Duty of Care for Remote Workers and Digital Nomads

Your employee sends you a Slack message from a co-working space in Chiang Mai. The WiFi is fast, the deliverables are flowing, and your team has embraced the flexibility. Then she gets caught in a street-level civil disturbance, and you realise with a cold jolt: does your company have any obligation to help her? Is she covered by your group health plan? Does your corporate insurance even know she’s in Thailand?

These aren’t edge cases. MBO Partners found 11.2 million Americans with traditional employment were working as digital nomads in 2025 - up 10% from the previous year. Across 40 million remote workers worldwide, a significant share are working from countries their employers never formally approved. Most of those employers have no policy covering what happens when something goes wrong.

The core question from HR teams and legal counsel right now is whether remote worker duty of care extends to people who work from wherever they please. The answer is yes - with important legal nuance depending on your jurisdiction. This post breaks down what the law actually says, where the insurance gaps live, and what a defensible work-from-anywhere policy looks like.

Does Duty of Care Apply to Remote Workers? The Short Answer

Yes. The legal consensus across the UK, EU, US, and Canada is that employment-based duty of care obligations do not dissolve because someone is working from a different geography. The employer-employee relationship - and the health and safety obligations that come with it - travel with the worker.

What changes is how you fulfil those obligations, what you can reasonably inspect or control, and which regulations apply when multiple jurisdictions are in play.

Employers who assume that a remote-first culture or a “we don’t mandate where you work” policy eliminates their legal exposure are taking on a risk they probably haven’t priced.

What the Law Says by Jurisdiction

United Kingdom

Under Sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, UK employers are required to do all that is “reasonably practicable” to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees - regardless of where those employees are working. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 add a specific requirement to conduct risk assessments covering all work activities, including remote and overseas arrangements.

The UK Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 also matters here. If gross negligence by senior management contributes to an employee death - including overseas - the organisation can face criminal prosecution. This is not a theoretical risk: the Act has been invoked in international contractor cases.

Practically, this means UK employers must assess the risks of remote international working and take reasonable steps to mitigate them. You cannot sign a blanket “work from anywhere” policy and then argue you had no duty of care when an employee needed evacuation from a country under civil unrest.

European Union

The EU’s Framework Directive 89/391/EEC sets baseline occupational health and safety obligations across all member states. Critically for remote work, the 2002 European Framework Agreement on Teleworking explicitly states that “the employer is responsible for the protection of the occupational health and safety of the teleworker in accordance with Directive 89/391 and relevant individual directives.”

The Agreement obligates employers to provide teleworkers with appropriate technical support, inform them of relevant health and safety policy, and take steps to prevent isolation. Several EU member states have since passed their own remote work legislation implementing these standards - Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal among them.

Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visa (the D8, launched in 2022) actually formalized a pathway for remote workers to live and work legally in Portugal. Spain’s Digital Nomad Visa followed. Italy launched its own in April 2024. The existence of these legal visa structures means remote workers can be “official” in-country - and their employers’ duty of care obligations are correspondingly clear.

United States

The OSHA General Duty Clause (Section 5(a)(1) of the OSH Act of 1970) requires employers to provide a workplace “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.” OSHA’s enforcement jurisdiction does not extend beyond US borders - but this does not mean US employers are free of liability for workers harmed internationally.

US common law negligence applies. If an employer knows or should have known that an employee is working in a hazardous location, failed to assess the risk, failed to provide appropriate support, and the employee is harmed as a result, the employer faces civil liability. Courts have found employers liable in international worker harm cases on negligence grounds precisely because OSHA non-enforcement does not strip employees of their right to sue.

Workers’ compensation coverage also complicates the picture. Almost every US state requires workers’ comp for all employees including remote workers - but domestic policies frequently exclude work performed outside the country. A worker injured in Medellín may find they have no workers’ comp coverage, leaving the employer exposed to a direct personal injury claim.

