life at work | Between “landscape and sea” post

Do a yoga session in a studio in the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica after working all day on your computer facing the sea: an inaccessible way of life? For digital nomads like Isabelle Maheux, this “ordinary” everyday life is in the office.

Think again if you think M.^I Maheux is in vacation mode: she is at work and faces the same constraints regarding deadlines, meetings, and deliverables.

“It takes discipline,” says the 44-year-old entrepreneur and strategic training consultant. Between the gorgeous landscapes, the sea, the mountains, and the good weather, I have work to do! »

Working from a foreign country for a short, medium or long term is not for everyone. You have to accept, for example, not being able to see everything or do everything in the host country, recalls Isabel Mihoex.

“I try to live in the moment,” says this entrepreneur from Beauce. I agree that I’m not in Quebec and I miss a lot of business. We live with FOMO all the time. (FOMO is short for Fear of missing outor the constant fear of losing something).

Josiane Desjardins, a 36-year-old freelance journalist, has chosen to work remotely, sometimes from Mexico, sometimes from Tunisia or Portugal, to combine her job with one of her interests: collaborative work.

“I have a lot of freedom and flexibility in my work,” she says, who lives from Sally, Senegal.

According to her, the key to success lies in organizing and planning her tasks. “It shouldn’t affect my productivity, it’s slipping, I have to maintain the same consistency.”

creativity

Discipline, organization, planning, focus, good work habits and schedule structure come in the words of digital nomads. To this, Jessica Di Tiglio, a 35-year-old strategy trainer who regularly goes to work in Dahab, Egypt, adds creativity.

“From a distance, it takes creativity, to find practical solutions,” she says, for example to manage our home in Quebec or manage our budget. »

She adds in passing that her finances have changed radically since she made the decision to work abroad: she considers that she spends much less and can therefore work less.

“It comes in waves, which is what windsurfing enthusiasts define, but I can say that I work about 20 hours a week when I’m in Dahab, and it’s my favorite anchor point.”

Insider-out work has been gaining momentum since the pandemic: According to a report published in September 2022 by US consulting firm MBO Partners, 16.9 million US workers describe themselves as “digital nomads,” up nearly 131% compared to 2019.

The features of these itinerant workers around the world are somewhat heterogeneous, says Manon Poirier, general manager of the Quebec-based Syndicate of Certified Human Resource Consultants.

In addition to the skills and profiles of workers, it is the types of jobs that make remote work abroad possible or not. Most often they are entrepreneurs, self-employed, contract workers – most of them have a high level of education.

in the mood of time

Labor sociologist Seyyed Ahmed al-Soussi sees the Bedouin at work as representing our era: it marks the end of a fixed way of working, with standardization of tasks and processes, as defined at the beginning of the twentieth century.^H a century.

“The digital revolution has brought management through projects,” explains a professor of sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal. With team and project changes, people are already nomads: they gather around a project and that changes over time. This obviously reinforces the fact of changing places, moving from place etc. “

till when ? It is not yet clear, Mr. Al-Soussi believes.

“In the context of staff shortages, employees, for the time being, have a great bargaining power. But the situation is situational: the balance of power between employees and employers can change quickly… so I don’t think it will be forever.”