Why digital nomads are not the real remote working story

But the real story about remote working that is reshaping our workplaces often has nothing to do with sun-kissed Teams meetings on the beach. It is Britain, not Bali, that is driving the change: employees who keep their existing job and simply move further from the office, not employees who ask to leave the country altogether.

In my experience, genuine requests to work abroad remain rare. Over the last few years, only a handful of clients have got in touch about people looking to move overseas. What’s much more common is people relocating within the UK while staying with the same employer. For example, swapping a city flat for a country pile in Perthshire or Fife, or fulfilling their dream of a home by the sea in coastal destinations such as Cornwall and Kent. Flexibility on location is no longer a perk reserved for a handful of senior or exceptional hires. It has become a standard part of the recruitment conversation, and HR teams that treat it as an occasional exception are behind where their own candidates already are.

The law has moved to match this. Employees used to submit a flexible working proposal that solved the problem for the employer. Now they can simply say what they want and it is the employer's job to work out whether it is workable. They can also apply more than once a year, where the right used to be capped at a single request every 12 months. That is a meaningful shift in negotiating position, and HR teams should expect more requests, more often.

What the law has not caught up with is cost. There is currently no regulation on who pays when an employee has voluntarily moved further from the workplace and is still expected in occasionally for meetings or client visits. It is a matter for agreement, not law, and leaving it unspoken is where most disputes start. From fixing travel allowances to determining set days in the office, it’s better to discuss any potential sticking points and get them on paper before the move happens, not after.

The harder question is rarely where someone is working from. It is whether the basics of employment can operate satisfactorily. Businesses must consider how individuals communicate with colleagues from day to day, whether they can take part in training on equal terms, whether health and safety obligations are met from a home office in a different postcode, and whether distance is quietly turning into disengagement. Such issues need to be addressed in writing, alongside the practical logistics of attendance and cost.

None of this means employers should be nervous about saying yes, especially at a time when a degree of hybrid working is expected. The greatest risk is whether performance and communication can be managed at a distance – a conversation to have before agreeing to a move, not after someone has handed in their notice on their old flat.

Chris Phillips, employment partner, Thorntons