The Rise of Global Digital Freelancing

Source: Ty Francis

2015 saw the rise of a new breed of professional within the digital industry. Freelancers and outsourcing work is nothing new in the fast paced environment of a digital agency, but many young professionals have taken a new approach to freelancing, paying for their travels around the world with remote work for agencies and businesses in the UK.

We can track this trend back to the UK itself, with hundreds of tech workers leaving London for more affordable and friendly digital environments in areas such as Bristol, Birmingham, and Brighton. It was also commonplace for a Birmingham or Brighton web agency to hire remote workers from London who had the experience but didn’t want to leave the capital. The philosophy soon grew and digital freelancers begun taking their remote work elsewhere, mainly outside of the UK.

We get a glimpse of what this sort of profession may entail from an article in The Telegraph. Anna Hart, who used to work in Hackney as freelance journalist, thought she had it great with her own studio space and flexible hours until she heard about Hubud in Bali. Hubud is an unconventional office which houses a multitude of freelancers and self-employed individuals, the majority of which provide work for Europe and America. This has sparked a mini-revolution of sorts, with workers in the UK taking the opportunity to explore new places whilst continuing with their full-time duties.

For many, the opportunity to travel can be difficult with full-time work commitments always looming, and whilst many may have the intention, they end up sticking with a particular position far longer than they ever intended. Whilst this is certainly nothing to be looked down upon, the type of working environment a place such as Hubud provides could signal a growing shift in how many view the workplace.

The Hubud itself, located on the beautiful and picturesque Indonesian island, now houses a 250 strong community of workers across many fields including healthcare, fashion design, photography, modelling, and most prominently, digital services such as web design, digital marketing and programming. There are many reasons as to why the digital industry has taken the lead with this kind of working environment, but the prominent theory is that most services within the digital industry are mainly knowledge based, meaning they can be accomplished easily with just a laptop and internet access.

This practice has now been creatively minted as ‘digital nomadism’, used to describe an asset light generation who are flexible and move can around freely for professional purposes. The key word in this title, digital, shows how these workers leverage technology to support a more independent lifestyle. It also highlights how recent the trend of digital nomadism must be, with cloud computing and hyper-connectivity only becoming a reality in the past decade and a half.

Digital nomadism was also partly inspired by business guru Timothy Ferriss, who in his popular book ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’, described a new generation of entrepreneurs who are increasingly rejecting the traditional 9 – 5 working lifestyle, choosing location independence instead and indulging in travel alongside their professional duties. The ideal is gaining so much traction that the Soho House Group, a London based property investor, is rumoured to be launching Homework, a professional cooperative which enables its members to hot-desk around the world.

Technological and financial developments have made this lifestyle possible today, and millennials are now given more choice in how and where they conduct their professional activities. The worst thing a job can do is breed resentment, especially for the things we believe we could be doing instead, and this is why the digital nomad approach is so appealing to many young people, and could signal a huge shake-up of traditional working practices.