‘If I didn’t take a remote job I’d have to live in Dublin or London. I felt more peace in Cork’

The Covid-19 pandemic transformed our working lives in ways that we are still only beginning to fully understand. The growth in remote working during the pandemic and the mainstreaming of hybrid working afterwards has arguably been the biggest change that many employers and employees have embraced.

Grow Remote is an Irish social enterprise whose core aim is to bring remote working jobs to Ireland to reinvigorate rural communities. It offers training programmes to new and seasoned remote workers and trains employers/managers to deal with hybrid teams.

“We want to boost the remote working ecosystems which lead to thriving communities,” says John Evoy, general manager of Grow Remote. “Our aim is to help local people get remote jobs rather than encouraging digital nomadism where people move around with their work.” The social enterprise is hosting its first in-person summit on June 8th and 9th.

The biggest challenge in the post-pandemic world, according to Evoy is that a lot of companies don’t know what’s the best way forward – to embrace remote/hybrid working, to get everyone back to the office, or to give up their offices completely. Many workers found that they were just as productive – if not more so – working remotely during the pandemic, but some argue that team productivity, networking (particularly with new people) and communications suffered.

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Denise Kelly, who lives in rural Co Galway, got her current part-time administration job through Grow Remote’s Slack digital noticeboard while she was doing one of their free online courses.

After being a full-time parent for years, Kelly says that part-time work from home suits her as she drops and collects her children from secondary school. “Not having co-workers can be difficult at times – you miss the craic, going for coffee or from Friday drinks – but part-time working from home has really given me a confidence boost,” says Kelly.

Although she has a workspace set up in a spare room, Kelly says that one thing she had to learn as a part-time worker was not to check emails outside of her work hours. “When I stopped doing this, it didn’t make the work any harder. I’d never drop my pen if something needs doing but it’s about give and take, if I need to collect a sick child from school, my boss is accommodating about that.”

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Kim Gray Ennis returned to live in Ireland from North America during the pandemic. “Remote working didn’t appeal to me in the beginning as I loved my in-person job. I was set on getting back to my life in Toronto,” she says.

Although from Dublin originally, Gray Ennis moved to live in west Cork in 2020 as that was where many of her friends were living. “Soon, I realised that if I didn’t take a remote job, I’d have to live in Dublin or London, and I felt more peace here.”

In February 2023, Gray Ennis began a new four-day week job with ChangeX, a social enterprise which helps social innovators fund new community-based projects. With staff in Dublin, Brazil, Spain, India and the United States, ChangeX is a good example of a remote-working culture.

You have to make more of an effort to meet people if you work remotely, whereas people who work in offices get their social quota for the day

—  Kim Gray Ennis

Gray Ennis sometimes uses the Ludgate Hub co-working space in Skibbereen in west Cork. “It’s nice to use a hub sometimes after not leaving the house for hours or if the wifi is down due to a storm. But I also like working from home.”

She is keen to set up a monthly co-working day for remote workers in the Ballydehob area. “You have to make more of an effort to meet people if you work remotely, whereas people who work in offices get their social quota for the day. But I can’t imagine doing a daily commute now.”

She believes that many younger workers expect to have a good work/life balance so that they can pursue other projects and hobbies. “The new way of working is about people being committed to their responsibilities and their [work] teams with everyone treated as adults and trusted to do their work,” she adds.

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One drawback of the big exodus of workers from cities during the pandemic is that property prices in parts of rural Ireland have shot up. It can also be difficult to get year-round rentals as owners of houses in holiday spots tend to put them on Airbnb during the tourist season.

“Legislation around Airbnb would be a good step forwards,” says Gray Ennis who tends to work in parts of Europe or stay with family in Dublin during the summer months. “If I had children, it would be impossible to uproot like this.”

The development of co-working hubs through the Government initiative connectedhubs.ie has given remote workers alternatives to working from home.

Denis Jastrzebski (19), who lives in Longford, varies the spaces he works in. “I work from home most of the time but I also work in cafes or at Co:worx, the co-working hub in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford”. Jastrzebski, who runs his digital marketing agency CuriousHawk entirely remotely says that meeting other remote workers is great for socialising and networking. He is also involved in the local Grow Remote Chapter (social group) in Longford.

“The real benefit for me is the costs are low. I work with a lot of international talent in different time zones and we have a communications charter which sets the communications standards for us.” For example, different digital platforms are used for urgent and non-urgent messages so people don’t have to be constantly checking various apps.

Jastrzebski says that the key attributes for remote workers are self-motivation, self-discipline and determination. However, he discovered that this also means knowing when to switch off from work. “I ended up nearly burning out. It’s very easy to slip into work mode at any point in the day when you are working from home. I almost had to stop everything in its tracks to figure out which aspects were taking the biggest toll.”

In the end, he realised that setting boundaries – such as only having notifications turned on at specific times – was key to working better. Now, he says, “I wouldn’t change the way I work if I could.”