Which of Your Company Policies Apply to EOR Employees? Handbooks, Codes of Conduct, and Local Rules

A typical scenario: a company in Berlin hires its first developer in Minsk through an Employer of Record. The offer is signed, and HR sends over the usual onboarding pack with the employee handbook, the code of conduct and the IT security policy, plus a request to e-sign everything in the HR system by Friday.

The catch is that, legally, the company in Berlin isn’t the employer. The EOR is. So the handbook the developer has just signed may carry far less weight than HR assumes, especially if anyone ever has to rely on it in a dispute.

Almost every new client asks us about this, so here’s how it works in Belarus: which policies apply as they are, which have to be adopted locally first, and which won’t work here at all.

Why Your Handbook Doesn’t Automatically Apply to EOR Employees

With an EOR, the employment contract is between the employee and the EOR. You sign a separate service agreement with the EOR and manage the person’s daily work. If you’re still deciding on a model, it helps to see how EOR and PEO services differ in who carries the employer’s obligations.

Belarusian law recognises two sources of workplace rules for an employee: the employment contract and the employer’s local legal acts. Local acts are internal documents that the employer formally adopts, for example internal labour regulations, a vacation schedule or a personal data policy. Your handbook is neither of these, because it comes from a company that isn’t the employer.

That doesn’t make it useless, and most people will follow it anyway. But if you later want to discipline someone, change their pay or let them go, you can’t point to a policy the EOR never adopted. The baseline is the Labour Code of the Republic of Belarus, and any internal rule that gives employees less than the Code does simply doesn’t apply.

Fixing this is mostly a matter of putting each policy in the right place.

Three Groups of Policies

When we review a client’s policies, we usually split them into three groups:

Group	Typical examples	How it becomes binding
1. Required by local law	Internal labour regulations, working time, leave, health and safety, personal data	The EOR adopts them as local acts under Belarusian law
2. Your policies, adopted locally	Code of conduct, IT and security, confidentiality, anti-bribery, IP, remote work, expenses	Added to the employment contract or the EOR’s local acts and signed by the employee
3. Won’t work in Belarus	At-will clauses, fines, discipline run by the client, leave or benefit rules that undercut the law	Rewritten for Belarus, dropped, or kept as informal guidance

Group 1: Rules the EOR Has to Have Anyway

These don’t depend on your handbook at all. The EOR adopts them as the legal employer, and the employee has to be familiarised with them in writing, normally before they start work.

They include the internal labour regulations, which cover working hours, breaks, hiring and dismissal procedures and discipline. There are working time rules (the standard full-time week is capped at 40 hours, and overtime is restricted) and annual leave of at least 24 calendar days. Health and safety instructions apply to people working from home too. On top of that, the EOR needs a personal data policy and a named person responsible for it.

These documents decide how much room you have. One example from the January 2024 amendments: an employer with no collective agreement can now split annual leave into more than two parts, but only if a local act such as the internal labour regulations allows it. GRATA’s overview of the 2024 amendments goes through this and other changes. If the EOR’s local acts are generic, you lose that kind of flexibility.

Group 2: Your Policies, Adopted Locally

Most of a typical handbook ends up here. These policies can bind an EOR employee once they’ve been built into the employment contract, an annex to it or the EOR’s local acts, and the employee has signed to confirm they’ve read them. These are the ones that come up most in our work.

Code of conduct. Values, behaviour standards and whistleblowing channels can all be adopted. If someone breaches the code, though, it’s the EOR that has to run the disciplinary procedure, under Belarusian rules.

IT and security. Device rules, access management and password requirements carry over without much trouble. Monitoring employees is more sensitive, since it involves personal data and has to be disclosed upfront. For the hardware side, see our piece on laptops and home-office equipment for EOR employees.

Confidentiality. To protect trade secrets properly in Belarus, the employer needs to set up a commercial secret regime and have the employee sign an NDA. A paragraph in a global handbook usually isn’t enough on its own.

Anti-bribery. Companies covered by the US FCPA or the UK Bribery Act 2010 can pass their anti-corruption policy down through the contract and local acts. The EOR will probably adjust gift limits and reporting lines to fit local practice.

Intellectual property. This one gets missed surprisingly often. Rights to work created during employment generally belong to the legal employer, which means the EOR rather than you. Your service agreement needs a clause assigning those rights to your company, and it’s much easier to sort out before the work starts than after.

Remote work and expenses. The Labour Code has had a separate section on remote work since 2020, and business trip allowances are regulated as well. Reimbursements also have tax consequences, so build your expense policy around how the EOR handles payroll in Belarus.

Group 3: Policies That Won’t Work in Belarus

Some policies don’t work here no matter who signs them. These are the ones we see most often:

• At-will employment. Belarus has no equivalent. A dismissal needs one of the grounds listed in the Labour Code and has to follow the proper procedure.
• Fines. Deducting pay as a punishment isn’t allowed. The only disciplinary measures available are a remark, a reprimand and dismissal.
• Unlimited PTO. You can offer it, but the EOR still has to schedule and track the statutory minimum leave.
• Probation, notice and severance terms from the global handbook. Where Belarusian rules are better for the employee, they apply instead.
• Non-competes after employment ends. Most Belarusian employers can’t use them.

