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Flexible Working Practices for your Organisation

We have been mainly working from home since the start of the pandemic which has worked for our organisation. We have kept our offices open on some days for staff who have been struggling and for business critical work. We are now starting to get requests for permanent WFH both in UK and in some cases abroad. We only have offices in the UK. Having completed an employee survey we know that most of our employees would like a hybrid situation, spending some time in the office and at home. We are also considering other flexible working options such as flexible hours and days for our new ways of working in the future.

Has anyone got any advice or things we should consider when we look at this next year. Or have you already implemented hybrid working practices that you could share?

Thanks in advance 

Rosemary

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  • You should be very very hesitant about agreeing to working abroad. There are plenty posts on this forum about the dangers of what I am going to call hybrid employment legislation and hybrid tax laws. Not to mention GDPR. There be dragons.
    Apart from all those issues you will have to confront the issue of the requirement to attend meetings and who pays for such travel.
  • In reply to Peter Stanway:

    Thanks Peter, I think there are sound business reasons not to allow people to WFH abroad which is probably the route we will go down. I will investigate the other posts.
  • In reply to Rosemary Mathews:

    We have a couple of people that work from home, abroad, it is a complex situation but can be achieved if there is a clear benefit for the business as well as the person in doing this.
  • In reply to Alun:

    Hi Alun - do you have any type of checklist of things the employee/manager should consider as part of this request? I'm thinking H&S, tax, insurances. Thanks
  • In reply to Claire:

    I'm afraid not, it depends on which country they are in as there are so many variances. We had to speak to a number of different experts around our liability. Tax is complex but actually the easiest subject and advice can be easily found. As they will be on a UK contact you need to follow the UK law in the most part but there are some specific country anomalies that you will need a local expect to support on.

    If our member of staff wasn't so senior we would have never have done it to be quite honest!
  • Most companies I have spoken to have opted for a max of 30 days permitted overseas to avoid tax consequences - creating a permanent establishment for the company or personal tax issues for the individual.

    It is also worth thinking about younger employees. Multiple surveys have shown 51% of people struggle to work from home and for others the consequences can be even worse. metro.co.uk/.../

    Www.tallymarket.co.uk is a good option to provide local workspace as and when your employees might need it.
  • Most companies I have spoken to have opted for a max of 30 days permitted overseas to avoid tax consequences - creating a permanent establishment for the company or personal tax issues for the individual.

    It is also worth thinking about younger employees. Multiple surveys have shown 51% of people struggle to work from home and for others the consequences can be even worse. metro.co.uk/.../

    Www.tallymarket.co.uk is a good option to provide local workspace as and when your employees might need it.
  • Hello Rosemary,

    I've come across many experiments done by other companies mainly to maintain social capital and keep tax implications to a minimum while also offering flexibility, I am listing a few here:

    - Number of days working from home per week (arranged with a direct manager or immediate team).
    - Core working hours/Flexible working hours (in a day)
    - 45-70 days of work from abroad)or home)) but it's like a leave you can apply for to work remotely from anywhere other than you are contracted.

    I would be careful with offering fully remote to too many too soon because of what the other comments have mentioned and you might find yourself in a pickle due to regulatory/ contractual, tax, payroll, and various other reasons.