WFH Employee Thought She Could Work Remotely From France Despite Company Warnings, but a Judge Just Shuttered Her Legal Battle
A cautionary tale.
A UK-based finance worker just learned the hard way that working from home doesn’t mean working from anywhere. Iryna Malyk thought she could relocate to France while keeping her remote job, but a judge just shut down her legal battle after her company fired her for ignoring repeated warnings.
According to The Sun, Malyk, who worked as a European regional finance business partner for Teleperformance Contact, a UK-based digital business service, moved to France in July despite being told it wasn’t allowed. Her employment tribunal case was dismissed, with the judge ruling that her company had every right to fire her for refusing to follow a reasonable management instruction.
The whole thing started when Malyk’s husband got a new job in France earlier this year. She approached her boss, Michael Aouate, about relocating, but he made it clear she couldn’t work from France under her UK contract. The company warned her that doing so would create legal and tax complications, though they didn’t specify exactly which laws would be broken. Aouate told her that if she went ahead with the move, she’d need to resign.
Malyk decided to move anyway
Instead of quitting, Malyk emailed HR on June 26, stating that she was moving to France in July and planned to continue working remotely. She acknowledged that Aouate had told her it would breach certain laws but seemed to think she could work around it. The company responded with a firm letter, explaining that working from France wasn’t feasible and that failing to return to the UK would be treated as unauthorized absence.
Malyk didn’t budge. She moved to France anyway and kept working, arguing that her contract was fully remote and that she could do the job from anywhere. The company saw things differently. After an investigation, they suspended her, citing the risk of legal trouble with French authorities. A disciplinary hearing followed, and she was fired for ignoring the company’s express instruction not to work from France.
At the tribunal, Malyk claimed her dismissal was unfair and disproportionate. She insisted she had acted openly and didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong. But Judge Hazel Oliver disagreed. She pointed out that Malyk’s contract clearly stated she would work from her home in the UK and that she had been warned about the consequences of moving. The judge ruled that the company’s instruction was reasonable and that Malyk’s refusal to comply left them no choice but to let her go.
This case is a stark reminder that remote work isn’t as flexible as some might think
While working from home has become a permanent fixture for many companies, especially in a post-COVID-19 pandemic era, that doesn’t mean you can just pick up and move to another country without consequences. Teleperformance Contact made it clear from the start that Malyk’s relocation wasn’t allowed, and they even offered her the option to resign if she wanted to go through with it. She chose to ignore those warnings, and now she’s out of a job.
The tribunal also highlighted that Malyk’s company had good reason to be cautious. Teleperformance provides outsourced visa services to governments, including the UK, France, and Germany. The last thing they’d want is to run afoul of French employment laws by having an employee working there under a UK contract.
The judge noted that the company believed it would be breaking the law if Malyk lived in France permanently while working on a UK contract, which made her dismissal anything but trivial. Malyk’s argument that her contract was fully remote didn’t hold up in court. While she was allowed to work from home, her contract specified that her home was in the UK.
The company had even required her to come into the office until it closed in September 2022, further reinforcing that her role wasn’t entirely location-independent. When she moved to France, she wasn’t just working from a different part of the UK – she was working from a different country with entirely different legal and tax requirements.
It also raises questions about how companies handle remote work policies
Teleperformance Contact’s stance was clear: employees can work from home, but only within the country where their contract is based. Other companies might be more lenient, but this ruling shows that if an employer sets boundaries, employees ignore them at their own risk. Malyk’s situation might have been different if she had negotiated a transfer to a French contract or if her company had a more flexible policy, but she didn’t explore those options.
For anyone thinking about relocating while keeping their remote job, this case is a cautionary tale. Just because you can work from another country doesn’t mean your employer will let you. If your company has rules about where you can work, you’re better off following them or at least having a conversation about whether exceptions can be made. Ignoring those rules and hoping for the best, as Malyk did, is a gamble that might not pay off.
At the end of the day, it helps to remember that companies still set the rules, and if you break them, you might find yourself out of a job.
(Featured image: Vitaly Gariev on Pexels)
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