Birgit Ennemoser (birgit.ennemoser@auren.de), managing director Personal Services

More and more employees are requesting to work from a vacation destination or other countries. Companies should find solutions for this issue, e.g. through the introduction of a workation policy. The requirements that are most suitable for a company in this regard depend on the number of workation applications and, in particular, the requested countries.

Working outside the employer’s premises – workation or remote working – is essential today. It is important that standardised processes be defined for this in order to keep the administrative workload of HR departments as low as possible on the one hand and to reduce corporate risks to a minimum on the other.

The most important framework conditions are the definition of the eligible employees, the time period and the desired countries. The geographical area is often limited to Europe or the EEA and Switzerland. However, there are also more and more requests about deployment options in popular third country destinations.

The third countries in particular must be carefully reviewed with regard to the impact in the areas of taxes, social security, employment law and immigration.

Tips regarding a workation policy

Once a workation policy has been drawn up, it should be announced by the company and published on the Intranet. It should be communicated that every employee who wants to take advantage of the workation policy must first undergo an application and approval process. This is the only way to ensure that the company is aware of an employee’s workation and that the necessary steps, such as applying for an A1 certificate for social security purposes, can be taken.

The application form should include clearly formulated questions that the employee can answer easily, e.g. “I confirm that I am an EU national”, “I confirm that my centre of vital interests is in Germany…”.

Individual aspects that are of great importance to the company can also be addressed in the application form; the employee should confirm these, e.g. “I confirm that I will also comply with the data protection policy during my workation”, “I confirm that I will also comply with the working time rules during my workation”….

Many companies use simple application forms in a pdf format. The HR department still has to evaluate these individually in order to decide whether to approve or reject the application. If a company expects a manageable number of workation applications, this is certainly a viable way to start introducing workation. However, it is to be expected that the number of workation applications will steadily increase after the introduction of a workation policy. HR departments will therefore have to look for alternative solutions in order to process the large number of applications.

The administrator’s evaluation is made easier with “EDP help”. This can take the form, for example, of the application form being structured in such a way that there are no obstacles to a workation if all questions are answered with “yes”.

Important for the application form

In practice, there are Excel-based solutions that evaluate compliance risks using an underlying logic and formulas and even fully automated solutions in the form of workation apps. Whether simple application forms, an Excel-based tool or fully automated assessments via an app – all three forms of application should have one thing in common: The company’s individual general conditions should be reflected in the application form.

It makes sense to involve the line manager in the approval process. Even if there is nothing to prevent workation from a compliance perspective, the implementation of a particular project may require the physical presence of the employee in Germany and thus rule out workation.

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