Workation
The new mix of work and vacation
Vacation or work? Thanks to home office, the pleasant can be combined with the useful.
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With your laptop to vacation paradise and open your home office there? An Expedia study shows that employees are open to it.
According to the Leibniz Institute for the German Language, the corona pandemic has already produced more than 1,000 new words, among them the so-called "workation". The term art is a mixture of the English words "work" and "vacation". What is meant by this is that in home office times it is easily possible to choose the location of your workplace and relocate it to where you might otherwise go on vacation. The online travel agency Expedia commissioned a study and found that around half of those who work in the home office long for a change of scenery.
Good for the mind
According to the survey, 49 percent of the home office workers surveyed would like a regular change of scenery and would "like to work from another location from time to time". Because many exclude their home as a vacation spot because of their current permanent residence, a majority of 55 percent said they would "prefer to work from a vacation spot rather than take a vacation at home".
According to the Expedia study, around a third of respondents therefore assume that a workation would have a positive effect on their own well-being and the results of their own work: 37 percent said they would work more relaxed from a location other than their home 33 percent think they would be happier if given the option. In addition, 31 percent said that they work more productively in a workation than in their own four walls.
Old concept, new target group?
However, the phenomenon of workation is not entirely new. So-called digital nomads have been using the offers of global co-working spaces for years and work from their laptops, but this is a lifestyle. In contrast to this, a workation takes place like the usual vacation, i.e. limited in time. The positive side effect: Because you use your stay to work, employees do not have to take vacation for their work.
What is new, however, is the large number of people who work from home and are therefore eligible for a workation: According to a representative survey by the digital association Bitkom, a little less than 20 million people currently work at least partially from their home office, around 10.5 million of them exclusively. The association assumes that this proportion will shrink again to around eight percent after the pandemic, which, however, means almost tripling the pre-corona level (three percent).