How to request, and get, a really flexible job

January 6, 2022 2:18 AM

For family/personal reasons, I'd like to be able to spend a significant amount of time each year abroad - say 3 months a year. I am thinking of moving jobs, and I'd like to be able to request a degree of locational flexibility in a new job that my current job just doesn't have. How can I approach this?

I currently WFH because of Covid. But my job is very office/virtual-office based. I am expected to be available from 9-5. Flexibility around days and times is heavily discouraged. Our boss places a premium on 'seeing' us - either virtually or, when times allow, real life. Extremely prompt responses to emails etc is required. Working from a different country, across different time zones etc, is unheard of in my organisation.

I am seeing more and more of my friends move into consulting work which affords them a lot of flexibility around times and places. They can work from anywhere. I really want to be able to incorporate some of this flexibility in my life, esp as my family (who live in my country of origin) get older and more in need of my support. I am increasingly frustrated by the effort and energy it takes to save and save and save up annual leave in order to go and see them for 3 weeks every year. It just is not good enough for me anymore. But my life is such that I cannot uproot myself and move home lock, stock and barrel.

In terms of seniority, I'm like, medium. I'm about as senior as you can get without actually having any leadership/management responsibilities, which I do not want. I do a lot of work in close tandem with senior members of staff, or entirely independently.

I like what I do, but am seeking new work as I've worked in my current job for years and it's time.

In my ideal world, I would like work some of the time [say all summer (3 months) or 2 months in the summer and a month in the winter] from my home country - I have the resources to create a reasonably good working set up from there. I would like to be able to largely work to my own timescale, rather than be expected to be logged on and working from 9-5 (which in my home country would translate to something like 4pm to midnight).

I feel like theoretically the nature of the work I do (I'm being cagey on purpose, to maintain anonymity) would lend itself to this kind of schedule; but my current job is so heavily based around meetings (both scheduled and impromptu) and anxious managers expecting you to reply to their emails within minutes that it really would not be possible to work to my own schedule.

I would like to apply for a new job and request this kind of schedule from the get-go. Is this degree of location/time flexibility a crazy thing to want from a salaried office job? I don't want to work for myself, but I wonder if I need to make that shift if I am going to get the flexibility I need. If it's something I can actually get from an office job, how would you recommend I go about asking for and getting it?

I work in the UK, in a large not for profit organisation.

Thanks for your help, Mefites.

posted by unicorn chaser to Work & Money (12 answers total)

I work in the UK for a consulting organisation which advises governments and investors on technical and commercial matters relating to energy. My team and I are salaried employees (or partners) and we occasionally use self employed outsiders to support as well.

The work we do is inherently project based and I think you probably want a job that is as well.

Many of the people that work for me are based away from our London office although we do try in non Covid times to spend some occasional office days together. Many of my colleagues take extended periods in their home countries on a regular basis. The only constraints are that people are required to manage their time so as not to trigger adverse tax issues and that if there are client calls, you might have to make those calls at awkward times for you.

The former might be a substantial issue for you if you are regularly taking three months. I might hypothetically know some people who do this without "officially" telling their line manager or commission managers even though its obvious. The problem here is that if you are working remotely for three months in a country, you and your employer may become subject to local employment legislation and taxation.

If you were self employed and working for your contracting company then this wouldn't legally change anything but frankly you aren't going to be caught doing this and it would be purely on you since your clients would not be your employers. Note that if you do this, you will have to consider IR35 implications as well as all the other faff associated with being self employed.
posted by atrazine at 3:13 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Remote jobs are a thing. If you're hired to work remote, you don't have to request anything. You get to decide where remote is. You may have time zone issues but companies that are entirely distributed are much more flexible about that.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:45 AM on January 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I would say flexibility and wfh, as well as 2 months in the summer and 1 month in the winter from your home country, is a reasonable request with some salaried jobs. Although I probably won't bring this up directly in the interview itself. I would probe how flexible they are though, and work the request in once you have proven yourself.

However, I would say that based on what I have seen in the UK workplace among my friends and colleagues, is that most of them are expected to keep some semblance of UK office hours. I have seen people do 7am to 3pm UK time (which for you would be 2pm to 10pm) for 1-2 month periods. And then every Friday off because no need to save up 3 weeks of annual leave to go back to country of origin.

I think it'll be currently unrealistic in the UK workplace to expect a schedule in which you are not on a similar-ish office hours with the rest of the team.

But it will depend on the nature of your job (meetings! sound like it won't work) and just how much your skills are desired in the marketplace, and what salary you prepared to accept.
posted by moiraine at 3:50 AM on January 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Generally, that kind of flexibility on employer’s part comes with an expectation that you are also flexible. At a minimum that normally means that your working hrs have some overlap with the predominant time zone the rest of the team is working in to facilitate some real time interactions. And that you make yourself available for calls at a time that suits your customers/vendors or whatever other 3rd party is not part of the flexible arrangement. If that means 4 am or 10 pm in the time zone you’re in that’s your problem. For example, I work for a multinational and live in Europe. If I have a project with teams in Asia, my mornings start early and I have calls all morning….if I work with teams in the US, I may have later mornings but will be in calls from mid-afternoon…so there are limits to how flexible you can really be.

It also generally requires that the work gets done and that your responses are timely by the standards of that organisation.

