Cape Town comes in at 63 out of 80 most attractive cities
MELBOURNE is the highest ranking city for remote workers, with Cape Town scoring 63 out of 80 cities, according to a study that ranks the attractiveness of 80 global cities for remote working.
The company ranks the cities according to their remote working compliance regulations, cost of living, infrastructure and liveability.
WorkMotion, a global employment specialist, named Melbourne as the highest ranking city in the index as it scored well for employment compliance factors, citizen happiness and its digital nomad visa. Montreal and Sydney rank second and third.
Dublin ranked best for ease of employment compliance, meaning its compliance regulations were most straightforward, ahead of Helsinki and Copenhagen.
The city with the happiest citizens is Copenhagen, followed by Bern and Wellington. Istanbul had the most favourable tax rates for remote workers, ahead of Lisbon and Hong Kong.
WorkMotion co-founder and managing director Carsten Lebtig said this week the growth of remote working has opened up new avenues for employees around the world.
“People are increasingly less restricted by their location and the size of its job pool, and can regard foreign locations as possible work destinations regardless of whether or not they speak the local language.
“Now that the initial shock of the pandemic has subsided, we wanted to capture a snapshot of the remote working landscape as the first step in tracking how it changes over the coming years. Many remote workers are drawn to cities by the promise of a different lifestyle or climate.”
Lebtig said that although they had long anticipated the move to remote working and set up WorkMotion last year with this in mind, the pandemic had hastened the trend far faster than they could have imagined.
He said the technology for remote work was well-established and in use prior to the pandemic; what had changed in the intervening period was the mindset companies have towards remote working.
Many people working in office jobs enjoyed flexi working and split their time between their home and office, with little or no effect on productivity.
“Some companies have been able to reduce the size of their offices, cutting expenses. Now that the dust is settling, many companies are beginning to look further afield when hiring employees, comfortable that the best person for the job might be located in a different country. The study gives insight into which countries have the most straightforward regulations when hiring remote workers.”