WLP245 What We Can All Learn from What's Going On Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd: There’s a massive scam hiding behind Google’s search results - here’s an interesting story, proving perhaps that human ingenuity still beats out the algorithms, Meanwhile, big corporations have their eyes on a flexible future, and we’re seeing new practice emerge from around the world: Fujitsu Embarks towards 'New Normal', Redefining Working Styles for its Japan Offices: Compare this to our podcasting buddy Robert Kropp’s reflection on the remote transition at Siemans - another powerful reminder of just what a big deal it is, to transition to remote at this global scale, and a fascinating comment thread to dig into on this LinkedIn post. Meanwhile closer to home at Essex County Council they have also been reflecting on recent changes and done some primary research: Digital remote working - research findings - Service Transformation, and produced this transparent and insightful report. This depressing article from the Guardian about 'the quiet grinding loneliness of working from home' made Maya groan (especially when people kept tagging her in it), but it’s good to be reminded how hard this has all been for so many people - even when journalists conflate living through a terrifying pandemic and all the impact that has on people’s mental health, with the effect of working from home.  Some serious multi-modal findings here from the big budget of Microsoft in The future of work—the good, the challenging & the unknown, we always love good solid evidence, and now we have the data. And a big report from the EU, Regulations to address work–life balance in digital flexible working arrangements, takes a deep dry dive into the legal frameworks including the Work–Life Balance Directive (EU/2019/1158), adopted in June 2019 and due to be implemented by Member States within a three-year period.   50:56 And in the Virtual Not Distant world: Maya reflected on the recent episode (241) about trust, to talk about trusting the system and the work, as well as the people.  A quick shout out to Lorraine Charles who joined us in episode 212 whose refugee training programme has a partnership with a new French NGO -  CHAMS to partner with Na'amal and UNHCR to provide skills for remote work - Jordan. Maya is working on a new book series called Healthy Happy Homeworking, with volume one coming soon (join the mailing list for pre-order opportunities).  Hello to Nikhil Vimal - thanks for sharing our podcast, and all that you learned from it, we love it when we spot things like this, and the feedback as well as the ego boost is invaluable. Pilar is running an event on the 3rd September with Next Stage Radicals, on ‘planned spontaneity’ - so sign up to workshop this concept here (it’s going to very spontaneous). The question of transcripts does keep bubbling up - would you like to see a full transcript of this episode, instead of or in addition to Maya’s summarising show notes? Let us know! A quick hello to our new team member Becky Boyd who Boldly, who is helping with some backend stuff and admin, also our LinkedIn page - so say hi to Becky if you spot her there! And last of all Pilar found our website strapline quoted here, on Virtual facilitation and training for remote teams – FUTOUR - we love these little echoes, from the from around the world of remote collaboration. 

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London; please check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/questions-education-perception for full shownotes and detailed information. In today’s episode we bringing you two interesting guests dig in to some of the big questions about remote work and the future of work.  03:51 Robert Kropp: How education needs to evolve for the future of work Robert joined us in Episode 230, when he and Rowena Hennigan introduced us to Remote Work Tree, and we’ve enjoyed his articles before in our What’s Going On segments (you can enjoy them all on his blog at Allwork.)  20:50 John O’Duinn: Physical proximity and employment status John joined us last month on Episode 240 to talk about how Vermont is incentivising remote workers.  He also wrote this really interesting article, Physical Proximity vs Employment Status. Please note: this show returns to its previous fortnightly schedule from now on. Make sure you follow us and subscribe in your favourite podcast player, so you don't miss any episodes.

Another solo show from Virtual Not Distant Managing Director Pilar Orti, completing an unofficial miniseries around the concept of visible teamwork. Please see full shownotes for this and all our podcast episodes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts. Visible teamwork is a set of practices which include using technology to make our work and ourselves manifest in our remote teams - staying connected, as well as collaborating. So we need to understand what drive us to do our work in the first place: our motivations, for being part of a team and working toward common goals. Deci and Ryan’s definition of intrinsic motivation comes from the positive position that we all want to do our best, in work and in life, but the environment gets in the way of that. It follows that we should assume positive intent in others too, so that’s a good place to start. They define the components of intrinsic motivation as autonomy, competence, and relatedness (see also Daniel Pink’s ‘Drive’ too, though he uses mastery and purpose instead of competence and relatedness). 5.23 Autonomy Having a choice of where to work from feeds autonomy, so it’s easy to conclude that ‘remote = better’.  But right now external circumstances may constrain that, as may the structures of large organisations trying to change the way they move forward in a safe and hybrid way. Choosing how and when to do the work matters too, and even who we do it with - so creating choice wherever we can will help people feel more autonomous. 10:18 Competence Both doing our job well and learning to improve, are important here - so asynchronous, flexible communication supports this, promoting deep work without disruption.    14.23 Relatedness We need to relate to people, the work, and its purpose - and this reminds us how much we need to stay connected to the whole organisation and the bigger picture, as well as our immediate team and work.  ____ To find out more, and put the concepts of visible teamwork to work in your team through our bespoke coaching and facilitation, then make sure you contact us. And look out for our forthcoming ‘podcasting for connection’ service, to help you strengthen those connections, wherever you are and whatever work you’re doing.

