21st Century Work Life

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. In today's episode host Pilar Orti speaks with Corine Tan from emotional wellbeing platform Kona. They discuss their recently published Remote Manager Report 2021, and the product they have created - which helps teams check in with each other and share their context and emotions, via a slackbot which presents as a cute dog avatar. Download Kona's team building guide, and keep up with Corine and Kona on Twitter.

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. Today's episode features Tammy Bjelland founder and CEO of Workplaceless, and features a deep-dive into their new product Placeless Coach. Tammy talks to Pilar about the background to Workplaceless, and the evident need for Placeless Coach, which helps teams and individuals develop better habits and behaviours around asynchronous working. Check it out at Placeless Coach - Reserve Your Spot. And keep up with Tammy on LinkedIn and Twitter, to see what else she is working on.

In this unusual episode (we rarely release an episode just about our own services), Pilar talks about the new (and not so new) workshops and programmes at Virtual not Distant, mainly for managers and leaders of remote teams. With the increase in training for managers of remote teams by companies who have been working "in the space" for a while, as well as new consultants who have learned about working online recently, we've decided to narrow our offering to offer what we can uniquely offer. In this episode, you can hear a little bit about each of the new 4 workshops for managers of remote teams, all delivered in-house. And Pilar shares how Podcasting for Connection could actually work in an organisation. You can find out details on the workshops through here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/training-for-managers-overview 04.45mins List of all workshops and talking about Motivation and Visible Teamwork workshop 07.37mins Mastering Online Facilitation for Engaging Meetings 09.32 Let's Meet Less! Adopting Asynchronous Communication 11.01 Overcoming Loneliness in Remote Teams 14.45 Overview of Podcasting for Connection, internal podcasting to help create a sense of belonging and connection in organisations You can find out more information and get in touch with us over at www.virtualnotdistant.com

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. Today Pilar and Maya explore 2 recent research publications which both touch on boundaries in remote work in a range of ways, (just like Maya's recent book 'Finding Your Edge: Establishing And Maintaining Boundaries When You Work From Home'): How to create psychological safety in virtual teams and The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

This episode is repurposed from the Northcentral Universtiy Podcast Series, from their CAVO series. Theresa Sigillito Holleman and Pilar Orti talk about what examples of hybrid workplaces they're coming across, the challenges that this set-up brings as well as how to spend less time in meetings! Check out more from CAVO here: https://www.ncu.edu/center-advancement-virtual-organizations Find out more about Theresa's work here: https://www.interact-global.net/ And check out Virtual not Distant's work here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com), where we help people work better together apart. Today's episode explores the themes of loneliness for the remote worker. This is an edited summary of a live talk with Dr Richard MacKinnon on loneliness and disconnection in remote teams back in July, as part of the Learning Lounge of the Emotional Intelligence (EI) Evolution. The live EI Evolution event it's on October 12th, featuring the godfather of EI Daniel Goleman - you can learn more and book here, using code PILARORTI10 for 10% discount. Beyond the #watercooler 19.14 Self awareness 27.44 Remote vs colocated work 34.30 Talking about emotions You can find the full show notes over at: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/​​beyond-watercooler-loneliness

Today's episode explores facilitative leadership in remote teams, and how to successfully blend asynchronous and synchronous practices to help teams work effectively together. Pilar Orti interviews Simon Wilson, co-founder of Wilson Sheriff, and certified master facilitator with the International Association of Faciliation (IAF). He's been working with the online space as part of his practice for many years, and co-authored Virtual Meetings a Practical Guide. Connect with Simon on Twitter, and online for more. For the full show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/asynchronous-collaboration-facilitation

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com) Today Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss explore topical themes and publications in remote work, including: 03.10 Going back to (the) work (place) Work at the Office, Win a New Car! Seriously! But there are better ideas from Ocado Group offers staff remote working abroad. 13.54 Regulating 'work from anywhere': Your Company Needs a Digital Nomad Policy (HBR) Top CHROs Believe 'Flexibility Within a Framework' Is the Future of Work (Gallup, June 2021). What to do about "Global COVID Nomads", 34.10 The future is flexible… Let's remember, in all this talk of location-hopping, that flexibility as a principle is about much more than where you work. Future Forum study of 10,000 knowledge workers shows that 93% want flexibility in when and how they work; more than half are open to a job change. (Slack are taking care of our emotional wellbeing in an app update, and advancing their audio offering too). 41.30 Company news New coworking adventures from the Virtual Not Distant team. What about you? Don't forget to share your questions, ideas, links, and concerns, about the rapidly evolving remote work scene.

From Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com), today's episode explores the use of the office and other environments for deliberate and mindful work in teams. We are joined by Justin Morris, Senior Customer Success Manager - Modern Communications, at Microsoft. We discuss 'reopening anxiety', onboarding during lockdown, courageous and flexible leadership, and Microsoft's 3 pillar frameworkof people, place and process. The right policies, underpinned by the right cloud-based technology, can make this work for everyone - but it requires an agile and experimental approach. Mindful teamwork is the way Justin describes it, and being able to nurture ideas from the spark to production means involving the right people at the right time. Our in-house Visible Teamwork framework structures this concept around a set of principles and practices which work effectively in long-term distributed teams, so here's a quick reminder of the Deliberate communication - passing on the right information in the right way, from availability to ideas to soliciting input and sharing news. How and where do we share each kind of information, at the right time, and with the right people? Work visibility - from project management tools and dashboards to collaborative documents, we need ways (appropriate to what we do), to share what we're working on and the progress it's making - providing updates, seeking feedback, managing resources, and sharing ideas. Planned spontaneity - finally, we need ways to recreate the unscheduled, serendipitous communications and connections and possibilities, by creating environments and practices which support this. And yes, the shared office can be one tool we can use for this - but it is far from the only one. For more on the Visible Teamwork framework, please check out the following articles and episodes: Good bye "Working Out Loud"; Hello "Visible Teamwork" WLP241 Visible Teamwork and Trust in Remote Teams Applications of Visible Teamwork in Remote Teams — Virtual not Distant WLP239 Match Your Visible Teamwork to Your Team Task Workflow You can also download our free PDF guide by signing up for the newsletter in the box below, and learn how to put the ideas into practice in your own team via an in-house workshop.