Workations today - Insights and best practices

The Workation Alliance is an organisation founded in 2022 to connect companies that offer workations as a benefit to their employees. The mission of the Alliance is to promote the benefits of workations and help member companies overcome the challenges associated with offering this unique benefit. In just six months, the Workation Alliance has already attracted over 30 well-known companies as members. These members come from a wide range of industries and geographies and all share the common goal of providing their employees with an innovative way to improve their work-life balance.

Recently, the Workation Alliance hosted its first open webinar, aimed at sharing data and insights on the benefits of workation in the future. Hosted by Pieter Manden LLM – Global Mobility expert and founder of WorkFlex - the webinar featured experts from companies such as Allianz, Bosch, and Clevis, who shared their experiences with offering temporary work from abroad. If you missed it, you can now watch the full recording below.
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Workation is the act of traveling while working remotely. It provides a great opportunity for employees to have a change of environment, which can lead to increased productivity, creativity, and motivation. Previously reserved to freelancers and the self-employed, this concept is now also possible for employees since the pandemic changed the way we work.

The benefits of workations are not only limited to employees, offering this can also be very beneficial to the employers. It can provide a competitive advantage in terms of attracting and retaining talent and it can also lead to cost savings for the company by lowering employee turnover rates – because happy employees want to stay with you.

One of the key speakers at the webinar was Daniel Zinner – Associate Partner at Clevis Consulting and founder of the People Mobility Alliance, who discussed how Covid-19 has revolutionized the way global mobility works in corporations. Previously, the only way to work internationally was on an international assignment approved by the company. The options were then limited to where the company had subsidies and a project need for the individual. However, in the last three years, the approach has shifted towards an individualized approach, and the focus has shifted towards technology that could empower the administration to support people in this.

Gudrun Kipp from Robert Bosch was one of the key drivers in offering Workations at Bosch. They realized very early on that workation was not a short-lived trend, but something that is here to stay. In just one year since implementation, they have already had over 2000 requests, and employees would like to work abroad for even longer than they are currently allowed to. Gudrun's advice is to involve senior management as early as possible as it accelerated implementation massively for them.

Oana Haiek, Global Mobility at Allianz, shared that getting to where they are now in offering workation has been a continous learning process. However, it is so worth it when they receive feedback from employees on how much they enjoy the freedom that workation gives them.

All three agreed: workation is a trend that is here to stay. The experiences shared by Allianz, Bosch, and Clevis demonstrate the benefits that workation can bring to both employees and companies. As the world continues to adapt to the changing work environment, it is essential to consider new approaches such as workation to improve productivity, job satisfaction, and employee well-being.

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Do you want to offer workations compliantly in your company but skip the effort of creating a workation management process?

Book a Demo with one of our WorkFlex experts and find out how No-risk Workation can help you to offer this benefit without compliance risks.