Work from anywhere (WFA) is becoming an increasingly standard part of the modern benefits package. As a result, HR teams are fielding more requests for it, whether the company has a formal policy or not. 

Handling these consistently matters. If you take an ad hoc approach, you risk creating inequity, exposing the business to compliance risk, and eroding trust with employees who feel decisions are being made arbitrarily. 

This guide helps you understand how to assess a WFA request fairly and thoroughly.

Clarify what's being asked

The first thing you need to do is understand the specifics of the WFA request. That’s because there’s so much variety in what someone wants when they ask if they can work from anywhere. For example, someone might be asking to work from a different country for two weeks, or for the remainder of the tax year, or on a rolling basis across multiple destinations. Each of those has different implications.

During the first discussion, you’ll need to ask the employee to confirm the destination(s), the proposed dates, the number of working days involved, and their planned working hours while they're away.

If you can prepare a short form or standard request template, you’ll ensure you're gathering the same information from everyone. This gives you a clear record to work from and signals that the process is being taken seriously, which tends to produce better requests.

Check your WFA policy

Once you have the details, the first place to go is your own WFA policy. If this exists, you should check the request against it: is the destination permitted, do the proposed dates fall within the employee's annual allowance, and does the request follow the correct notice and approval process?

If no policy exists, this is your moment to flag that internally before giving an answer. And if you’re looking for tips on how to start building this policy out from scratch, we’ve got some tips for this in another blog.

It’s important this is systematic and transparent, because an ad hoc ‘yes’ to a request without documented terms can put the business in an awkward position if the same request comes from someone else, or if the same employee asks again under different circumstances. Even a brief written summary of the terms you're agreeing to for this trip acts as a de facto policy for future reference.

Check WFA eligibility

Not every role or employee will be eligible for WFA, even in companies with a formal policy, so eligibility needs to be assessed before you go further.

Check whether the employee has passed any probationary period your policy specifies, and whether their role is one where WFA is operationally viable. Some functions, particularly those with in-person client obligations, regulatory requirements around where work can be performed, or systems access restrictions tied to geography, may be excluded entirely or subject to additional conditions. If the employee's manager hasn't already been consulted, this is the point to bring them in.

If the employee isn't eligible under the current policy, communicate that clearly and explain why, rather than returning a vague no. If their ineligibility is time-limited, for instance if they're still within a probationary period, tell them when they'd be able to reapply.

Check the proposed WFA destination

It’s called work from anywhere, but the reality is that the destination matters. That’s because different countries create different levels of administrative complexity for employers, and some create compliance obligations that make approval genuinely difficult.

Start by checking whether the destination is on your list of pre-approved countries, if you have one. Pre-approved countries are typically ones where you already have a legal entity, where your employment lawyers have assessed the risk as manageable, or where you've handled previous trips without issue. Countries outside that list aren't automatically refused, but they require additional review before you can say yes.

For any destination not already approved, the key questions are whether the trip's duration and frequency would trigger tax residency or social security obligations in that country, whether there are any visa requirements for working remotely there, and whether the employee's work can legally be performed from that jurisdiction under their current employment contract. Your legal advisers or a global mobility specialist can help with country-specific assessments; for employees who travel regularly or for longer periods, having a standing arrangement for this kind of review is worth building into your process.

Check the operational impact

A WFA request isn't only a compliance question; it's also an operational one, and both need to be assessed before a decision is made.

Talk to the employee's manager if you haven't already, and ask them to consider: the time zone difference, and what it would mean for the team's working patterns; whether the employee's responsibilities during the trip period require in-person presence or same-timezone availability; and whether cover is in place for any tasks that can't be handled remotely. In most cases, especially for shorter trips to nearby time zones, the operational impact is minimal, but the point is to confirm that rather than assume it.

If a time zone difference is significant, check whether the employee has a plan for managing core collaboration hours. A reasonable expectation in most WFA policies is that the employee can overlap with their home team for a meaningful portion of the working day; if the proposed destination makes that impossible, it's worth discussing before approving rather than after.

Check compliance is covered

Even where a trip is short and the destination is pre-approved, there are a few compliance areas worth confirming before sign-off.

Tax is the most significant. You should confirm that the proposed trip falls within the number of days that your policy or legal team has determined is safe for that jurisdiction, and check whether the employee has had any previous trips to the same country in the same tax year that would count towards any applicable threshold. For UK employees in particular, the statutory residence test uses a range of factors beyond a simple day count, so it's worth having a standard threshold below which trips are pre-cleared, and a review process for anything approaching it.

Data security is worth a brief check too, particularly for employees handling sensitive information or accessing systems via VPN. Confirm that the employee has access to secure connectivity in their destination and understands your IT policies around working from public networks. This is rarely a reason to refuse a request, but it's a legitimate operational consideration.

Finally, confirm that the employee's travel and health insurance is valid for the destination and covers them while they're working, not just on holiday. Standard travel insurance often excludes work-related travel or work-related incidents, so it's worth flagging this to the employee if you don't already cover it centrally.

How to approve, and what to document

When the checks are complete and you're in a position to approve, do so in writing, even if the original conversation happened verbally. A brief confirmation email or letter setting out the destination, the approved dates, the number of days being used from the employee's annual allowance, any conditions attached (such as time zone availability requirements), and the process for reporting if anything changes is sufficient and important.

Keep a record centrally, both for the individual employee's file and for any aggregate tracking your business needs for compliance purposes. If you're managing WFA across a growing number of employees, a simple log of approved trips by employee, destination, and date range will save you significant time if questions arise later, whether from payroll, legal, or the employee themselves.

If the trip is the first under a newly introduced policy, use it as a reference point. Make sure you document what worked, what questions came up that the policy didn't anticipate, and whether any adjustments to the template or process would be helpful for next time.

How to decline a WFA request fairly

Sometimes the answer genuinely has to be no, and being clear and honest about why is both fairer to the employee and better for your employer brand than a vague refusal.

If you're declining because the request doesn't meet the policy terms, say so specifically. Tell them which condition hasn’t been met, and whether there's anything the employee could do to make a future request viable. If you're declining because of the compliance picture in a specific destination, explain that the issue is with that country rather than with WFA more broadly, and note whether an alternative destination would be approvable.

If you're declining for operational reasons, be specific about what those are. "Your manager doesn't think it will work" is less useful than "there are client meetings during that period that require your in-person attendance." The more specific the reason, the more useful the feedback is to the employee, and the harder it is for a decline to feel arbitrary.

Document the decision and your reasoning in the same way you would an approval. Building consistency in how declines are recorded is particularly important if there's ever a question about whether WFA eligibility has been applied equitably across the business.

Where a request is declined because no policy exists rather than because the request itself is problematic, it's worth flagging internally that this may be worth addressing. Employees who ask for WFA and receive a no because "we haven't thought about it yet" are increasingly likely to look elsewhere, and the market data makes it clear they won't struggle to find an employer that has.