For companies sending staff abroad · September 2026
Your engineer is flying out on a business visa to do work that needs a permit.
He is going for four days. He is on your payroll, not theirs. Nobody is paying him a penny over there. He is only going to help the local team get the installation finished.
Every one of those facts feels like it should settle the matter, and not one of them does. This is the most common immigration mistake companies make, and almost nobody makes it on purpose.
The line is not where you think
Ask a travel manager how they decide whether a trip needs a work permit and you will usually get one of three answers: it is only a few days, nobody is paying him there, or he is employed by us not by them.
None of those is the test in any of the five countries below.
The question every one of these systems is actually asking is whether the person is entering that country’s labour market — doing productive work there, or filling a role a local worker could fill. Duration does not change that. Nor does who signs the payslip. An unpaid two-day installation is work. A three-week schedule of meetings and contract negotiations is not.
A useful rule of thumb: if the trip produces something for the business in that country — code shipped, a machine commissioned, a customer served, a shift covered — it is probably work. If it produces a decision, an agreement or an understanding for your business at home, it is probably a business visit.
Where the line sits, country by country
The principle is shared. The detail is not, and the detail is what gets people turned around at a border.
The visa
Standard Visitor (business activities under Appendix V)
Generally permitted
- Meetings, conferences, seminars and interviews
- Negotiating and signing contracts for an overseas employer
- Site visits and inspections
- Attending training that is classroom-based, not on-the-job
- Fact-finding and gathering information for an overseas business
Crosses into work
- Doing productive work for a UK business, paid or unpaid
- Filling a role a UK employee would otherwise fill
- Selling goods or services directly to the public
- Being paid by a UK source for the activity
Watch this one
The UK test is not about payment. Unpaid work is still work. What matters is whether the activity is productive labour for a UK entity rather than business conducted on behalf of an employer abroad.
General guidance, not legal advice, and rules change. Confirm the position for the specific trip before anyone books a flight.
The four traps companies fall into
The trip that changed after it was booked
It was approved as a client meeting. By the time he flies, the local team has asked him to stay an extra two days and fix the integration. The visa was right for the trip that was planned, and wrong for the trip that happened.
“Training” that is really doing the job
Classroom training is generally fine. Standing beside a local employee doing the work while they watch is usually not. The word covers both and the law does not.
The repeat visitor nobody is counting
Four short trips in a year can breach a cap that no single trip comes close to. New Zealand caps business visitors at three months in twelve. Nobody is tracking the total until a border officer does.
Treating Schengen as one jurisdiction
The visa is common. Work authorisation is not. Admission to the Schengen area is not permission to perform services in any particular member state, and companies conflate the two constantly.
What actually happens when it goes wrong
Usually nothing, for a long time. That is exactly why the practice spreads: it works until it does not, and by then it is normal.
When it does surface, it surfaces at the worst possible moment — at a border, with an employee alone, holding a laptop bag and an honest answer to the question “what will you be doing here?”
He is refused entry and sent home
The immediate cost is a wasted trip. The lasting cost is a refusal on his record that he must declare on future applications, to that country and often to others.
Your company becomes the pattern
Officers see the employer name. One person turned around at the border makes the next colleague’s questioning longer and less friendly.
The employee carries it personally
The consequence lands on them, not on the manager who approved the trip. That is the part that should trouble anyone signing these off.
Getting it right without slowing the business down
None of this argues for making travel harder. It argues for asking one better question before the flight is booked.
Ask what they will actually do, not why they are going
“Client meeting” is a reason. “Configure the client’s system” is an activity. The activity decides the visa; the reason never does.
Re-check when the trip changes
Scope creep between approval and departure is the single most common cause. If the plan changes, the question reopens.
Send a letter that matches reality
A letter from the employer setting out the activity, who pays, and that the person returns to their role abroad. Canada now effectively expects one. Make it true rather than favourable — an officer who catches a discrepancy stops believing the rest.
Count the days per person, per country
Somebody should be able to say how many days each traveller has spent in each country this year. Almost no company can.
When it is work, get the permit
It is slower and it is the answer. A permit obtained late is an inconvenience. A refusal at the border is a record that follows the employee for years.
The question is never “can we get away with a business visa”. It is “what is this person going to do when they land”.
Tell us what the trip involves. We will tell you what it needs.
Business visit or work permit, across the UK, Schengen, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — assessed on the activity, prepared properly, tracked in one place.
Continue Reading
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Schengen Refusal Rates by Consulate
Official EU figures showing where applications from your market actually fail.