Must a Lithuanian employer issue orders for hiring, leave and dismissal?

No. The Labour Code does not require hiring, annual leave or dismissal to be recorded in a document called an “order” (įsakymas). It requires other documents: a written employment contract, a notification to Sodra, a notice of working conditions and, on dismissal, a written decision of the employer. Annual leave is documented in the way the employer sets, so, unless your rules say otherwise, a reply to the employee’s request is enough. An order is only one of the forms in which an employer can put its decision in writing. If your company does not write orders, that is not in itself a breach.

How to change working conditions and raise pay, we described in a separate article. Which documents to prepare on dismissal, in another. Here we cover what the law actually requires and who may approve employees’ requests.

Where the Labour Code uses the word “order”

For example, the question can come up on two occasions. A company is being liquidated, and the liquidator or archivist asks for “all HR orders”. Or the company has management from abroad who are used to every HR decision having its own order.

As far as we found, the Labour Code names an employer’s order as a required form in one place only: the employer sets up the works council election committee by order (Article 171(2) of the Labour Code of the Republic of Lithuania (DK)). Elsewhere the Code speaks of an employer’s decision, written form, or a procedure set by the employer. So what matters is not the name of the document, but whether the written document a specific rule requires exists.

Hiring: a contract, not an order

An employment contract is deemed concluded when the parties agree on the essential terms (DK Article 42(1)). Those terms are the job function, pay and the workplace (DK Article 34(1)). The contract is made in writing in two copies (DK Article 43(1)). A signed contract is already the employer’s decision to hire. In our view, a separate order “to hire” adds nothing to it in law.

The law requires three other things:

• notify the State Social Insurance Fund administration (Valstybinio socialinio draudimo fondo administravimo įstaiga, known as Sodra) of the hiring at least one working day before work starts (DK Article 42(2));
• let the employee start work only after acquainting them, against signature, with the working conditions, the labour law rules setting the order at the workplace, and health and safety requirements (DK Article 42(4));
• give the employee a notice of working conditions before work starts (DK Article 44(1)). More on this below.

Dismissal: a written decision

This is where the law is strictest, but even here it requires a decision, not an order. The employer’s decision to terminate the employment contract must be in writing. It states the ground for termination, the legal provision and the day the employment ends (DK Article 65(3)). The decision is handed to the employee without delay, and if the employee challenges the dismissal, the employer has to prove it was delivered (DK Article 65(4)). Then an entry is made in the employment contract and Sodra is notified no later than the next working day (DK Article 65(7)).

The Labour Code requires a written decision but does not prescribe what the document is called (DK Article 65(3)). You may call it an order, but you do not have to. What matters is that the document contains all three elements of Article 65(3).

Leave: a reply to the request is enough

Annual leave is documented in the way the employer sets (DK Article 128(6)). The law does not oblige you to write an order. For employers with an average of fewer than ten employees, annual leave is granted by agreement of the parties (DK Article 110, point 5).

Does leave need written requests from employees, or is email correspondence enough? A reply from the employer granting the employee’s request is enough, unless your own internal rules require more (DK Article 128(6)). Whether internal documents are needed depends on those rules.

The request and the reply can be emails or entries in an HR system. The Labour Code treats information sent by commonly used information and electronic communication technologies as written, provided its content, sender, the fact and time of sending can be established and reasonable opportunities to save and print it have been provided (Article 25(2) of the Labour Code (DK)). Our recommendation: name the channel for requests clearly in the contract or in the work rules. Then there will be no later dispute about whether a message in a chat app was a proper request. How notices by email work, we also answered briefly in the FAQ of our labour law documents page (in Lithuanian).

Who may approve leave and other requests

Who may approve leave: must it always be the head of the company (CEO)? Can a head of department do it? And a team lead whose role has never been formally approved?

The employer may adopt internal regulations governing the working conditions of all or some employees, or the order at the workplace (DK Article 3(7)). The employer must publish them at the workplace in the usual ways (DK Article 3(9)). So you can set out yourselves, in free form, in the work rules, who decides which matters on the employer’s behalf. If your company has an average of twenty or more employees and a works council, consult it before adopting or changing the rules (DK Article 206(1), point 1). If there is neither a works council nor an employee trustee performing its functions, but a trade union operates at the employer level, the information must be given to that union (DK Article 206(4)). The key point is that employees understand whom to approach on which question.