Canada

Canada’s occupational health and safety obligations are provincially administered. Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) defines “workplace” broadly as “any land, premises, location or thing at, upon, in or near which a worker works.” Remote locations - including overseas locations - can fall within scope.

On October 28, 2024, Bill 190, the Working for Workers Five Act, received Royal Assent in Ontario. The amendments substantially expand employer obligations for remote workers, including requirements to have a written remote work health and safety policy and to ensure workers are aware of emergency procedures regardless of work location.

The cross-border complexity adds a layer: if a Canadian employee works remotely from another jurisdiction, Canadian common law duties of care may still apply even if local occupational health and safety legislation is unclear. The safest reading for employers is to assume the duty follows the employee.

Remote Work Is Not the Same as Business Travel - and That Matters

Traditional duty of care programs were built for a clear use case: an employee travels on company business, stays for a defined period, and returns. The risk profile is known. Travel insurance covers the trip. Emergency contacts are pre-established.

Remote work - and especially digital nomad arrangements - breaks almost every one of those assumptions.

Location is often unknown or unapproved. Employees may move between countries, extend stays, or work from locations their employers never anticipated. Many companies have no pre-trip approval process for remote workers and therefore no visibility into where their people actually are on any given day.

Duration is open-ended. A business traveller staying two weeks in Singapore is different from a remote employee living in Singapore for three months. Insurance policies, visa terms, tax residency rules, and welfare obligations all shift with duration.

The work-from-home versus work-from-abroad distinction matters legally. An employee working remotely from their home country is in a different risk category from one working from a country with active civil unrest, endemic health risks, or poor emergency infrastructure. Most remote work policies do not differentiate between these.

Psychological and welfare obligations are different too. Remote employees - particularly those working across multiple time zones in isolation - are at elevated risk of burnout, mental health deterioration, and lack of access to occupational health support. The EU Telework Agreement’s provisions on isolation are deliberately worded; this is a documented occupational risk, not a soft concern.

The Insurance Gap Nobody Audits

This is where many companies get caught. Standard corporate travel insurance is typically written for business trips - defined as travel to meet a client, attend a conference, or visit a company office. When an employee is working remotely from abroad, that is not a business trip in the insurance sense. Many policies explicitly exclude coverage for employees who are “residing” in a foreign country or who are there on a non-business basis.

Your employee working from Lisbon for three months on a tourist visa - or even a Digital Nomad Visa - may have no coverage under your corporate travel policy. If she needs emergency medical evacuation, a medical emergency requiring inpatient care, or support following a security incident, the claim may be denied.

Group health plans have similar gaps. Domestic employer-sponsored health insurance in the UK and US is typically designed for in-country treatment. Emergency care overseas may be covered to a limited extent, but routine care abroad, prescription continuity, and mental health support across international borders often are not.

The result: an employee in a genuine emergency may find their employer’s insurance does not reach them - and may then seek to recover costs through negligence claims against the employer instead.

Reviewing your insurance stack against actual employee location data is not a compliance nicety. It is risk management.

What a Good Work-from-Anywhere Policy Actually Covers

A policy that protects both your employees and your organisation should address these elements:

Approved and restricted locations. Not everywhere is a reasonable remote work location. Countries under a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory, active conflict zones, or destinations with inadequate healthcare infrastructure should require explicit approval or be off-limits. Your policy should say this clearly.

Prior notification and location tracking. Employees should be required to notify HR or their manager before working from a new country. This is not surveillance - it is the minimum information you need to ensure coverage is in place. Many travel risk management platforms can automate this with employee self-check-in.

Insurance confirmation. Before an employee works from an overseas location for more than a short period, confirm their coverage under existing policies and identify gaps. Consider whether global health insurance or dedicated international cover is needed.

Risk-tiered approval. An employee wanting to spend three weeks in Amsterdam is a different conversation from someone planning six months in Lagos. Your policy should define tiers and the approval process for each.

