In our company, employees have the ability to work from home anywhere in the UK. This is something we've continued since the start of the Covid pandemic when we required working from home.
However, some employees now are asking if they can work from abroad for short periods, e.g. 2 - 3 weeks, on an occasional basis.
I understand this can be an issue with local taxes and employment rights arising, if the employee works abroad for a long period of time (seems to be more than 180 days in a lot of the EU).
The managers are generally fine with these requests as long as the employee works the same hours, are available during those hours, and it doesn't affect their output.
As we have a few requests now, I think we need to have a policy in place so we treat everyone consistently and are covering the risks.
Some issues I can think of are:
- If they bring IT equipment abroad (whether personal or company owned) and it breaks or they lose it, what happens? We can't really ship a new laptop abroad to a country we have no presence and where we didn't even require that employee to travel abroad in the first place. Do we make it a condition that if their equipment breaks or is lost whilst abroad, it is their problem to sort out, and they must find an alternative computer to continue working from and if they can't - take the down time as holiday etc.
- Should our employers liability insurance cover employees while working abroad?
- Do we need any other insurance while employes are working abroad?
- Data protection issues while abroad?
May I ask how others handle these requests to work whilst abroad? It seems like a minefield.
Thank you
