The Digital nomad life: marrying work and travel
Concept hinges on embracing uncertainty
On a recent afternoon in Medellin, Colombia, a group of 22 out-of-towners gathered to brainstorm and then met up with locals.
They weren’t on vacation. Nor had they met by coincidence. They were participants in a program run by Unsettled, a startup that organizes 30-day co-working experiences around the world for creative people, entrepreneurs and other professionals seeking to combine work, travel and redefining themselves.
The company is one of dozens of new work-tourism programs that aim to help workers known as digital nomads navigate living and working in far-off places.
“If we could be somewhere, experiencing the world in a beautiful setting while working, challenging ourselves, growing professionally, enjoying a community of like-minded people and connecting locally, what’s stopping us?” said Michael Youngblood, who founded Unsettled with another digital nomad, Jonathan Kalan.
The name Unsettled “is about turning something perceived as a negative into a positive,” Kalan said. “Everybody feels unsettled at some point. If you’re unsettled by a 9-to-5 job, then why not embrace the uncertainty?”
The concept resonated with Stacey Chassoulas, a digital marketer from Johannesburg. She joined Unsettled’s program in Buenos Aires in the fall “to change the rhythms of daily life” and test the waters of remote work with her partner, Tyrone Niland. Both are 36 and love to travel, but wanted to keep their jobs and home.
“I wanted to see if it was a lifestyle that would mesh with the corporate world,” said Niland, a partner at Bramel Business Solutions, a small private equity advisory firm.
“Concepts like Unsettled are very new to South Africa’s professional environment,” but his company was supportive “as long as I could take phone calls and respond to emails,” he said.
Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research, an independent research and consulting firm, said combining work and travel was not new, but interest has been increasing. “We still don’t know how many digital nomads there are,” he said. “It’s hard to measure, but it’s pretty clearly growing at a strong rate.”
He attributed the increase in the number of remote workers to improved technology, a changing job market and inexpensive flights.
The two main groups fuelling it, he said, are millennials interested in taking time off from traditional work and aging baby boomers who have financial resources and flexibility.
“Humans are social beings,” King said. “It’s not easy to penetrate foreign cultures, so help in that process is hugely important.”
It’s not easy to penetrate foreign cultures, so help in that process is hugely important. STEVE KING, PARTNER AT EMERGENT RESEARCH
Roam, a network of co-living properties in Miami, Bali, Madrid, London and eight additional places by the end of the year, is geared to remote workers “who need a reliable base in different cities,” said Bruno Haid, the company’s chief executive.
Each location has communal living areas, with meeting rooms, a co-working space and fast Wi-Fi, and offers social activities, often unique to the locale.
“It offers a much deeper sense of the local experience and is more affordable than most traditional hotels and apartments,” Haid said. (Costs start at $1,800 a month and $500 a week.)
He compared Roam to extended-stay hotels popular with business travelers, but with a stronger focus on community and design.
Most guests are “freelancers, authors and creative industry types,” he said, but “we do increasingly see employees” from companies like Google or the Boston Consulting Group.
Jim Lockard, 65, and his wife, Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, 61, empty nesters, sold their California home, cars and most of their furniture just over two years ago and have been travelling — and working — ever since.
They recently spent 16 weeks at Roam’s Miami location.
“We really like the co-working, co-living concept,” said Cotter-Lockard, who runs a leadership and organizational development consulting firm. Until recently, she said, they often booked accommodations through Airbnb, but Internet connectivity “was hit or miss.”
Both said they enjoyed the weekly “family nights” and daily informal dinners, where people cook in a communal kitchen and dine together.
“It gives us a home base and the opportunity to meet people from all over the world,” said Lockard, a former police officer and minister who now writes and coaches.
Studies show that when employees have the choice to work remotely, “business is a whole lot better” for “people, the planet and profit,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a consulting firm that focuses on emerging workplace trends.
A new study, Future Workforce, released in February by Upwork, a marketplace for online work, surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. hiring managers.
It found that only one in 10 believed location was important to a new hire’s success; nearly two-thirds said they had at least some workers who did a significant portion of their work from a remote location, and about half agreed that they had trouble finding the talent they needed locally.
“Remote work has gone mainstream,” said Stephane Kasriel, Upwork’s chief executive.”
On-site work between the hours of 9 and 5 “is a remnant of the industrial era.” But there are drawbacks. “Technology is just not there yet,” said Lister of Global Workplace Analytics.
Many companies do not have programs to train staff members to work effectively with remote workers, and labour and tax laws can be challenging.
“But the genie is out of the bottle,” she said, “and it’s not going back in.”