What to Check Before You Accept a Remote Job

A remote offer has more ways to go wrong than an office one, and most of them are invisible at the point of signing. The salary looks fine. The role looks right. Six months later you discover the “fully remote” job requires four days a month on site at your own expense, that your equipment is your problem, and that every decision gets made in a room you are not in.

None of that is usually deception. It is the ordinary result of nobody writing down what everyone assumed. This guide is the list of things to establish in writing before you accept.

1. Get remote working into the contract

This is the single most important item and the one most often skipped. If your contract names an office as your place of work, you are contractually an office worker with a current permission to work from home — and permissions get withdrawn.

Companies have reversed remote policies at scale in recent years, often with a few months’ notice, and employees whose contracts specified an office had little recourse. Employees whose contracts specified home as their place of work were in a much stronger position.

Ask plainly:

“Could the contract state my place of work as remote or home-based, rather than the office address? I want to make sure we have the same understanding written down.”

If they will not, that is informative. Ask what the actual policy is, who can change it, and with how much notice.

2. Establish the employment relationship

Especially for cross-border roles, work out what you are actually being offered.

• Direct employment by a local entity — the simplest and best-protected arrangement.
• Employer of record — a third party employs you locally on the company’s behalf. Normal and legitimate; you are legally employed by the EOR, so check who handles leave, notice, and disputes.
• Contractor — you invoice. No paid leave, no sick pay, usually no notice period, and you handle your own tax, insurance, and pension.

A contract rate must be materially higher than the equivalent salary to compensate for what you absorb. Comparing a contractor day rate to a salary without that adjustment consistently flatters the contract.

3. Pay, and what happens if you move

Ask two questions:

• Is compensation adjusted by location? Some companies pay a single national or global rate; others band by geography. This can differ by 30% for the same role and is rarely stated in the advertisement.
• What happens if I move? If pay is location-banded, moving to a cheaper area may reduce your salary. Moving to a country the company cannot employ in may end the arrangement entirely. Establish the rule before you need it.

Also confirm the currency you are paid in and who bears exchange-rate risk — for international roles this is a real and recurring cost that nobody mentions at offer stage.

4. On-site expectations

“Fully remote with occasional travel” can mean twice a year or twice a month. Pin it down:

• How many days on site per month or quarter, in a normal year?
• How much notice is given?
• Who pays for travel and accommodation, and is time spent travelling counted as working time?
• Are there fixed events — quarterly planning, an annual company gathering — that are non-negotiable?

For an international role this matters enormously. Four trips a year from Lagos to London is a significant commitment of time and, if unreimbursed, money.

5. Equipment, expenses, and connectivity

• Laptop and peripherals — provided, or a stipend, or your own? If your own, is there a security or specification requirement?
• Home office allowance — one-off or recurring? Desk, chair, monitor?
• Internet and utilities — some employers contribute, many do not. In some countries there is a statutory expectation.
• Backup connectivity — if reliable internet is genuinely a constraint where you live, raise it now and agree what happens during an outage.
• Software and subscriptions — who buys them.

Get the answers in writing. “We’ll sort you out” is not an expenses policy.

6. Working hours and availability

• Core hours — are you expected online at fixed times, and in which time zone?
• Required overlap with the rest of the team, in hours per day.
• Meeting load — ask what a typical week looks like. A remote job that is six hours of calls a day is a different job from one that is two.
• Out-of-hours expectations — is there an on-call rota, and is it paid?
• Public holidays — do you follow yours or the company’s? For international roles this is frequently unresolved until it becomes a problem.

7. How the company actually works

The difference between a remote-first company and an office company that tolerates remote workers is the largest single factor in whether a remote job is any good, and it does not appear in the contract.

Diagnostic questions:

• “How many of the team are remote, and how many are in the office?” If you would be one of two remote people in a forty-person office, expect to be structurally out of the loop.
• “Are decisions made in meetings or in documents?” If decisions happen in rooms, remote workers get the summary.
• “How do people find out what is happening?”
• “Has anyone been promoted from a fully remote position in the last two years?” The clearest available test of whether remote staff are genuinely equal.
• “What does onboarding look like for someone not in an office?” A vague answer usually means it has not been thought about, and your first month will be harder than it needs to be.

8. Ordinary contract items, checked anyway

• Notice period, both directions, and any probation terms
• Annual leave, and whether public holidays are on top
• Sick pay — statutory or contractual
• Pension or retirement contribution — and whether it applies to your country at all
• Health cover, and whether it covers you where you live
• Restrictive covenants — and whether they are enforceable in your jurisdiction
• Data and security obligations — what you must do to comply while working from home

Asking without seeming difficult

Candidates worry that a list of questions reads as distrust. Framed as practicality it does the opposite — it reads as someone who has done this before and plans properly.

Five specific questions, a stated intention to accept, and an offer to discuss. No competent employer objects to this, and the ones who do have told you something useful.