In recent months, given the Covid-19 health crisis, a large number of companies have resorted to teleworking, which enabled employees to carry out their work directly from their home.

However, the performance of the work from home does not protect the employee from dismissal with immediate effect.

As a reminder, a dismissal with immediate effect is conditioned by „a fact or a fault, which immediately and definitively makes it impossible to maintain working relations“ with his employer.

The Luxembourg Court of Appeal analysed a case in which the employer had considered that his employee had not actually performed his work from his home and, therefore, dismissed him with immediate effect. (Luxembourg Court of Appeal, 14 July 2016, No. 41210)

The employee in question was hired as a real estate agent.

The employer criticized the employee for never having performed his work at the office of the company and the employee argued, within the procedure, that there was an agreement between himself and his employer which allowed him to carry out his work for his home.

The Court of Appeal considered that it was not necessary to analyze the question of the possible agreement on the place of performance of the work (from the office or at home) but the Court of Appeal simply analysed whether the work was actually performed by the employee for his employer.

The Court of Appeal concluded that, in relation to the documents submitted to the Court, the employee  had not provided proof that he had performed sufficient work for his employer (no proof that the agent had concluded rental and / or sales contracts over a given period) with the conclusion:

The fact of not having performed work during one month is sufficient reason to render immediately and definitively impossible the continuation of the employment relationship and justifies the immediate dismissal.

Consequently, the dismissal with immediate effect was declared justified.

In conclusion, it should be noted that employees  teleworking would be well advised to keep proof of the performance of the work from their home.