Two practical points follow. First, when the approving person changes, no orders need to appear: change the relevant clause of the rules (after consulting the works council, where required) and tell the employees. Second, if you let team leads approve, name them in the rules by position. Until you do, their approval rests only on custom, and in a dispute you would have to prove it.

Which documents the law actually requires

If there are no orders, what matters is that the other documents the law requires are in place. Here is a short list:

• employment contracts and their amendments in writing (DK Article 43(1) and (2));
• notices of working conditions (DK Article 44(1));
• working time records (timesheets) in a form approved by the employer, which may be kept and stored electronically (DK Article 120(3)). The duty does not apply to employees working a regime with a fixed length of working day and a fixed number of working days per week (DK Article 120(1));
• a pay system: if no collective agreement sets it, the employer must approve one and make it available to all employees; information and consultation procedures are carried out before it is approved or changed (DK Article 140(3));
• written decisions on termination of employment contracts (DK Article 65(3));
• if the average number of employees is over fifty, the measures implementing the equal opportunities policy (DK Article 26(6)) and the violence and harassment prevention policy (DK Article 30(5)).

The bigger risk is not missing orders but scattered emails. When a company is liquidated, requests and approvals may no longer be possible to collect. So keep them in one place from day one.

Job descriptions: are they required, and what must you tell the employee when you update one?

A job description is not required. The law allows the job function to be defined in the employment contract, in position regulations (pareiginiai nuostatai) or in a work (activity) description (DK Article 34(2)), but it does not require a separate description. In our view, a description is worth preparing only when you want special rules for certain positions. General duties of all employees go in the work rules, and there is no need to repeat them in descriptions. At the employee’s request, the employer must provide information on the content and scope of the job function in writing within five working days (DK Article 34(2)).

How to update depends on where the function is written. The job function is an essential term of the employment contract (DK Article 33(2)). On the employer’s initiative, essential terms can be changed only with the employee’s written consent (DK Article 45(1)). So if the description is part of the contract, or the contract refers to its specific text, the new version needs consent. If the description is a separate employer document and the change only details the same job function, the employer can change it by its own decision, when the rules governing it change or in case of economic, organisational or production necessity. The employee must be told of the changes a reasonable time in advance, and the employer gives them adequate conditions to prepare (DK Article 45(4)). If the job function itself changes, that is a change to an essential term: the employee’s written consent is needed, whichever document describes the function (DK Articles 34(2) and 45(1)).

The second question is the notice of working conditions. It states a description or outline of the job function, or the title of the job (position) (DK Article 44(1), point 4). When the conditions stated in the notice change, the employer provides information on the changes in the same way before they take effect (DK Article 44(4)). It is convenient to state only the job title in the notice. Then an updated description does not change the notice, and it is enough to acquaint the employee with it.

We recommend preparing the notice as a separate document, not as part of the employment contract. The reason is simple: when conditions change that the employer may change by its own decision (DK Article 45(4)), an updated notice is enough and the contract does not need to change. Essential terms (job function, pay, workplace) and additional contract terms always need the employee’s written consent, even if they are stated only in the notice (DK Article 45(1)). Giving the notice does not remove the duty to inform the employee of the essential contract terms under Article 34 (DK Article 44(6)). The law allows a separate notice: the information is given in one or more written documents, but at least one of them must contain the information listed in points 1–10 of Article 44(1) (DK Article 44(2)). Where annual leave, overtime rules, notice periods or the other items listed in part 3 are set by labour law rules (a statute, a collective agreement or workplace rules, DK Article 3(1)), a reference to that rule is enough (DK Article 44(3)). The right to training is stated if the employer grants it (DK Article 44(1), point 12), so otherwise you can write “not applicable”. It is best to state pay in the notice before tax, as in the contract.

When updating a description, it is worth sending the employee a short email: what changes, from which day, where to find the new text, and a request to confirm receipt.

How to start

Send us your employment contract template, your notice of working conditions template and your work rules, if you have them. We will check which documents are required and write into the rules who approves requests.

Phone +370 5 212 1506, email info@linden.lt

More about this service: drafting labour law documents.