Welcome to our regular news round-up episode, that has become a monthly feature in the light of such fast-moving change in the world of remote work. In these episodes, Pilar and Maya discuss a selection of recent news items, announcements, and publications, which reflect the way issues and policies are unfolding. This conversation was recorded on 30th June 2020, please see full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/WGO-July-2020 Productivity monitoring: Considerations for HR, from compliance to culture More and more companies are resorting to ‘employee monitoring solutions’, to manage their remote workforce. . Our favourite quote: “Surveillance is not a replacement for leadership”.  However, in We Work Harder When We Know Someone’s Watching, HBR reminds us that external accountability definitely can make us more productive. Spain is introducing new legislation around ‘teletrabajo’ -   El Pais has been discussing it, and the Future for Work institute have published research Teresa Douglas shared this article on LinkedIn about performance review: 4 Different Approaches Companies Are Taking to Performance Reviews This Year. And in the UK, Only 13% of UK working parents want to go back to ‘the old normal’ . Slack has a brand new emoji pack to help with remote work, and Slack Connect (here’s a round-up of announcement articles from Angel List).  Listener and community news Shout out to Chris Coladonato, for joining the conversation about task interdependence and visible teamwork, reminding us how much there is to unpick there… Essential listening, episode 239 - if you work with other people in any way, do check it out. Thanks Andy Brogan for sharing it too. The IAF England and Wales chapter are planning an online conference at the end of OCtober, so do take a look at that.Annual Conference 2020 - the Power and Practice of Facilitation Over on LinkedIn, Diego Von Söhsten has been looking at Lessons Learned From Our Early Adopters in Their Forced Shift to Remote Work - interesting perspective on Agile and remote, so well worth checking out this concise read. Sharath Jeevan is developing a short LinkedIn series on re-igniting inner-drive in our working lives.  Maya has been attending (online) some sessions at the Future of Work summit…  You can buy access to sessions you have missed here.

In today's episode, we look at the link between trust and visible teamwork. She covers: -Propensity to trust -What makes up trust -The difference between cognitive and affective trust (and why building trust is not just done through social interactions) -Do we need trust in remote teams? - Can visible teamwork damage trust? For more detailed show notes, go to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/trust-remote-teams-visible-teamwork

This show is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, helping teams with remote transformation and transition, In today's episode we have two excellent interviews on the theme of economic development and social change, being the bigger picture of remote work and its community impact - do check out full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/beyondwfh-socioeconomic-change. 5:00 John O’Duinn is a Senior strategist at Civic Actions, and author of Distributed Teams: The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart. 37.58 Tracy Keogh tells us all about GrowRemote, which is a community project that makes remote work local, by going into communities and making remote work both visible and accessible.

Pilar has been working on how the way in which are tasks are dependent on other team members’ affects the visible teamwork practices we adopt - and why. This episode is brought to you by Virtual not Distant. Thanks go to Theresa Sigillito Hollema from www.interact-global.net for the inspiration - and she now has her book Virtual Teams Across Cultures on pre-order! he principles don’t only help us to stay aligned in our teams, but they can help us to feel connected. (For more on Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams, check out our 7 episode series!) The principles of Visible Teamwork can be found here, and follow three areas: Deliberate Communication Work Visibility Planned Spontaneity Understanding the level of interdependence of your tasks will also help you see whether the systems of visible teamwork are going to help you mostly with coordination of the work, or to increase your sense of connection with each other. Pooled, sequential and reciprocal interdependence. For detailed show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/task-interdependence-remote-teams

