Workation – The New Trend Of Work

Workation – Remote working while travelling

If ‘Work from home’ was the main keyword of Covid-19, then ‘Workation’ – shifting workplace away from office is the new trend of workers, especially young generation workers in the new normal. This concept comes from the fusion of the words ‘work’ and ‘vacation’, originated from U.S., Europe and later spread to Asian countries, including Vietnam.

According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index in 2021, 73% of survey participants shared their desire for the continuation of a remote working model. Furthermore, results on tourist demand and trends in the Covid-19 period in Vietnam from the latest report conducted by the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) showed that nearly 90% of respondents want to travel in the next 10 months. All the above combined with the need to refresh their workplace have become the main driver of workation trend.
In fact, various countries have implemented workation offers, especially Dubai with their remote visa program enabling workers to relocate to UAE from all over the world, and remotely work with access to all the necessary services including world-class utilities and telecoms. This program has attracted over 16.000 foreigners from December 2020 to January 2021, many of which are in workation model.

Ms. Nguyễn Thị An Hà, Head of Marketing and Strategic Partnership of Talentnet shared that “Workation” is the needed arrangement for workers to change their working environment to be more relaxing, which is expected to improve their creativity and productivity. It is almost a thing that “Workation” will become the first pick of those working in marketing, sales, customer service… – all the professions that are least-reliant on fixed equipment, or documents.

Note for a productive workation model

As its name suggests, workation is a double-edged sword as it blurs the lines between work and leisure, so much that workers without necessary preparation will be neither able to work effectively nor have fun properly. “Workation” may seem attractive, but it is surely not applicable to everyone.

Ms An Hà suggested that businesses should implement necessary regulations to guarantee “workation” workable. Specifically, employees should be transparent about timetables for work as well as leisure. On the other hand, leaders should proactively “schedule” mandatory working hours and set limitations for “flexibility”. As for businesses that measure working effectively solely on productivity, it is a must that both employers and employees agree on various index beforehand. “Most problems happen when one side or both sides fail to manage each other’s expectations. For example, leaders are demanding a profitable, down-to-earth plan yet the employees return a head-in-the-cloud, ambiguous plan when surrounded by a relaxed and calming atmosphere. Businesses and leaders must focus on communication in the event of lacking constant interactions of “Workation”.

Similar to all other trends, HR experts are required to pay attention, and quickly apply “Workation” to attract, and retain talents, which further improves the growth rate of businesses in the new normal. Contradictorily, businesses can face obstacles in managing human capital, providing negligence to new trends.

Source: VNExpress