"Have computer – and internet connection – work anywhere. So goes the cost-cutting corporate human resources mantra.
Even on an uninhabited coral island in the middle of nowhere?
To the dismay, perhaps, of office workers everywhere, Frenchman Gauthier Toulemonde has returned to civilisation to report that it is indeed possible, though not necessarily desirable nor particularly cheap, to relocate staff "offshore".
Until six weeks ago, Toulemonde, a businessman, journalist and former banker, was inclined to agree with the received wisdom that workers, given the right equipment, can labour more or less anywhere.
Being adventurous as well as entrepreneurial, however, he decided to put the theory to the test and at the same time fulfil a childhood dream of living like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.
"Who hasn't dreamed of going to a desert island, to get away from it all, to go on an adventure. For me it was a childhood dream. When I'm big I'll leave, I told myself, but as an adult obliged to work to live and subject to the numerous constraints of modern life, I realised it was complicated," he wrote in his blog.
But a year ago, fed up with commuting from his home in the northern French city of Lille to Paris, Toulemonde, 54, decided to relocate his job as the head of a publishing business to an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere for several weeks.
"I found myself in Gare Saint Lazare in Paris just before Christmas watching the continuous stream of people passing by," he told the Guardian. "They had this sad look on their faces, even though they were carrying Christmas presents. It had long seemed to me absurd this travelling back and forth to offices.
"My idea of going away had been growing for a while, but it was on that day, I decided to leave."
It took six months to identify a suitable island, a 700-by-500-metre island in the Indonesian archipelago (the Indonesians made him promise not to reveal its exact location) 10,000 miles from Paris, and a few more months to prepare.
On 8 October, he left his home in Lille with four towel-sized solar panels, a windmill, a laptop computer, a tablet computer and two satellite phones. He was also carrying two tents to protect him, and the equipment from the humidity and the seasonal heavy rains.
Gecko, a borrowed dog, "rented" from a Chinese businessman came too to scare off local wildlife that included rats and snakes.
Toulemonde, who had a budget of €10,000 (£8,300) for the adventure, including €20 a day for internet, said he wanted to be the world's first "Web Robinson".
"I wanted to show how with solar energy and new technology, we can live differently and work from far away cutting out all the time lost in commuting," he said.
"The Anglo-Saxon world is far more open to this idea of distance working, but there is a resistance to it in France."
He added, that the adventure was no holiday: "I had a business to run, and had to deal with suppliers, banks, clients. The aim was to show I could do this on my own from far away."
He woke at 5am daily and went to bed around midnight. For a change of diet from the rice and pasta he had packed, Toulemonde fished in the sea and rooted out vegetables.
In between, his company Timbopresse was able to publish two editions of Stamps Magazine, to the same deadlines and with the same content.
This week, on his return from the long distance 40-day "business trip", Toulemonde, was a changed man.
There were, he admitted, the good points.
"It was like being in quarantine for 40 days," he said. "It was good to get away from modern life, to follow the rhythm of the sun and to live in the closest possible contact with nature.
"There's always the risk that when you actually fulfil a childhood dream it won't live up to what you expect. In this case far from it. I was extremely happy. Every day was magical."
And there were also the, well, not so good. Quite apart from the rats and snakes and the torrential rain and "terrifying storm" on his first night on the island, there was the constant and terrifying fear of the internet being cut off for lack of electricity or because the rats had got to the cables.
And, he was forced to admit, life can get a bit dull without someone to say "bonjour" to every morning.
"Doing everything virtually has its limits," he admitted on Friday. "Working from a distance is certainly doable, and with the internet and Skype you are never alone. But I'd say 40 days is about the limit.
"But it's not the same as physically meeting someone. Nothing can replace human contact."
Source: theguardian
