Workcation in Bali: How the Workplace is Changing

For those paying attention it’s clear: the world has changed. The change isn’t necessarily a changing-out of one thing for another, it’s more about the way we do things or how things are put together that has changed. We used to get set up by friends, go to church, or hit the bar to find love - now we use the app of choice. We used to have to flag down a cab and fight over the fare, now we order a ride from our phones and the fare is automatic. We used to have a large desk full of staplers, papers, pens, pencils, stamps, envelopes, framed pictures of our kids, a typewriter and now we have a laptop and a smartphone. Offices are becoming abandoned buildings and cafes are becoming offices.

Changes are quick, passing through our open fingers as quickly as sand or the latest version of Windows. Luckily, one thing that has changed is work.

Many people are familiar with the rise of digital nomadism. People from all over the world are able to work from a computer and have no need a physical location - this has resulted in a new class of work, called remote work, where people are choosing either to work from home or to travel and use the globe as their workplace. Since the publication of Tim Ferriss’s The 4-hour Work-Week the world has exploded in it’s love for digital nomadism and it’s desire for adventure.

Digital nomadism isn’t the only revolution though. In fact, digital nomadism and remote work are just subclasses of the modern working environment called “location independence”. If the spectrum of Location Independence has traditional work in an office 40 hours a week with 2 weeks vacation during the year as an extreme on one side and digital nomadism with complete location independence year-round as the other extreme then surely there must be a middle ground right?

There is, and slowly it’s materializing and making itself known. Location independence is quickly becoming available to everyone in the world in one form or another and the most prominent form of location independence arising today isn’t at the individual level, it’s at the company level and it’s called Workcation (sometimes spelled workation).

Companies in the last couple of decades found themselves in pickle - either they remained a traditional “rooted to the ground” companies or they became “distributed” companies composed of remote workers. The traditional companies had better cohesion among team members who saw each other in person but started having difficulty finding new talent to work with them and also retaining those among them who longed for location independence. The work was quality but the workers wanted that “special something”. So taking a page from the location independence book that distributed companies used, traditional companies discovered a solution - the workcation.

Not every company is going to be able to be distributed or even wants to be distributed, in fact some rely on the team being present together or find that physical togetherness is essential to achieving quality. A workcation allows these kinds of companies to be location independent together, taking a certain amount of time during the year to move everyone to another location where they work like normal (work) but live in an exotic environment where everyone can be adventurous together (vacation).

Workcations are still fairly new, and until recently most companies deciding to engage in a workcation had to use their own time and resources to make it happen - it wasn’t efficient, but it was effective. The majority of the planet’s surface still requires a company to use it’s own time and resources to achieve a workcation which discourages them from doing one, but there is one place where this isn’t the case - it’s a tropical paradise in the middle of the ocean that invites companies to do a workcation and makes it as easy as booking at flight.

This paradise is the island of Bali, a long-time digital nomad favorite and also the home of one-stop workcation miracle worker No-Location.

Bali has been visited by digital nomads for over a decade and because of this the island is uniquely set up to accommodate remote work and location independent culture. The internet is stable, reliable, and up to date. The accommodation is affordable, beautiful, and top notch. The locals are lovely, and the entire island is pure magic.

Bali is more than a pretty island - it’s a place of health and abundance - it’s a place where one can write an article drinking artisan coffee grown on the nearest mountain while looking at the ocean and taking writing breaks that consist of surfing and barbecue. It’s a place one can wake with the sunrise call of tropical birds and attend yoga sessions in an open-air hall overlooking the jungle before a skype meeting in a quiet coworking space. It’s a place where one can finish work and within minutes be in a secluded mountain temple, a hidden beach, or a fashionable restaurant. It’s a place that offers classes of every practical and esoteric variety one can dream of. It’s a place where one comes to realize: There is still magic in the world. It’s where a company comes to know: This can be us.

At the time of this writing, to best of the author’s knowledge, the largest workcation in history happened in Bali, undertaken by a Polish software development company called Droids on Roids and it was facilitated by a Bali-born startup called No-Location. For Droids on Roids it was as simple as a skype call with No-Location and arranging flight tickets - for No-Location it was business as usual. For the world it was a shining example of a bright and wonderful new era.

If you'd like to see our workation packages then visit us at http://no-location.com
If you'd like us to create a workation package especially for you then contact us at [email protected]