This is the second of three episode of the mini-series, "How the World of Work (and our attitudes to work) are Changing". Today, Pilar talks to Andrew Saunders about the research carried out in September 2020 the exclusive survey carried out by Management Today on what leaders really think about the return to the workplace: Will Hybrid Working Ever Work? You can connect with Andrew via Linkedin or Twitter. You can download the report here: https://cached.offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/NewsAttachments/OTM/Will-Hybrid-Working-Ever-Work-Mangement-Today-special-report-2020.pdf

The first episode in our three-part series on how the the world of work and our attitudes to work are changing. Today, Pilar talks to Katerina Bohle Carbonell about the results of the Remote Working during COVID-19: Ireland’s National Survey, phase II. This work was carried out with the support of the Whitaker Institute, NUI Galway and the Western Development Commission. Katerina is one of the four authors.  You can check out the survey here: http://whitakerinstitute.ie/project/remote-working-during-covid-19-irelands-national-survey/ And to connect with Katerina:  https://netnigma.com/ Subscribe to her newsletter: https://netnigma.substack.com/ Connect on Twitter with her: https://twitter.com/katerinabohlec  

This bonus episode is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, and it continues the conversation between Pilar Orti and Tim Burgess of Shield GEO, looking at what’s been happening in both companies and the events they’ve been involved with.  Pilar took part in the IAF conference, which was a week-long single track event, taking place online for the first time.  Very different was Agile Tour London  - also run on Zoom, but with the community conversation centred on Slack.  Finally, Pilar has just attended Repeople, which used to be the NomadCity event in person in Gran Canaria. Also Shield GEO have run events online for their own distributed team, instead of their usual face-to-face retreats. Dividing their 17 regions into 3 blocs by timezone, they had fun online with trivia and so on, but also dived deeply into cultural exploration and learning from each other about each other’s locally lived experiences.  Pilar has run webinars recently on Visible Teamwork, and learned from participants that even when people know the theory, providing a framework and vocabulary for the interactions which support the theory is what makes all the difference.  If you enjoyed these conversations with Tim Burgess, do follow him on Twitter, and take a look at the special series on connection and disconnection in remote work that we produced in partnership with ShieldGEO nearly a year ago - when the world was a different place, but the issues were strangely evergreen.  

We have a special guest for today’s What’s Going On episode, as Tim Burgess from Shield GEO joins Pilar Orti from Virtual Not Distant, while Maya is away. Recording on the 6th November 2020, heres:' 5.32 What's going on  Home vs Office This article The commuters who don't want to return to the office illustrates how women in particular feel less rushed and time pressured, when they don’t have to travel to work outside the home.  Business Insider Australia point out that Dutch civil servants now get $2 a day to cover coffee and toilet paper while remote working — and you should ask your boss for the same, a financial institution says. This is now law in parts of Europe, with new law in Spain to ensure boundaries, and this from Switzerland: Companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home.   21.50 Research into future of work Great to see work from anywhere entering the academic discourse with featured articles in Harvard Business Review from Prithwiraj Choudhury, and we love the uptake of this particular turn of phrase.  Helen Jewell shared this article with Pilar at the IAF conference, about sign language for the Deaf community on video conferencing - a good reminder of the lost nuances for all when we translate a 3d face to face experience into a 2d one on-screen. 36.41 Surviving 2020 This article Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated relates intrinsic motivation to the way we’re working through a crisis now, a valuable lens for understanding employee behaviour and wellbeing. Another recent paper Tim found goes deeper still, EXPRESS: Interpersonal connectivity work: Being there with and for geographically distant others - Ella Hafermalz, Kai Riemer, which explores the impact of telemedicine (another huge focus for remote collaboration 2020, that has much to teach us all).  So that’s What’s Going On, and do join us tomorrow for the events and company news section of this conversation.  

