For the past three years, she\u2019s been travelling with her son, Will, who has just turned 11, and husband Brendon. Using Mexico as a home base, they\u2019ve spent a few months at a time in Brazil, Indonesia, the United States, Singapore, Europe and Britain.<\/p>\n
Being online during New Zealand business hours means Hughes starts work at 5.30am when she\u2019s in Southeast Asia, then has the afternoon and evening free to go exploring. In Mexico, where they have temporary residency, she starts late and works into the night.<\/p>\n
All she needs is a Wi-Fi connection \u2013 sometimes hotspotting off her phone \u2013 but juggling the time differences can be tricky. In Britain and Europe, that was particularly challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaylight savings took my small time window to no window,\u201d she says. \u201cMy boss told me not to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jen Hughes working at the beach in Cumbuco, a fishing village on the northeast coast of Brazil.<\/p>\n
The weather in France was too cold, anyway, for a family who chase summer. Hughes, who speaks Spanish, spent time in Chile as a teenager. She loves the rich culture and unpredictable \u201ccraziness\u201d of Mexico, where they have a car and keep some warmer clothes in storage.<\/p>\n
The rest of the time, they travel on tourist visas with their lives packed into a handful of suitcases, including a large carry-on bag for Will\u2019s Lego collection. In Brazil, they did a pottery class every week and filled an extra case with all the pieces they\u2019d made.<\/p>\n
Brendon, who was a lab technician in New Zealand, has picked up more of the parenting responsibility for Will and is developing a business online. In countries like Mexico, they can manage on a single income.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to have kittens when we get back to New Zealand and feel the cost of living,\u201d Hughes says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing for me is when I see the boys going off to do fun things. It\u2019s not like being permanently on holiday because I\u2019m working fulltime.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it does feel like I\u2019m on holiday, if I compare it to what everyday life was like in New Zealand. When I finish work, I don\u2019t have jobs to do. Brendon takes care of that, and then we just get family time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will makes friends with an iguana in Yelapa, a small beach town in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Wrangling remote teams became part of the landscape for companies during the Covid pandemic. However, Hughes is in a unique position as someone who\u2019s employed on staff in New Zealand while located permanently offshore with no fixed abode.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s encountered a few Kiwis on \u201csabbatical\u201d with their families. However, most of the professionals she\u2019s met who are long-term travellers either run their own business or are digital nomads doing gig work online.<\/p>\n
Now in her mid-40s, Hughes joined Rothbury in a broker support role when she was 19 and the company had only eight people on its staff. There are now close to 500 nationwide \u2013 and the person who interviewed her for the job, managing director Roger Abel, is still her direct report today.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have been possible without him,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re very in sync in the way we work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, she\u2019s held various roles, from executive assistant for the managing director to IT, due diligence, financials and acquisitions. On her 25th anniversary, she was flown back from Mexico to attend the company\u2019s conference in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got all this knowledge in different areas of the business, so I\u2019m quite useful,\u201d Hughes, whose status as an overseas remote worker is flagged on her email signature, says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if I\u2019m not around physically, they\u2019d rather have me still working for them than not at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family in M\u00e9rida, the capital of the Mexican state of Yucat\u00e1n, which has a rich Mayan heritage.<\/p>\n
Stepping outside the 9-5 office grind is something Hughes has been working towards for a long time. In 2008, she moved on to a lifestyle block north of Auckland and went hybrid, commuting into the city two or three days a week.<\/p>\n
When Will was born, she worked part-time from home and later moved to Nelson, which is where she met Brendon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen Covid happened,\u201d she says. \u201cI was fully remote at that point, so I guess they were getting more and more used to me not coming into the office at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started looking [offshore] and narrowed it down to Spain and Mexico. I agreed with my boss that we\u2019d try it out for a one-year trial to see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jen and Will at Foz de Lumbier, a narrow gorge in Spain at the foothills of the Pyrenees.<\/p>\n
Three years on, the pros have far outweighed the cons. The hardest aspect of long-term travel as a family is finding enough social time with children of a similar age, says Hughes. Teenagers can find that especially tough.<\/p>\n
She thinks Will has thrived on his \u201creal-world learning and experiences\u201d, enrolling at local schools or joining homeschooling collectives in the community. A couple of years ago, he went to a \u201cforest school\u201d in Oaxaca, one of the most biodiverse states in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Still, he\u2019s now at a stage where he wants to put down some roots and have a more regular routine. That\u2019s unlikely to involve a return to New Zealand, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy big thing is just go and live,\u201d says Hughes, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t know how long you\u2019ve got, right? Life can be really cruel where people retire and they\u2019re gone in a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to work my whole life for that. Go and live your best life and enjoy the hell out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the circumstances that have allowed Hughes to do just that are rare, a growing number of New Zealand organisations are offering more flexible working conditions as part of their company ethos.<\/p>\n
Last week, Amy McWhannell was in Buenos Aires visiting her grandmother, Marti, who is in her late 80s.<\/p>\n
For a fortnight, their mornings were dedicated to spending time together. Then, while her grandmother was resting, McWhannell\u2019s working day would begin.<\/p>\n
