Workation in a Polish company 2026: how to legally allow an employee to work from abroad

Imagine this scenario. Your key developer or marketing director calls from Bali. Officially, they're on vacation, but they're asking if they can stay there for another three months. They declare that from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM local time (or Polish time), they'll be regularly checking Slack, completing tasks, and joining calls. Sounds tempting, right? After all, a happy employee is an effective employee. Unfortunately, at this point, a red flag should go up for the HR director and the legal department.

Workation – what exactly is it from the perspective of Polish labor law? It's not just regular remote work; it's a complex operation involving tax, insurance, and labor code regulations. Polish companies are massively falling into the trap of "silent workation." Employees leave without informing their employer, and companies pretend not to know anything. This poses a significant financial risk. In 2026, with the tightening of tax systems in the European Union and automatic data exchange between social security institutions, a lack of procedures for remote work from abroad will mean one thing: colossal fines, labor court proceedings, and additional tax assessments.

In this guide, you will learn how to legalize this process step-by-step in your organization, create a secure workation policy, and manage issues such as workation taxes and the relationship between workation and ZUS.

What is workation in 2026 and why does Polish law still not recognize it?

Workation is a model of performing professional duties in which an employee combines remote work with a stay in a tourist or recreational location, most often outside the borders of their country of permanent residence.

The concept of "workation" does not formally exist in the Polish Labor Code. The amendment to remote work regulations provided employers with tools to control work from home, but completely ignored the international aspect. These regulations were written with an employee sitting in an apartment in Warsaw's Ursynów or a cottage in Podlasie in mind, not on a beach in Alicante or in a coworking space in Lisbon. However, the market abhors a vacuum. According to Eurostat data and national labor market analyses, as many as 42% of specialists in the IT, e-commerce, and modern business services (BPO/SSC) sectors ask their employers about the possibility of such an international benefit. Moreover, companies that strictly prohibit leaving the country report an 18% higher employee turnover rate in key creative and technological departments.

Why does the traditional approach to remote work fail for international trips?

When an employee logs in from a foreign IP address, we enter the realm of international law. Polish health and safety regulations require employers to provide a safe workstation. How are you going to check the ergonomics of a chair in a hotel in Thailand? How will you react if an employee has an accident there? The legal systems of other countries automatically begin to assert rights over such an employee if they stay in their territory for too long. Most HR managers make a fundamental mistake: they treat an international trip as a regular "home office," just with a nicer view outside the window. This is a mistake that can cost the company hundreds of thousands of zlotys in the event of an inspection by the National Labor Inspectorate or a foreign tax authority.

Tax residency and workation taxes – the 183-day trap

Tax residency is the legal and tax status of an individual which determines in which country they are subject to unlimited tax liability on their total income.

The main flashpoint in the discussion about remote work from abroad is taxes. Here, the so-called 183-day rule plays a key role, stemming from the OECD Model Tax Convention and bilateral double taxation treaties (DTTs). If an employee stays in a given country for more than 183 days in a calendar year (or over a consecutive 12-month period, depending on the agreement), their remuneration should begin to be taxed in the country of stay. However, the 183-day limit is not the only criterion. The second, much more fluid and dangerous, is the center of vital interests (personal and economic).

Center of vital interests and unexpected tax assessment

If your employee packs their bags, rents an apartment in Spain, enrolls their children in school there, and brings their partner, then even if they only spend 90 days there, the Spanish tax authority may consider that they have moved their center of vital interests there. In such a scenario, Spain has the right to demand income tax from the first day of their stay. For a Polish employer, this means the necessity of registering as a tax remitter with the foreign tax authority, calculating local tax advances, and remitting them in accordance with local law. When analyzing workation taxes, the specifics of the particular destination country must be taken into account.

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How to protect your company from tax risk?

The simplest solution is to introduce a strict limit in the company's policy. The safe limit adopted by most Polish companies is 30 or a maximum of 90 days in a calendar year. Such a period drastically reduces the risk that foreign tax authorities will take an interest in your employee and consider them their tax resident.