Today we’re delighted to be speaking to Theresa Sigillito Hollema, about her new book Virtual Teams Across Cultures: Create Successful Teams Around The World, in discussion with Pilar Orti from Virtual Not Distant Ltd. Theresa is a cultural consultant and team coach with Interact Global, working with virtual teams spanning cultures and borders, for many years. Pilar and Theresa discuss cultural competence, the intersection of cultural difference and remote team dynamics, team belonging, and diversity and inclusion, in this interesting conversation - please see full shownotes on our website, and keep up with Theresa on Twitter and LinkedIn for more information about her work and her writing.  Also, do check out our earlier episodes exploring some of the concepts covered in the episode, which are summarised and linked in a single big blog post here.

Welcome to episode 250 - a nice milestone to celebrate, so we even altered our usual running order to make this round number an occasion for Pilar and Maya to record together, and discuss what’s going on in the world of remote work right now in October 2020, brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd in London. Don’t forget you can receive our valuable guide to leading through visible teamwork, just by signing up for our newsletter.  For now, let’s take a look at ‘What’s Going On’... Hybrid workspaces and practices Beware the office politics of hybrid workplaces, we’ll have to see how this emerges and unfolds - and see who really has a chance to make a choice.  This New York Times article picked up on tensions in some big tech companies in this article: Parents Got More Time Off. Then the Backlash Started. The evolution of remote work Eva Rimbau shared this OECD study: Productivity gains from teleworking in the post COVID-19 era: How can public policies make it happen?, demonstrating large organisation understanding of remote working’s risks and rewards.  According to Fast Company, Gitlab are quite exemplary when it comes to this stuff - Extremely transparent and incredibly remote Gitlab’s radical vision for the future of work is a good read. Looking to the remote future... Maya found this article which might be the salvation of Spain’s struggling tourist industry - Log on, chill out: holiday resorts lure remote workers to fill gap left by tourists.  Whereas back in the UK, Bosses are doing weird things to get people back in the office, according to Wired.  Leadership thoughts Thanks for this ‘comfort reading’ share Chris Coladonato, Seven Ways to Rally Your Remote Team in Confusing Times - some gems here in this nice fluffy listicle, also surprisingly touchy-feely for Inc. The traits of good remote leaders · Intense Minimalism shared by Valentina Thorner on Linkedin is also a great read, including very up-to-date research. Random tech changes which make remote better Pilar is very impressed with Word online (in Office 365) now transcribes dictation. Amazing how this tech is evolving - do take a look! Also, did you know you can record the pronunciation of your name, in your LinkedIn profile? So now if you want to hear the difference between Pilar’s name in English and Spanish, go and have a listen.   Virtual Not Distant announcements: Speaking of LinkedIn, a great conversation emerged here about asynchronous communication - do take a look this thread full of some amazing ideas from our fabulous remote community. Pilar was featured in this recent Washington Post article How to work remotely through time-zone changes, also focusing on asynchronous communication - this time from the perspective of US nationals who had ended up remote working from afar - once again great to see this stuff reaching the mainstream conversation. Maya’s new book “Out of the Office”, first in the Healthy Happy Homeworking series, is about to publish! So please sign up for presale discount notification, and news of forthcoming releases. Please do share it with any friends particularly if they are struggling with any aspects of working from home.

Virtual not Distant Ltd brings you a fascinating episode today, exploring the role of employers in the future of work, and how remote work fits in to this -  with two very different interviews and points of view. Firstly, on the 8th October we have a webinar about sustainable asynchronous communications, in association with regular podcast guest Richard Mackinnon at Work Life Psych - classic webinar style, you can listen in passively, or join in the chat conversation of course. And on the 27th October, when Pilar will be talking about adopting Visible Teamwork in your team through asynchronous communication - to help you put it all into practice. 8.06 Erica McMannes, Instant Teams Erica McMannes and Liz Rodewald put Instant Teams together four years ago, to meet the employment needs of military spouses, for flexible location-independent work opportunities. They knew there were companies who needed the dedication and skills that this underserved cohort could bring to that need, so they created the service specifically to bring these two parties together. They’re industry-agnostic, building remote teams for any industry, focusing on admin, marketing, and customer success teams. They create long-term employment relationships, and have their own software system which helps them scale and build teams fast, carefully vetting and matching their educated and experienced candidates with the right firms, using trusted tools. Art Kleiner, author and consultant Art Kleiner is the co-author of The Wise Advocate: The Inner Voice of Strategic Leadership, author of The Age of Heretics and Former editor in chief of the magazine strategy+business. He and Pilar recorded this conversation nearly a year ago! BUT it follows on nicely from the interview with Erica, because it builds upon the question of how we build careers, and specifically what enterprises have to offer employees, as opposed to contractors? So these laws and structures have shaped how we work together at a high level - but right now, everything is in flux, even more so than when Art and Pilar had this conversation in 2019! Check out Episode 244 if you like more of these ‘big questions’, because while they may not have clear answers, they have great potential to make you think.  What will the enterprise of tomorrow look like, and how will those who do the work within it relate to it - economically, legally, and personally?  