Aucklander Amy McWhannell in Buenos Aires with her Argentinian grandmother, Marti.<\/p>\n
In Argentina, it was 4pm when Wright Communications \u2013 the Auckland public relations agency where she\u2019s on staff as an account director \u2013 opened for business at 8am. By the time she clocked off, after an eight-hour shift, it was 1am.<\/p>\n
The time difference wasn\u2019t too much of a problem, she says. \u201cSouth Americans eat late, at around 10pm, which is lunchtime in New Zealand, and Buenos Aires doesn\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up, McWhannell went on family trips to Argentina every year with her mother, who was born in Buenos Aires. Moving into the workforce made that much more difficult, with limited annual leave outside the end-of-year shutdown.<\/p>\n
When she joined the PR agency almost five years ago, a flexible office policy, including \u201cwork from home Fridays\u201d, was already in place. Then, two weeks into the job, New Zealand went into lockdown.<\/p>\n
Moving home to her parents in Hamilton, McWhannell worked remotely until the borders reopened. In early 2024, she relocated to the Bay of Plenty permanently and has recently bought a house with her partner in P\u0101p\u0101moa.<\/p>\n
Still on the payroll full-time, she commutes to Auckland once a week and spends every Wednesday dialling in remotely from Hamilton, where she teaches a \u201cshapes and core\u201d class at Les Mills gym before and after work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about trust,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m talking to clients every day. If you\u2019re responsive and constantly in communication with your team, they can see you\u2019re still getting the results.\u201d<\/p>\n
McWhannell, left, and her sister, Ashley, with cousin Vicente at a football game while the sisters were in Argentina visiting family.<\/p>\n
McWhannell\u2019s first long-distance stint, working from Argentina, was a three-week trip with her sister Ashley to spend precious time with their grandmother and wider family there last year.<\/p>\n
With New Zealand haemorrhaging talent offshore, she believes companies need to offer more flexible working conditions if they want to stay competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a stereotype with working remotely that almost makes you work harder, because you don\u2019t want to fall into that trap,\u201d she says. \u201cLike, I\u2019m actually so responsible. I\u2019m always at my desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a survey of 200 senior managers late last year, 55% said a hybrid working model (a mix of in-office and remote) best described the way their company operated. However, that figure was down from 63% the previous year.<\/p>\n
At Unilever, employers in New Zealand and Australia can request to work remotely from overseas or interstate for up to 20 days a year. Recent offshore locations have included India, Argentina and Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Yet despite the globalisation of post-Covid workforces, there are some fish-hooks to avoid, as writer Lara Markstein discovered when she moved back home from the United States.<\/p>\n
Lara Markstein spent five years working for the University of California from her home in the South Island before she was told to return to the US or forfeit her job. Photo \/ Anthony Phelps <\/p>\n
The assistant director of the Centre for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, she began working remotely before the pandemic hit, relocating to North Carolina when her American partner, Mike, took a job there.<\/p>\n
In 2019, they decided to settle in New Zealand, where Markstein had spent her childhood after migrating with her family from South Africa when she was 7. The couple now live with their toddler in Waikawa, a small settlement near Picton.<\/p>\n
Her immediate supervisors were happy for her to continue to work remotely from New Zealand, which she did for the next five years. During that time, she won a staff award and was approved for maternity leave.<\/p>\n
Last July, she was sacked when a whistleblower discovered by chance that she was living permanently offshore and informed the \u201cuniversity bureaucracy\u201d. Markstein was slapped with an immediate stop-work order and given two weeks to return to the US to keep her job.<\/p>\n
By then, she\u2019d been in the role for 16 years. However, her \u201cat-will employment\u201d conditions meant she had no contract and could be legally terminated without notice at any time, a common scenario among workers in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not how things work here,\u201d she says. \u201cEssentially, as soon as legal found out, they really had to fire me, because otherwise they would have been subject to New Zealand employment law. So there were no hard feelings. I understood where they were coming from entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Markstein says the legal and tax implications of working offshore can be complex, and companies offering advisory services aren\u2019t always fully transparent about the potential consequences of that.<\/p>\n
Mike, who is an internet business lawyer, is also working remotely but in reverse, running his practice from Waikawa and working with clients in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re an American citizen, you have to pay tax, no matter where you live in the world, and there\u2019s a very complicated tax treaty with New Zealand that we have to deal with,\u201d Markstein says.<\/p>\n
Still, returning to the US wasn\u2019t an option she considered, even at the cost of her job. \u201cI was sad to leave my role, but where we live is a magical, beautiful place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanna Wane is a senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past three years, she\u2019s been travelling with her son, Will, who has just turned 11, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,6726,2046,8344,1651,545,2109,9479,48879,305,51928,15896,194,9862,111,43,139,10114,69,384,163226,8244,1313,13913,11925,19554,301,223,14344,15897,109196,4576,377,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-296032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-become","10":"tag-career","11":"tag-common","12":"tag-digital","13":"tag-extreme","14":"tag-family","15":"tag-flexibility","16":"tag-greater","17":"tag-have","18":"tag-increasingly","19":"tag-joanna","20":"tag-kiwi","21":"tag-meet","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nomads","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-people","28":"tag-phrases","29":"tag-recent","30":"tag-redefining","31":"tag-remote","32":"tag-seek","33":"tag-taken","34":"tag-talks","35":"tag-the","36":"tag-travelling","37":"tag-wane","38":"tag-whove","39":"tag-work","40":"tag-world","41":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}