LA cabins start-up Find Sanctuary wants remote workers to ‘work from the woods’

Some of us said goodbye to the office for good during the pandemic, but many small businesses are still navigating a hybrid model with mixed results. While working from home undoubtedly has its benefits, for some, the result can be a lack of community and connection – and a feeling of isolation.

It’s into this landscape startup Find Sanctuary launches, offering offices and micro-cabins embedded in wild nature just two hours drive from the city. Founder Charlie Hammond has eschewed the ‘off-grid’ model favoured by other cabin companies, instead adopting a ‘plugged-in’ model designed to prise workers out of the urban core and into nature without the fear of missing deadlines.

Hammond picked Big Bear for Find Sanctuary’s inaugural 40-cabin site and is currently testing a pilot cabin. While many cabin or glamping sites offer vague promises of restoring well-being, Hammond putting his money where his mouth is with Find Sanctuary and proving it can do so. Visitors to this first cabin will have cortisol levels tested pre and post-stay to see if there’s a measurable difference.

While nature will do much of the heavy lifting, the cabin design should also help – offering a reading nook, mediation rock, rain shower and outdoor bath, and panoramic windows that ensure the outdoors never feels far away.

Hammond’s grand, long-term ambition is for workers to be given two or three days ‘in nature’ per quarter. ‘Our B2B Paid Time On, “work-from-the-woods” model will be targeting remote-first tech companies to begin with,’ he explains.

‘This offering will be intended as a company-wide, preventative mental health tool, combating employee burnout and team disconnect,’ says Hammond. ‘For remote-first businesses, we see this as an extremely powerful productivity and wellness play that similarly helps on both talent acquisition and retention.’

Find Sanctuary has set its sights on launching locations close to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York to begin with and hopes to encourage a broader shift in corporate culture by persuading companies to rethink employee well-being as a result.