The exception is Hi-Tech Park residents. Decree No. 8 gave them the right to sign non-compete and non-solicitation agreements with employees. For a non-compete, the employee has to be paid at least a third of their average monthly earnings while the restriction lasts, as GRATA notes in its review of the decree.

So if non-competes matter for the roles you’re hiring, ask whether your EOR is an HTP resident before you sign.

Who Can Discipline an EOR Employee?

This surprises clients more than anything else. Disciplinary action can only come from the legal employer, and only in the form and order set out in the Labour Code. You can’t formally warn an EOR employee, cut their pay or dismiss them yourself.

What you can do is write down what happened, collect whatever evidence you have and pass it to the EOR. The EOR’s HR team then checks whether an adopted rule was actually broken and asks the employee for a written explanation. If the case holds up, it applies a measure within the legal deadlines. Any decision to end the employment is something you and the EOR agree on together.

Your manager’s notes matter here. A short written summary sent the same day is far easier for the EOR to act on than a vague complaint weeks later.

PIPs are still useful for managing performance, but a PIP alone isn’t a legal reason to dismiss someone in Belarus. The same goes for part-time or fractional hires through EOR.

Language, Signatures and Records

Local acts in Belarus are usually written in Russian or Belarusian, the two official languages. You can keep English versions of your policies, but decide in advance which version wins if they say different things. Most clients make the Russian version binding and keep the English one for reference.

Familiarisation also has to be recorded, either on a signed sheet or through an electronic process that meets the legal requirements. The 2024 amendments allowed more HR documents to be handled electronically, but check with the EOR which steps you can actually do online.

Agree, too, on who keeps which records. The EOR holds the official employment file. Copies of signed acknowledgments can live in your HR system as well, provided the data is transferred lawfully.

What Happens When Your Policy Conflicts With Local Law?

Belarusian law comes first, then the EOR’s local acts, then the employment contract, and only then your global policy. If one of your rules gives the employee less than the law, that part doesn’t apply. If it gives more, there’s usually no problem. A few examples from practice:

• A policy saying salaried staff work as long as the job requires. Belarusian working time limits still apply, and overtime has to be recorded and paid.
• A rule against commenting publicly about clients. This can usually be adopted as part of the confidentiality rules, provided it’s reasonable and the employee has signed it.
• Keeping employee files in a US-based HR system. Under Law No. 99-Z on Personal Data Protection, this counts as a cross-border transfer, so it needs either an adequate level of protection in the receiving country or another legal basis, such as the employee’s informed consent. DLA Piper’s overview of Belarusian data protection describes how the regulator works.

Before Your Next Hire: A Short Checklist

Here’s the order we’d suggest:

1. List all the policies your employees are expected to follow.
2. Go through them with the EOR’s lawyers and put each one into a group.
3. Rewrite or drop anything in Group 3.
4. Adapt the Group 2 policies and have them translated into Russian or Belarusian.
5. Adopt them through the EOR’s local acts or an annex to the employment contract.
6. Get signed acknowledgments during onboarding, before the first working day.
7. Check that your service agreement covers IP assignment and confidentiality.
8. Review everything once a year, and whenever the law or your policies change.

Don’t forget the employee in all this. People hired through an EOR often aren’t sure who their employer actually is or whose rules apply to them. Our guide for Belarusian employees working for a foreign company through an EOR answers most of those questions and is easy to forward.

How EOR.by Helps

Sorting policies into groups sounds simple until you’re looking at a 60-page handbook written for a US or German workforce. As part of our HR consulting services, our in-house lawyers go through it against Belarusian law and tell you what can stay, what needs changing and what has to go.

We then prepare the local acts, translate the key policies into Russian and handle familiarisation during onboarding, so the signed documents are in place before the employee starts.

If you’re planning a larger team in Belarus or need non-compete protection, our page on Hi-Tech Park services explains how the HTP regime works for foreign companies.

FAQ

Can we just have the EOR employee sign our global handbook?

They can sign it, but that alone doesn’t make it binding under Belarusian law. The policies need to be adopted through the employment contract or the EOR’s local acts, and they can’t go against the Labour Code.

Can we discipline or dismiss an EOR employee ourselves?

No. Only the EOR, as the legal employer, can do that, and it has to follow Belarusian procedures. Your part is to raise the issue, provide evidence and agree on next steps with the EOR.

Who owns the IP an EOR employee creates?

By default, generally the EOR as the legal employer. That’s why the service agreement should include an assignment of rights to your company, ideally signed before any work begins.

Does our code of conduct apply to EOR employees?

It does once it has been adopted locally and the employee has signed it. Before that, it’s guidance rather than an enforceable rule.

Can we use non-competes with EOR employees in Belarus?

For most employers, no. Hi-Tech Park residents are the exception: they can sign non-compete agreements as long as they pay the required compensation. The official HTP membership FAQ explains how companies join the park.

Do our policies need to be in Russian or Belarusian?

The binding versions should be, since local acts are drafted in one of the official languages. You can keep the English text for reference, but say clearly which version prevails.

Summing Up

For an EOR employee in Belarus, your handbook is a starting point rather than a legal document in its own right. What gives your policies weight is local adoption: the EOR’s local acts, the employment contract and the employee’s signature. Anything that conflicts with the Labour Code needs to be rewritten or dropped.

If you’d like us to look at your handbook, contact our team and we’ll tell you what works in Belarus as it stands and what needs changing.