Employment

Employment regulations in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina are largely idiosyncratic, which makes legal support essential. Our employment practice spans from everyday support to employers in managing their relationships with employees and ensuring compliance with labour regulations, through to assistance in meeting the challenges posed by modern technologies in the workplace, and to helping them in contentious situations.

  • Setting up a solid internal framework: Drafting of disciplinary rules and various company policies. Ensuring proper localisation of  global policies.
  • Ensuring compliance: Implementing a whistleblowing scheme. Advice on occupational health and safety requirements. Ensuring overall compliance with employment regulations.
  • Establishing relationships: Drafting employment agreements, management agreements, and out-of-employment agreements. Advising and implementing non-competition, non-solicitation, Intellectual Property, data protection and privacy clauses. Advice on outsourcing.
  • Rightsizing the workforce: Advice on and support in carrying our redundancies.
  • Secondments: Advice on secondments within Serbia and cross-border.
  • White collar work: Appointment and dismissal of directors/board members. Drafting management agreements for directors/board members. Advice on implementing remuneration plans and incentive schemes.
  • Immigration issues: Advice and assistance in the procedure for obtaining/extending residence and work permits for foreign employees and their family members.
  • Collective bargaining: Relations with trade unions, support in negotiating collective bargaining agreements and advice on their application, advice on the prevention of strikes and the minimization of their effects, representation in industrial disputes.
  • Terminations: Assessment of the grounds for dismissals. Advice on and guidance through the procedure. Drafting the dismissal documentation. Assistance and guidance through sensitive negotiations.
  • Labour disputes: Representation in labour litigation.
  • Data Protection and Privacy: Advice on how to address the impact of new technologies on the traditional standards of behaviour in the workplace and on how to overcome the growing overlap between private and work spaces. Drafting privacy policies. Registration of filing systems with the Data Protection Authority. Cross-border data transfers.
  • IP at the workplace: Advice on work-related copyright, design and patent.
  • Tax: Advice on tax and social contribution regimes related to different forms of employment.

“Outstanding department that continues to receive commendation from the market. Provides a broad scope of advice on employee-related matters such as immigration, the analysis of dismissals and workplace health and safety. Routinely advises on the impact of EU law on Serbian legislation. Team members have further knowledge of labour litigation, data protection and privacy issues.

One client admires the practice’s ‘detailed information and sound advice on legal requirements.’

Another source considers the firm ‘very good commercially, realistic and good value for money,’ adding that ‘the lawyers know their profession very well.’”

CHAMBERS EUROPE 2017 (SERBIA

“The ‘exceptional’ Ana Jankov leads BDK Advokati’s practice, which is experienced in advising employers on data protection and privacy matters. The team assisted British American Tobacco with terminating a management agreement.”

LEGAL 500 2017 (SERBIA)