Milly* has been working since 5am. Not because she’s following some deranged TikTok productivity advice, nor is she up against a deadline. The real reason the 29-year-old marketing manager is up so early is to account for the six hour time difference between Mexico and her London-based offices.
“The early starts are a bit of a pain,” she admits. “But it means I’m done working by midday and can drink margaritas on the beach for the rest of the day.”
Although she’s allowed to work from home, Millie’s boss has no idea that for the past month “home” has meant Mexico. So when she jumps on her weekly team catch up call, she does so against a white wall in her brightly lit bathroom to pretend it’s 9am. “One time I commented that it was a nice morning even though it was absolutely miserable in England,” she says, “so now I make sure to check the weather forecast before jumping on a call with someone.”
She uses a VPN when logging into her company’s network so that IT can’t see she’s remoting in from Mexico, and also puts on foundation that’s three shades too light to cover her tan. “I didn’t ask permission from HR to do this because I knew they’d say no even though it makes no difference to my output.”
It may sound drastic to do all this for sun and some banked annual leave days, but Millie is one of the many workers going on secret workcations behind their bosses backs — or “hush holidays” as coined by Glassdoor. According to a survey conducted by RV rental marketplace RVShare and Wakefield Research, 56 per cent of adults say they’re very or extremely likely to go on a hush trip this year, while 36 per cent of Gen X and millennials already have one planned.
Likewise one survey performed on behalf of the HR company Topia found that as many as 40 percent of HR professionals had recently discovered that employees were working outside their home state or country, and that only 46 percent were “very confident” they know where most of their workers are, down from 60 percent just last year.
Thirty two-year-old George* went on a hush holiday in 2022. He decided to book it after noticing the TikTok trend where individuals film themselves getting a last minute Zoom invite from their manager while “working from home” — and the ensuing panic as they pan out to show themselves sitting in an airport terminal.
“Obviously that’s taking it too far, but it made me realise how many people were taking liberties with working from home,” he says. Although the copywriter is required to come into the office twice a week, his bosses usually don’t mind if he works at home for two weeks at a time — as long as he keeps them updated.
“My partner and I wanted to go to Barcelona but we had no more annual leave left,” he explains on his decision to take a hush holiday. “Luckily he also had work to do so we decided to go as a workcation.” George explains that they banned each other from posting any content to social media — even their close friends’ Instagram stories, and gave his boss a heads up that he needed to work from home as they were having work done to the house which he needed to oversee.
Workplace solutions expert and CEO of Officeology Adam Butler says that a huge driving force behind this trend was the pandemic which gave people, “a realisation of how important life is and how quickly it can change.” He adds, “Making the most of every opportunity is a big priority for many people, more than ever before, including goals such as to travel more and experience new cultures.”
However, Butler believes that employees keep these travel plans secret because, although remote working has become more popular, some businesses don’t feel it’s the most productive way to get the most work out of their staff. Or they struggle to trust their employees, resulting in people not being fully open about where they are working.
This mistrust is evident in the huge drive for many businesses to get their employers back to the office. Despite a study by Gigabit Networks finding that 41 per cent of employees questioned didn’t want to return to the office at all, a Forbes headline states that “bosses are winning the battle to get workers back to the office” — with London seeing a “slow but sustained return to the workplace”.
Millie and George are the lucky few who are allowed to have more flexible work arrangements, and neither think they’re doing anything wrong by going on hush holidays. “Does it really matter where I get the work done? As long as it’s done and to a high standard I don’t see why it’s a problem,” says Millie.
Does it really matter where I get the work done? As long as it’s done and to a high standard
“My boss didn’t realise I was away, in fact, he even commented that I was ‘on fire’ while I was secretly away,” agrees George, “it just goes to show they need to trust their employees more. So many bosses seem to think that when we’re working from home we’re just lying in bed and replying to the occasional Slack message.”
Both believe that the trend is going to become even more prolific. However Rhys Wyborn, who is a partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, warns that employees should be aware that they could be creating potential tax issues by working overseas. “It can trigger a ‘permanent establishment’ base under local laws to require a payroll or administrative base in that jurisdiction,” explains Wyborn. “This could lead to additional costs, insurances, and other expenses that the employer would not have envisaged or approved,” he explains.
Wyborn also warns there could be GDPR and data protection risks in employees taking data further afield and that “employees could also face potential disciplinary action from their employers where this is done behind their back and where it breaches any particular terms and conditions of their employment, and where prior consent has not been obtained from the employer.”
Still that doesn’t seem to deter workers, instead it just makes them more cautious. Rebecca is a PR strategist who has taken multiple hush holidays across the UK as well as Italy. “I avoid at all costs free wifi networks at restaurants or cafes,” says Rebecca on the data security precautions she takes. “I usually book a place at a coworking space or use a private network.” She also uses a VPN with encryption and checks that she has the right to work in the host country.
By their nature, employers can’t control whether their employees are taking secret hush holidays. Nor can they really know. After all, George, Milly and Rebecca all technically “got away with it”. But Butler believes that if employers want to stop the rise of this trend then the buck stops with them. “The way around this begins with the employer. To get the best out of your employees, you have to build trust. As a boss, you have to trust your team to get the job done, and likewise, the team needs to feel like you trust them. Otherwise, this is when secrets are kept and trends like ‘Hush Holidays’ form.”
Depite this, he believes giving employees the flexibility to work wherever is best for them will do wonders for productivity. “Not only does it encourage a better work-life balance, which ultimately increases productivity, but it also has a huge impact on employee wellbeing,” he explains.
So maybe it’s not about getting rid of hush holidays, but embracing WFH (work from holiday) instead.
*Names have been changed.
