How we implemented a genuine “work from anywhere” scenario: Making scary decisions, Part 4

We’ve already talked in previous posts about our async and remote-first working philosophies – but for us, there is another level to giving our employees the freedom to do their best work - “work from anywhere”.

Our team is a group of highly skilled, intelligent people and wherever they’re based we want each of them to be able to work in an environment that inspires them, brings out their passions, feeds their ambitions, and empowers them to do their best work by having access to the lifestyle that best suits them on a holistic level. This mindset supports our goal of delivering great results on some of the toughest dev challenges out there.

Many companies promote the idea of working from anywhere, but it’s not always that simple in reality because so many factors come into play – factors like time-zones, culture, and the way of working. That means that to get it right, we need to have some ground rules in place – and this goes way beyond equipping our people’s homes with essentials like monitors, laptops, and comfortable chairs – we’ve focused on ensuring that working from anywhere is truly a part of our culture.

If someone is the right match for us, we’ll hire them wherever they are – whether that’s central London, a beach in Brazil, or in Patagonia. In addition to who we hire, we also extend the opportunity to work from anywhere to our existing team members – if they want to move to their dream location, we actively support them to do so and because our way of working means we’re not restricted by the location of our offices, we can really offer them that freedom.

As part of this commitment, this year we started a sponsorship program to support our SOUTHIES who’d like to move those countries where SOUTHWORKS has presence. For instance, Spain is particularly appealing for lots of our Latin American team members, but without a European passport the idea of moving to Europe can feel like a distant dream due to regulatory restrictions. If they really feel that living in, say, Barcelona and having the chance to travel during the weekends would support their full-life vision and a healthy work-life balance, then we will do all we can to help them achieve this by supporting them with their paperwork and using our presence in those countries to sponsor them to make that move.

And it’s not about forcing people to move in order to keep working for us – it’s about facilitating the move they want without ever objecting or holding them back. It’s about encouraging them to go and get what they want in life. Throughout these last two years we’ve proved to ourselves that we have the process, principles, and working methods to really work from anywhere, and knowing that SOUTHWORKS is truly prepared to enable that empowers our people to achieve their dreams. We love talking with those who are moving and seeing the positive impact we’ve been able to have on their lives. It’s a big part of our “Make Everything Right™” mantra – we want to be part of the solution in our people’s lives.

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Does a true “work from anywhere” culture sound like your kind of thing?

‍Learn more about how we work on our blog, or check out our open positions if you’re interested in becoming a SOUTHIE.

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