WFH - From Abroad - Why not?

[MichaelAwkward]

The biggest blocker from the employers POV will no doubt be exposing them to potential tax liabilities in other countries as well as employment responsibilities. Doubly so if they don’t have a presence in that country to begin with.

Obviously a lot of people no doubt get away with doing it on a tourist visa, moving to a new country every 90 days or whatever but then I imagine they aren’t staying with a single employer for long either.

 

[m@rty]

My old employer was quite happy for people to go abroad for up to a month and work, as long as they never had any in person meetings and/or site visits to attend. I never took the opportunity to do it, and in hindsight, wish I did!

 

[slinxy]

It really depends on your role and the company you work for..

I know there’s security concerns and legal reasons why I can’t do my job aboard else it would have either outsourced like many of the roles at my place or they would hire someone in one of the foreign countries that we have operations in.

I did joke that I wanted to work in Kos and my gaffer said that he would give me a wonderful reference when the bank of Greece ask for one.

He did threaten to send me to New York, as we are struggling to get a resource over there at them moment.. and I was like hell no!

 

[koolpc]

I know a solicitor who works, several times a year from his 2nd home, in Greece!!

 

[geekman]

There are three key elements to making this type of thing work:

1) Moving to a country with a lower cost of living than the country you're being paid in.
2) Either having an employer who is totally OK with it (unlikely), or simply not telling them (can be quite easy depending on the job).
3) Making sure that the time difference between your "work" country and the country you're living in isn't so great that you're having to get up in the middle of the night or stay up really late.

In the majority of poorer countries, you can enter on a tourist visa and simply leave for a few days before your visa expires, then come back in and reset the clock. Considering the amount of annual vacation most jobs give you, this is relatively easy to do. As long as you don't overstay your visa and can provide proof that you have sufficient funds to sustain yourself, most border agents don't care. You could have course be unlucky and get one who decides to do a bit of digging but I don't know of anyone in Latin America / SE Asia who that's happened to.

Cards like Halifax Clarity, Revolut etc etc can be used for all your daily expenses, and you can open an account with a company like Global66 or Transferwise so you can pay your rent. If you end up getting into a relationship with someone out there, you can even buy a house / car etc and put it in their name until you get married, which will get you a visa anyway. If you don't, rent and ubers are cheap enough in a lot of places that it's a non-issue on a British salary.

In order to avoid the typical OCUK self-righteous pile-on, I should probably mention for those that might look at my location and make the obvious connection that I personally have done absolutely none of the above apart from the getting married bit, but I have helped a lot of people to do it and it's worked well for them.

 

[HangTime]

Different tax and employment laws are two major hurdles.

Yeah. I really don't know much about it, but I assume if nothing else it's a headache for the HR department to assess what risks that poses. Like if you work from country X, maybe that country has some special workers rights that apply to everyone working their regardless of employer. So the employer is then exposed to some risks and needs to be an expert on employment law in other countries as well as where they are based. They don't want to get sued under some silly law they didn't know existed by a disgruntled employee.

There's also laws around data egress and stuff like that. Like if you move personal data outside of the EEA then it is subject to certain data protection controls etc. Again just another ballache the employer could do without.

That said I've seen it go on pretty much everywhere I've worked in a short-term and often unofficial capacity. I did have a mate that moved to Australia and remained employed with us but we had an office in Australia so I assume that helped with the above issues already taken care of.

 

[Priapus]

I saw something like this on social media where some dude was working abroad in a 5 star hotel all inclusive for months and it was cheaper than living in the UK!

Be careful what you wish for though because if legislation becomes active that would allow it then goodbye decent wages as masses of Indians will do your job for a quarter of the wage.

The last thing I would want going forward is a WFH job because you are the easiest thing to replace by cheaper labour.

That depends on the sector. I've done WFH 24/7 since March 2020. In my industry, demand is very high for skilled developers and finding a cheap developer from India isn't the best idea. I have moved jobs a couple of times since 2020 - and only ever gone to an office for onboarding and such.

Talking of such things; I am potentially moving jobs again (Due to relocation to the UK) and will be working for a very large UAE client - so I'll spend 4 weeks in Dubai and then work remotely at first from South Africa and then more perm, from the UK.

It can be done; just takes a bit of work.

At my current company (HQ in the UK too) one my colleagues recently moved their whole family to rural Portugal; on a Digital Nomad visa.