Emergency protocols. Who does the employee call in an emergency? Who at the company is responsible for coordinating support? How do you account for employees in an acute crisis? These answers should be documented and communicated before the employee leaves, not figured out in the moment.

Specific digital nomad provisions. If your organisation formally supports digital nomad arrangements - where an employee works from a series of locations over an extended period - treat this as a distinct policy area. Visa compliance, health insurance continuity, and duty of care obligations in this scenario are meaningfully different from a standard remote work policy.

The Harder Cases: Unsanctioned Remote Work

The genuinely difficult category for employers is employees who work from overseas without explicit approval. They may not mention it, may use VPNs to mask their location, or may simply assume the company doesn’t care.

This creates a trap. An employer who was unaware their employee was working from a high-risk location might assume they have no duty of care obligation. But courts and regulators often focus on what the employer should have known rather than what they did know. If your company culture implicitly tolerates work-from-anywhere without any monitoring or policy, you are building a negligence argument for the plaintiff.

Proactive policies with clear communication - “if you’re working from abroad, we need to know” - both protect the employee and create a defensible paper trail. They also allow you to maintain coverage continuity and have emergency contacts in place.

What to Do Right Now

If your organisation has remote or hybrid employees - especially those who travel regularly or work internationally - here is where to start:

Audit where your people actually are. Survey current remote employees. Many will admit to working from abroad on extended periods. Start with facts.
Review your insurance for geographic gaps. Check your corporate travel, group health, and workers’ comp policies against current employee locations. Identify where coverage voids exist.
Draft or update your work-from-abroad policy. Include approved and restricted locations, prior notification requirements, and clear escalation procedures.
Establish emergency contact protocols. Every remote international worker should know who to call from the company and what the emergency response process looks like.
Conduct a risk assessment for existing remote arrangements. Treat each location where employees are working as a workplace for risk assessment purposes. Understand the health, security, and infrastructure risks.
Train managers on their role. Your managers are likely the first point of contact when something goes wrong. They should know the policy, understand their responsibilities, and have access to emergency support contacts.

For organisations with significant remote or nomad workforces, a structured duty of care platform can consolidate travel intelligence, location visibility, insurance management, and emergency response into a single system - reducing the operational burden of doing all of this manually.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my duty of care only apply to employees I send abroad on business trips?

No. Duty of care obligations are tied to the employment relationship, not the reason for being in a particular location. If an employee is performing work duties from abroad - whether officially sanctioned or not - the employer’s health and safety obligations are engaged. The degree of obligation and your ability to fulfil it may differ from a standard business travel scenario, but the baseline duty remains.

What if our policy says employees can work from anywhere?

A permissive work-from-anywhere policy does not eliminate your duty of care - it potentially expands it. Without location visibility, risk assessments, and insurance coverage for the range of places employees might work, you have created a duty you cannot fulfil. Permissive policies need to be supported by the infrastructure to actually manage the risk they invite.

Does standard corporate travel insurance cover remote workers abroad?

Often not. Most corporate travel insurance policies are written for business trips - defined as travel to meet clients, attend meetings, or visit offices. Employees working remotely from a foreign country as a lifestyle or for an extended period frequently fall outside policy definitions. Review your policy wording carefully and consider dedicated international health cover or remote worker-specific insurance products.

What if the employee chose to work from a high-risk country without telling us?

Employers have a defence when they took reasonable steps - including having a clear policy requiring advance notification - and the employee deliberately concealed their location. The key word is “reasonable steps.” If your organisation has no remote work abroad policy and no notification requirement, you have less protection. Build the policy before you need to rely on it.

Does ISO 31030 apply to remote workers?

ISO 31030 - the international standard for travel risk management - applies to any work-related travel and mobility, including remote work arrangements where employees are in locations other than their home base. Aligning your remote work duty of care programme with ISO 31030 principles provides a recognised framework and a useful benchmark for demonstrating reasonable diligence. Many ISO 31030-compliant platforms now include specific remote and nomad workforce modules for exactly this reason.