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd, please see the full show notes over on our website.  What’s Going On We're reading and discussing: Covid-19 Just Accelerated What Was Already Happening [Long Read]  Five workplace trends will shape life after lockdown  Mapping “The Future of Work” Startup & Investor ecosystem.  Bill of Rights for Remote Work Facebook and Google extend working from home to end of year and  Facebook employees could receive pay cuts as they continue to work from home, also Google will let workers expense $1,000 worth of office furniture. We also discuss remote tracking/monitoring apps and trends, Brexit negotiations on Zoom, accessibility of collaboration tools (Making collaboration accessible to all with Microsoft Teams and  Accessibility overview of Microsoft Teams - Office Support), and online meeting fashion tips (yes, this is now a thing).   Meanwhile, at Virtual Not Distant, and our community… Bart, has a new book out in Belgium, with the Dutch title: "Voorbij Het Nieuwe Werken, een dialoogboek". ("Beyond the New Way of Work")  www.futureofworkBE.org (#futureofworkBE)   Pilar has recently run two round tables for the Spanish energy company Iberdrola, who are approaching remote working from the green point of view, and more for Spanish speakers, take a look at Campo Virtual Latino.  Emotional Contagion A recent conversation on LinkedIn led to a great dialogue, which was so interesting that Pilar pulled it all into an article: Do Emotions Spread through Collaboration Platforms? So there you have it, lots going on in the world of remote, even beyond the present dependence on home-based working worldwide. If you have ideas, angles, and articles you’d like us to explore in future episodes, do get in touch 

With the sudden “rush to remote”, many teams and managers have sought training in working remotely - however, sometimes taking a different first step towards adapting to the new environment can be more beneficial to your team, in the current situation, and with a view to the future.  In this episode, we give you an overview of four different types of interventions. If you need help with any of them, get in touch at www.virtualnotdistant.com In this episode, inspired by the academic paper Team Development Interventions: Evidence-Based Approaches for Improving Teamwork  published in the journal American Psychologist 2018, Vol. 73, No. 4, 517–531, Pilar goes through four different training interventions that might be suitable for your remote team, right now.  Think of the team competencies you might need to address. For example,rather than training in working remotely, your team might benefit undergoing training in other areas like “communicating in writing” (you’ll probably need to do A LOT of that when working remotely), or “concise communication” - which can be done in writing and audio.  “Giving and receiving feedback” (also necessary when working apart from each other as a team) or even “task management”, or spend time together learning how to master three or four functions in MSTeams that will save you time and headaches in the future. (Pilar mentions her Remarkable tablet.) Team Training. What are attitudes, skills and knowledge we need to work in a team? (By the way, don’t assume that because someone knows how to use the tech, it doesn’t mean that they know how to use it collaboratively)If you are losing visibility in the organisation, and are a highly specialised team, you might benefit from training in using everyday language to communicate with others. Leadership Training  In-house training courses are the best option, because they enable peers to talk to each other, network and learn from each other. Sometimes, if there is a very specific issue that a manager has, coaching might be a better option.“Transfer” is key, to be able to put all new information and learning into practice, as is feedback. Of course, attending any kind of  training also gives you the space to reflect. Improving Team Dynamics and TeamBuilding in Remote TeamsThese intervention have the aim of improving how people work together: co-ordination, nurture trust, discussion of values etcThese help with goal setting, problem-solving, role clarification… in any case, it’s important to know what a teambuilding intervention can help you solve. As we talk about all this, we talk about the work, and how we engage with the work, and collaborate. These interventions will also surface a lot of hidden information, and a lot of information remains hidden in team members’ heads when we’re remote. Role clarity in remote teams, can give us role flexibility, making the team more resilient. Having a facilitator running these discussions can help, giving people the space to think without worrying about team dynamics as much.4) Team DebriefThese are great learning and teambuilding opportunities (Agile teams do this very well through their retrospectives!) and opportunities to celebrate success. (LINK TO CELEBRATIONS)They give us an opportunity to reconnect through the work. These sessions don’t need to be very long, 18 minutes are an average good length, and are the most effective in improving team performance. These sessions are influenced by the team climate, (here it helps to have a facilitator to create a psychologically safe climate), learning to provide feedback. You might want to think in your team about the kind of questions that help you really learn from the experience. “Conclusions and agreements need to be documented”.And of course we can help you with tailored management team-training and team facilitation. But why not run Team Debriefs in your team, led by different team members each time, so that you can discover new talents in your team, which have emerged recently in the remote space? Get in touch through www.virtualnotdistant.com

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, a London-based consultancy where we help teams transition to remote working, and operate happily and productively in that environment. Today we explore hiring remotely, and to do that we are joined by Jo Palmer from Pointer Remote Roles (04.33) to help us understand the unique perspective of the specialist hiring agency, and then by Morgan Legge from Convert (34.30) to look at how this global, fully distributed team finds new colleagues, who will be a fit within their framework of holacracy. Please find full shownotes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/hiring-remotely