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Fernando Ara faces an extreme virtual commute from his Orange County, CA office to Madrid, Spain. Ara is in the vanguard of worldwide cross-border telecommuters. Ara is the U.S. country manager for Redkaraoke, a social networking website, but works out of his California-based home office and travels when necessary for meetings.
Ara’s colleague, Justin Abbott, based in Baltimore, MD, heads up business development for the company. Another manager, Jose Miguel Segurra, lives in Japan. They communicate with HQ mostly via Skype.
“The biggest issues are managing between multiple time zones - from Spain, to the United States, to our Country Manager in Japan,” Abbott said. “And, of course, making sure that we all understand each other and are on the same page.”
WorldatWork, a Scottsdale, AZ, Washington, DC and Toronto, Canada-based organization, predicted in a recent report that 100 million Americans will be teleworking by 2010. Most of them will be working for companies located in the U.S.-but as the trend continues, it can be expected that as steadily increasing number of people will find cross-border opportunities.
It’s not just a virtual career choice, it’s a quiet workplace trend that goes mostly unremarked-upon by media or governments.
The Gartner Group estimates that there are 137 million teleworkers worldwide. “This growth will mushroom as companies learn more about telework benefits and its highly advantageous return on investment, and the proliferation and use of online job boards and virtual hiring,” according to a report in Innovisons Canada.
The report contends that cross-border commuting poses “some serious competition for North American jobs, and ought to be a wake-up call to all of us.”
But to workers, this trend represents a much larger career playing field. “One of the advantages of being a cross-border telecommuter is that it can open up horizons and opportunities that could not otherwise be widely available to a lot of employees…” Ara said.
Michael M. Kiefer, General Manager for Brandprotect.com, is an American who telecommutes from Chicago for the Toronto, Canada Company. “In the virtual world, the Internet makes up for great distance, assuming you are not too many time zones off,” Kiefer said. Kiefer travels to the company headquarters” every month or so. “I think in today’s world, with today’s technology, the game is much easier,” but, he said, “Nothing makes up for face-to-face contact and group interaction. Monthly is just enough.”
Laura Harris owns an Allstate insurance company in Texas, but is engaged to a man who lives in Canada. Instead of moving her base of operations, she now runs her company from Canada. “With computers and Vonage my customers don’t even know that I don’t live in Texas. Well, they might now … but, then again, in today’s increasingly virtually-based economy, location is becoming increasingly less important.
A growing number of companies are reaching out to prospective employees who can work virtually from, well, anywhere. While there are tax and legal issues involved, today’s global marketplace has flung open the door for worldwide to Internet-based job and entrepreneurial opportunities.
In a Fast Company article, Michelle Bowman, a senior vice president at Boston-based Global Foresight Associates, predicted that in the future, “Cybership will vie for importance with citizenship. Companies will need to increase their tolerance for change, and view boundaries - whether national, corporate, or divisional - as more and more nebulous.”
“In today’s global economy we are all competing with everyone from everywhere for everything,” Ara said.
Guest blogger Sharon Reed Abboud is a freelance journalist specializing in careers and business trends. She is the author of the forthcoming book All Moms Work, Short-term Career Opportunities for Long-Range Success, Capital Books.
