BONUS | Working Remotely? | Jordan Hirsch - Tips for Working Remotely from an Experienced Remote Worker

Jordan's Resources:

• "So you're suddenly working remotely" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-youre-suddenly-working-remotely-jordan-hirsch/
• MURAL's "suddenly remote" webinar series recap: https://blog.mural.co/suddenly-remote-recap
• Phase2's WFH "How-to" Packet: https://phase2.gitbook.io/phase2-remote-work-playbook/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)

Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and knowing there is a lot more going on outside the accounting and finance world. We would like to align with Ima CEO Jeff Thompson's message and extend our heartfelt support to everyone facing the implications of the worldwide Coronavirus outbreak. Today we would like to share a timely bonus episode as IMA continues to support the profession with a variety of professional development resources. As many of our listeners are now faced with remote work and distant learning. My cohost Adam had a conversation with Jordan Hirsch to give our listeners some suggestions for working remotely. Jordan is the director of innovation at phase two a digital experience agency with a strong remote culture. He has over a decade of experience working from home and share some real practical tips for those who may not be as accustomed to working outside of the office. If you find yourself handling your business in what feels like a new, slightly uncomfortable work environment, listen to this conversation to help you adjust and get the most out of it. 

Adam: (01:15)

So Jordan, as we see with the recent events concerning the Corona virus, many people have been thrust into working from home suddenly. I know you've been a remote employee for a while now, so could you describe what it was like for you when you were first getting started? 

Jordan: (01:28)

Sure. I would say also that I feel for everybody who's getting thrust into it now because it is definitely really different from working in an office, especially if that's what you're used to. When I first started it was, it was kind of weird at first, my very first job out of college way back in 1999, I had an office job and I was allowed to work from home one day a week in that job. And that one day for a while I sort of saw it as my like get everything at home done day. I would, uh, you know, I'd vacuum the apartment, I would do a bunch of chores. I tried to get my work done ahead of time the rest of the week, so I didn't actually have to do much that day. And then over time, as I had other jobs and I started sort of do it more and more, it occurred to me, I started to realize that I actually needed that time to do work and I had to learn how to actually do my job at home. And I was working in tech at the time. So the mechanics of doing the work weren't that bad. I learned how to, you know, which files I would need to bring home from me, uh, to be able to work on my home machine, how to access all the network things that I needed from my job at home. How to sort of minimize the things I would need from the office. But probably the hardest part was learning how to apply some structure to myself to not see it as, you know, fun time or time when I could sort of get things done at home. But how to actually be at work at home was the biggest adjustment. So learning how to really have the discipline to sort of structure my time by myself and how to have that structure while I was, you know, literally all alone in the apartment was, was probably the steepest learning curve for me. 

Adam: (03:04)

So if there was one thing, there were a couple of things that you could have told yourself back then when you first started working at home, what would that be? 

Jordan: (03:11)

Probably just because you can do all your household stuff in the middle of the day and then do all your work at night. It doesn't always mean it's really a good idea. That worked. Okay. Sometimes when I was doing development work and I was a bit more working on my own. But if you're working with part of a team that can be really disruptive. So I wish that I had known at the beginning to start practicing giving myself some structure so that work time is for work and home time is for home. So kind of resisting that urge to get things done. You know on the, on the household front during the day. Now that so many household chores are online, you can do them in the office too. And so it's not that big of a difference. But you know, if I do decide like I've been at my desk too long, I have a break between meetings, I'm going to go, you know, go for a walk, go for a bike ride, vacuum the apartment, go do something else. Also having the discipline to make that time up later cause eventually it will catch up with you. Something else I would say I would have liked to know then is the idea of over communicating with everybody else at work, especially if you're new to it and if your team is new to it, it can take awhile to build up trust. Over-communicating helps people know where to find you, when to find you, how to find you, what you're doing. If you're busy, all the things that they could probably tell just by poking ahead and you know, at your desk or at your cubicle. But they can't do that now. So if someone reaches out to you and they don't hear back, they don't know. If you haven't set things up correctly, they don't know, you know, are you in a meeting? Are you going for a walk? Are you watching the Simpsons on your couch? You know, what's going on? Why can't I find Jordan? And those things can start to eat away at trust a little bit. So I'd say probably the thing that I would've liked to know also in addition to structuring my time is how to engage in those trust-building behaviors. 

Adam: (05:00)

So speaking of like trust-building behaviors, you know, there's probably a lot of team leaders who are suddenly the leaders of virtual teams. You know, can we keep talking on that? Where we'd like on keeping the culture and the teamwork alive, even though everybody's in different locations? Like, what advice would you give to them? 

Jordan: (05:17)

Oh, absolutely. The first thing I would say is if your team is moving to video calls, turn your cameras on. That's a really seemingly simple thing and it's also something that people get really uncomfortable with. We don't mind sitting at a table, you know, in a conference room full of our coworkers where everybody can see us. But turning on a camera feels like a really different step. There's definitely a mental barrier there to being on camera that people just aren't used to. When you turn your cameras on, it humanizes you for everybody and it humanizes everybody else on the call too so that you can all still look each other in the eyes, quote unquote. It's not exactly the same, but at least you are able to see each other and that goes a long way towards kind of remembering that like we're all together, we're all at work, we're all on the same team. These are the people I work with every day. I'd say also to make sure that you're making time for your culture. It's something now that you're going to have to schedule culture used to be able to happen, you know, in the break room and the kitchen stopping by someone's desk to say hi, just seeing someone in the hallway on the way...