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International home office regulations in selected countries

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​published on 6. December 2022 | reading time approx. 3 minutes
  


   


International home office regulations in selected countries 

With the health crisis and Covid-19, home office has become part of the daily landscape of employers and employees. 


Beyond the economic and social issues, home office opens new questions in terms of environment but also of organization of lifetime, living places, etc.

This new way of working, at a distance, constitutes an upheaval in work relations. 

For many new home officers, the experience of this new practice since spring 2020 has allowed them to measure its advantages and has led them to wish to benefit from the possibility of continuing to home office after the health crisis - for jobs that allow it. However, home officers may be exposed to new psychosocial or economic and social risks.

The implementation of home office can be organized at employer or employee request and there are many forms of home office: one day a week, all week, at home, in a third place... and what is called “home office/remote working" can correspond to very different realities depending on the context. 

Poorly thought-out and poorly organized home office can degrade working conditions and disorganize companies.

The European Statistical Office Eurostat is monitoring home office in the different EU Member States. The last study published just before the Spring 2020 showed both a certain disparity in the use of home office across countries, but also a relative stability in regular home office and a moderate increase in occasional home office over the last de­cade.

The study indicates that 5.2 percent of employed people aged 15-64 in the European Union were working remotely regularly in 2018 (up from 4.9 percent in 2008), and 8.4 percent were “home officing” occasionally (up from 5.8 per­cent in 2008), representing less than 15 percent of workers in the European Union. The European Statistical Office showed significant differences between EU Member States. Home office was found to be much more developed in countries like the Netherlands (14 percent regular home office and 22 percent occasional home office), Finland (13 percent and 17 percent), Luxembourg (11 percent and 20 percent), Austria (10 percent and 12 percent) and Denmark (8 percent and 21 percent). Germany and France were in the middle (5 percent and 7 percent), while the Eastern and Southern European countries had a marginal practice of home office: in Italy and Greece, 95 percent of the employed never home officed, in Romania and Bulgaria it was 99 percent. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures home office through the ATUS study, whose latest release indicates that the share of home officers (i.e. at least one day every two weeks) had risen from 18.6 percent in 2003 to 23.7 percent in 2018. 

The health crisis of spring 2020 gave a sudden boost to home office/remote working. It will be very interesting to follow the future studies. 

With now more than a year of hindsight, several observations can be made:
  • Home office has changed scale: from a marginal practice, it is now a common practice, which can be used beyond exceptional crisis situations
  • permanent home office has many obstacles, and the physical presence in a common place does not seem to disappear completely.

Legal provisions in selected countries

Global Guide to Remote-Working

Details on the rules applicable to the home office in selected countries, you will find in our eBook concerning Remote working, published in cooperation with Lee Hecht Harrison - LHH, a division of Adecco Group, a world’s leading talent advisory and solutions company.




 
In this context, you will find below an overview of the existence of legal provisions governing home office/Remote working in selected countries and the obligation to provide compensation for it. 

To enlarge, please click on picture
​Specific question: What if my employee would like to work remote from another country?  
International remote working (which should not be confused with secondment) is currently not subject to a dedicated international / European regulation and mobilizes several areas of law. 

In this context, you will find hereafter a summary of the essential subjects that we consider important to validate beforehand:

Possibility to refuse

Can the employer prohibit an employee / all employee from working remotely?

Country

Will the workplace be located in a non-EU country or within the EU, the European Economic Area (EEA), or Switzerland?

Duration

For what duration is this remote working planned / requested by the employee (specific period or indefinite)?

Structuration

What is the structure of my company abroad (no presence, branch, subsidiary)?

Are there any special rules in my structure (compliance, GDPR, etc.)?

Immigration

What are the regulations to be respected in terms of residence permit and/or work permit?

Labour law

What is the impact of remote working on the applicable law on the employment contract and labour law?

Social security

What are the consequences on the applicable social security law?

-        On the complementary social protection system (complementary health insurance etc.)?

-        On the work accident, professional illness, insurances, etc.? 

-        On the possible retirement insurance system? Etc.

Tax

What are the consequences in tax matters: income tax, permanent establishment, etc.?

Expenses

What are the obligations of the company in terms of reimbursement of expenses in particular to return of the company premises?

Benefits

How to manage (individual and collective) benefits (lunch reimbursement, benefit in kind, etc.)?

How are all materials (computer, cell phone, company car, etc.) handled?

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