Situation: my partner and I are from Europe. He started his new job this April, and his contract says that he is entitled to one month of work from his home country as the company is “international”.
(He also mentioned that he is from Europe to the boss and everyone knew about that when he was accepted for the job.)
We were planning to go back to Europe for 3 weeks during Christmas, booked the tickets etc. he applied in advance for this working from home thing for the time we are in Europe, and got refused with “the time difference is too big, we only allow 1-2 hours time difference with Japan” reason and now they say he must take an unpaid leave (since his paid leave is 10 days a year it won’t be enough to cover the trip).
His contract does not say that he is allowed to take work from home only with a condition of “1-2 hour difference”. He asked why was he told that he can have this option, and the boss brushed him off with “well you’re working with clients so in YOUR position it is not okay, if you had some other type of work that doesn’t involve other people you would be able to work from home in Europe”.
I am feeling a little bit weird about this. Do you think he is legally entitled to claim his home office if his contract doesn’t mention this “1-2 hour detail”?
11 comments
If the contract does not stipulate “within one or two hours time difference” have him explain to the boss that he is allowed to work from home and determine the times that overlap and explain that you are willing to sign an addendum stating he will be available during the hours in the month he will be working from home. Be sure he states that he is doing this special favor for the company as it is not in the contract but he making an exception for goodwill and in the spirit of cooperation.
Our company has a 90 day work from anywhere policy. We have a rule where you have to overlap 6 hours with your home time zone. So basically i work from California from 3pm to 11pm and 5pm to 11pm of that time it overlaps with Japan from 9am to 3pm in Japan
Don’t try to fall back on a he said she said on the contract. Negotiate your way to a deal that works for both sides.
Can’t he just work his normal Japan hours while abroad? There are plenty of tools to help him match the time.
>Do you think he is legally entitled to claim his home office if his contract doesn’t mention this “1-2 hour detail”?
Yea. If the contract mentions nothing about this caveat, then he should be entitled to it, regardless of where his home country is.
Also, do other colleagues, in the same job role from other countries/Japan have this “1 month work from home country” in their contract too? If so you could argue that this is a violation of Article 3 of the labor standards act, which is unfair treatment to employees from Europe/from countries in the similar time zones.
>Article 3: An employer must not use a worker’s nationality, creed, or social status as a basis for differential treatment with respect to wages, working hours, or other working conditions.
https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567/en
From an employer’s view point, I would be asking for your proposed work schedule for the Christmas break versus the time difference (although if you are in a client facing role and have no backup, I’d question it too). I’ve had employees try to “work from home” full time during the holiday season only to have them admit they are effectively taking vacation (due to their home country being on national holiday versus their host country being working days).
Probably will be difficult to claim it. Here is what I would do (luckily my company is more understanding)
1) Explain the significance of Christmas. This is stupid, but somehow these cultural things make it easier to explain to others and higher ups. I am a foreigner and Christmas is like a very important thing for my traditional European family. And this time is especially important because…
2) Explain you already booked the tickets and apologize for the confusion.
3) Ask for what is acceptable to do in this position. Then negotiate from there. Taking holidays makes sense, then just work the crazy hours for a week or so? Apologize and bow a lot when a compromise is reached.
First, he should’ve discussed this with his boss/HR before you even bought the airplane ticket. Working from foreign countries is a finicky stuff, especially with huge time difference and client-facing position.
My coworkers took one with 7-8 hours difference, but since they were a client-facing position, we had troubles scheduling with the customers, some miscommunication happened here and there, it was quite a nightmare. Don’t think that everything can be solved with just a zoom call.
So even if you assure your employer that you could be available during Japan time, the truth is you probably won’t. Perhaps it would be better to take the unpaid leaves, learn the bitter lesson here. Ultimately WFH from other countries is a privilege, not a right.
The contract says you can work from abroad, but doesn’t it also stipulate working hours? If those working hours mean he works 5pm to 1am in Europe then he should work those hours while abroad.
I would personally be 100% accommodating on the hours and work 5pm to 1am if required (even though it would suck). But be completely inflexible on the trip.
I also would have notified them in advance of the trip… prior to buying tickets. But even if they said no, insisted 100% that I’m going. If they don’t like it they can fire me (though this is the quiet part you don’t say out loud – important to stay composed at all times).
I have a question:
What about the national holidays and sometimes company-standard off days during that time?
ETA can you share whether the time frame is without or including the time around New Year?
e.g. from 27th to 2nd or something might be off anyways.
That plus the 10 day leave might already cover plenty. Maybe it is not worth fighting so hard, just take the vacation and know better next time?
I mean, of course, you should figure the rules out, but honestly maybe also not aim to work while having vacation off. Even in the most ideal case, was the plan that he is basically 8 hours on the laptop while you visit family?
Why on earth would you book a three week trip without checking first with the company?
It is common sense to check first and selfish/unprofessional not to. What if the company needs someone in the office at that time and others also want to be out (either on holiday or WFH)?
Your partner *might* be able to legally claim these days, destroying meanwhile any kind of standing he has in the company. Here’s what I would do.
First, escalate/make it official. It’s rare to have such a great condition in your contract, but if you do then it’s official and you can/should be involving HR as well. The first thing I would ask, to both your boss and HR, is something like:
>Hi Boss, HR,
>
>There seems to be some misunderstanding regarding my working conditions. When I joined, one of the important conditions was to work from my home country for a while every year, and so we reached an agreement and as per my contract I can use “one month of work from home country per year”.
>
>I am interested in taking this month around Christmas, since it’s very important for people from [my country] to spend some time with the family. Please advice how we can organize best so that we can fulfill our contract while being productive at work.
>
>Best regards,
>
>[your name]
Your boss might not even want to answer and might contact you directly, if so ofc your partner should be recording the audio on his phone (and I recommend recording most “important” HR/Manager meetings, Japan is a one-side-consent country). But anyway.
If HR sides with your manager somehow and are willing to break the contract, then I’d go to take a different route, either offering to work with some overlap time, or asking for extra holidays in lieu of the work from home benefit:
>Thank you HR, Boss,
>
>I understand now that it is difficult for my country to take these WFH days because of the timezone difference, but since these are very important holidays for the family. So I’m happy to compromise and propose two alternative solutions:
>
>I could work from [home country] as agreed, but keep few hours of overlap with Japan. For example, I could work from 14:00 (midday) Japan time until 22:00 (evening), that way from 14:00 to 18:00 I’m working normal hours.
>
>Alternatively, if that yearly 1 month of working from home benefit is just impossible for my country, maybe I could get 10 extra days of holiday to compensate for it? Then I can still go to [home country] as planned, and our clients don’t have any inconvenience because of the time zone difference.
>
>Best regards,
>
>[your name]
(if you don’t care about saving face and consider that bridge destroyed, I also have some advice on how to get the most out of it lol, let me know).