According to the Flex Employment Agreement, employees are not obliged to make use of working remotely. As long as there is no conflict with work duties, employees subject to the Flex Employment Agreement can decide freely whether they want to work remotely on up to 60 percent of the working days in a month or spend their entire working hours in attendance at Freie Universität Berlin. You can only work remotely after consulting with your supervisor and therefore have to request this through them. A request form will be provided centrally for employees on the Freie Universität Berlin homepage. A documentation obligation is derived from the above in order to be able to transparently indicate the share of working remotely for everyone. This form of required documentation has so far not been specified in detail.

No, working remotely for a time period of less than half a working day is calculated as a half-day in the allocation for remote work.

The current agreement (temporary regulation) currently provides for 40 percent remote working. The temporary regulation will apply up to the end of the winter semester 2023/2024 (March 31, 2024). If the university management and Staff Council: Entire Freie Universität happen to agree on a different percentage, an adjustment would be possible in principle.

Working remotely should be made as simple and uncomplicated as possible, even at short notice. At the same time, this form of work also needs to be transparent, comprehensible for all those involved and, if necessary, the use of the service also needs to be verifiable (e.g., for tax reasons, accident protection). Against this background, remote work is to be documented using a request form that is centrally available to employees. Whether this practice will prove itself in everyday usage will be investigated when the Flex Employment Agreement is evaluated after two years of operation.

If you make use of working remotely on a regular basis, you can request it at least three days in advance. Use at short notice should always be possible in consultation with your direct supervisor.

Working remotely from abroad is currently not possible due to a lack of regulations at Freie Universität Berlin and is not planned as part of the Flex Employment Agreement. However, Freie Universität Berlin reserves the right to introduce other regulations covering “Working Remotely from Abroad.”

Even in the context of the Flex Employment Agreement, regular remote working will not lead to employees no longer being provided with a fixed workplace. Working remotely is offered on a voluntary basis to allow employees to perform their contractual work from a different location (in Germany) when necessary. This does not affect the previous permanent desk.

The reference value for remote work is the total number of working days in a month. This means employees should also be able to work remotely for longer stretches (as long as this does not conflict with work duties).

Taking an average of 20 working days per month (five-day week), working remotely would therefore be possible on up to 12 days per month (whole days). These 12 days can be distributed over the month, i.e., employees could, for example, work remotely on up to 3 days each week or 12 days in a row (not counting weekend days in between).

In addition, you could work remotely on half-days. Using the aforementioned calculation (five-day week), you could, for example, work remotely half-days on all 20 days (calculated as up to 24 half days/month). 

A combination of full-day and half-day remote work (also alternating) would therefore be possible. Using the aforementioned calculation (five-day week), employees could, for example, work remotely for full days twice a week and work remotely half-days (by the hour) on two days. One working day would have to be spent entirely in-house.

All examples above assume, of course, that there is no conflict with work duties.

The Flex Employment Agreement does not regulate any forms of desk sharing. All employees will continue to have their own designated workspace. Working remotely is offered to employees on a voluntary basis. 

New forms of working in the context of New Work will be adopted at Freie Universität Berlin in the medium to long term, but will need trials. The Executive Board therefore reserves the right to design model workstations that are suitable for desk sharing.

The remote work regulations in the Flex Employment Agreement allow you to work remotely on up to 60 percent of the working days every month. Taking an average of 20 working days per month (five-day week), working remotely would therefore be possible on up to 12 days per month (whole days). These 12 days can be distributed freely over the month, i.e., employees can, for example, work remotely on up to 3 days each week on a regular basis or 12 days in a row (not counting weekend days in between).

In addition, you can work remotely on half-days. Starting with the above calculation (five-day week), you can theoretically work half-days remotely on up to 24 days.

A combination of daily and half-day remote working (also alternating) is also possible. Using the aforementioned calculation (five-day week), you can work remotely on two full days per week and half-days on two days (hourly rate). One working day would have to be spent entirely in-house.

Telework and working remotely are used synonymously in everyday language for “working from home.” However, from a legal viewpoint, these terms describe two different forms of work and therefore need to be differentiated and regulated separately from a labor law perspective. 

Telework is highly formalized in legal terms and subject to certain conditions when used. For example, the teleworking place needs to be located in the employee’s own home environment in a separate study and must fulfill certain requirements (in terms of room size, equipment, ergonomics, and data protection). In addition, teleworking has to be regulated in a contract, and fixed working days and communication times have to be defined.

Working remotely has not yet been formalized in law. It does not require contractual regulation and is not tied to the employee’s home workplace. In contrast to teleworking, it can also be used at short notice – provided this does not conflict with work duties. Working remotely would thus be possible, for example, from a café, a co-working space, a playground, or any location away from your home (e.g., at the home of a family member or persons who need to be looked after or cared for by employees of Freie Universität Berlin).