The remotest of remote

Remote working, where the employee is based outside New Zealand, presents significant challenges for employers and HR professionals in ensuring the health and wellbeing of employees as well as ensuring effectiveness in their roles. Rachael Mason, Partner at Lane Neave, explores ways to support remote workers.

Over the past year, many employers will have had employees who have been affected by the border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where they are stuck offshore and unable to gain re-entry to New Zealand. A further scenario is where candidates have been offered employment before or during the border closure and cannot enter the country, so they have started their role working remotely offshore. New Zealand employers have already made good progress in successfully enabling remote working.

Employees stuck offshore – is a border exception possible?

If you have an employee who is stuck offshore, the first consideration in most cases is to exhaust all avenues for enabling their entry to New Zealand. Make sure you get good advice about what options are available to secure a border exception. Sometimes, the easier and more certain route for securing a border exception may be through a family-based category rather than an employer-led category. This may be the case if either the candidate or their partner is a New Zealand or Australian citizen or resident or if their partner’s employer can make a stronger claim for an exception.

The introduction of the trans- Tasman bubble also offers further opportunities for potential entry to New Zealand. In some cases, your candidate (or their partner) may be able to secure entry to Australia, which then opens up the option of New Zealand entry via the bubble. A lot of moving parts need to be considered, so getting good advice is very important.

If you are thinking of making an appointment for someone who is offshore, consider getting advice about the possibility of successfully securing a border exception before making an offer so you and your employee can have realistic expectations about what the next few months may hold.

Supporting employee wellness for remote workers overseas

While some roles may be carried out remotely, we have worked with several employers (and their employees) who have struggled with the effects of working remotely. Some of the issues encountered include time differences, leading to fatigue (which can then lead to issues of effectiveness, increased risk of errors and so on); IT issues such as connectivity problems and security; greater difficulty assimilating with the New Zealand business culture; challenges in building relationships and working collaboratively with internal colleagues and external stakeholders.

In addition to the above, the overall impact on employee wellbeing due to the cumulative nature of all these issues and the effect that sustained work in another time zone can have on their personal, family and social lives cannot be underestimated.

If you have employees (or prospective employees) stuck overseas who currently do not have an option to secure a border exception, you can do some things to help support their wellbeing. Bridget Romanes, Global Mobility Specialist and Principal of Mobile Relocation, has delivered virtual wellbeing programmes for several New Zealand employers and their employees in this situation and recommends the following.

• Be open and make it OK for international remote employees to share their concerns and struggles. They are likely to be worried about job security or performance and may be reluctant to speak up and ask for simple changes to improve their situation.

• Bring in specialist expertise either one-on-one or in group sessions to give international remote employees strategies to tackle the unique challenges they face before more serious mental health issues emerge. Ensure international remote workers know about and have access to your organisation’s EAP programme if they need further help.

• Support and connect the managers of remote workers within your organisation, so they have a full understanding of the implications of international remote working. They won’t have had to deal with this situation before either.

Conclusion

Although some positive moves have occurred with the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble and the introduction of recent new border exception categories for reuniting family members, the reality is it is still very difficult to secure a border exception for an offshore employee in most cases.

That position is unlikely to change for some time. On that basis, employers need to be proactive in thinking about how they will support remote workers and accessing expert help in that regard. Previous articles have discussed the different border exception categories at length. However, if you would like to enquire about the merits of a candidate’s potential request for a border exception, please feel free to get in touch. In the meantime, you can still offer support in many ways and show empathy to employees who are working remotely for the foreseeable future.

Rachael Mason is qualified in New Zealand, England and Wales, and has practised exclusively in the area of immigration law for several years. Rachael is a facilitator for HRNZ PD courses, virtual courses and webinars. Go to hrnz.org.nz/pd to see upcoming courses. She works with both multi-national corporate clients and smaller local employers across a range of industry sectors in managing their global and local migrant workforces and developing and maintaining compliance and legal right to work policies. Rachael is focused on providing highquality technical immigration advice that is both pragmatic and commercial.