“Anywhere working” could be the key to improving the livability of HCMC, which is predicted to become the second fastest growing city economy in Asia within the next three years, new research has found.

A panoramic photo of HCMC’s central business district - PHOTO: COURTESY OF RMIT UNIVERSITY VIETNAM

The “An Investigation into Anywhere Working as a System for Accelerating the Transition of HCMC into a More Liveable City” research investigated the impact of the city’s traffic congestion, air pollution and limited infrastructure on living conditions linked to its booming economy.

Dr Reza Akbari, RMIT Vietnam lecturer and lead author of the research, said the research was inspired by the rapid speed at which the city was growing, which will inevitably cause a lot of challenges through an increase in traffic congestion and pollution.

“We looked into methods or practices to be able to transform some of those challenges by looking into anywhere working practices,” Dr Akbari said.

Dr Akbari described anywhere working as a work model outside the traditional office setting, where the employee communicates by cloud-based technology. As more cars and motorbikes hit HCMC’s streets every day, Dr Akbari believes anywhere working is a viable method of shortening commutes.

“Anywhere working is not just from home,” he said. “We can have different hubs or offices in different districts where people can perform their job over there without having to travel all the way to District 1 (the city’s downtown core) or from one side of the city to the other.”

The research determined the average commute length to and from work among respondents was 140 minutes. The shortest reported commute was five minutes, while the longest was 205 minutes.

While 74% of the city’s commuters revealed they would like to engage in anywhere working, only 41% of respondents were given employer permission to do so, and 29% admitted they didn’t know whether it was an option in their workplace.

Most surprisingly, the research revealed the age group with the highest response rate of disliking remote work was respondents under 24 years old, which is contrary to similar researches conducted in other countries.

“The most significant challenge to any long-term adoption of the practice in HCMC would be the aversion to anywhere working found in the youngest age group. This was an unexpected result, which warrants further investigation,” Dr Akbari said.

This research was a collaboration between RMIT University and Swinburne University. RMIT University lecturer Dr Akbari, along with co-author from Swinburne University Dr John Hopkins, created a detailed survey to discover how people commuted to work from home every day in HCMC and followed the journeys of 201 participants over a two-year period.

SGT