Untruthfulness 'will expose an employer to additional liabilities,' says employment lawyer
Working from home, once a red flag to skeptical managers, has become standard. Firms eager to fill vacancies from a shallow pool of jobseekers know to include flexible WFH arrangements near the top of a listing.
But some workers are pushing the definition to include working from a holiday destination, known as “quiet vacationing.”
A recent report on behalf of the Australian branch of recruiter Robert Half found 17% of gen Z office workers surveyed (aged up to 27 years) have done it, and 40% would consider doing so.
The older cohorts are more cautious: only 12% of millennials and gen X (28-43 and 44-59 years) admit to fibbing about working on holiday, and 8% of baby boomers (60-78).
Respondents said they were prepared to take the risk in order to extend a holiday, avoid taking unpaid leave or not take the chance of leave being declined.
More often than not, an employer will approve a request to work overseas for a spell — but quiet vacationing can blow up in an employer’s face, according to Kellie-Ann McDade, a partner with Baker & McKenzie in Melbourne.
“The problem with the untruthfulness of quiet vacationing is that it will expose an employer to additional liabilities they are just not aware they are being exposed to.”
To avoid risk of liability, an employer must be satisfied a remote workspace is safe, she says. This is harder to quantify if a worker is toiling in a crowded dormitory, for example, or risky parts of the world.
Internet access is another weak spot, with different security protocols around Wi-Fi leaving employers vulnerable to security breaches.
“It doesn’t give the employer the opportunity to assess whether the connection is safe, which could be a big issue,” McDade says.
Plus, holidays are not always relaxing, and a traveller trying to juggle fun with professional activities may also be prone to fatigue.
“There are important considerations around what can be accommodated and whether that is going to stray into someone burning the candle at both ends,” she says.
Working in another time zone without the boss’s knowledge becomes even murkier for employees on award structures, with overtime and penalty rates. In that case, an employer could be exposed to a breach of modern award claim, McDade says.
“[An employer] may have lost control of recording working hours and when they were payable.”
A worker who’s gone AWOL while keeping up his KPIs might not raise an alarm, so long as they let the boss know.
To withhold the truth, however, is to break two key tenets of a productive relationship: trust and confidence.
“It could be a disciplinary offence,” McDade says.
Some employers are more open-minded than others, allowing staff to pitch in from anywhere in the world – so long as deadlines are met.
For example, agreements that allow tech workers to move around the globe have been used, McDade says, to “attract the best talent … [people who] were not interested in sitting in an office nine-to-five and missing out on things they want to do in their lives.
“They are a fairly creative type of employee and they like a bit of flexibility.”
Policies aimed at quiet vacationing should cover travel insurance, workers’ compensation and working hours, she says.
“It would require consideration about what jobs can be accommodated from those sorts of locations and what they can agree to,” McDade says. “Any agreement to work while someone is travelling would always be subject to the employer conducting a risk assessment.”
