To go abroad when working from home?

Post-Brexit, if you do not have an EU passport, you enter the EU under the conditions of the Schengen visa waiver, which means that you are typically not allowed to do any kind of work. That actually varies by country (because they have sovrintee™ for work matters when it comes to non-EU citizens), but in general while you are allowed to go for a business meeting, you are not allowed to perform remunerated work.

This is all on top of the data transmission issues and any other policies that your employer might have.

Of course, the chances of you being detected as "working" are pretty low. But if you turn up on your own at Rome or Barcelona and the immigration officer decides to ask why you are there, do not say "I fancied a change of scene for my WFH". And if the hotel WiFi is not very good, maybe be discreet about asking if they can move you to another room nearer to the router "so I can make my work video calls". Things might also get interesting if you got ill and needed to use your GHIC for hospital treatment.

If you did get caught, you could expect a 4-figure fine and ban of a couple of years from the Schengen area, plus several more years of grief when you subsequently apply for an ETIAS (coming soon).

This is really bad advice.

Thanks! Probably a list of countries I wouldn’t really want to be a digital nomad in, should it ever arise 🤣.

I live in France and recently did this. Trip back to UK to spend time with a family member who was recovering from an operation.

I requested written agreement from my manager and HR.

HR had to prepare me and extra insurance document, but otherwise no other issues and they were very accommodating to let me do it.

I wouldn’t go ahead and do it without written agreement, as if you have any kind of accident within working hours, they are responsible for you during those hours.

It depends on your workplace policy, our laptops are blocked if we take them abroad without approval.

I've done this as have others in my company, but just check with your manager.
If you can I'd highly recommend it!

Please don't do this without discussing it with your manager first. We have a policy that allows this in certain circumstances and if the employee follows certin guidelines abd procedures.

I had member of staff try to do this a while ago without telling anyone . Suffice to say it caused a lot of issues when it became clear at the very last minute what they were planning on doing. We has a number of data governance access and security issues and tax implications to sort out in a very short time. I was not best pleased, because if the request had been brought up earlier we would have been able to plan for it. As it was we almost missed a deadline because the employee was unable to work on certain parts of a project while abroad due to the terms of our licence for use of the data. Something my staff member was apparently not aware of 🙄

We worked it out but becasue I am a nice boss but the person doing this was warned that if they did it again we would implement disciplinary procedures for not complying with our policies on this . They also forfeited some pay as they had placed themselves in a situation where they were not able to work on what was needed for a couple of days so were forced to take unpaid leave

A less understanding boss would have started disciplinary procedures and HR said I could definitely do that but I was focussed on delivering the promised work and did not want to go nuclear right away. So the staff member kept their job but lost some pay and is on an official warning . This was only because I discovered what thyr planned to do just before they left. If they had been abroad when I discovered it, disciplinary procedures for gross misconduct would have been implemented.

I've talked about this before. I worked for decades for a large corporate everyone has heard of. We were at the front for homeworking and actually had a home working policy with hot desking arrangements from 1999. We always had, and they continue to have, strict rules on home workplaces, equipment, insurance, safety etc.

Our policy was always from day 1 that this was not allowed because to do this, said company would have to be fully conversant in taxation, H&S, law etc. for each and every country that an employee would wish to work from. They had a duty of care to ensure they were not breaking any laws of the country or putting the employee in an unsafe situation or causing tax or immigration issues.

As a result of that, it was a blanket no unless the employee was one that travelled on business to said countries and presumably was covered by visas and company insurance for the same. Jane in admin or even Jane's manager's manager's manager absolutely could not decide to go to their apartment in Turkey, Gite in France or chalet in Switzerland for the summer and log on there.

I'm still shocked at how many companies let their staff work from home using a laptop at the kitchen table. It would be a very foolish employee that booked a holiday, didn't tell anyone and disappeared abroad for a month with their work laptop.

FFS

Did you not notice that she's planning to have afternoons off to explore? And some businesses don't routinely monitor whether people are at their computers, actually working. Admittedly more do since it became clear that productivity was dropping, but still a lot rely on trust.

What you are talking about is maybe four weeks or 28 days at most, so even if all your remaining holidays are out of the UK, doubt if you would ever get to 90 days where there could be tax implications.

However, you should seek your employer's agreement. And depending on your employer, what you would do or costs you would lose if there was a reason to come to the office at short notice.

Post Brexit unless your employer has a French base you would not be able to do this legally from France without going through some hoops.
Your employer would have to follow French labour laws.

VPNs can solve some of the issues but some countries restrict their use (such as Egypt, UAE, Myanmar) and some countries it is completely illegal (China, Iran, Turkey etc).

Depends on your employer. You can only ask. Mine allow it, but as others have said, only short term due to tax implications.

I live in Germany.

I can do this for - potentially - up to six months in one year. I need to fill out an A1 form before going each time to confirm my company is still responsible for my social security contributions in my country of residence. The company needs an address for me in my temporary country and the dates I will be there.

As Covid hit, they expanded our accident insurance to cover working outside of the office, so I‘m automatically covered there.

I do this to regularly spend a week at a time in the UK throughout the year.

A) people aren't comparing the security of UK vs France, they're comparing the security of your PRIVATE home network, with log on details only known to you, vs whatever SHARED network you'd be accessing in your hotel/air bnb. The country is irrelevant, its like saying working in Costa is less secure than working from your own house

B) it doesn't matter whether it is or not, the only thing that matters is if your employer thinks so. Why are you arguing with randoms on mn about whether it's OK to do? The only person you need to ask is your employer- if they are happy with it its fine, if they aren't it isn't.

My company is fine with it but we would need to tell them.

Yes, it's a potential tax issue, as well as a data liability and safety issue. If you only want to be away for a few days, why not just book annual leave?

Not allowed phone or laptop out of UK without explicit permission. We just had a cyber security thing and aren’t allowed to charge up in random places especially wireless pads that are often in places (juice jacking is a big threat). I’d have a chat and see what they say.

The naivety and ignorance is obvious.

Most employers will know exactly where their systems are being being accessed from at all times. If you don't understand this, your advice to the OP is worthless.

Many employers will have strict policies around where in the world data can be accessed from, and via which types of networks, due to how transmitted data is intercepted in some countries.

Never mind any of the other issues they may have with where their employees are when carrying out company business.

Seek permission from work, ensure you don’t exceed the number of days allowed and ensure you follow all company policies the same as you would WFH in the UK, including having childcare abroad if required. Plenty of people do it of their contracts allow it.

It definitely depends on your employer. In 2023 I met two French guys who had moved to Spain and had been working there remotely since Covid and their employer didn’t know. Their company was based out of Paris

You could, you know, ask them.

It's not better. But UK companies IT security is set up for the UK internet.

UK companies data protection policies are based on UK laws and UK internet and UK processing. Different things apply abroad.

I had to spend a lot of time making sure our operational processes were still in line with GDPR when Brexit happened. We have to pay attention to how things change in the EU and the rest of the world because our arm of the business is here but the umbrella company is international.

It's not as simple as whether you can logon to the internet somewhere. There is legislation and regulations to comply with, depending on your sector and what data you handle.

Get a VPN.