Out of sight cannot mean out of mind
Michelle Adam, litigation partner and solicitor advocate at Thorntons, discusses the responsibilities employers have for the health, safety and welfare of remote overseas workers.
When an employee trips over a cable at work and breaks a wrist, everyone understands what happened and who might be responsible. When an employee working time zones away slides quietly into burnout, the picture feels murkier.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees so far as is reasonably practicable, and that includes mental health. If an employer allows or directs someone to work abroad, the obligation to keep them well travels with them.
Overseas remote workers face a distinct set of pressures. They’re cut off from workers and the informal support of an office. Time zone differences stretch the working day at both ends: early calls for one market, late calls for another.
The courts have been clear that employers are not insurers of wellbeing. What they must do is respond when a risk is known or foreseeable. An employer who spots the warning signs, or should have spotted them, and does nothing may face a claim for psychiatric injury just as surely as one who ignores a faulty ladder.
The difficulty is that most overseas working arrangements grew up informally. If an employee asked to spend a month with family in Portugal and the request was granted but not given much further thought, it is that informality that can be the problem. Without a risk assessment, agreed working hours, scheduled check-ins and a clear route to support, an employer has no way of knowing whether someone is thriving or struggling, and no answer when asked what they did about it.
The fix is not complicated. Treat an overseas working request like any other change to working conditions: assess the risks, including the psychological ones, put sensible safeguards in place, and keep talking to the person once they have gone. Remote working abroad can genuinely work for both sides. But distance doesn’t dilute responsibility, and an employer who lets someone disappear over the horizon without a second thought may find the consequences landing much closer to home.
Michelle Adam is litigation partner and solicitor advocate at Thorntons
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