As a Manchester lad with family throughout Northern England, I wanted to spend some quality time with my extended family, catch up with childhood friends, and most importantly eat my mums home cooking! With it being summer, a lot of people were taking a break so it involved some discipline on my part to be working at peek social hours (2pm – 10pm) to be in line with US EST work hours. Lucky for me most of my friends and family are night owls and Manchester is open late.

I was happy to see that even amongst friends and family that Remote Work is flourishing in England. A brother who works in Employment Background Clearance; a sister with a home office who travels to see therapy patients locally on a convenient schedule; another who’s a make-up artist, taking appointments at home; and a friend who teaches high school students online. It’s quite apparent that remote work isn’t limited to the IT sector, but a general move of consciousness for both employers and employees in multiple sectors, globally.

I asked why they chose to work remotely and what led their employers to move them into remote roles?

The answers varied for everyone. My brother moved 4 hours South for his work, over a year later he grew homesick and decided to hand in his resignation. Rather than losing a valuable employee, his employer asked him to work remotely from Manchester where they had a small client base. With my brother now being able to cover large parts of the North, the company expanded its client base northward, taking advantage of his geographic location.

The Therapist started her job showing up to an office an hour away from her patients just to do admin tasks. As a lot of her patients were homebound it was important for her to see as many of them as possible. She convinced her employer that admin tasks can be done from her home office and now she’s able to see an extra patient a day rather than driving traffic bound to get to the city office.

So, England involved; meeting new babies, birthdays, barbeques, weddings, and eating all the food I’d missed while in the US!

If you know anything about England, you know we take our curry very seriously. It’s been a National Treasure since Bangladeshi Migrants started work in British Mills/Factories since the 1960’s and brought their cuisine with them. British Curry now has its own reputation and a lot of the dishes are unrecognizable to the traditional dishes of South Asia. Most of what I’m able to find in my family kitchen isn’t available in the restaurants, so catching up on my Bengali Soul Food is another perk of working remotely in England.