The hybrid holiday: a quest for work/leave balance

Pho­tos of lap­tops perched on beach­es and moun­tain­sides are pop­ping up all over people’s LinkedIn feeds, illus­trat­ing how work­ing from any­where (WFA) is fast becom­ing a sig­na­ture ben­e­fit of the new world of employ­ment. 

The num­ber of adverts for jobs offer­ing remote work on LinkedIn and Indeed in the UK increased by 329% between Jan­u­ary 2020 and March 2022, while the num­ber of relat­ed search­es leapt by 790% over the same peri­od. 

In the first quar­ter of 2022, remote tax con­sul­tan­cy The Work From Any­where Team pub­lished a sur­vey of firms employ­ing more than 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple around the world. It found that 54% of respon­dents allowed WFA and a sim­i­lar per­cent­age believed that this facil­i­ty would become a core employ­ee ben­e­fit in their indus­tries with­in a decade. Half of those oper­at­ing such a pol­i­cy allowed staff to work from any­where for more than 60 days a year.

Adapting to the digital-nomad lifestyle

Ecosia is a Berlin-based green search engine that allows its employ­ees to work from any­where for up to six months each year, although it encour­ages peo­ple to avoid fly­ing wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. Mean­while, Pleo, a Copen­hagen-based fin­tech uni­corn spe­cial­is­ing in expens­es man­age­ment, lets its staff work from any­where indef­i­nite­ly. Its flex­i­ble ben­e­fits pro­gramme even enables employ­ees to buy an extra 10 days of annu­al leave.

Ecosia’s chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer is Han­nah Wick­es, an Aus­tralian who’s plan­ning to work in Scot­land and Por­tu­gal for the next two months. She sees the allowance as a way of reward­ing peo­ple who may have been barred by Covid trav­el restric­tions from vis­it­ing rel­a­tives and friends over­seas for the best part of two years.

“This approach means that employ­ees often want to com­bine their annu­al leave with a work­ca­tion and make the most of their trav­el time,” she says. “It’s not uncom­mon for team mem­bers to spend up to two months a year tak­ing advan­tage of our flex­i­ble pol­i­cy.”

Pleo’s “peo­ple per­son”, Jessie Danyi, is “liv­ing and work­ing around the world, one con­ti­nent at a time”. Hav­ing spent from April to July this year in Moroc­co, the South African is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing rel­a­tives in Hun­gary. Her plan is to return to Africa after a month and spend six weeks on the coast of Kenya. 

Although the care­ful­ly curat­ed LinkedIn posts glam­or­ise the dig­i­tal-nomad lifestyle, any­one seek­ing a work­ca­tion will need to con­sid­er the more mun­dane real­i­ties of WFA. For instance, employ­ees at Ecosia must first run their trav­el plans past their col­leagues, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they’re going to be in dif­fer­ent time zones. 

Numer­ous prac­ti­cal chal­lenges might deter would-be trav­ellers. Danyi acknowl­edges that it can take a lot of effort to sort out visas, trav­el arrange­ments and suit­ably equipped accom­mo­da­tion. Find­ing a decent Wi-Fi con­nec­tion takes pri­or­i­ty over admir­ing the scenery, for instance. What’s more, you are actu­al­ly work­ing – mean­ing that you’re unlike­ly to get as much time to explore as you might have hoped. Not hav­ing a base or a local friend­ship net­work can also be exhaust­ing, she admits.

“Trav­el­ling with work brings trade-offs on how adven­tur­ous you can be,” Danyi says. “If you’re work­ing full time, that leaves morn­ings, evenings and week­ends, of course. Some­times, if you’ve had a busy week, you just want to watch Net­flix and catch up on your sleep. Or maybe you need to dri­ve to the near­est city to buy an eth­er­net cable because your Zoom calls are lag­ging, so you end up using your week­end for admin.”

