What Modifying a Contract Means
Modifying an employment contract begins in the Georgian Labour Code with one clear principle: essential terms are changed only by agreement of the parties. By notice, the employer may only specify individual circumstances of performing the work that do not change the essential terms. The boundary between these two regimes is precisely where the practical task of modification is won or lost: a clarification happens by one notice, an essential change — by agreement.
The law also specifies what is not deemed an essential change: a change of the place of work, where reaching the new workplace from home and back by available public transport takes no more than 3 hours a day and does not require disproportionate costs; and a change of the start or end time of work by no more than 90 minutes. Changing both circumstances simultaneously is already deemed essential. There is a single exception — a change conditioned by an amendment of Georgian legislation requires no consent; and a missing essential term is defined with the employee's consent.
Secondment — the 45-Day Rule
The classical trap of modification is secondment. Under the law, secondment is the employer's temporary change of the workplace arising from the interests of the work; it is not deemed a change of essential terms where the period does not exceed 45 calendar days a year. Exceeding that limit is already deemed an essential change — that is, it requires consent. The employer must fully compensate the employee the expenses connected with the secondment. These norms apply where the contract does not provide otherwise — the contract can therefore establish its own secondment rules.
The practical conclusion for secondment: the 45-day annual budget must be planned and recorded in advance, because an inadvertent crossing of the boundary without consent turns the change into a subject of dispute.
The practical instrument for classifying a change is three questions: does the planned step touch the list of essential terms; what is the cumulative effect — one non-essential element or both; and which document records the outcome — a notice or an agreement. Clear answers to these three keep the modification process free of dispute risk and show the auditor and the parties one and the same picture.
Timing matters as much as classification: an essential change negotiated early preserves the working relationship, while the same change imposed late converts a routine operational decision into a conflict. The drafting of the addendum is therefore not paperwork after the fact but the very form in which the parties' consent lives.