Out of office: The rise of the ‘workcation’

“Workcations” are a relatively new item on the expanded menu of post-Covid working options. Photo / Peggy Anke Wu, Unsplash

Dalia Hamiyeh, a communications executive at Publicis in Lausanne, will spend a week this summer working remotely in her family’s homeland of Lebanon. In 2022, the French media group began allowing staff to work for up to six weeks a year from any of the 100-plus countries where it has offices. “Most of us use the time in summer,” said Hamiyeh.

She will add the working week to a fortnight’s holiday. Her cousins visiting from Singapore will do their remote work alongside her and she aims to spend breakfast, lunch and evenings with family. “I always get comments from my grandmother that I work too much, even though I only work 8am to 6pm,” she said. “But they do understand. They are super-grateful. The fact that we get to come back, even for a couple of weeks, is better than nothing.”

Summer “workcations” — essentially doing a job from a holiday location — are a relatively new item on the expanded menu of post-Covid working options. So fresh is the trend that data is still scarce. But a range of employees’ testimonies and corporate policies show demand is strong.

In a recent YouGov poll, 53 per cent of Americans who can work remotely said they were interested in taking a workcation in the next 12 months, with interest highest among 18- to 34-year-olds. (Both Americans and Britons named Italy as their preferred destination.)

At its best, a workcation can boost productivity while offering some of the relaxation of a holiday. Philippa Brackfield, a writer in London, often works alongside her husband from their Devon cottage. “He would say, when he’s working here he feels like he’s on holiday, because he can pop to the beach at lunchtime, go to the Green Dragon pub at six,” she said. Working amid nature — known as “green desking” — is a related trend that advocates have argued can spark creativity.

Big firms on board

Many companies have responded to employees’ wishes by offering so-called “work from anywhere” weeks. Alphabet and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote to staff in 2021: “Googlers will be able to temporarily work from a location other than their main office for up to four weeks per year (with manager approval).” The aim was to “give everyone more flexibility around summer and holiday travel”, he said.

US bank Citigroup last year allowed employees to work remotely for the last two weeks of August and December. American Express has introduced four weeks a year of “work from anywhere”.

Any company offering such policies has to navigate regulatory issues: tax liabilities if an employee exceeds a certain time in a place, immigration rules, insurance and corporate safety protocols.

Many companies view workcations as a free post-pandemic perk they can give staff in a tight labour market. Often, the option emerges from fraught negotiations on the future of offices between employees, who typically want more remote work, and bosses, who seek more office presence.

But some companies also believe “work from anywhere” weeks can boost productivity. Richard Beech is co-founder of Electroheads, a London-based e-bike and scooter ecommerce brand. About a year ago, he escaped to a house near the beach in Cornwall to launch the company’s website, which he achieved while also surfing every day. “It was a highly successful week, from my perspective,” he said by Zoom from a London office that was empty of staff on a remote-work Friday in summer. “I was surprised by the benefits for my mental health. It’s been a transformative experience.”

Working in a quiet place away from the office, he explained, “your pace of thinking goes down, but your productivity goes up”.

Cornwall has fewer distractions than London. Even getting a coffee there is less stressful, he noted. That allows longer periods of concentrated work, which is especially helpful for big projects.

Electroheads now offers to pay employees’ costs for short workcations. Beech called this “encouraging people to just eff off for a week and see what happens”. He tries not to burden employees by setting targets for their time away. Yet few of them have so far accepted the offer. Beech said some feared “missing out” while away from the office, and bosses might worry they would not be able to manage their teams remotely.

Many people use workcations during their children’s summer holidays. A couple might take turns working and spending time with the children. A European software developer who is going to stay with American in-laws for a month said: “Visiting family usually involves a lot of sitting around waiting for things to happen, so being able to work means I don’t burn through my holiday days sitting on a couch in Indiana.”

Many people use workcations during their children’s summer holidays. Photo / NZME

James Tidmarsh, an international lawyer in Paris, is spending this summer working from various holiday locations, from Geneva to Croatia, while his daughter is off school. “I can keep everything going with a laptop and a large screen I haul around,” he said. “The only requirement is a fast connection and a picturesque backdrop for Zoom and Teams. I used to worry about clients’ reaction. Now it’s simply a talking point, or a way to connect, and we get along and get the business done.”

Maria Soleil, founder of Soleil Marketing in London, who takes two or three remote-working trips a year, agreed: “I have clients who tend not to mind where I am. Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.” For client meetings, she said, “Zoom is the default now, it’s very accepted.” In any case, in most sectors there are fewer such meetings in summer.

Workcations often involve push and pull between staff and bosses. A Spanish banker reported: “Some bosses frown upon employees that work remotely. My boss loves spending long weekends on his favourite island. So he is more open to remote working during summer.” A partner at the London office of a major US law firm said the freedom to take workcations was “very much correlated with seniority”. From mid-July to the end of August, “the expectation is that the majority of the partnership will work from second homes or holiday homes. Juniors are often asked to remain in the office during that period,” he added.

Beyond clients and bosses, there is another obstacle to workcations: unsuitable locations. A good holiday home or hotel is not necessarily a good place to work. To solve this problem, a number of companies have entered the market for workcation destinations.

Aled Maclean-Jones is co-founder of Ashore, a platform that lets companies book short stays for staff in British holiday homes suitable for work. To qualify for the platform, homes must install a workspace approved by Ashore, and have excellent WiFi. Brackfield, who rents out her cottage on Ashore, said prospective customers should think about how good the connection would be in homes advertised on other sites. “Is that WiFi going to cut out in the middle of one of my board meetings?” she asked.

Workcationers also like having a decent coffee shop nearby, said Maclean-Jones. And he recommended that couples had separate workplaces in the home, to avoid driving each other mad. Absent these things, he warned, a workcation can be “the worst of both worlds”: neither good for work nor for vacation.

Written by: Simon Kuper

© Financial Times