Increasingly, employees are asking if they can keep their jobs and move to another country. The reasons can include cost-of-living issues, a different quality of life, healthcare access, legal protections for women or LGBTQ+ workers or the access that EU residency or citizenship provides. Whatever the motivation, the requests are arriving on HR desks with more frequency.
“Workers are willing to take sizeable pay cuts in exchange for the freedom to work abroad,” says Jen Barnett, co-founder of Expatsi, a company that works with employers to offer global mobility as an employee benefit.
She says that the regulatory framework for making these arrangements has matured significantly in the past two years in some regions, and the structural posture of at least one major European government is designed to support it.
Spain leads the way
Spain passed its Startup Law in December 2022, introducing a Digital Nomad Visa and expanding the “David Beckham Law” tax regime to cover remote employees of foreign companies, according to Alastair Johnson, who manages Spain-based remote work arrangements and previously oversaw work-from-home teams at AstraZeneca. He says the legislation created a formal pathway for high-earning employees on a stable foreign payroll.
The policy intent goes beyond the statute, says Johnson. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez historically framed the country’s migration policy as a step toward guaranteeing future health of the nation, citing population density below the European average and nearly half of municipalities at risk of depopulation.
Johnson says that attracting working-age, tax-paying residents is an explicit national strategy. “The headwind most teams expect is not really there,” says Johnson. “After a rocky start with the Certificate of Coverage issue that made W-2 approvals very difficult, our immigration lawyer partners are more than confident in taking W-2 US employee applications to UGE. This pathway now has consistent approval rates.”
Read more: Europe ranks last in employee engagement. How can HR help?
Opportunities in Italy
Italy presents a different, but complementary opportunity. For employees pursuing Italian dual citizenship through descent, the advantages extend beyond residency. “With an Italian passport, one can reside, study and work anywhere in the EU without restriction,” says Marco Permunian, founder and CEO of Italian Citizenship Assistance. “It also provides dual citizens with extra protection when traveling, as they would have access to two consulates.”
For employers with European offices, there may be an operational benefit. “If the company has offices around the world, the employee could be sent to EU offices without having to apply for a work visa,” Permunian says. An employee with dual citizenship removes a layer of friction from international assignments that companies typically spend significant time and money managing.
‘Managing by outcomes’
“Managing by outcomes rather than attendance is essential,” he says. “Communicating goals clearly and setting much better targets becomes non-negotiable. All of this matters even more when a team member is in another country rather than just up the road.”
Johnson says the challenges HR teams underestimate include time zone integration between U.S. and Spanish working hours, determining which set of public holidays the employee follows, what in-person expectations are reasonable and whether the broader team is comfortable with the arrangement.
“Equity within the team matters more here than people expect,” Johnson says. “One person in a sunnier place on the same money can cause friction that the regulatory paperwork will not fix.”
Compensation and retention
The pay question is one the industry has not resolved. Should a U.S.-based role carry full U.S. compensation when the employee has relocated to a country with substantially lower costs of living? Johnson says the “pay for the role” point of view is that compensation should reflect the value of the work, not the geography of where it happens. “Most companies I see are still working this out case by case rather than by policy,” Johnson says, “which I think is the honest answer for now.”
Barnett’s data suggests that many employees are willing to absorb a pay reduction in exchange for the autonomy to relocate. This could mean that employers can negotiate on salary, making costs lower than they might appear.
By the time an employee formally proposes an international move with HR, Johnson says they have typically been considering it for months. “We hear from people who are really worried about raising the conversation with their employer,” he says. “They believe that saying they want to move abroad may threaten their employment if remote work is not already on the table.”
Keeping remote and international arrangements on the table is one of the strongest retention signals HR and employers can send, Johnson says. Employees who want this option but see no clear path to asking for it may simply leave rather than stay to find out.
“The question I would put first to any HR executive thinking about a [out-of-country] remote arrangement is not a legal one,” Johnson says. “It is whether you have the right person in the right role with the right support and objectives. Get that in place and the regulatory side gets considerably easier.”
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