Hybrid working overseas - General - Remote and hybrid working

1 Hybrid working overseas

11 Apr, 2024 08:43

Hello!

Our charitable organisation does have quite an evolved hybrid working policy already, however it doesn't include anything specific regarding working overseas. As others are finding, we are receiving an increasing number of requests to work from overseas, normally tagged onto a holiday to see family/friends. To date, this has been agreed very much on a case by case basis and strictly on a short term basis for all the reasons already mentioned by others.

Given the uptick in requests, I'm planning to propose we develop our policy position on this - and wondered if any members would be happy to share a copy of a policy/wording or signpost to further sources of info that they've used as a starting point?

We've used (and are using) a 'no longer than 20 days in a year' rule of thumb, but not entirely sure where that's come from! :-) I suspect it's based on taxation requirements.

All advice gratefully received, thank you!

265 views

Thomas | 0 Posts

12 Apr, 2024 07:46

Hi Lizzy,

I considered a similar thing recently, however, in my case opted to stick with the requirement for employees to request to work overseas and continue to assess requests on a case by case basis. The reason I did this is because of the potential issues with regards to data protection. For example, we had an employee request to work from the Philippines, and on investigation we found that there are complications with this because the Philippines and the UK/EU and the various Data Protection Acts don't fully cover data transfers to the Philippines.

Clearly your mileage may very depending on the type of business and what sort of data you process, but for us, a blanket policy for overseas working would not work with the data we process. I would consider this (admittedly rather complicated) area before deciding to go ahead with a blanket policy.
- Cancel