The tax and compliance risks mentioned by others are very real and organisations that are set up to work globally also have ways of ensuring compliance. Compliance with your organisation’s policies in this respect is generally a requirement under your employment contract and failure to comply can result in termination in a lot of organisations. Individual line managers may live by the idea that ignorance is bliss but you can’t rely on that or have a reasonable expectation that they do.
posted by koahiatamadl at 4:26 AM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't know what industry you work in but full-time remote work is a thing and We Work Remotely is a job posting board with 100% remote jobs. It leans heavily into tech work but includes a bunch of other things as well. Many of the job posted are looking for employees in the US but some are oriented toward Europe. I have seen a few but not many listed for Asia. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 6:05 AM on January 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

A few further points:

If you are sufficiently valuable and have a rare enough skillset, you may be able to command more flexible terms. I have an employee who is a technical specialist in a narrow field which we have a constant need of and where experience is almost impossible to find, he works on New Zealand time. It's a coordination nightmare for me but I would pay twice as much on the open market if I wanted someone in my own time zone (If I could get them at all which is by no means certain) so we make it work.

Note, we try and minimise his involvement in client calls but we do expect him to join 0.5-1 calls a week in core European hours with clients and he has to make that work for him. He's joining a call that could not be moved an hour from now which I think is 3AM for him.

I understand that he lives like some of medieval god king on the coast of the South Island though so you know... it's working for him.

A key thing to distinguish between is constraints which are management bullshit / preferences and things which are external constraints for your employer. The first are based on the personal beliefs of managers, the second are sector based so will rule out / rule in certain kinds of jobs.
posted by atrazine at 6:17 AM on January 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

I would look for a company that has existing employees in the both the UK and your home country, so they are already set up to follow the laws and regulations for both. You do need to be upfront with your employer about where you are working from. I know of someone who was fired from my US based company because they claimed to be at home but were actually in another country. This was not for months but only for a few days so they could get a longer vacation.
For schedules, you could maybe split the difference and work more like noon to eight in your home country. I work with people in both Asia and Europe and though most of them don't work 9-5 their time, they don't work 9-5 my time either. Most are done with their jobs by noon in the US and when we need something after that, it is just a matter of asking for them to do it the next day and often they're done before I get in the next day. This is a cultural expectation that will differ between companies. Project based work does lend itself to things like this.
posted by soelo at 6:44 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is possible and you are at a level at which it is achievable. But you definitely need to find an employer that is open to this sort of arrangement as there will also be a bunch of places which could enable this sort of thing but would never willingly do so.

I agree with others that a UK-based organisation is unlikely to be used to dealing with different timezones among employees so you'll need to do the organising around that on your end. This probably means having a significant overlap of your working time with 9-5 UK time. In your case, you may need to work early evening local time, and the occasional late night meeting.
posted by plonkee at 6:45 AM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I work remotely for a company that is completely distributed, which makes this kind of thing possible. That said, depending on the kind of work you do, you will likely still have at least a few hours a day where you will be expected to be online in order to overlap with others for collaboration purposes.

I live in the US but the account that I work on has a team that is mostly Europe-based, which means that I have 3-4 hours in my morning that are packed with meetings. However, after about noon my time, all of the EU folks sign off and I have a lot more flexibility to step out if I need to. I ended up time shifting from a regular 9am-5pm ET schedule to 7am-3pm ET so I could have more overlap with the Europe team, as well as a few hours of quiet time before all of my meetings start up for the day.

The big thing to think about, even with a completely distributed team, is where the people that you will work with the most are located. For example, I'd love to live in Japan for a few months, but that would require significant "time shifting" on my part to have overlap with my EU teammates.

There are several people at my company (including a few on my account) who travel full-time. They let the company and their managers now when they are changing time zones and adjust their schedule if needed.
posted by anotheraccount at 7:21 AM on January 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

You can filter for only remote jobs in the Linked In job search engine, I think (as well as FT/PT/Temp). As others have said there may be many roles out there where you won’t have to ask for much or anything at all.
posted by cultureclash82 at 7:45 AM on January 6, 2022

"If you're hired to work remote, you don't have to request anything. You get to decide where remote is. You may have time zone issues but companies that are entirely distributed are much more flexible about that."

Careful: as others have said, once you start doing your work from a different country, all sorts of that country's regulations apply to you and your employer.

I have an accountant friend who specializes in taxes for people like professional athletes who work in lots of different US states every year. They have complicated taxes!

Sure, plenty of remote workers don't have to think about this, and as long as all they're doing is keeping up with their email on their vacation, probably nobody cares.

But if I was planning to spend months abroad on a regular basis, I'd definitely be up front about that with a prospective employer.

It can be a completely reasonable request depending on the job--it's just something that needs to be planned for.
posted by bfields at 9:37 AM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

You should consider contracting. I did it for a year and absolutely loved it. It’s less lucrative than it was in the U.K. due to IR35 legislation to crack down on people who were being treated as effective employees rather than true contractors, but the flip side is that it’s very easy to find contracts and get paid through PAYE umbrella companies who do the payroll stuff for you.

The big upside is flexibility - you can usually earn enough in a 6-9 month contract to not have to work for 3-4 months a year if you don’t want to. Or you can work a bit more and earn enough to take more extended breaks.

Downsides are relative lack of job security and that you must manage your own pensions etc. Your contract can be ended with 24 hours notice. So if you do go down this road you’ll want to focus on building up a cash cushion so that you can handle contracts ending suddenly. Most of the time though they will run for 6 or 9 or 12 months and may often be renewed.

PM me if you have any questions about this.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:08 PM on January 6, 2022