Spotify is one of those companies in New York. Employees are allowed to work from home, or move to a place that may be more affordable, or better suited to the wishes of the employee. As a result, the music company was able to give up 16 floors in the World Trade Center. And Spotify is not the only one. All over the world companies are adapting their offices to hybrid working.
Completely new industry
Work from anywhere has received a huge boost due to corona. Entrepreneurs and employees are discovering that working in the office or from home is not the only option. When it used to be about digital nomads, it mostly concerned backpacking solo entrepreneurs who showed on social media how well they had their affairs in order; feet in the sand, laptop on their lap and a cocktail nearby.
Now the nomadic way of working is spurring a completely new industry. The startup Remote helps companies hire employees remotely, and has already raised nearly $200 million in investment funding. The company, founded by a Dutchman and a Portuguese, is not alone, by the way. Competitors such as Deel, Papaya Global, Lattice, Factorial and Turing are also promoting the trend of working remotely, and they have all raised tens of millions in financing.
Madeira or Iceland?
Besides companies, regions are also getting involved in the fight for working people. In recent years, Italy and Spain have already promoted shrinking regions, where foreigners could sometimes even obtain free housing. In this way, the governments hoped to inject new life into these regions.
The Portuguese Madeira is going big. The island pulls by now already more than 10,000 workers from all over Europe. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic places such as for example Zadar (Croatia), Bucharest (Romania), Kreta Catania (Italy), Malta and Iceland have been trying to attract digital nomads with generous visas, tax benefits of up to 70 percent, discounts on accommodations, restaurants and workspaces. Traditional nomad destinations such as Bali and Costa Rica were inaccessible due to travel restrictions, but are now also seeing growth in the digital workforce. Thanks in part to teleworkers, rental platform Airbnb has reported since the coronavirus pandemic a doubling of the number of long-term contracts.
For everyone?
It is not known how many Dutch people have started teleworking abroad since corona. The CBS says that 41 percent of the working population in 2020 worked from home and that 66 percent of the companies where working from home is possible expect that hybrid working is the future. From research by MBO Partners from 2021 it appears that 10.5 million Americans now describe themselves as digital nomads, an increase of 42 percent. A year earlier that increase was even 112 percent.
The trend therefore continues to exist, even after corona. The desire to work abroad fits seamlessly with the demands that younger employees in particular make. Employers who are able to give people a lot of freedom can also benefit. That is also seen by Sytse Sijbrandij, the Dutch CEO of Gitlab. “You can thus better attract talent in more places around the world. And those people can often work much more independently,” he said to Business Insider . “Less commuting results in more free time and also reduces CO2 emissions.”
