Putting on a yoga session in a studio in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle after working all day on your computer facing the sea: an inaccessible way of life? For digital nomads, like Isabelle Maheux, it’s “ordinary” everyday life at the office.
Think again if you think Ms. Maheux is in vacation mode: she is at work and experiences the same constraints related to deadlines, meetings and deliverables.
“It takes discipline,” says the 44-year-old entrepreneur and strategic coaching consultant. Between the beautiful landscape, the sea, the mountains and the good weather, I have work to do! »
Working from a foreign country, for a short, medium or long period, is not for everyone. You have to accept, for example, not being able to see everything or do everything in the host country, recalls Isabelle Maheux.
“I try to live in the present moment,” says this entrepreneur from Beauce. I accept that I am not in Quebec and that I miss a lot of business. We live with FOMO all the time. (FOMO is the acronym for Fear Of Missing Out, or the constant fear of missing something.)
Josianne Desjardins, a 36-year-old freelance journalist, chose to work remotely, sometimes from Mexico, sometimes from Tunisia or Portugal, to combine her job with one of her passions: cooperative work.
“I have a lot of freedom and flexibility in my work,” she says, live from Saly, Senegal.
According to her, the key to success lies in organizing and planning her tasks. “It must not interfere with my productivity, she slips, I have to keep the same consistency. »
Discipline, organization, planning, concentration, good work habits and schedule structure come up in the words of the two digital nomads. To this, Jessica De Tillieux, a 35-year-old strategy coach 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 house in Quebec or manage our budget. »
She adds in passing that her finances have changed dramatically since she made the decision to work abroad: she considers that she spends much less and that she can work less as a result.
“It comes in waves, says this kitesurfer, but I would say I work around 20 hours a week when I’m based in Dahab, which is my favorite base. »
Working from home abroad has been gaining traction since the pandemic: According to a September 2022 report by US consulting firm MBO Partners, 16.9 million US workers describe themselves as “digital nomads”, an increase of almost 131% compared to 2019.
The profile of these globe-trotting workers is rather heterogeneous, underlines Manon Poirier, director general of the Order of Certified Human Resources Advisors of Quebec.
Beyond the skills and profiles of the workers, it is the types of positions that make teleworking abroad possible or not. They are often entrepreneurs, self-employed, contract workers – and most have a high level of education.
In the opinion of the sociologist of work Sid Ahmed Soussi, nomadism at work is representative of our time: it marks the end of a fixed mode of work, with a standardization of tasks and processes, as established at the beginning of the Twentieth century.
“The digital revolution has brought project management,” explains the professor of sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal. With team and project changes, people are already nomadic: they are gathered around a project and it changes over time. It is obvious that this favors the fact of changing places, of moving from one place to another. »
For how long ? That remains to be seen, Soussi believes.
“In a context of personnel shortages, it is the employees, at the moment, who have a great capacity for negotiation. 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. »
