Will Travel Enable the Work-Where-I-Want Ethos?

At some point during the pandemic, the idea that return to business travel had to be tied to return to office strategy began to fall apart.

For a significant percentage of workers—one EY study from June says more than 80 percent—remote work has evolved from being a forced adaptation to being a driver for quality of life. It went from a shocking reality to a bona fide employee expectation. And the idea that employees, specifically, knowledge employees, should think about their jobs as a function and not necessarily tied to a particular location has gone mainstream. It’s amped up by accessible Wi-Fi connections, VPNs, high-quality videoconferencing capabilities and cloud-based collaboration tools. 

“Earlier [in the pandemic] return to the office and return to work were connected, but over time there doesn’t seem to be a huge connection between the two,” said EAB vice president of business solutions Steven Mandelbaum. “When it was all about social distancing and not getting together, at that point it was the same. Over time, it may not be the health conditions [we have to think about] but what is the best place for work. Now, we have to think differently.”

For EAB that means a new workplace mindset the company calls “Successful Days.” No matter where employees need to work—at home, in the office or away from both—the company needs to enable them to be productive. “We literally want to ensure they have successful days,” said Mandelbaum.

Some employees always knew their job wasn’t tied to a particular place—you guessed it, business travelers.

Now that more employees are looking to break the shackles between work and being “at the office,” managing the implications of new segment of roaming workers is looking like a challenge that travel managers may be in a position to tackle. Or, at least help.

Is ‘Work from Anywhere’ a Real Thing?

According to MBO Partners, about 10.9 million Americans in 2020 described themselves as digital nomads, compared to 7.3 million in 2019. Co-founder of startup global tax advice marketplace Work from Anywhere John Lee said those numbers are on the rise in 2021, as employees realize the power dynamic is on their side in a dramatically changing workplace and in the midst of what appears to be a growing labor shortage—at least in the U.S. and Europe. As a result, companies are figuring out how to offer “work from anywhere” as an employee benefit and how to establish policies to manage it.

“If your competitors are offering ‘work from anywhere’ and you’re not offering some items of it, you’re going to lose your best talents,” Lee said, adding that companies have to weigh the administration aspect of having such a program over the risk of not having it. “Companies have to look at the costs and benefits and when it makes sense to get the talent they want. It may not be an option for everyone, but they may need it for others.”

Festive Road consultant and self-proclaimed digital nomad Aurelie Krau got more specific. “I saw job offers last week. [A company is] developing their activities in the Middle East, and they were looking at people in Dubai. Within the job offer it said the employees would be allowed to work for up to three months… from wherever they want.” There are plenty of similar offers, she said.

Lee said “work from anywhere” is not a new concept—rather, an expansion of an old one travel managers know well.

“It was called business travel for people traveling less than seven days, and it was called expats for people going for more than 365 days. Plus, we hired from anywhere before the pandemic, as well,” he said, “so it’s not like we are working from complete scratch. You’ve got a lot more people looking to go for more than seven days and less than 365 days—it’s a whole new kind of emerging segment in business travel; it’s like extended business travel.”  

The evidence for this trend has filtered through business travel platforms and data. 2021 data from hotel solutions platform HRS showed 39 percent of corporate bookings extended longer than eight days. This compared to such extended stays comprising only
8 percent of bookings in 2019.

HRS CEO Tobias Ragge said anecdotal discussions with travel managers indicate the trend is here to stay—so much so that HRS has created a new “long-stay” segment to display in its booking tool. “[It’s] a noteworthy new reality for buyers and suppliers as our industry looks towards recovery,” Ragge said in a statement announcing the new feature. 

Ready… Set… Not So Fast

The tricky part now will be managing visas, immigration and tax implications at scale for remote workers—and this is where travel management skills come into the picture.

Travel managers have seen a growing challenge in the past several years, with visas, work permits and tax regulations becoming more complex. Countries and even municipalities have implemented new or are now enforcing old taxation and immigration regulations. More countries are cracking down on traveler immigration as a political tool to show they support local workers; and they are getting more sophisticated about how they do it, introducing more digital immigration processes and tracking capabilities.

