Not sure those are "scary stories" but sadly may well just be teh reality now of employing people in a foreign country

Heres a thread where Ray sets out in first answer some of considerations - in reality unless this person has unique skills it may well be a bridge too far for a charity with limited resources.

community.cipd.co.uk/.../100374

In reply to Keith:

Thank you so much, that's really useful.

In reply to Keith:

Thanks, Keith - beat me to it.

In reply to Keith:

It's easy too understand why the concept of 'working from anywhere' is widely becoming accepted as routine after the experiences of the last two years, but it's clearly not without its complexities.  This particular issue - working from home when 'home' is outside the UK - seems to be coming up more and more often.  There's lots of good stuff scattered about in various responses, the overall theme of which seems to be that there are potentialy quite serious pitfalls for both employers and employees and the best solution to avoid these is to pay for good advice. 

I was wondering whether CIPD is giving thought to producing some guidance of its own on the subject?  I can see that it's pretty novel (and not the same as the expatriation arrangements that many organisations used to have) and not straightforward, but a Factsheet highlighting the main issues - which seem to be residency/taxation and widely differing employment law regimes - would be very helpful. 

We obviously have some colleagues who know quite a bit about it who might be able to help if need be.

In reply to Caroline:

Hi Caroline,

Yes, we did have a couple of FAQs on this on our Coronavirus Hub but removed them recently when we revamped the hub a bit, in the context of 'Living with COVID', and all that. The FAQs mainly focused on enforced homeworking. It's an interesting point though about guidance for longer term hybrid/remote working, and I've flagged to a colleague here who is going to see whether we can add something relevant to 'now' back in.

In reply to Steve Bridger:

That’s great Steve.

There seems to be an easy acceptance in the media that ‘working from anywhere’ is the new normal; it’s only natural, therefore, that employees who have second homes or relatives abroad are enthusiastic about the prospect of being based outside the UK, either all the time or for some parts of the year.  However, while in theory it should be easier for a person working for an organisation based in Canterbury to work from home in Normandy than in Northumberland, it looks as though in practice that isn’t the case. 

So we risk being the people who have to disappoint both our employers and our colleagues by explaining that their proposals may not actually be feasible, and it would really help to be able to point to authoritative guidance from CIPD to make it clear that we aren’t just inventing bureaucratic obstacles – it’s genuinely not as straightforward as it sounds.

Not an issue for Greece necessarily as it’s within the EU but for future requests you may also want to check with the relevant colleagues about your company’s employee liability and professional indemnity insurance. Ours only covers the EU and can be widened to cover other countries if needed but premiums are only affordable in some countries. Countries with high levels of litigation, e.g. USA would be unaffordable for us.

You’ve also mentioned GDPR considerations, which is not so much of an issue for countries in the EU but might be insurmountable for countries outside. Our IT team actually have blocks on access to our systems from IP addresses outside of EU.

In reply to Katie:

Katie, I find this interesting as you mention Greece being within the EU. As the UK is now outside it does raise a number of HR queries in my mind when it comes to someone wanting to relocate back to Greece. Some of those queries might be covered if you have a Greek employing entity, payroll etc