Employment Contracts in Georgia: Required Terms and Drafting Rules

Georgia's Labour Code sets specific rules for employment agreements. A useful contract should therefore do more than state salary and a start date: it should accurately record the essential terms required by law and the real working arrangement.

When must the agreement be written?

Article 12 provides that an employment agreement may generally be oral or written, fixed-term or open-ended.

However, if labour relations last longer than one month, the employment agreement must be concluded in writing.

For practical risk management, written documentation is useful even for shorter engagements because it records the agreed terms and reduces later disputes about what the parties understood.

Essential terms under Article 14

The Labour Code identifies the following as essential terms of an employment agreement:

• information about the parties;
• the commencement date and duration of the labour relationship;
• working time and rest periods;
• the place of work, including information on different places of work where there is no regular or primary workplace;
• the position and the type and description of work;
• remuneration and the procedure for payment;
• the procedure for compensating overtime work;
• the duration of paid and unpaid leave and the procedure for granting it;
• the procedure for termination by the employer and employee; and
• applicable collective-agreement provisions where those regulate employment conditions differently.

A template that omits these issues may be incomplete even if it looks commercially polished.

Fixed-term contracts require attention

Where an employment agreement is for less than one year, Article 12 allows a fixed term only where one of the statutory circumstances exists, such as a specific amount of work, seasonal work, temporary increase in workload, replacement of an absent employee, or another objective circumstance justifying the fixed term.

The Code also contains rules under which repeated or long fixed-term arrangements may be treated as open-ended.

Do not use a fixed end date simply because it is administratively convenient.

Trial periods

A trial-period employment agreement:

• may be concluded only once;
• may last no more than six months;
• must be in writing; and
• must be paid.

The usual Article 48 termination procedure does not apply to termination of a trial-period agreement unless the agreement itself provides otherwise.

Internal rules can become part of the contract

An employment agreement may make internal labour regulations part of the agreement.

Where that is done, the employer must make the regulations available to the person before concluding the employment agreement and make later changes available to the employee within the statutory period.

This matters because internal rules can also be relevant to disciplinary and termination issues.

Foreign employees can trigger additional requirements

Where a foreign national is a labour immigrant working for a local employer, the Labour Migration Law can impose additional work-right and immigration requirements beyond the Labour Code.

An employment contract that is correct under the Labour Code is therefore not, by itself, proof that the foreign employee has the necessary immigration/work status.

Draft around the real job

A sound agreement should match the actual role: working model, duties, supervision, remuneration, overtime, leave and termination mechanics.

Calling an employee a "contractor" does not remove Labour Code issues if the factual relationship is employment.

For employment documentation or workforce structuring, see Labor & Employment Law or contact TK Counsel.