Negotiating remote work agreement

csm

Just wondering if anyone has had experience negotiating a remote work agreement with an employer?

I work in an office in Australia and the work is suited to working remotely. I would like to come back to Ireland for an extended period relatively regularly (say for 6-8 weeks every year) but I'm pretty sure my employer would not be receptive to this. The company allows some people to work from home one or two days a week but the vast majority come into the office and there is no formal policy on working from home that I am aware of. There are a lot of ex-pats working there and I'm not aware of any who do what I am suggesting.

Currently, I am extremely valuable to the company, but I am a little reluctant to play hardball as I would struggle to get a similar job if the relationship went sour. A former colleague left in December and still hasn't found work. Nevertheless, this is important to me and I'm happy to push them out of their comfort zone a bit!

Has anyone any tips? Anybody successfully negotiated something similar with a reluctant employer?

Kimbot

Surely if you are valuable to them they would understand you wanting to come home for a few weeks, especially when you tell them you are willing to work while your here too. Talk to management and just ask them if there was a possibility to do this, might not work for 6-8 weeks but they might say yes to 3-5 weeks.

Nody

What's the benefit for the company if they do let you do so? That's what you need to answer (beyond the practical things such as access,time zone differences, review of work etc.).

seamus

There are a number of things you're fighting here;

1. If there's no set policy or prior history here, then they're wary that you could be opening up a floodgate. People taking "working" holidays rather than actual holidays, etc.

2. Although the work might be "suited" to being done remotely, if it's not in the culture then people won't see the potential. In my current job we do a lot of remote stuff; video meetings, Skype interviews, etc. 75% of my meetings take place over a group chat or some form of video chat meeting. Every meeting room is fitted out with a computer, TV and web cam for these meetings. Probably no more than €1,500 of gear in each room. Working from home is done routinely.
In my previous employer, they spent €20k setting up a dedicated videoconferencing link in just one room, so two of the offices could speak to eachother. The idea of using polycoms and webcams routinely was just completely alien to them, as was having someone sitting at home working rather than fully suited up and in the office. Like you, working in my previous employer could have been done 100% remotely, but they officially had a "no remote working" policy (except for hush-hush one-off agreements).

3. If any of the bosses above you are micromanagers, forget about it. Some bosses are the kind of annoying people who like to be able to walk up to your desk when they need you. If your boss is one of these, you have no hope of being allowed to work remotely for more than a day or two. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to "keep an eye" on you.

The big question on their mind though will be, "How do we know you're working". A trip home is a holiday, as far as they're concerned. You should bring to them, solutions to the problems they might raise. You could suggest, for example, that you set goals and milestones before you leave, to be accomplished in that time when you're gone. And then arrange check-in meetings, etc, ahead of that. So they know then what you are working towards and how quickly you plan on accomplishing it. To them it shouldn't really matter whether you're online at 9am their time and taking two hour lunches in the pub with your mates, so long as the work you're doing is on target and up to scratch.

csm

Benefits to the company are a bit difficult to tease out. From an outward-facing perspective, the company has one employee in London in a different but related field. It is possible that I could put together a business proposal to try to expand my field in the UK/Irish market, but I do not have a BD background and I suspect I would be thought of as too junior to take on that responsibility. Nevertheless, I'm going to bring it up as a possibility. From a personal perspective they would get a happier employee who would be less likely to jump ship and probably would be more productive.

The negative items are the practical considerations you mention. Time-zone differences and hence a reduced ability to attend meetings would be the main one. I don't have a lot of client-facing work but I'm often brought in as the technical expert with short notice. I think it would make them nervous if I wasn't around.

Johnny, yes you'd think they'd be reasonable on this and just let me do it. Maybe they will be but I want to have all my bases covered in case they're not.

csm

Thanks seamus, great reply.

Points 2 & 3 are what I'm up against. They are geared up with all the relevant equipment but the culture leans much more to the 'turn up to the office' side of things. The micromanaging boss is something I can deal with I think but, again, requires sensitivity. He won't be the decision maker but his opinion obviously will carry a lot of weight.

Yes milestones and check-in meetings will certainly help. Whether I'm working or not will be important to them but, equally, I want them to see that I can be super productive while away so that it can become a regular thing.

EDIT: actually point 1 could be an issue too now that I think about it. I would certainly need to give them something that makes it clear to the rest of the office that this is a special case. Perhaps the UK/Irish BD thing could be this.

Mrs OBumble

Ahh, when you're in Ireland, you will be needing to work in the middle of the night in order to be available for others in the office to chat to. Are you really prepared to do that, every day? Do you expect any employer who knows anything about life in Ireland to believe you'd do that?

Also - your job may be "suited" to being done remotely, but to be totally blunt, if it can be done 100% off-site then it can be done a lot more cheaply in Bangalore. Presence in the office is about a lot more than just getting your specific tasks done.

Personally I think you would be more likely to get permission to take an extra 4 weeks of unpaid leave each year (on top of your regular leave entitlement, and taken as one block)

csm

Starting at 6am would give me 2 hours of contact time each day, which is plenty as long as it is scheduled. I'm up at 6am each day anyway so it's not a big problem.

Unpaid leave is an option but undesirable for both parties so I'd try to avoid this.

Outsourcing can happen to anybody but I'm not concerned about this for now.

Thanks for the reply. This is good for building potential issues an responses.