A recent Supreme Court decision is a useful warning for foreign employers managing Italian staff through local or overseas line managers.
STATUS | Supreme Court decision – judgment no. 22622/2026
Italian law normally requires an individual agreement to regulate remote working. In practice, however, working arrangements are not always managed with the same formality as the employment contract. A manager may approve remote work by email or message, and the arrangement may then continue for months without HR documenting it properly.
That gap between formal policy and actual practice was central to Supreme Court judgment no. 22622 of 2 July 2026. The employer dismissed an employee for allegedly unjustified absence, but the courts found that remote working had in fact been authorised and consistently accepted. Emails, messages and the parties’ conduct supported the employee’s account. The employer could not rely on the absence of a formal agreement after having allowed the arrangement to operate in practice.
The decision should not be read as abolishing Italy’s formal requirements for remote working. Its more practical message concerns evidence and consistency: an employer’s conduct can undermine a later disciplinary case. This is particularly relevant where an Italian employee reports to a manager outside Italy, who may not appreciate that an informal operational decision can have employment-law consequences.
Practical point. Remote-working permissions, changes and withdrawals should be recorded centrally. Before alleging unauthorised absence, HR should check not only the contract and policy, but also the emails, messages and working practices created by the employee’s actual manager.