While she was in Moroc­co, Danyi was able to gain a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion of the country’s cul­ture, while also find­ing enough time for some surf­ing. Over­all, she believes that the rewards of her expe­ri­ence there out­weighed any down­sides.

Striking the right balance

Work­ca­tions might also be the only method by which self-employed peo­ple, espe­cial­ly entre­pre­neurs start­ing a new busi­ness, can get away. Rachel Alli­son, who found­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Axe & Saw in Lon­don in March 2021, recent­ly spent a fort­night work­ing from an Airbnb in Por­to, where she enjoyed the local cui­sine and also went surf­ing. 

Alli­son admits that it was tricky to get the bal­ance right ini­tial­ly. But, once she man­aged to “nail it”, she reaped the ben­e­fits.

“In the first week, I was putting in my nor­mal hours – on Zoom calls all morn­ing, dur­ing lunchtime and even at 5pm. That left me feel­ing frus­trat­ed and fraz­zled,” Alli­son admits. “But I was keen to make things work. I became aware that usu­al­ly there’s not so much going on from Mon­day to Wednes­day, so those were the times to get my head down. Once I’d cracked that, my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rock­et­ed.”

Is a work­ca­tion an ade­quate replace­ment for annu­al leave? Not for Alli­son, who says that her time in Por­tu­gal “allowed me a rest dur­ing an extreme­ly busy peri­od for my busi­ness, which is still new. But a prop­er hol­i­day would undoubt­ed­ly still be the most effec­tive way to recharge.”

Danyi believes that firms embrac­ing WFA will see more of their employ­ees adopt­ing a par­tial dig­i­tal-nomad lifestyle that fol­lows the sea­sons. Brazil­ian entre­pre­neur Mar­cos Car­val­ho agrees, pre­dict­ing that more peo­ple will become autonomous work­ers in decen­tralised com­pa­nies, giv­ing them­selves more time to pur­sue their pas­sions.

If trav­el is one of these and you also have young chil­dren, how to care for them prop­er­ly while you’re work­ing abroad adds to the list of chal­lenges. Car­val­ho co-found­ed Bound­less Life in Sep­tem­ber 2021 to address that very issue. His busi­ness offers accom­mo­da­tion, childcare/education and co-work­ing spaces in coun­tries includ­ing Por­tu­gal, Greece and Italy.

While Bound­less Life does attract cor­po­rate nine-to-fivers, it’s built a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing among self-employed peo­ple and entre­pre­neurs who share Allison’s dis­com­fort about leav­ing their nascent busi­ness­es unat­tend­ed for long.

“Being with us helps them to feel they’re in the right place to achieve a bet­ter bal­ance with their fam­i­lies, while giv­ing them more cre­ativ­i­ty to direct towards their work,” Car­val­ho says. “That’s why entre­pre­neurs are attract­ed to this lifestyle.”

While he is com­fort­able with the fact that his own lifestyle reg­u­lar­ly blurs work and leisure trav­el, Wick­es, Danyi and Alli­son are all con­scious that a work­ca­tion could do the oppo­site of its intend­ed pur­pose and actu­al­ly increase the risk of burnout.

It’s there­fore cru­cial to estab­lish strict work/life bound­aries while tak­ing one, accord­ing to Rowe­na Hen­ni­gan, an Irish nation­al who runs her train­ing and coach­ing busi­ness, RoRe­mote, from Zaragoza in north-east Spain. 

“Exhibit­ing self-dis­ci­pline in your work, down­time and well­be­ing mat­ters even more in this con­text,” she stress­es. “To avoid the fear of miss­ing out, you need to know when you’re work­ing and when you’re actu­al­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the loca­tion you’ve trav­elled to.”

Hen­ni­gan believes that unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions and blurred bound­aries will inevitably cause ten­sion, mak­ing the expe­ri­ence unbal­anced and, ulti­mate­ly, coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Being clear about when you’re an employ­ee and when you’re a trav­eller, she rec­om­mends, is the key to get­ting the max­i­mum mileage from a work­ca­tion.