An online store was scaling with a fully remote team across different cities and high turnover in sales. The task was to set up a controlled document flow and signing of HR documents with a qualified e-signature, choosing a model of formalising the relationship to fit how the work is actually organized.
The starting facts of the case
A team of 10: a manager, a finance manager and 8 sales managers — all working remotely from different cities of Ukraine. The bottleneck was the difficulty of signing documents at a distance and getting them back when cooperation ended.
Risks for the owner with a remote team
- Delays in signing documents due to different cities and schedules
- Lack of confirmed agreements between the parties
- Risk of a civil-law contract being reclassified as employment if the contract effectively resembles hiring
Options for formalising the relationship
We compared two approaches: an employment contract for remote work (the standard form) and a civil-law contract — for specific services with a measurable result, without subordination to internal regulations.
Why a civil-law contract was chosen in this case
The contracts were worded to exclude signs of disguised employment:
- Specific services with measurable indicators
- No subordination to internal labor regulations
- No fixed working hours
- Payment based on service acceptance acts
- Clear contract-termination terms
How we organized the document cycle
A four-step rollout:
- Monthly contracts with a transparent list of active contractors
- 10-day notice of extension or termination of cooperation
- Monthly reports + service acceptance acts with the corresponding payments
- Signing via a qualified e-signature and electronic document-flow platforms — with no geographic barriers
The result and when an employment contract is better
The client substantially reduced the risk of losing documents and gained a controllable process with control points and standard templates. At the same time there are “red flags” that call for an employment contract: a fixed schedule with time tracking, subordination to internal rules, a permanent operational function, regular “salary-like” pay instead of pay for results. Penalties for disguised employment are set out in Article 265 of the Labor Code.
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