“It’s the law,” said Blue Dot CEO Isaac Saft, whose company manages global taxation for clients. “You have to answer to [tax] authorities and you have to have the data to do that. If they are staying five days in New York and 20 days in London, that’s no problem. Your challenge is to have the data.”

Seeing complexity on the rise, heavy hitters in the business travel and compliance industries came through with some integrated solutions. In 2017, EY rolled out an immigration and tax compliance suite called TRAC that sits over the Concur Travel booking tool and throws back an instant compliance analysis for the trip. Tallying total business travel days in the destination was a key feature. Deloitte launched a similar app with SAP Concur called Travel Ready in November 2020. Dedicated consultancies and services like Blue Dot, Global Tax Network and Work from Anywhere are now keen to serve companies that don’t yet have business travel compliance strategies and solutions locked down—and many don’t.

Brexit, alone, has thrown spanner in how U.K.-based, cross-border business travelers will have to operate once business travel returns in earnest to the European continent. But it goes far beyond Brexit, and prior to the pandemic, travel managers were feeling the pinch—should they enable frictionless business travel or potentially put their company at risk of being audited and penalized?

These challenges only expand if remote employees set out on their own, and work while they are away—one, two, maybe three months at a time. It exposes companies to risk, and they may look to travel managers to support.

Ford Motor Co. global travel manager Stephen Swift said his company is beginning to look at the potential for remote work policies—though it’s very preliminary. Swift himself realized that tax implications and proper cross-border worker documentation would require much more rigor once Brexit took full effect and when travelers returned to more active patterns after the pandemic.

“It was clear what we really needed was to automate the process,” he said, to remove friction, but also to capture all the information and data required to stay compliant. Swift is in the process of integrating Ford’s travel approval process with a workflow that will automate proper documentation. As a former relocation manager, Swift has deep knowledge of employee mobility and has reached out to some of his previous contacts to connect the dots for tax and visa compliance automation.

Ford has not contemplated the idea of enabling worker-driven “work from anywhere” ethos, but rather the reality of longer business trips. Swift acknowledged that the technologies and systems he’s looking to integrate on the business travel side have caught the interest of the human resources team to whom he reports—and positioned him as a trustworthy consultant as they grapple with creating new frameworks and potential policies for such workers.

Lee said travel managers would likely be a key component of the cross-functional team required to contemplate and execute the work from anywhere strategy. It helps, he said if they already have relationships with or report directly into HR. Showing an interest in the challenge and demonstrating expertise with potential solutions could be enough.

“Companies still have a few months to get their act together on this, and I’ve no doubt a lot of them are already discussing what’s critical,” he said. “But it can’t be achieved in a silo. It’s got to be done cross-functionally with travel, yes, but also with HR, with tax compliance, with legal and with global mobility. I do think it’s a real opportunity for travel to come together with mobility to offer strategic solutions once HR and the C-suite set the higher-level objectives.” 

The Trends Are Accelerating

“I’ve been trying for years to articulate the benefits of a work from anywhere strategy,” said Krau, “but apparently it took a pandemic, you know, for people to realize that employees can be more efficient, more productive and probably drive more loyalty into the company when they can work more on their own terms. It’s management based on trust and outcomes—and obviously, if the outcomes aren’t there, then it’s a different problem.”

And while Krau acknowledges the complexities involved, she’s not buying any excuses from businesses that are well positioned to enable remote workers but won’t. “There will always be some limitations for employees. The tax piece is a nice excuse, but companies need to find solutions,” she said.

Some countries are working to ease the burden—and want to encourage digital nomads to set up shop for a while. Many are looking at the burgeoning work from anywhere segment as a way to boost international tourism revenues—the lack of which has crippled many local economies.

Indeed, several Caribbean islands jump-started a trend through the pandemic of bringing new kinds of travel visas to the table. But even locations like Croatia, Dubai and Estonia have developed their own versions to welcome digital nomads to settle within their borders for anywhere from six months to two years, usually without the individual or their company having local tax obligations. As of October, 22 countries around the world had rolled out some kind of remote work visa, charging anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 for long-stay visitor permissions.

As countries create more opportunities like these, the challenge to accommodate employee’s desires to ‘work from anywhere’ may ease in terms of compliance. Until then, travel managers with curiosity, skill and the will to move their workplaces into the future, may have a new path to follow.