is done, how working time is recorded, how the employee is contactable during the shift, who supplies and insures the equipment, and how costs are handled under the next heading.

One of two things, under § 190a zákoníku práce: reimbursement of the employee’s actual, evidenced costs, or a flat-rate amount, a paušální částka, for each started hour of remote work, where that has been agreed in writing or set by internal regulation.

The flat rate for 2026 is 4.70 CZK per started hour (about EUR 0.19 at 24.350 CZK to the euro, ČNB fixing for 21 September 2026). It is set by vyhláška č. 572/2025 Sb. of 18 December 2025 and has been in force since 1 January 2026. On an eight-hour day that works out at about 38 CZK, and for a full-time home worker at roughly 790 CZK a month (about EUR 32) on a standard 40-hour week. Those two figures are a calculation from the statutory rate, not a market allowance, and nobody should present them to a candidate as a home-office budget.

Four mechanics matter more than the number itself.

• The allowance can be contracted out of. The parties may agree in advance, in writing, that no reimbursement or only part of it is payable (§ 190a odst. 2).
• A private-sector employer may pay more than the flat rate if it wants to (§ 190a odst. 5).
• If the flat rate is paid, it is deemed to cover all of the employee’s remote-working costs (§ 190a odst. 6), so there is no second claim for electricity or broadband on top.
• Payment is due at the latest in the calendar month following the month in which the right to it arose (§ 190a odst. 5).

The rate is re-set with effect from 1 January each year. MPSV derives it by decree from ČSÚ household-consumption data adjusted for a remote-working model, for one adult in an average Czech household per hour, rounded up to ten haléře, and it can also be re-set during the year if the underlying data moves by 20% or more. Any figure you publish internally carries a year, and 2027 will need a new one.

For people engaged on the small agreements, the dohoda o provedení práce and the dohoda o pracovní činnosti, the remote-work allowance is payable only where it has been expressly agreed (§ 190a odst. 7). Our post on DPP and DPČ work agreements explains why those two forms are employment relationships rather than contractor arrangements.

Almost nothing, which surprises people. The set weekly working time stays at 40 hours under § 79 odst. 1 zákoníku práce, 38.75 hours in a two-shift regime and 37.5 hours in a multi-shift or continuous regime. Working from a kitchen table does not create a different working week.

The record-keeping duty is unchanged as well, and it is the one that catches employers who assume remote means unmonitored. Under § 96 odst. 1 zákoníku práce the employer must keep records showing the start and end of each worked shift, overtime, night work, work done during on-call and on-call periods held. Under § 96 odst. 2 the employee may inspect their working-time and wage records and take copies, at the employer’s expense.

Those records do double duty once a flat-rate allowance is in play, because the allowance is paid per started hour of remote work. The hours you record are the hours you pay on, which means the time record feeds the payslip rather than sitting in a separate system. Our post on Czech payroll covers how the monthly run and the filings fit together.

Two related arrangements are worth knowing. Individual part-time work, kratší pracovní doba, must be agreed in writing under § 80, and pay corresponds to the shorter hours. Job sharing, sdílené pracovní místo under § 317a, lets two or more part-timers doing the same type of work schedule themselves inside a balancing period of at most four weeks, on written agreements, filing a joint schedule at least a week ahead and changes at least two days ahead. That arrangement also ends on 15 days’ notice from either side.

Someone has to be the employer, because the dohoda o práci na dálku is made between an employer and an employee and there is no third option in § 317. If your company has no Czech entity, an Employer of Record Czech Republic arrangement puts our own Czech company in that position: your people are employed by our Czech company on Czech employment contracts under the zákoník práce, and it is our Czech company that signs the remote-work agreement with them.

Assigning employees to a user company requires a licence in the Czech Republic, and we hold one. Our Czech company holds an employment agency licence (povolení ke zprostředkování zaměstnání) issued by MPSV, and we employ through our own Czech s.r.o. rather than through a chain of third-party partners.

The split of work is the same one that applies to any hire. You choose who to hire, set the role and the pay, direct the work and decide when the role ends. The employing company issues the written contract and the remote-work agreement, runs payroll monthly, calculates and remits the 33.8% employer contributions to ČSSZ and to the employee’s own health insurer, records working time, and pays the 4.70 CZK per started hour allowance for 2026 where that is the route agreed.

There is a named contact who works on Czech payroll and can answer a question about dovolená, the allowance or a tax code. The fee is €499 per employee per month, approximately 12,151 CZK at 24.350 CZK to the euro, ČNB fixing for 21 September 2026. Assignment of the same employee to the same user company is capped at 12 consecutive calendar months under § 309 odst. 6 zákoníku práce, subject to exceptions, so the arrangement is reviewed rather than left open-ended.