Building a ‘Plug-and-Play’ Work From Anywhere Policy
PwC Survey: WFA Important Criterion for 81% of Under Forties When Choosing a Job
Compliance Updates From Around The World
Remotely Interesting with John – podcast with Sophie Wade & EOR post
Product Updates with Donal – new countries released & search analytics
Mel’s Tip of the Day – Summer lovin had me a blast, Christmas consulting happened so fast
Building a ‘Plug-and-Play’ Work From Anywhere Policy
Following on from our recent blog post about “5 Things to Consider When Building a Workation Policy”, a frequent complaint we have heard from HR and Global Mobility teams was how long it takes to get cross-functional buy-in to agree on a work from anywhere policy.
Even if there is buy-in from the C-Suite, maybe it’s the corporate tax team who could be holding back discussions, worried about Permanent Establishment risks.
Sometimes it might be within the global mobility function, who simply don’t know where to start when putting together a work from anywhere policy.
All of these influences above mean it can take as long as 18-24 months to get agreement on implementing a work from anywhere policy.
With that in mind, we thought it would be helpful to put together a ‘plug and play’ work from anywhere post to help you quickly draft and then launch your own work-from-anywhere policy.
To help you get a quick-start when drafting your work from anywhere policy, and given it’s the season of giving, we’ve taken some of the hard work out of it by drafting a workation policy blueprint for you to customize to your company’s risk appetite. You’ll be able to download the template at the above link.
PwC Survey: WFA Important Criterion For 81% Of People Under 40 When Choosing A Job
This survey by PWC caught our attention in recent weeks.
Not unsurprisingly, WFA is considered an important criterion for 81% of the people under 40 when choosing a job.
Another paper by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman evaluated what activities people like and dislike. They found that the second most disliked activity was work.
There are a few major pieces of legislative updates that caught our attention these last few weeks that we wanted to highlight:
The latest UK immigration update, as covered by Fragomen, expands the activities you can engage in under Visitor Visas, as published by the UK government in their recent Statement of Changes (SOC). Visitors will explicitly be permitted to work remotely while in the United Kingdom provided their remote work is “not the primary purpose of their visit.” This is just another indication that governments around the world are taking a more measured approach to the opportunity that international remote work presents.
The EU has agreed new gig economy rules that will likely have a major impact on how contractor misclassification is interpreted across Europe, especially amongst platform workers such as delivery drivers, but likely also beyond these categories of workers (e.g. it’s not yet clear what impact this would have on platforms like Upwork or Toptal).
Something that you might easily have missed a few months ago, but the Albanian digital nomad visa is one of the first digital nomad visas to have explicitly outlined the permanent establishment (PE) implications of this visa. Included in the legislation, it mentions that a non-resident company that hires a digital nomad or receives services from a digital nomad will not be considered to have a permanent establishment in Albania only because it hires a digital nomad.
It specifically includes the following under legislation “Notwithstanding any provision of the Income Tax Law, a non-resident entity shall not be considered to establish a permanent establishment in the Republic of Albania solely because it receives services from a digital mobile worker or solely because it has employed a digital mobile worker.” While not a silver bullet, this measure is meaningful, so hopefully more jurisdictions will move towards this direction which will help reduce the PE risk of using these visas in future.
Thank You For Your Support!
In other news, Thank you to Sophie Wade for having John on her podcast series on Transforming Work. Did you know that her podcast “Transforming Work with Sophie Wade” has been rated one of the Top Business Podcasts for 2023 by Podcast Tonight?
Following on from last month’s newsletter about Employers of Record, we’ve had a few companies reach out asking how to go about choosing the right Employer of Record.
We don’t have a definitive answer as it really depends on your compliance risk appetite and what the needs of your hire from anywhere programme are, but to give a hint, it’s a bit like dating in that you might have to kiss a few frogs before finding the right one for you.
“What gets measured gets managed”
I’m excited to share that we’ve released a major product update in recent weeks.
What’s under the hood of the new platform upgrade?
🌍 70+ countries already on the platform including the following new countries:
Albania
Bangladesh
Chile
Cyprus
Paraguay
Qatar
Sri Lanka
📊 Search analytics
You see all the historical searches, most popular destinations and the overall risk level for each historical search
You can mark the trips as approved or rejected and as well as add notes
You can see who has been searching and some of the key trends
📄 Enhanced compliance checklist to make sure you stay off 🎅 Santa’s naughty list
🎶 🎶 🎶 Summer lovin had me a blast, Christmas consulting happened so fast
We all know the song…it was actually the first video tape we had, it was in fact a joint Christmas present to me and my sisters. That year we drove our parents up the wall singing and dancing the entire Christmas holiday, the journey to and from Ireland did not stop us, it gave us more time to practice in the back of the car. Upon arrival at our grandparents we quickly stepped straight in to performance mode, they were delighted with our little show, our parents however…nowhere to be seen! 👂
So just as I was beginning to wind down and reflect on the year and all that we’ve achieved and how nice my workation was earlier in the year, a couple of companies reached out looking for help with building their work from anywhere policies. So I’m working to understand the many nuances of their businesses…the company risk appetite, their driver and culture, discussions around number of days to allow, role specifications, exceptions, etc.
Thankfully, we’ve got it all under control so that these companies will be able to launch and implement their Work From Anywhere policies in 2024. Helping companies develop these policies has filled me with joy because everyone should get access to this benefit.
One of the big reflections from 2023 was the Hello Workation campaign we launched. It was a hugely successful campaign not just because we are helping companies but the number of people that shared their own workation story.
Thanks for tuning in!
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Donal Brady is Co-Founder and Head of Product at Work From Anywhere, a platform to help companies execute a successful workation policy. He has deep expertise and experience in the world of remote work having spent nearly twenty years working in finance leadership roles with global multinationals like PwC, before entering the world of global mobility with International SOS and then pivoting into the software industry with Accel-KKR backed Smart Communications. He walks the walk with Work From Anywhere, speaking 5 languages, having travelled to 65+ countries and worked in 10.
Discover Work From Anywhere trends, Employers of Record insights, tax updates, John’s podcast appearance, Virgin Voyages’ WFH, and platform security upgrades.
Unlock insights in our Monthly Newsletter! Discover Work From Anywhere strategies including our HR Guide to Work From Anywhere Success, debunking Return-to-Office myths, global tax updates, and more. Dive in now!
Unlock insights in our Monthly Newsletter! Discover Work From Anywhere strategies including our HR Guide to Work From Anywhere Success, debunking Return-to-Office myths, global tax updates, and more. Dive in now!
Unlock Insights in Our Monthly Newsletter! Explore the untapped potential of Work From Anywhere policies – discover why 93% of companies miss measuring the business impact. Delve into Spotify’s WFA success stories and catch up on product updates from Donal. Plus, don’t miss Mel’s Tip of the Day. Prioritize you and shift from global strategies to the essence of self-care. Read now!
