Guide for workation: a blend of work and leisure

Every year, once the weather begins to get gloomy, days are getting shorter and people are bummed out, we beat the autumn blues by taking off for workation. But what exactly does the term workation stand for at Sudolabs?

The concept of workation has been part of our DNA for some time now and it's quite straightforward. A workation is simply a fusion of vacation with your team and remote work while the fundamental goal is to ease off and delight in the change of scenery. To enjoy sun rays for a bit longer, we always look for a country within Europe whose weather forecast meets our criteria and offers pleasant temperatures even during the autumn season.

An attractive location for digital nomads

This autumn we have chosen Lisbon, the astonishing capital city of Portugal known for its ornamented architecture, abundant history, and the iconic tart pastry Pastel de Nata. While being Europe's fastest-growing tech ecosystem, Lisbon has become an attractive location for digital nomads. The surrounding area offers a broad variety of landscapes and the world-renowned spots are for our surfing lovers easily accessible.

As a company, we cover the costs for accommodation during the entire stay and it's up to our colleagues for how long do they prefer to stay at the remote location. And the best thing about it? You can have a +1 with you. It doesn't matter whether it's your partner, mum or simply just a friend, everyone is welcome.

The blend of taking a break from your standard workplace and leisure provides a positive impact on motivation, along with the increase in productivity, creativity, and overall employee happiness. Nonetheless, there is an extra aspect worth mentioning - loads of time to socialize with others. As many of our colleagues work remotely and due to our flexible hours we do not meet in the office on a daily basis, it is a great opportunity to spend some of our focus time together. By utilising co-living the team spirit is simultaneously being enhanced and that's what we deeply care about.

In total, there are 28 people who've decided to participate this autumn. Some of us are staying for the entire November, the others only for a couple of days or weeks. You can probably imagine how demanding was the process of finding accommodation and concurrently providing everyone with adequate privacy and sufficient workspace.

So how did we arrange the entire thing?

First and foremost, the location had to be chosen. Given the fact we wanted to visit a country with more suitable weather, our picks included Spain and Portugal. A list of numerous cities was created and compared based on accessibility, weather conditions, and availability of accommodation. After conducting extensive research our choice ended up picking Lisbon.

The next phase was to find and book accommodation. We've decided to avoid hotels, in order to provide common space and privacy. After searching for a couple of days we realized it is fairly unrealistic to find a place suitable for such an amount of people, therefore three separate units within the same area were booked via Airbnb. Our accommodation consists of the main house with a pool, where all social gatherings are happening and two apartments. All units are located within 10 minutes from each other, therefore it's very convenient for us in case we want to have face-to-face meetings or just simply hang out.

As previously mentioned, everyone can choose the length of their stay, here comes the planning part. Once we had the accommodation confirmed it was time to allocate colleagues into units based on the dates preference. For a better overview, we've created a visualization in Notion, which helped us to see when is which apartment was already taken and organize everyone's arrival and departure. The notion is an all-in-one workspace and an essential part of our internal management for any kind of process. It's easy to understand, simple to navigate within, and very well structured, we highly recommend it!

Workation is always a great idea

It's been a couple of weeks since we arrived and we truly can't complain. The weather has been amazing, the local cuisine is delightful and co-living provides us with plenty of opportunities to get to know each other better. To put it simply - workation is always a great idea.