WLP248 Emotional Intelligence in Remote Teams Today's episode explores the fascinating subject of emotional intelligence in remote teams, and is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd - with the help of Rowena Hennigan, and Sandra Thompson, from Rise in Emotiona Intelligence  ( also on LinkedIn) timestamps: 7.30 Emotional intelligence defined 18.24 Highly emotional intelligent teams 40.10 Developing Team EI  

Welcome to our monthly What’s Going On round-up, brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd. Today we discuss tech, the future of the office, the future of life and housing and work life balance, and an upcoming event. 3.29  Tech AI-Driven Accountability,  https://tldv.io/  “too long, didn’t view”, 12.20 The future of the office  UK office demand 'shifting to the suburbs' amid Covid-19 crisis,   The age of the office is over – the future lies in Britain's commuter towns | Simon Jenkins   MGM Resorts Rolls Out Ultimate Work-From-Vegas Package At Bellagio And ARIA 23.06 Work-life balance and boundaries Building Work-Life Boundaries in the WFH Era -  Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce - 37.15 Back to tech - well, email anyway, and a cool event: The Basecamp/Rework team built a new email app Hey,   Built to Last – Audio Conference for Brand Builders.   46.09 What’s going in the Virtual Not Distant community Rowena Hennigan (see episodes 215 and 244) and Sandra Thompson have set up RISE Emotional Intelligence - Brian Rhea has written The Manager’s Guide to Engaging Remote Employees, about engaging remote workers - do have a look, it’s really in depth and comprehensive. Lisette Sutherland’s Work Together Anywhere book is now in Japanese  Pilar has a workshop on planned spontaneity on the 3rd of September with Next Stage Radicals,  Pilar was also a recent guest on their own podcast, so that’s well worth a listen. The Visible Teamwork Guide will be published *very* soon - so do look out for that, more news asap, and the full book will follow. And finally, Pilar has a new newsletter to subscribe to, ‘Think, Write, Converse’ - sign up on her site, for a glimpse into Pilar’s mind!  

Today’s episode from London-based consultancy Virtual Not Distant is about asynchronous communication - for more on this subject check out episode 234, and also this podcast from My Pocket Psych - because being able to communicate flexibly across time and space without snagging people up in endless calls is so critical to successful online collaboration, as we discuss today with two fantastic guests. 5.02 Gonçalo Silva, CTO at Doist Gonçalo joins us from Portugal, where he works as the CTO of Doist (creators of apps like Todoist and Twist), a fully remote, global, and bootstrapped organisation of 13 years, where they walk their talk and make tools which work for their own communication needs in the first instance. They have grown slowly and carefully, expanding over 34 countries, to a team of now comprising nearly 80 people.  Gonçalo role-models the organisation’s core values through his day-to-day interactions, and working toward incremental improvements - self-reflecting, and sharing and making sure his actions are congruent with his values and intentions to provide an example for the rest of the team. Do check out the Doist Blog, and keep up with Gonçalo on Twitter.   43.30 Justin Mitchell, Yac Our next guest is the founder of a tool called Yac, and Justin explains this as voice messaging for teams - something which works because we’re so used to voice messaging in the consumer space. You can learn more by connecting with Yac and Justin personally on Twitter, to keep the asynchronous conversation going. And of course they have a podcast, which they record live and share on Youtube: Remote Voices.