What are the 10 best cities for Remote Working?

Over the past decade, advances in technology and digital connectivity has led to an emergence of a new breed of worker – the digital nomads – who work remotely, telecommuting at their location of their choosing, rather than being physically present at a company’s headquarters or office.

The pandemic accelerated this trend rapidly over the last 18 months and prompted companies to rethink the way we work. According to SSON Analytics’ Global SSO Strategies: Impact of the Pandemic One Year On  Analytics Workbook, close to half the market surveyed believed that the pandemic coupled with the widespread adoption of remote work has spurred an increase in employees’ productivity. Three of four shared services are leaning towards a hybrid solution of combining office with virtual operations as the way forward, while close to 20% plan to stay completely virtual if possible.

With hybrid and remote work here to stay, what are the top 10 cities for remote working? Nestpick analyzed 75 major global cities according to three broad categories – Cost & Infrastructure, Legislation & Freedoms, Livability – to develop the “The Work-from-Anywhere Index”¹ which lists out the best cities worldwide for those seeking the perfect home base from which to live and work remotely from, as well as those with the potential to attract this new breed of workers in the future.

Top 10 Cities to ‘Work Anywhere’ from:

Digital Nomad Visa Cities 

Only 10 cities in the global study offer a ‘Digital Nomad’ Visa, which is a specific visa, or equivalent document that allows self-employed and foreign-employed remote workers to enter the country to work.

Find out more about these cities with SSON Analytics Interactive Data Tools

Interestingly, when cross-refencing the top 10 cities for remote work with the Shared Services Atlas, these cities are also shared services hotspots for their respective countries. To find out which companies have set up their shared services and GBS centers in these locations, please check out the Shared Services Atlas – SSON’s Analytics global database of 7000+ SSCs and 3000+ BPOs.

(Data as of July 2021)

The City Cube is also another great interactive data tool that houses more than 850,000 continuously-updated data points for 3,800+ cities including the cities listed above. You can find out more on shared services and BPO numbers, talent availability, the job market, availability of language talent, average annual salary, cost of labour and overhead operations costs, cost of living, taxation, ease of doing business, global health security index and much more.

¹ Nestpick’s Work-from-Anywhere Index