64 Business The Economist May 7th 2022
F
or mostwhitecollar workers, it used
to be very simple. Home was the place
you left in order to go to work. The office
was almost certainly the place you were
heading to. Coworking spaces were for
entrepreneurial people in tshirts who
wanted to hang out with other entrepre
neurial people in tshirts. You could stay
at a hotel on a work trip but it was not a
place to get actual work done, which is
why a hotel’s “business centre” defined
all of business as using a printer.
The pandemic has thrown these neat
categories up into the air. Most obvi
ously, home is now also a place of work.
According to a recent Gallup survey,
threequarters of American workers
whose jobs can be performed remotely
expect to spend time doing just that in
the future. And offices are increasingly
where you go to put the company into
company—through collaborative work as
well as through social activities.
But the boldest version of remote
working extends well beyond these two
locations. “Working from anywhere”
envisages a completely untethered exis
tence, in which people can do their jobs
in Alaska or Zanzibar. Plenty of destina
tions are keen to blur the lines between
business and leisure (“bleisure”, the
world’s ugliest chunk of wordvomit).
Hotels are revamping some of their
rooms as offices and rolling out work
fromhotel offers. Entire countries are
reinventing themselves as places to mix
play and work (“plork”?): the Bahamas,
Costa Rica and Malta are among those
that offer visas for digital nomads.
The workfromanywhere world
edged a little closer on April 28th, when
Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s boss, outlined
new policies for employees of the prop
ertyrenting platform. As well as being
able to move wherever they want in theircountry of employment without any
costofliving adjustment, Airbnb staff
can also spend up to 90 days each year
living and working abroad. Mr Chesky has
been living out of Airbnb properties him
self for the past few months, and thinks
this is the future.
The idea of a globetrotting existence
sounds wonderful. Nevertheless, plenty of
barriers remain. Some are practical. The
legal, payroll and tax ramifications of
working from different locations in the
course of a year are an administrative
headache (Mr Chesky admits as much, and
says that he will opensource Airbnb’s
solution to this problem).
Mundane issues like it support be
come more complicated when you are
abroad. Working from anywhere is only
feasible if your equipment functions
reliably. If the WiFi at your Airbnb re
minds you of what life was like with mo
dems, your options may be limited. If you
spill suntan lotion on your laptop, the
people on the hotel’s reception desk are
more likely to offer you sympathy than a
replacement computer. Another set of obstacles is more
personal. The carefree promise of work
ing from anywhere is far easier to realise
if you don’t have actual cares. Children of
a certain age need to go to school; part
ners may not be able to work remotely
and have careers of their own to manage.
The option to work from anywhere
will be most attractive to people who
have wellpaid jobs and fewer obliga
tions: childless tech workers, say. For
many other people, the “anywhere” in
working from anywhere will still boil
down to a simple choice between their
home and their office. That might be a
recipe for resentment within teams.
Imagine dialling into a Zoom call co
vered in baby drool, and hearing Greg
from product wax lyrical about how
amazing Chamonix is at this time of year.
Resentment may even run the other
way. Hybrid work has already smudged
the boundary between professional and
personal lives. Making everywhere a
place of work smears them further.
Countries that used to be places to get
away from it all will become places to
bring it all with you. Turning down
meetings when you are on a proper
vacation is wholly reasonable; it is not an
option when you are plorking on a jobli
day. Antigua and Barbuda’s tourism
slogan, “The beach is just the beginning”,
sounds a lot more idyllic if the punchline
in your head isn’t, “There’s also the week
ly sales review”.
Adding to the menu of working op
tions for soughtafter employees makes
sense. Mr Chesky’s new policies will
probably help him attract better people
to Airbnb. They are certainly aligned with
the service he is selling. But for the fore
seeable future, working from anywhere
will be a perk for a lucky few rather than a
blueprint for things to come.It sounds wonderful. But working from anywhere is only for a lucky fewBartlebySuntan lotion, laptop charger
main force behind the boom. That, indus
trywatchers agree, would be Amazon. The
eemporium “is the absolute numberone
catalyst for supplychain transformation,
no question”, says Julian Counihan of
Schematic Ventures, a vcfirm. Whereas
the supply chain has historically been seen
as a cost centre, Amazon has turned it into
a moneymaker. With the rise of nextday
and sameday delivery, consumers’ expec
tations have changed dramatically. As
shipping times plummet, logistics re
quires “way, way more supplychain tech
nology”, says Mr Counihan. Some scepticism is in order. Many of
the startups look little different from the
incumbents they are seeking to disrupt.
Kuehne + Nagel, a big Swiss freightfor
warder, has invested heavily in digitisation
even if it doesn’t “sing and dance that they
are a ‘digital’ freight forwarder”, as Mr
Schreiber of Freightos freely admits. C.H.
Robinson, a big American logistics firm, is
“really a digital freight broker”, says Mr
Armstrong. And although some of the big
incumbents rely on antiquated technolo
gy, he adds, they have much more scale
than any of the newcomers. That lets themsecure lower prices from ocean liners, air
freighters and other carriers.
Still, as Ms Keckarovska points out, the
upstarts have a shot. The freightforward
ing market remains highly fragmented, so
they need not take on a huge incumbent.
dhland Kuehne + Nagel, the two biggest
brokers, have a combined global market
share of just 6%. And despite their digital
aspirations, the incumbents’ tech nous
leaves plenty of room for improvement. Of
the 20 biggest established freightforward
ers, 15 apparently use the same offthe
shelf tmsto manage their shipments. n