Imagine this scenario – your star graphic designer, Steve, is hitting all his deadlines, responding to emails in record time, and even joining Zoom calls with a tropical background. But then, you find out… it’s not a virtual background at all. Steve’s been secretly working from a beach in Bali for the last month without telling anyone. This is the latest “quiet” trend in the world of remote work called quiet vacationing (also known as hush trips), where employees take off on unapproved getaways while continuing to work remotely – all without the consent, or even the knowledge of, their employer. So why is this such a big deal?
On the surface, this may seem harmless. If someone is hired to work remotely and is getting work done remotely, why should it matter where the work is actually being done? But before you start packing your bags for an under-the-radar workcation, let’s talk about the legal, financial, and security nightmares that quiet vacationing can create (some experts even argue it should be a fireable offense).
Why Hush Trips Are More Than Just a “Flexibility” Issue
The problem isn’t that employees want to work from cool places. The issue is that businesses operate within rules that don’t change just because someone wants to answer emails from a mountain lodge in Switzerland. Sure, everyone wants to live the digital nomad dream, but there’s a series of reasons why hush trips cause major headaches for employers.
Legal and Tax Nightmares
Many employment contracts tie compensation, taxes, and benefits to a specific location. When an employee secretly works from a different country (or even a different state), it can create serious compliance risks.
In a real-life example, Virginia-based tech startup GravyWork estimated spending upwards of a half a million dollars in total costs when they discovered a former software engineer had been secretly working from California and Texas for extended periods. Turns out, they owed somewhere between $20–30 thousand to states where GravyWork wasn’t registered, leading to surprise bills and meetings that eventually racked up the total cost fifteenfold. “We’d never even thought about these things,” recalled Gravy Work’s CEO, Alex Atwood.
Security Risks and Data Breaches
A survey from Wrike found that 41% of remote workers admit to using personal apps to access sensitive company data when working virtually. That’s 41% too many, whether you’re quiet vacationing or just working remotely.
Employees logging in from random hotels, airports, and coffee shops might as well be handing cybercriminals a front-row seat to company files. And let’s not even talk about what happens when someone forgets their laptop at an Airbnb.
The Trust Factor
A healthy workplace runs on trust and transparency. When an employee hides their whereabouts, it raises bigger questions:
- If they’re lying about where they are, what else might they be hiding?
- Can the company rely on them for sensitive or high-stakes tasks?
- Is this a bigger symptom of a toxic work culture where employees feel they can’t ask for time off?
Workplace culture expert Hayley Saunders argues that hush trips aren’t just about employees wanting to work from a different location, but rather, they’re a symptom of deeper issues within company culture. “If employees are feeling the need to take a break from work without being honest about it, there is something wrong with the company culture. There is not just a lack of trust, there’s a lack of psychological safety,” she explains.
If employees feel like they have to sneak away instead of taking legitimate time off, that’s a company-wide problem.
Hush Trips: A Rising Trend and a Big Problem
Remote work has given employees unmatched flexibility, but some have taken that freedom a little too far. A recent survey reported by the New York Post found that 29% of Americans have worked remotely while on vacation without informing their employers, while Allwork.Space highlighted that nearly one-third of remote workers admitted to taking secret vacations. If those numbers seem alarming, you’re not the only one who thinks so.
Suzanne Lucas, better known as “The Evil HR Lady,” warns that hush trips are not an employee perk, but something that can easily turn into a legal headache. “Every government loves to collect taxes. There are all sorts of rules around working in a variety of states and even more about working in different countries,” Lucas writes. “It’s not about being mean or ‘confused in corporate’ when you won’t allow your employees to be digital nomads. It’s about staying in compliance with the laws and protecting the company.”
In other words, hush trips don’t just bend the rules. They break them.
Quiet Vacation Mitigation
At the end of the day, quiet vacationing likely isn’t going away any time soon. But that doesn’t mean businesses should turn a blind eye. There’s a myriad of ways to create a culture of trust and accountability, but the key ingredients involve:
- Create Clear Remote Work Policies – If employees want to travel, they should be able to request approval to avoid legal and tax issues. The policies should be simple, easy to follow, and all employees should be aware of them.
- Invest in Ethical Time-Tracking Tools – Use solutions like Traqq to monitor productivity regardless of work location. The tool you use should have the option to disclose location, but not use actual geodata, so that employees don’t feel like they’re wearing ankle bracelets while working.
- Encourage Actual PTO – Employees shouldn’t feel like they need to sneak away just to take a break. Implement a clear, streamlined system of PTO requests and approvals that workers don’t feel uncomfortable actually taking advantage of.
Hush trips might seem like a fun travel hack, but they come with very real risks. If workers feel obliged to take hush trips, businesses need a change in policies, tools, and culture that promotes both accountability and transparency.
How Traqq Helps Businesses Maintain Transparency
Let’s be real – employees want flexibility and businesses need accountability. So what’s the solution? Perhaps the path to mutual success isn’t just blind compliance and overly strict oversight. Of course, intentionally deceiving an employer is already a problem in and of itself, regardless of what is being hidden. Therefore, the solution must include a way for employees to be productive and engaged while fostering an environment of trust.
The productivity management software you use shouldn’t involve micromanagement, surveillance, or bureaucratic red tape that compel people to lie about how (or where) they do their work. It should be a fair, ethical way to track work time and location without crossing the bounds of privacy.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what time tracking solutions like Traqq aim to do.
Location Compliance Without the Drama
While Traqq doesn’t track exact locations using GPS, it does use the computer’s OS settings to detect time zone and country, so businesses can still monitor their workers’ productivity with AI-driven analytics while they are traveling. Traqq can even generate reports that show whether these workers are more productive when they change their work location.
Automatic Time Tracking Without Spying
Traqq automatically logs work hours and activity levels, which helps businesses monitor productivity without intrusive surveillance (no creepy keystroke monitoring here). Instead of putting employees under a microscope, Traqq focuses on ethical and transparent workforce management, allowing teams to work freely and efficiently without feeling micromanaged, regardless of where they choose to work.
A Culture of Transparency, Not Secrecy
PTO and leave management is a breeze with Traqq. All employees have to do is send an in-system request and a responsible manager can review it. The calendar view provides an easy-to-read way to ensure there are no overlaps in leave, and approval is a synch. With Traqq, there’s no red tape or awkward PTO request emails, allowing employees to actually use their paid time off instead of feeling the need to work in secret from the Maldives.
The Bottom Line? Accountability, Transparency, and Trust
Quiet vacationing is simply a symptom of an overarching issue in the way both businesses and employees approach remote work. Managers shouldn’t just assume that their remote employees won’t work from truly “remote” places, while workers shouldn’t assume that they are free to do so without letting their managers know about it. Accountability is a two-way street, and transparency is the streetlight that ensures there are no head-on collisions.
Every workplace needs to have the culture and means that allows workers to take a vacation when they need to, without jumping through flaming hoops or feeling embarrassed to send a PTO request. At the same time, employers need to be aware of the risks that come with employees working from outside their usual locations and clearly communicate their expectations from the get-go, especially if that entails making hush trips a fireable offense.
However, if an employee’s request to work out-of-state, or even abroad, is truly harmless after assessing all the risks, then it shouldn’t cause a headache to monitor their productivity while traveling. Employees want flexibility in their work. Businesses need accountability from their employees. Traqq makes both possible. The future of work is flexible, but it also has to be responsible.
