12 months living as a digital nomad, from LinkedIn, describes how a GE talent development executive spent a year as a digital nomad.
The key quote describes what she did when she finished her year as a digital nomad:
A point of culmination of this experiment is when I had the opportunity to pitch my experience to the CHRO of GE and so I have presented my learnings about this aspect of the future of HR, painting an image of digital nomads and flexible work at GE.
In the forecasting business, this is what's called a signal.
And in this case, the signal is corporations are starting to consider creating digital nomad programs.
There are 3 reasons we see this as a strong signal.
First, the author of this article is in talent development. This means she works with the people who decide the remote work policies at GE.
Having someone in her position supporting digital nomadism makes it much more likely GE will allow others to become digital nomads.
Related to this, she was able to pitch the chief human relations officer (CHRO) at GE on her experiences. This means the senior team at GE is now aware of digital nomads.
And 3rd, this didn't happen at Google or Facebook or some tech startup. It happened at GE, a traditional manufacturing firm.
According to the findings of the 2019 MBO Partners digital nomad study, there are about 7.3 million American digital nomads. Of these, about 3.1 million report having traditional jobs.
Based on our digital nomad interviews, the vast majority of job holding digital nomads have been allowed to do this outside of any official corporate policy. In most cases, their boss decided to allow them to travel.
This is starting to change. As with GE, corporations are starting to explore, evaluate and consider - and in some cases, putting in place - digital nomad policies and programs.
See the MBO Partners digital nomad research brief (we worked with MBO Partners on this study) for more on this topic.
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