How forto offered 100% compliant short-term remote work abroad in over 45 countries

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About forto

forto is a company that specializes in digital supply chains. The technologies of the forto platform cover the entire process flow, from quotation, booking, document management, tracking and tracing to proactive exception handling and analysis. Headquartered in Berlin, the company currently has employees in 17 locations in Europe and Asia, with offices in Milan, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. forto has around 800 employees worldwide with 62 nationalities. German, Chinese and Indian are the most common.

Since Corona, the company has offered its employees the opportunity to work flexibly from different locations - even temporarily abroad.

forto’s „Remote Work“ Policy:
forto emphasizes that remote work and vacation are separate concepts, which is why forto uses "remote work" or even - to match the tool -"workflexing" instead of the term workations.

forto currently allows"workflexing" for 20 working days per calendar year in countries that have a maximum time difference of plus or minus four hours from Berlin, so that people are still reasonably present during regular working hours. If the home country is a little further away than these four hours, there are also exceptions in consultation with the manager. All employees who are employed in European countries can use WorkFlex - including interns and working students.

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🔥 Challenge

Since the pandemic, forto has offered mobile working abroad, so that its employees can work safely from their home countries - but only within the European Union. Employees from other countries rightly felt unfairly treated, which prompted forto to look for an external solution. Because it was clear that this benefit was indispensable. Firstly, forto saw how high the demand was. Employees actively requested this from HR and also initiated it from time to time. Secondly, forto has seen how important it is. Employees actively thanked them for the opportunity to work away from their families. And thirdly, because it simply works. The employees did a good job from there and felt comfortable.

However, in order to offer remote work outside the European Union and to keep an eye on compliance and legal aspects, forto had to rely on external help. Before introducing WorkFlex, they struggled to find clear answers to questions such as taxes, insurance and labor regulations related to remote work outside the EU.

• Who pays tax where?
• What about insurance?
• Does the labor law now apply from Germany or from another country?
• Who is liable if something should go wrong?

All these questions could be answered by the WorkFlex software and the "no-risk" concept.

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💡Solution

In June 2023, forto implemented WorkFlex to enable employees outside the EU to work from their home country. WorkFlex enabled the company to set clear guidelines for remote work, ensure compliance and offer employees a structured process for short-term work stays abroad. The implementation followed a thorough evaluation of various providers, with WorkFlex being the only one that stood out for its complete package:

In addition to clear assessments of the compliance risks for each individual application, WorkFlex offered

1. Liability: In the unlikely event of complications, WorkFlex assumed financial liability, as well as professional support during administrative procedures. This gave forto the peace of mind of being able to send employees around the world without worrying about legal stumbling blocks.

2. Automatic issuance of A1 certificates: WorkFlex took care of all the complex compliance tasks such as issuing A1 certificates.

3. International health insurance: WorkFlex automatically secures travel health insurance for each employee from "Hallesche Krankenversicherung", which provides unlimited medical cover, including Covid-19 cover and repatriation from all countries. The team takes care of the application, communication and management of the insurance during the entire travel period.

4. 24/7 hotline at WorkFlex: WorkFlex offers a hotline available around the clock for all concerns, such as accidents, questions, compliance issues, which Forto has seen as a huge benefit.

5. User-friendly software: Before WorkFlex, forto had no overview of where all employees were, which could have disastrous (legal) consequences. Now they can see where each employee is, how many days they have worked abroad and much more through a simple click of a button.

6. Best support: forto's dedicated Customer Success Manager responded incredibly quickly and did a great job of familiarizing forto with the tool. At the townhall, the Customer Success Manager also showed the platform, which was very helpful for all employees as well as HR.

7. Assessments for all countries - and nationalities: The WorkFlex compliance engine is able to assess all possible countries and nationalities combinations. forto was therefore able to implement WorkFlex, for example, in its entities inSpain without any problems and also enable their many Latinos to work from their home countries.

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📈 Success measurement

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The success of the implementation of WorkFlex at forto was demonstrated by

• ‍Time and resource savings: Using WorkFlex proved to be easy and efficient for both employees and the HR team. The compliance-related challenges were successfully overcome by working with WorkFlex.‍
• Less administrative burden for HR: Before, there wasn't even really time to issue A1 certificates. Now it takes the People Ops team no more than a minute per request as all the work has been outsourced to WorkFlex.‍
• Increased employee retention and satisfaction: The introduction of WorkFlex has been well received by employees. With clear guidelines and the ability to work abroad for up to 20 working days per calendar year, forto was able to better meet the needs of its global workforce. Employees appreciated the flexibility and the combination of work and travel, especially when it came to visiting their families in their home country.‍
• Recruitment success: forto experienced a positive response both within the company and during the recruitment process, with remote work - abroad - being highlighted as a decisive criterion for potential employees.

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“On a scale of one to five. I would definitely rate remote work abroad as a five, the most important benefit, because employees really did ask about it and it is also actively asked about in the interview process and apparently the decision is even made based on whether or not remote work abroad is offered. I really believe that this has changed since the pandemic and since the times of Corona and the demand for it is simply so great and it will continue to be so in the future.“
Carolin Braband, Team Lead People Operations
Remote Work at Forto:
‍Since September, in less than 3 months, forto employees from several different origin countries requested to work 3669 days (= more than 10 years) from 45 different destination countries abroad. More than every fifth request was for Indians to go back and work from India.

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Overall, the introduction of WorkFlex at forto has led to improved employee satisfaction, less administrative work and increased attractiveness for potential employees. The introduction of WorkFlex has led to a hybrid working culture at forto, where employees have the flexibility to choose between working from home or in the office. This hybrid model has been well received and will be further developed in the coming year to meet the needs of employees.

forto is convinced that hybrid working models and the option of remote working will shape the future of work.

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