Workation and ZUS: A1 Certificate as an employer's defense shield

An A1 certificate is a document confirming which social security regulations apply to an employed person when they work in several EU, EEA member states, or Switzerland.

Social security issues at the intersection of workation and ZUS (the Polish Social Insurance Institution) can be even more stringent than taxes. According to EU Regulation No. 883/2004, an employee should be subject to the social security system of the country where they physically perform work. This means that if a Pole goes to Italy for a month and works from there, contributions should go to the local equivalent of ZUS (INPS) from the very first day of work on Italian soil. To avoid this bureaucratic absurdity, it is necessary to obtain the aforementioned A1 certificate from the Social Insurance Institution. This document confirms that the employee remains subject to the Polish social security system while abroad.

Procedure for obtaining an A1 certificate for an employee on workation

In practice, the A1 certificate is issued for seconded employees. Workation is not a classic secondment – it's the employee who wants to travel, not the employer sending them. However, ZUS, in its official guidelines, accepts A1 applications (on form US-1) for individuals performing remote work from abroad at their own request, treating it as a specific form of secondment.

• Step 1: The employee submits a request to the employer for approval to travel.
• Step 2: The company signs an addendum to the contract (or an agreement) with the employee regarding remote work from a specified location abroad.
• Step 3: The employer submits an application to ZUS via the PUE/ZUS portal for the issuance of an A1 certificate.
• Step 4: Only after the document has been generated should the employee safely cross the border.

What if they travel outside the EU? If the destination is a country with which Poland does not have a bilateral social security agreement (e.g., Bali/Indonesia, as mentioned earlier), the situation becomes critical. The employee may be subject to double insurance, and in the event of an accident, the Polish ZUS may refuse to pay benefits, considering that the work was performed illegally from the perspective of local regulations.

Workation policy – how to create a secure legal framework in the company?

A workation policy is an internal legal act that modifies or supplements the work regulations, defining the rules, rights, and obligations of the parties in connection with performing remote work outside the country.

Don't let travel rules be decided "verbally" between a manager and an employee. If you want to introduce this benefit, you must create an official regulamin workation. Such a document protects the company's interests and clearly communicates to the team what is allowed and what is strictly forbidden. It is also worth remembering the correlation with other modern models of work time organization – you can read about how to manage flexibility in a team in our article on hybrid work schedule.

Key elements that must be included in the regulations:

• Maximum time limit: Exact number of days per year (e.g., up to 30 working days).
• List of permitted countries: Limiting travel exclusively to the territory of the European Union, EEA, and Switzerland (due to the ease of obtaining ZUS A1 and GDPR regulations).
• Application procedure: Requirement to submit an application at least 14 days before the planned departure.
• Technical and OHS requirements: Employee's obligation to ensure a safe, ergonomic workstation and a stable and secure internet connection (prohibition of using public Wi-Fi networks without a VPN).
• Availability and time zones: Obligation to perform work during the core operating hours of the company (e.g., availability for meetings between 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Polish time).

Technical risks and permanent establishment (Permanent Establishment)

A permanent establishment is a fixed place of business through which the business of an enterprise is wholly or partly carried on, which may result in a tax obligation arising in the country where that establishment is located.

Beyond the employee's personal taxes, there is another, much greater tax risk for the company itself: the creation of a so-called permanent establishment abroad. If a high-level manager, authorized to sign contracts on behalf of your company, goes on a several-month workation to France and negotiates and concludes agreements with clients from there, the French tax authorities may deem that your Polish company has a permanent establishment in France. The consequence? A portion of the entire Polish company's profits could be subject to French corporate income tax (CIT).

Data security (GDPR) and cyber threats

Working from a hotel room, a cafe, or an open co-working space in a tourist resort poses a real challenge to data security. Taking a company laptop with clients' personal data without adequate security measures is a direct path to enormous fines from the UODO.

1. Disk encryption: Every computer leaving the office must absolutely have full encryption implemented (e.g., BitLocker).
2. Clean Desk and Clean Screen Policy: The risk of an outsider in a hotel lobby peeking at confidential data on an employee's screen is enormous. Privacy filters for screens are essential.
3. Prohibition of working from open networks: Employees are required to use only an encrypted VPN connection provided by the company or a mobile router with a secure SIM card.

