Cross-Border Remote-Work Policy Director

The mandate

A global game studio permits remote work, but employees increasingly change countries without telling managers and remain attached to teams operating across incompatible time zones. Security, tax, immigration and employment advisers receive cases after travel has begun, while employees experience arbitrary approvals. The company needs one usable operating policy that balances creative collaboration, employee choice, duty of care and specialist review.

The eight-week deliverable is a remote-work eligibility framework, approval workflow, employee-manager toolkit and country-risk handoff model. Milestone one fixes worker populations and use cases in week two; milestone two maps decision factors and specialist triggers in week four; milestone three pilots approval and exception cases in week six; milestone four delivers accepted policy, controls, communication and governance.

The client will provide work-location data, employee requests, team collaboration patterns, security classifications, travel records, existing policies, case outcomes, adviser trigger guidance, employee feedback and HR-system constraints. Acceptance requires common cases to produce consistent routes, specialist triggers to be explicit, internal HR to process six test scenarios and unresolved country questions to remain attributed to qualified advisers.

Consultants will not provide tax, immigration, legal, privacy or security opinions; approve individual work locations; discipline employees; configure systems; or negotiate employment terms. Specialists and management retain those decisions. The policy will establish when their review is required and what evidence employees must provide, without presenting a generic country list as professional advice.

Outputs will distinguish domestic remote work, temporary cross-border work, relocation, travel, assignment and unapproved location change. They must address time-zone burden, team presence, accessibility, wellbeing and employee data alongside compliance. Individual case remediation, system build and country advice after week eight remain outside this engagement.

Why this is external work

Internal teams handle cases through their own specialist lens, producing slow and inconsistent employee experiences. Studio leaders need a practical policy quickly but should not improvise across jurisdictions. External workforce-design specialists can connect employee and operating needs to clear professional handoffs without giving the underlying advice.

What you will own

• Reconcile known domestic, temporary cross-border, relocated, travelling and unapproved-location workforce populations.
• Define eligibility through role, data, collaboration, time zone, employee circumstance, duration and destination evidence.
• Map tax, immigration, employment, privacy, security and duty-of-care triggers to named specialist decision owners.
• Design request, manager recommendation, specialist review, approval, expiry, renewal, exception and correction workflows.
• Test employee fairness across nationality, disability, caring responsibility, seniority, role and manager preference.
• Pilot six realistic scenarios including urgent family travel, hidden relocation and project-critical collaboration.
• Deliver the formally accepted policy, decision tree, evidence checklist, manager scripts, employee guidance and annual governance calendar.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed cross-border remote-work operating policies for globally distributed technology or creative workforces.
• Distinguished temporary remote work, business travel, formal assignment and relocation through employee behaviour and role evidence.
• Created usable specialist handoffs without issuing tax, immigration, employment, privacy or security opinions.
• Addressed cross-regional time-zone burden, collaboration, accessibility, wellbeing and manager consistency alongside specialist compliance requirements.
• Piloted difficult employee cases and converted exceptions into controlled learning rather than precedent.
• Left internal HR teams able to process, document, correct and renew diverse cases consistently after project acceptance.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete four Lisbon-led studio and worker workshops within the eight-week engagement.
• Will disclose gaming employers, remote-work vendors, mobility firms, advisers and employee-representation relationships.
• Brings implemented global remote-work policy design; generic flexible-work guidance is insufficient.
• Accepts no authority over specialist opinion, individual approval, discipline, contract change or system configuration.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a remote-work case that was actually relocation or assignment under the operating facts.
2. 49 words maximum. Which employee and role evidence should precede specialist country review?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you make manager discretion consistent without eliminating legitimate exceptions?