Romania Follows Japan in Adopting Telework Law

Romanians will have the right to ask their employers to let them work from home, and still enjoy the same rights as any employees working in an office, under a new law adopted on Wednesday.

The bill was submitted last year by the Ministry of Labour and was inspired by similar legislation in Japan, according to the Minister of Labour, Lia Olguta Vasilescu.

"Anyone who works on a computer can do this from now on from home," she said on Wednesday. "They will be evaluated like any other employee in the office, will have a contract in Revisal [the online system that tracks employment contracts in Romanian companies], and will have equal rights - only they work from home," she added.

Employees and human resources experts told BIRN that most companies, including large multinational groups, already allow employees to work from home, especially in Romania's booming IT industry, call-centres, telemarketing, and bookkeeping.

Most employees who ask to work from home are parents and young people who need flexible schedules and working hours, Ioana Badescu, a human resources expert, told BIRN.

"Young employees who want to be flexible, to travel, to be able to work from anywhere, are usually the ones seeking this type of employment," she said. "Older employees are more inclined to an office schedule. It's a matter of culture," she added.

John Tohme, a French project manager working for a multinational company in Bucharest, told BIRN that working from home is already common in most companies, but explained that companies need to prepare the logistics - laptops, software, secure networks and Cloud.

"Technology allows it, and economically it's lucrative because we don't need to rent a big office. In fact, we realized that with employees...