Working from abroad in a changing world at Scout24

Scout24 is one of the leading digital companies in Germany and home of ImmoScout24. With its 20 million users every month ImmoScout24 successfully brings together homeowners, real estate agents, tenants, and buyers.

Now, how did the company embrace the changing way of working for its employees?

• 850 employees globally
• 50 nationalities
• Main markets: Germany and Austria

The challenge

As was the case for millions of companies worldwide, working from somewhere else than the office, also from abroad, became a huge consideration for Scout24 when the pandemic did hit. Fast forward two years and, Scout24 is seeking to formalise flexible arrangements without running the risk of breaking international tax or labour regulations. Hence, implementing the opportunity to work from abroad. Since at Scout24 the opportunity to work from abroad is given, it was important to create very clear regulations which supported the overall strategy.

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The solution

Flexible or at least hybrid work was now in everybody’s mind and companies needed to align. So did Scout24. They made a point of giving their employees an additional benefit that allowed employees the flexibility to work from abroad, which had to be based on clear processes and regulations.

Under normal circumstances, if an employee is working more than 183 days abroad, taxes must be paid in this country, however this was relaxed by many countries during the pandemic. Arrangements for cross-border workers (Konsultationsvereinbarungen) that took place during the pandemic were temporarily limited.

Scout24 got in touch with WorkFlex because they were aware of the potential to allow “working from anywhere”. And with the help of WorkFlex, allowances could have automatic risk assessments, issuance of A1 certificates and more. Now, Scout 24 employees can request working from abroad up to three months each year within the European Economic Area and up to one month from outside of it.  

1. Positive feedback from the employees: work-from-abroad requests are increasing and the official request process enables full clarity for all parties.
2. Tax- and compliance-friendly: the legal and tax teams can count on a fully proficient documentation follow-up. The teams can also access the risk assessments easily making it a great decision-making tool.
3. Time savings thanks to an automatic risk assessment.
4. Professionalism and automation: requests are facilitated.

“At Scout24, we decided early on to embrace the new world of work through flexible working and to strengthen the work-life balance of our employees. With WorkFlex, we are providing the right tool to support our strategy. Requests for working abroad are automated and now part of our way of working. We improved tax and legal compliance respectively. Thanks to the first-class service, we can respond more quickly to the wishes of our employees, which means that they can start actively planning and designing stays abroad more quickly without having to think about it too much.”

Krzysztof Lysik – Head of Tax at Scout24

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