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unfair 180 from company on remote working location

Hi all We have an employee that we agreed to allow to work from abroad when lockdown happened. They ultimately moved there as their family is there and they have been successfully carrying out their duties from there. The line manager has absolutely no problem with this set up. We have an overseas working agreement signed which notes that they are responsible for any tax implications in their country of residence whilst they are paid in the UK. They are abiding by this and have their own tax consultant there. Our internal tax person, that doesn't have an expertise in pay taxes, mentioned that there might be a very minimal risk to the company in the employee's new country of residence and suggested we transfer them over to a local employee contract and payroll. We did the legwork and researched this as the company was onboard. We spoke to the employee and they were happy to move to the local company (we have a branch of the company there). Out of nowhere the company have done a 180 and want us to communicate that they either move back to the UK or they can resign. They are a great team member, work hard and deliver great results for the company. Their manager has asked me to find out if there is anything we can use in employee rights to protect her from this bizarre decision. I appreciate that I work to protect the company but I'm also here to ensure fair treatment of the employees and I can't get behind such a decision. Does anyone know of anything I can use to persuade the company to review this? Thank you for any help.
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  • Johanna

    | 0 Posts

    CIPD Staff

    12 Apr, 2022 08:22

    Hi Emily, while you're waiting for Community members to offer their thoughts, as a CIPD member you also have access to the 24/7 legal helpline which may be of help with this case scenario. www.cipd.co.uk/.../advice-support
  • Hi - does the employee actually now have a contract with your overseas branch of the company? If so, I don't really see how the company can unilaterally undo that.

    Also, do you know the rationale for the decision and what the person who made the decision plans to do if the individual neither returns or resigns (a company can't tell a person to resign any more than an employee can tell a company to dismiss them). Their only option is really to dismiss the person if they don't return and they need to have fully considered the risks and issues that this would bring, before they make the final decision
  • Be wary of managers looking to weaponize HR against their superiors.

    It is great that you feel strongly about how this employee is being treated and, where there are legal obstacles or issues, we should absolutely bring these to the attention of managers making the decisions. But in this case, the employee's own manager doesn't want them to be dismissed or forced to return to the UK. Their job is to go into bat for their employee and fight their corner on operational grounds - they are already doing their job well remotely, there are no obstacles to keeping them safely employed, and replacing them would be costly and time-consuming.

    Letting them put "advice from HR" on the table is reversing the natural order of dog and tail and risks exposing the HR function generally and you in particular as taking sides in a management dispute.

    In a case like this, I would go over this manager's head to whomever they are going to be making their case to, make sure that person isn't operating on any legal misapprehensions and then back away and let the operational management of the business do its job.
  • thank you for the response, sorry for the slow reply, weirdly I had no notifications and couldn't even find my own post. They are still on a UK contract. The decision makers haven't told me why they have done a 180 but from speaking to them in a roundabout way it seems to be because they think the employee is being paid too much. The salaries in Sweden (the employee's new country of residence) are lower in comparison to the UK but the employee is being paid what is market level here. Another reason they suggested was that they didn't want to set a precedent of others asking to do the same thing. We as a company have always encouraged moving across borders and working at our overseas offices and even have senior managers living in different countries to the ones they manage, one of the decision makers being one of these managers. I'm struggling to get behind this decision or see how it is fair. I know we work for the side of the company but I understood that HR also have a responsibility to ensure fair treatment to employees.
  • Thank you Johanna. I didn't know we had this support line.
  • Johanna

    | 0 Posts

    CIPD Staff

    6 May, 2022 11:12

    In reply to Emily:

    Sorry to hear you've been having trouble accessing the threads on this Community too Emily. My advice would be to stay logged in and pin on a tab on Chrome for easier access or at least that's what I do!!
  • Johanna

    | 0 Posts

    CIPD Staff

    6 May, 2022 11:15

    Intrestingly there is a whole search category on Indeed jobs now for 'Work from anywhere' so that tells a tale. uk.indeed.com/Work-Anywhere-jobs
  • In reply to Emily:

    Where we have had a similar situation (i.e. the overseas work is employee led) we have said that the employee would have a COLA adjustment (+ve or -ve) for base salary to account for the new location. This often means that the system isn't 'played' by allowing people to move wherever they want because of lower tax rates or lower cost of living. Have you had that conversation with the employee? Where you have benchmarking data in the organisation this can be super helpful.