Working From Abroad: 5 Questions Work-From-Anywhere Policies Miss
A great many professional and technology firms now let people work from another country for a period each year. Four weeks, six weeks, sometimes longer, usually approved by a line manager through a short form.
The policies behind those arrangements are almost always written by HR and finance, and they are usually good at the things HR and finance worry about: approval, duration, time zones, tax questions flagged for advice, and a clause reserving the right to say no.
What they rarely address is that the employment relationship, and every duty attached to it, travels with the person. This is not business travel, where the employer directs a trip for a business purpose, and it is not employing someone locally through a provider. It is a third thing, and it sits in a gap.
Five questions worth answering before the next approval.
1. Whose rules reach them once they are there?
The threshold question, and the honest answer is that it depends on facts nobody usually collects.
Your duty as employer does not switch off. In British terms, section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 attaches to the employment relationship rather than to a location, and the obligation to assess risks to employees under regulation 3 of the Management Regulations does not carve out work done from an apartment in another country.
At the same time, the country the person is physically in has its own framework, and several jurisdictions covered in this series regulate the conditions of remote work directly. Mexico applies a dedicated standard requiring an equipment list and periodic verification of conditions at the place the work is done. Egypt's 2025 framework expressly covers remote and flexible working. Others address it through general prevention duties.
The practical position is that your duty continues and a second framework may also apply. Immigration, tax and social security consequences sit alongside that and need specialist advice, which is exactly why a policy that flags those and ignores health and safety has covered the easier half.
2. Does anything you provided actually travel?
The question that exposes how thin most arrangements are.
The workstation assessment was done for a desk in your office, or at best for a home in your own country. The chair, the monitor, the dock and the riser are in one of those two places. HSE's guidance on home working and display screen equipment covers habitual home use, and the same logic applies with more force to an unfamiliar setting.
What people actually work from on these arrangements is a kitchen table, a sofa, a rented apartment with a low counter, or a shared workspace of unknown quality. Six weeks of that is not a holiday posture, it is a working pattern.
The workable approach is modest and needs stating in the policy rather than assumed: a short self-assessment covering the specific setting, an expectation about what constitutes an acceptable working position, permission to buy or rent basic equipment locally within a small budget, and a route to say that the arrangement is not working without that being treated as a failure.
Equipment issued to the person rather than fixed to a desk resolves much of this, which is another argument for that approach generally.
3. Is anyone actually covered?
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The question most likely to produce an unwelcome answer, and it needs asking of three separate arrangements.
Employers' liability. Cover arranged under the 1969 Act is a domestic requirement and its territorial scope is a matter for the policy wording. Whether it responds to an injury sustained while working from another country for six weeks is a question for your broker, and it is better asked in advance than after.
Travel and medical cover. Business travel policies frequently exclude trips that are not for business purposes, and personal travel insurance frequently excludes working. An arrangement that is neither a holiday nor a business trip can fall between the two, leaving somebody with a medical incident and no cover.
Local requirements. Some jurisdictions require work injury cover through a statutory scheme rather than a commercial policy, and a person working there, even temporarily, may raise questions about that scheme's application.
None of this is exotic and all of it is answerable. What is not defensible is approving the arrangement without having asked.
4. Where are they, and what happens if something goes wrong?
The operational question, and it is usually unanswered because nobody thought it needed asking.
Establish, as part of approval rather than afterwards, what country and what city the person will be in, how they can be contacted outside your usual hours, and who they contact if they need help. The government publishes foreign travel advice by country, and checking it before approval is a two minute exercise that occasionally changes the answer.
Two specifics are worth building in. Someone working alone in an unfamiliar country, without colleagues nearby and often without the language, is in a lone working situation, and HSE's guidance on lone working applies in substance even though the setting is unusual. And a medical emergency, a natural event or a civil disruption in the destination becomes your problem the moment it happens, because the person is there with your approval.
A named contact, a check-in expectation proportionate to the destination, and a stated position on what the organisation will do if the person needs to come home are the whole of it.
5. When does temporary stop being temporary?
The question that turns a personal arrangement into an organisational one, and it deserves a clear line in the policy.
Duration matters, repetition matters, and so does what the person does while they are there. Extended or repeated periods in one country can raise questions about whether the arrangement has become something more substantial, with consequences that reach well beyond health and safety into employment, tax and corporate presence.
That determination is not a health and safety judgement and should not be made by a line manager approving a form. What the policy can do is set a duration limit, require approval above a stated threshold to go through a defined route rather than a manager, and prohibit repeat arrangements in the same country without a fresh look.
Where an arrangement does become established, the questions change entirely: local employment obligations, possibly a local entity or an employer of record, and the full set of national duties that come with employing someone in that country.
The five, and what a policy should say
| Question | What most policies say | What is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Whose rules | Nothing | Duty continues, local framework may also apply |
| Equipment and setup | Nothing | Self-assessment, equipment position, route to raise problems |
| Insurance | Tax flagged, insurance not | Three covers checked before approval |
| Contact and emergencies | Nothing | Location known, contact route, check-in, repatriation position |
| Duration | A number of weeks | A limit, an approval route above it, no repeats without review |
Note the middle column. These policies are rarely wrong; they are usually silent, and silence is what leaves the organisation relying on nothing having gone wrong.
For international groups
Two considerations that make this harder and one that makes it easier.
Harder, because a group with entities in several countries has people moving between jurisdictions where the group already has obligations, and a temporary arrangement in a country where you have an entity raises different questions from one where you do not. And because destination requirements vary: the remote working frameworks in Mexico, Egypt and several European systems attach obligations that a British-designed policy does not contemplate.
Easier, because a group standard for this genuinely can travel. The questions above are the same everywhere, even where the answers differ, so a single approval process asking them consistently is both achievable and more defensible than local variation.
Holding approvals, assessments and destination checks in one place rather than in manager inboxes is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits will establish how many of these arrangements are currently running without anyone knowing.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite works with organisations whose people are increasingly not where the organisation is, which now describes most professional and technology employers. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with IT and software, finance and banking and professional services organisations, where work-from-anywhere policies are now a recruitment expectation rather than a concession.
Our global health and safety consultants establish what destination countries require of remote working, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current as your people choose new places to go.
If your organisation approved twenty of these arrangements last year and could not now list the countries, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
