To go abroad when working from home?

[StreakOfTheWeek]

If I went to Italy or France or Spain or wherever... and logged in and did my work - would this be wrong?
I work 8-2 Mon - Thurs normally
Never have to go into office, except for 4 meetings a year.

And I would work as usual, and thought I could then spend the afternoons exploring and taking it all in.

There's nothing wrong with my idea, is there??

There are all sorts of ways of excusing why you werent at your 'desk'.

Put yourself on Do Not Disturb. Make an excuse as to why you couldnt respond quickly i.e you were working on 'something'.

Take your IPAD/phone everywhere and every so often respond. Say you need to look into it. The when it takes longer than expected say it was more complex than first thought of

Time emails to be sent at certain times

Come on line early - send a few emails. The go to the beach/back to bed. That way people know you are around.

What about the travelling time to the foreign country. Is that going to be taken as annual leave or as just part of your normal working hours.

The reason I am saying this I used to work for a very large company where these sorts of things did go on! I remember one lady who went abroad and did exactly what I have listed out. She claimed it was a family emergency but dont worry. She would still be working...I wasnt managing her but my colleague was. It took a ridicilous amount of time to resolve because she didnt actually say she was going anywhere. She claimed as it was a family emergency she thought it was OK to just go and carry on as normal without telling anyone.

Yeah right!!

I

Just ASK them.

My friend is a 'digital nomad' and combines work with house/pet sitting. So she's earning twice, while on clients' heating & lighting & broadband ...

It can work brilliantly.

But if they specify in the rules that you can't, don't.

And if they say no but you go ahead and do it - assume they will find out because of where your laptop is located etc and there will be consequences.

That's it really.

Our company are fine with this as long as it's not china, north Korea or Russia etc

It’s interesting how quickly any thoughts that working (in any capacity) whilst abroad on a tourist visa or traveling visa free continue to be studiously ignored….and there’s an assumption “it’s allowed” because a mate or friend has got away with it. The reality is it often isn’t allowed at all, or in very limited circumstances (e.g. restricted to checking work e-mails).

It’s also maybe worth being aware that working from home in some European countries is legally codified, in terms of facilities so for example in those countries the landlord or house owner might get their collar felt if the authorities find out a tenant or guest is WFH without the correct measures/precautions/declarations being in place.

I guess if I had to make one final contribution it’s that if I was a visiting Brit traveling as a tourist but planning to WFH in at least one of the countries listed by the OP I’d tell absolutely nobody what I planning to do or actually doing once I was there..

Oh I hope this thread isn’t descending into another WFH/remote/felxible working = lazy and work shy debate.

Remote Working wasn’t invented in 2020. Plenty of people work on site, sat in their car, in a cafe or round at their work bestie’s for a bit of company, sometimes abroad (and making the most of the free time when we do, I certainly do) or with people in other time zones, and have done so for decades.

Everything that @MichaelandKirk describes above happens, yeah, it’s bloody shit, but it’s also been a feature of pretty much all large workplaces even in the 9-5 analogue days. Many of us can play that game and know folk that do.

We don’t need to say that @StreakOfTheWeek is a a slacker to suggest her plan might a bad idea - she could be her company’s top deliverer in her role for all we know. I think the constantly repeated advice to look at the policies, speak to her line manager would be the same.

Why not do a trial run?

Book a few days' holiday. Go abroad, taking your laptop. Try logging in to your work system and see whether you succeed.

If you succeed but get asked about it when you return, say you had a sudden panic about an email or piece of work and wanted to check on it.

If there is a policy on logging in from abroad, I'm pretty sure you'd be told about it then.

I asked our IT and they are fine with it. We can ask for our "location lock" to be removed. And they are fine with it as long as it's a normal "safe country". Like no Iran, Iraq, Syria etc