Remote Work in Morocco: From Legal Vacuum to Legal Framework

Morocco’s Labour Code does not mention remote work. Thousands of companies have nonetheless been practising it since 2020, on informal arrangements that secure nothing. Draft law 032.26 sets out to close that gap — here is how to prepare.

Where the law stands today

Law 65-99 was written in 2004 for work performed at a place defined by the employer. Remote work does not appear in it — not as a right, not as an obligation, not as a specific regime. It is therefore arranged by contract, by addendum, or by tolerated practice.

While all goes well, that gap is comfortable. It stops being comfortable at the first dispute. Draft law 032.26, approved in Council of Government, makes remote work one of its explicit workstreams. The text still has a parliamentary path ahead, but the direction is set.

Five questions no informal arrangement settles

1. Accidents at home. An employee is injured at home during working hours: workplace accident or domestic accident? The classification determines social-security cover and employer liability.
2. Equipment and expenses. Who provides the laptop, the connection, the chair? Who pays for electricity? Practice without a written basis sets a precedent that is hard to withdraw.
3. Working time. The statutory week remains 44 hours. How is it counted remotely, and what becomes of overtime when nobody clocks in?
4. The right to disconnect. Absent from Moroccan law. In practice, Saturday-morning messages become an implicit norm nobody agreed to.
5. Reversibility. Remote work granted with no return clause becomes an acquired right. Taking it back later looks like a change to the contract.

What your remote-work agreement should contain

• Eligibility by role, not by person — otherwise every refusal becomes an individual negotiation.
• Number of days and how they are scheduled (fixed, floating, by team).
• Availability windows rather than hour-by-hour monitoring, with an explicit definition of out-of-hours.
• Equipment provided and expense contribution, quantified.
• Declared place of work — relevant to accident cover and insurance questions.
• A reversibility clause with notice on both sides.
• Confidentiality and security rules for data handled off site.

Managing remotely: what actually breaks

Remote work does not degrade individual productivity — coordination degrades, and it degrades quietly. Three symptoms recur.

Information stops moving sideways

On site, most coordination happens through unplanned exchanges. Remotely, all of it has to be deliberately organised; otherwise each team optimises locally and conflicts surface late.

Assessment drifts towards online presence

Without clear objectives a manager measures what they can see: responsiveness on chat. That penalises people who work in depth and rewards performative availability.

New joiners fall behind

Onboarding relies heavily on informal observation. Remotely, a new joiner without a structured path takes twice as long to become autonomous — and that is where a large share of early attrition originates.

All three are management issues, not tooling issues. They belong to management training and company culture.

A four-step compliance plan

1. Inventory. Who genuinely works remotely, how many days, on what written basis? The answer almost always surprises HR.
2. Sort by exposure. Separate situations covered in writing from those resting on custom.
3. One framework agreement. A single company document, applied by role — rather than addenda negotiated case by case.
4. Train line management. The agreement does not apply itself: front-line managers either bring it to life or contradict it.

An organisational diagnostic gets steps 1 and 2 done without spending three months on them.