When Sam (name has been changed), 26, spent a month in Spain this summer, he didn’t plan to let his manager know he had left the country. That was, until a colleague let slip on his whereabouts a week and a half in, during a Zoom call. Sam says his manager “just told me to make sure I got all my work done”.
He certainly did. Between an hour of yoga and meditation every morning, an hour-long walk after lunch, more yoga in the evening and dinners out with friends at night, Sam reckons he did about three hours’ work a day — but says this was more than enough time to make sure he pulled his weight. “I had a lot less to do than usual, so I did a lot less,” he says.
His manager made no complaints. Sam is untethered to an office. Before the pandemic, the company he works for was headquartered in a large British city, but now he and his colleagues work from home fulltime, meeting only once or twice a month at most.
He has now taken three on-the-clock trips abroad since Covid — two weeks separately in 2021 and 2022, and a further month this year — all without the go-ahead from his boss..