5 Most Common Mistakes Polish Companies Make When Implementing Work from Abroad

Most organizations learn from their mistakes, unfortunately very costly ones. Below, we've compiled the major pitfalls of Polish HR departments and management boards when organizing work-cations.

• Mistake 1: Confusing vacation leave with work. Employers agree to let employees "make up" for vacation time while traveling, without formalizing it with any document. In case of an inspection by the labor inspectorate, this is treated as a gross violation of working time records.
• Mistake 2: Failure to verify tax residency status. Allowing employees to travel without controlling the number of days spent outside Poland annually.
• Mistake 3: Ignoring health and safety regulations. Assuming that since it's remote work, the employer is not responsible for an employee's accident while working abroad. They are responsible – and criminally so, if they failed to fulfill informational procedures.
• Mistake 4: Lack of travel and medical insurance with a work option. The EHIC card in Europe only covers basic medical services. If an employee has an accident while performing work, standard travel insurance will not apply unless it included an extension for occupational risk. The company may be charged for treatment costs or medical transport.
• Mistake 5: Allowing time zone anarchy. Lack of clear definition of when an employee should be available, which paralyzes communication within projects. The market is dynamically evolving towards optimizing working hours – you can read about trends such as reduced working hours in the article about a shorter work week and working 6 hours a day.

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FAQ 

Can an employee work from abroad without the employer's knowledge?

Absolutely not. Performing work from a location other than that agreed upon in the employment contract or regulations constitutes a breach of fundamental employee duties. The employer has the right to disciplinarily dismiss an employee who arbitrarily left the country and logged into company systems from abroad, as this generates tax and legal risks for the entire company.

Who pays for internet and electricity during a workation?

According to the Polish Labor Code, for standard remote work, the employer is obliged to cover the costs of electricity and telecommunication services. In the case of a workation, undertaken at the employee's explicit written request as a benefit, the parties can (and should) agree in an addendum to the contract on a flat-rate payment at the existing level (corresponding to costs in Poland) or stipulate that the employee covers additional logistical and infrastructural costs abroad themselves.

Is an A1 certificate application mandatory for a 2-week trip?

From the perspective of EU regulations – yes, an A1 certificate should be held from the first day of working in another member state. In practice, for short trips (up to 14 days), the risk of inspection by a foreign social security institution is small, but for the company's full legal security, it is worth obtaining this document for every trip.

How to handle a workplace accident during an international workation?

The procedure is complex. The employer must appoint an accident investigation team to make findings. Since a physical inspection of the accident site, e.g., in Tenerife, is impossible, the team relies on the victim's explanations, witness testimonies, medical documentation from a foreign hospital (translated by a sworn translator), and photographic documentation. Having an A1 certificate is crucial for ZUS (Polish Social Insurance Institution) to recognize such an event as a workplace accident.

What if an employee wants to work B2B from abroad?

For B2B contracts (self-employed individuals), the situation is simpler for the contracting company, as labor code regulations and employee-related ZUS contributions do not apply. Tax risk (establishment of a foreign permanent establishment or change of tax residency) largely shifts to the contractor themselves. The company should only secure data confidentiality clauses (GDPR) in the B2B agreement and specify the legal jurisdiction for potential disputes.

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Key takeaways for a modern HR department

• The principle of limited legal trust: Workation is a great recruitment benefit, but only when it's backed by strict procedures.
• Time is money: Limit the duration of international trips to a maximum of 30-90 days per year to avoid issues with foreign tax residency.
• ZUS under control: Never agree to an employee traveling to EU countries without first obtaining an A1 certificate from ZUS.
• Regulations above all: Create clear, transparent regulations accessible to every employee on the intranet before the first person packs their bags.
• Technology and security: Invest in secure VPN systems and GDPR procedures to ensure that working from a foreign resort doesn't result in a company data leak.

Sources:

• Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the coordination of social security systems.
• OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital.
• Act of 26 June 1974 – Labour Code (provisions on remote work).

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