Working from anywhere is now a reality

The definition of work is fundamentally shifting.

Amidst the global war for talent, the ability to choose where you live, and work is central to the employee value proposition being offered by corporates. The war for talent is no longer just between companies however, entire countries are now getting in on the act, angling for the best talent. Bali has recently introduced a digital nomad visa where you can now live and work in Bali for up to 6 months (5 years under consideration) tax free.

I spoke about this trend on ABC news (watch here) and how foreigners are flocking to Bali in droves, escaping the commute.

And it isn’t just Indonesia, more than 25 countries or territories have launched digital nomad visas according to a new Migration Policy Institute report. Bermuda introduced a Work from Bermuda program two years ago and it has brought more than $28 million dollars into the nation’s economy according to Bermuda’s Ministry of Economy and Labour.

The whole landscape of work has shifted, and research has shown it’s not going back. Employees are voting with their feet, flocking from companies who refuse to embrace the new world of work. We have a chance to recalibrate the way we are working and living to be profoundly better.

But not everyone wants to learn the tango or martial arts in a far-flung locale. And, for a whole host of reasons, not everyone can, even if they want to. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want things to change. While the idea of starting the workday with fresh coconut juice perched alongside our laptops as we gaze over the ocean sounds lovely, the workday reality for a lot of us is far less glamorous. For too many people, work sits somewhere along an unhappy continuum - bored to death or stressed to death. Quite literally. A study of more than 143, 000 participants found those who worked ten or more hours a day for at least 50 days per year had a 29% greater risk of stroke.

Working from anywhere is not the only trend growing rapidly post-pandemic. An analysis of 382,000 employee exit interviews found that reports of employee burnout have almost doubled in the past year. It isn’t surprising then that the rise of the anti-work movement is currently the second most popular article on BBC Worklife. Despite the economic stress and uncertainty, there is a growing sentiment that no job is better than a bad job.

Sitting in the middle of the ‘work from Bali’ and ‘give up work altogether’ trends is the increasing push for a 4-day work week. Once a fledging idea that most thought would stay on the fringes, a large-scale global pilot to test out the 4-day work week us currently underway involving organisations from the UK, Australasia, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Europe and South Africa. While there is a great deal of discussion on what a 4-day work week actually means, most organisations in the pilot are adopting the 100:80:100 model. Under this arrangement employees are paid 100 per cent of their pay and can reduce their hours to 80 per cent so long as they continue to maintain 100 per cent of productivity.

The preliminary findings of a six-month pilot program covering 73 organisations in the United Kingdom showed that of the 41 companies who responded to questionnaires on their experience of the program, 88 per cent said the shorter week was working “well”; 46 per cent said productivity had stayed the same; 34 per cent said it had “improved slightly”; and 15 per cent said it had “improved significantly”. And importantly, 86 per cent of companies who responded indicated they were “extremely likely” or “likely” to retain a four-day workweek after the end of the trial.

What seems certain is that our definition of work is evolving. For many people, the pandemic changed their concept of success and their ambition related to their careers. And in a world where an all-time high of 75% of companies reporting difficulties in hiring, a world of work that includes the ability to work a 4-day week or to work from a remote location seems certain to expand.

In light of these shifts it is interesting to note that the whole idea of humans being able to work like machines is cuirious to say the least. How did we imagine that people would work well day in day out in the same cubicle, expected to consistently produce at the same level for 48 weeks (or more in some countries) of the year?

Reimagining work considers how we can use different places and spaces to support being at our best. Working from anywhere. Architecture for a new world of work.