Flexible Working Time Agreements in Estonia 2026: 5 Mandatory Clauses

If you employ people in Estonia — whether you are an Estonian company or a foreign business with staff on Estonian employment contracts — a recent change in Estonian labor law is worth your attention. Since 13 February 2026, the amended Employment Contracts Act allows flexible working time agreements with any employee, in any sector.

One important note before we start: this article covers Estonian jurisdiction only. The rules below come from the Estonian Employment Contracts Act (töölepingu seadus) and apply to employment relationships governed by Estonian law. Latvia, Lithuania, and other EU countries regulate variable working hours differently.

And here is the catch every HR manager should know: a flexible working time agreement is valid only if it meets the exact statutory requirements. If even one mandatory element is missing, the agreement is void — and every hour the employee worked above the agreed workload retroactively becomes overtime, payable at 1.5 times the wage.

What changed on 13 February 2026?

The Estonian parliament adopted the amendments on 19 November 2025, and they entered into force on 13 February 2026. Until then, flexible working time agreements were available only under a pilot scheme for retail-sector workers. Now any employer in Estonia can use them.

The legislator's goal was explicit: reduce the practice of covering fluctuating workloads with civil-law contracts — service or authorization agreements that give the worker no vacation, no sick pay, and no termination protection. If your company engages people on such contracts, the EU is moving in the same direction across the board: see our guide on freelancer contracts and the Platform Work Directive.

The logic of flexible working time is simple: the employee has a guaranteed minimum workload, and on top of it they can agree to additional hours up to the full-time limit. Workload and pay may fluctuate from month to month without counting as under- or overtime.

Preconditions: when is the agreement allowed at all?

Before the content of the agreement even matters, four preconditions must be met. If any of them fails, the agreement is void from the start.

1. The hourly wage is at least 1.2 times the statutory minimum. In 2026 Estonia's minimum hourly rate is 5.31 euros gross, so a flexible working time agreement requires an hourly wage of at least 6.38 euros gross. This is a deliberate choice by the legislator: flexibility has a price.

2. The agreed working time is at least 10 hours per 7-day period. Estonian law does not permit zero-hour contracts — the employee must have a guaranteed workload of at least a quarter of full time.

3. Agreed and additional hours together do not exceed full-time work. Flexible working time is not a way to relabel overtime. Anything above the full-time norm remains overtime with all the usual rules.

4. The agreement is concluded in writing. A verbal arrangement or a "flexible schedule" mentioned at the bottom of an email does not count. A signed document is required.

The 5 mandatory clauses of the written agreement

Written form alone is not enough — the law also prescribes the mandatory content. Before signing, check that the document contains all five clauses:

1. The number of agreed working hours. The guaranteed minimum workload the employer is responsible for in any case — at least 10 hours per 7-day period. The employee is paid for these hours even if there is no work to offer.

2. The volume of additional hours. The maximum number of additional hours the employer may offer. Agreed plus additional hours may not exceed full-time work.

3. The advance notice period for additional hours. How far in advance the employer must offer additional hours. The law does not prescribe a specific number — but the agreement must state one, so the employee knows what notice to expect.

4. A statement that the employee has the right to refuse additional hours. This is not a formality — it is a mandatory part of the agreement. Additional hours are always voluntary for the employee, and refusing them may not bring any negative consequences.

5. A requirement that each acceptance of additional hours is confirmed in advance, in a form that can be reproduced in writing. Before working additional hours, the employee must each time confirm their consent in a way that can later be reproduced — an email, a text message, or a digitally signed confirmation. A verbal "sure, I'll come in tomorrow" is not sufficient.

It is also worth knowing that concluding the agreement itself is strictly voluntary. An employer may not pressure an employee into signing or threaten to end the employment relationship if the employee declines.

What must the employer do after signing?

The signed agreement is only the beginning. Estonian law puts three ongoing obligations on the employer, and each of them requires a solid process.

Keep separate records. Agreed hours, additional hours, and overtime must be clearly distinguishable in the working time records — including under summarized working time accounting. If the records are murky, the burden of proof in a dispute lies with the employer.

Provide a summary at the end of each accounting period. The employee must receive a clear overview: how many hours were agreed, how many additional hours were worked, and whether any overtime accrued.

Watch the 4-out-of-6-months rule. If the employee has worked more than the agreed hours in at least four of the previous six months, they have the right to demand an increase of the agreed working time. If the parties cannot agree, the new agreed working time becomes the average of the last six months. The rule exists to prevent keeping a de facto full-time employee artificially on minimum hours.

And once more, the risk this article was written about: if the preconditions or mandatory clauses are not met, the agreement is void. All hours above the agreed working time are then counted as overtime — retroactively, at 1.5 times the wage.

On paper this is hard. Digitally it is not.

Look at clause 5 again: every acceptance of additional hours must be confirmed in advance, in a reproducible written form. If you have ten employees on flexible working time who pick up extra hours every week, the question becomes — where do those confirmations live? In text messages for one employee, in email for another, in a chat app for a third? When the Estonian Labour Inspectorate audits you, or a dispute arises, you will need to find all of them.

The same applies to the agreement itself. Written form means signatures — and when eight seasonal hires start in the same week, nobody wants to print, scan, and chase contracts over email.

In Agrello you can set this process up once, properly:

• Create a flexible working time agreement template once. Lock the five mandatory clauses as structured text, leave the variables (name, hours, hourly wage, notice period) as fillable fields. The legal validity of the agreement no longer depends on who happens to draft it.
• Share the template as a public link. The employee opens the link, fills in their details, and signs with Smart-ID, Mobile-ID, or an ID card — no individual invitations needed from HR.
• Keep every signed document in one archive. Agreements, amendments, and confirmations are findable in seconds, with signatures and timestamps. In an audit or dispute, nobody digs through six months of messages across three channels.

If you have many employees on flexible working time, bulk document creation from a template lets you prepare all the agreements at once from spreadsheet data.

Checklist before signing

• The employee's hourly wage is at least €6.38 gross (1.2 × Estonia's 2026 minimum)
• The agreed working time is at least 10 hours per 7-day period
• Agreed + additional hours do not exceed full-time work
• The agreement is written and signed
• The number of agreed hours is stated
• The maximum volume of additional hours is stated
• The advance notice period for additional hours is stated
• The employee's right to refuse additional hours is stated
• The requirement of advance written confirmation for each additional-hours instance is stated
• Working time records distinguish agreed hours, additional hours, and overtime

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For employers in Estonia, the flexible working time agreement is a genuinely useful tool — it lets workload fluctuate honestly and legally, without sliding into the grey zone of civil-law contracts. But it works only when the form is right: five mandatory clauses in place, signatures collected, and every additional-hours confirmation retrievable.

If you want to set up flexible working time agreements correctly from day one, create an Agrello account and build the template once.

For the broader context of employing people in Estonia in 2026, see also Cross-Border Telework 2026: What Your Employment Contracts Must Now Cover.