21st Century Work Life

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London: Https://virtualnotdistant.com Today’s episode we take a deep dive into the world of Online training, and how this has changed and continues to evolve. 3.03 Interview with Catherine Nicholson, Virtual Training Team Learn more about Catherine and the Virtual Training Team check out their YouTube channel (which includes loads of guides and support for your own online training), and do connect with her on LinkedIn. 35.50 Pilar’s thoughts on hybrid working We have always talked about ‘office-optional’ working at Virtual Not Distant, but this has never been such a complicated question! Keep an eye on Pilar’s Twitter at midday (UK time) on Wednesday, for ongoing discussions of this and similar themes. 

A bonus episode encouraging those who move events like All Hands / Town Hall meetings and conferences online, to approach the whole design process differently to how they would be run online. For the accompanying show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/engaging-online-events

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com), Today's episode, recorded 04-05-21, brings you a discussion between Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss about  What people mean, when they talk about hybrid work? (Tl;dr - a lot of different things with no consensus on definitions); What the future might be for co-working spaces? What can we learn from the Basecamp story, about how asynchronous teams communicate and share? And our experimentations in Twitter Spaces - will we see (hear) you there?

Today’s episode features a conversation recorded back in February 2020 between Pilar and returning guest John O’Duinn about how he’s helping the government in California to show how remote work can benefit the environment, and how he’s seen people experience the sudden transition to remote work. Find out more over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-work-environment

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help leaders of remote teams thrive. http://virtualnotdistant.com In today's episode Pilar interviews Ann Collins from Bluebottle coaching, who has been conducting some fascinating in-depth research with leaders of remote teams and the impact of COVID on their work. You can read more about Ann’s work and this research on LinkedIn, and she’d be very glad to connect with listeners there and send further details of her findings. Her own podcast is Leaders who love what they do.

In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Anish Hindocha, who, after working as a change consultant for over 20 years, now helps organisations improve their culture. They talk about what organisational culture is, whether it has changed in organisations during the pandemic - and how - and the opportunities to make the world of work a better place.  You can connect with Anish here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anishhindocha/ And you can find more detailed show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/culture-conversation

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com) Maya has recently published “Finding Your Edge: Establishing And Maintaining Boundaries When You Work From Home”, reflecting on issues on many minds right now as we all strive for balance between work and the rest of our lives. Pilar and Maya discuss integrators vs segmenters, using daylight and other sensory input as boundaries, and keeping tasks and roles in place when we work from home. 23.00 What’s Going On Interesting articles: I'm socially anxious, and working from home has been life-changing. Spain to launch trial of four-day working week. and 38:20 Tech updates: Being in a BBC virtual studio audience recording, How to use Slack emoji to simplify work (and cut out noise), Taming the hybrid work chimera: Tips from Slack, WordPress, & Salesforce chiefs; Why Microsoft wants Discord 59.45 Our community: Take a look at the conversations and our question of the month, over on our LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtualnotdistant  

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, today's episode explores mindset issues for new remote managers, and some changes which people new to this role may need to explore. (https://virtualnotdistant.com)  The episode is structured around Pilar’s article Key mindset changes for the new remote manager  and covers the need to: (4.09) 1. Adopt a coaching mindset (8.09) 2. Embrace delegation and avoid interference (10.04) 3. Make friends with your technology (Including an interview with agile coach Mark Kilby (at 18.24), about how data visualisation can help explore issues of disengagement in remote teams) (44.13) 4: Get Intentional (47.14) Finally, 5: Don't make yourself indispensable  

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help teams work together better online, https://virtualnotdistant.com In today’s episode Pilar and Maya take their regular look at what’s going on in the remote work and collaboration space (which goes beyond work to include education and other spheres now using the same technology), and then explore the theme of social connection in remote teams. 04.00 What’s Going On - a focus on education Pilar took part in a panel at PA2021 for Project Access International with Bernie Mitchell (Episode 158), and Niklas Huppmann from Human Aid and Covid Africa.  It’s so interesting how the tech is changing the way we learn, hopefully leading to greater opportunity for everyone.  Despite technical challenges ( likeSingle Sign-on for Programmable Video), the panel predicted that a hybrid approach blending online and face-to-face is what to expect in future, with interesting implications for building professional networks. Pilar has also been working with BeNext on virtual leadership, and exploring the strengths of cohort based learning  - a great strength of the online space, as People Matters agrees: Article: Ten reasons why cohort-based programs are the future of skilling — People Matters.    21.57 Socialisation in the online space   People talk about missing social interaction when forced to work from home, and often the solution seems to be to arrange specific out-of-work opportunities for this. But this is to imply that social interaction at work only takes place in the pub afterwards! Which isn’t how it works in the colocated workspace - so why should it be online?   Recent episodes with Chris Coladonato (262) and Goncalo Silva (264) have some great ideas of how to do this well, and there’s also episode 170 with Jochen Lillich on the DIRECTT framework (Decision, Insight, Result, Emotion, Contact, Troubles, Thanks) for working out loud - all ways to weave engagement and sociability throughout your day to day interactions. How are you making space for sharing and connecting in your organisation? Don’t forget to let us know, and maybe our in-house podcasting service could help, if you want a new way to relate to one another in your online team. 43.51 Our community With everything segueing beautifully today, this takes us into our LinkedIn question of the month, Now that you're not working in an office together, how are you capturing the learning in your team that happens away from each other? generating fantastic and insightful responses from friends like Bart Van Roey (episode 261) - we’d love to know what you think too.   

In this episode, Pilar talks to guest Francisco Corzo about the future of the workplace in Guatemala and the concept of Working Near Home. You can find the full show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/near-home-in-guatemala Links to articles we refer to:  Pilar and Francisco talk about the recent Forbes article: From Work from Home to Work Near Home, the beginning of a new office trend. Pilar’s article on LinkedIn from a few years ago called Sharing Office Spaces across Organisations