BACKGROUND During the pandemic, employees and their families
found
themselves unable to accept international assignments based in other countries due to travel restrictions imposed. This meant that international assignments had to be conducted virtually. Individuals and their families also found themselves unable to leave assignment locations due to Covid restrictions once their tour of duty ended, and some ended up living in a third country which was neither their home or host location, for example caught up when travelling on vacation. This situation
resulted in
organisations having to manage individuals living in locations while their job roles continued elsewhere. This set the trend for requests by employees to work remotely while undertaking international duties. International remote work has now become a feature of international mobility and refers to employee requests to perform duties in a different country from where their job role is formally based. During the pandemic, compliance authorities understood that individuals were unable to relocate as necessary and a more lenient approach was taken to the treatment of immigration and tax implications. Now, however, with freedom of movement back in play, compliance has become a key issue in employers’ decisions to allow employees to live and work in different places.
ORGANISATIONAL PRACTICE: RECENT AIRINC. RESEARCH Employers need to consider a number of factors when deciding whether to facilitate international remote working and the policies that they devise to support employees and their families. Typically, employers wish to have an entity in the country in which the employee proposes to work remotely for compliance reasons. Yet, according to a recent survey by AirInc.*, this is not always the case. It found that 30% of the firms that it surveyed allow international remote work in countries where the company did not have an entity compared to 29% which did not allow international remote work in such circumstances. Interestingly, 39% of those surveyed handled remote work requests on a case-by- case basis. These data indicate a mixed picture with no clear trend as to where remote working is allowed. A further issue that needs to
be taken into account is how long international remote working is allowed. AirInc. found there were two main approaches to setting time limits on international remote work. These were the use of a cumulative day cap and/or a consecutive day cap. The use of a cumulative day cap refers to a maximum number of days of remote work allowed during a year, but these days do not have to be taken in one block, for example a maximum of 30 days taken during a year but not necessarily taken as a consecutive period of one month.
A consecutive day cap refers to a number of days allowed within a defined period, taken as one block, for example a maximum of ten days in a month. AirInc. found that 34% of
organisations applied a cumulative day cap, 9% applied a consecutive day cap, 12% applied a consecutive and cumulative day cap thereby combining these two measures, and 29% used a case-by-case approach. In terms of the length of the cumulative day cap, it found that 28% applied a maximum of 20 days, 26% a maximum of 30 days, 20% a maximum of 10 days, with the remainder some other length of time. So once again, the picture here is very mixed in terms of what organisations do with respect to time limits placed on international remote work.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS If organisations allow international remote working, this normally falls under the remit of the Global Mobility function. A question then arises as to whether an organisation should have a formal global mobility policy to underpin this form of international working. To manage it effectively, it is important to have technology that can track days spent in the international remote work location. AirInc.’s research finds that
company support for international remote work is often quite limited. The main focus reported is on providing some guidance on income tax and immigration issues
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GLOBAL MOBILITY REMOTE WORKING
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