Will you benefit from a remote first working world?
I wrote this article “WFH: Be careful what you wish for!” last year after Airbnb released their work anywhere strategy.
Whilst I was a big fan of their approach to flexible working, what interested me is how all of this will pan out in the longer term.
Not just for Airbnb specifically, but for all global businesses who are moving towards a similar remote model.
With geographic location no longer a fixed factor, how will this impact the location of where employees end up being based?
For sure, there will be benefits for many, however, will some people potentially lose out?
We are nearly a year on and recently have seen some big changes in the tech world.
After a period of increased hiring activity, many tech CEOs have had to admit to making grave errors in their manpower planning strategies
This has resulted in mass layoffs across the global tech world.
Another tech giant that has made large strides in creating a flexible location work environment is Spotify.
They promote the mantra “Work isn’t somewhere you go, it’s something you do” and it’s very true.
They also announced a 6% cut to their workforce.
These two things are not related but as with Airbnb, their remote working policy does raise some interesting questions for the future.
Airbnb announced as part of their policy that they would be moving to country-specific pay scales. If you were above the country scale you would maintain your current salary level and anyone below would be moved up.
Sounds great if you live in a cheaper regional area, but perhaps not so great for those that for example live in London.
Of course, there are high-demand skill sets that won’t be as affected as much by this, but there are also many support functions that potentially will be.
Spotify has a very flexible policy, you can read it here, as they will let you move anywhere within your current region as long as they have a legal entity set up there.
So, if you are in Stockholm for example you could work remotely in the Europe region.
It doesn’t mention whether remuneration would change depending on where you are within this region, but if you can earn Stockholm money and live in Budapest then it sounds like a good deal!
The question that interests me is when Spotify starts to resume hiring and replace the 6% they have cut, which regions will these jobs become available in?
For high-demand, tech candidates they will hire wherever they can as they don’t really have a great deal of choice about this.
The wider business support roles may however be a different story.
If we look at Central Europe as an example. Vienna to Bratislava for instance is an hour by train, but average wages vary dramatically. If you are a global business operating in English and local language skills are not so important, then there is a significant cost saving to hire in Slovakia as opposed to Austria.
This is a simple example and of course, there are many factors, but you can start to see that there will be cost efficiencies if you can move your hiring out of higher-cost areas.
There are a lot of job roles that could realistically be handled anywhere in the world.
The institute for global change wrote about this issue and used the term “anywhere jobs”.
They estimated that in the UK, this could affect 18% of jobs with 5.9 million jobs mainly in ICT, financial and professional services in London and the South East.
When we look at the short term it is probably not going to affect too many people, but when we look at it over the medium to long term, we may well see a shift in where job roles are located.
If you have an anywhere job and live in a city or country which historically has a higher pay scale, then this remote first world may not be as advantageous as you first thought!
