21st Century Work Life

In the final episode of the year, Pilar shares a wide range of listener's thoughts, yet again widening the conversation around remote work. We announce our new podcast collaboration with ShieldGEO and talk a little bit about some new Virtual not Distant services. Find out more about us over at virtualnotdistant.com  

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Looking back at 2019, it’s been a busy year - we’ve a lot to look forward to in 2020, but first it’s time to reflect on a transformational time for remote working. We discuss research, infrastructure, technology and wellbeing issues and how they have shifted through the year - while we also look ahead at what's to come. For full shownotes please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-now-what, where highlights include: 22.46 interview with Rowena Hennigan, remote work advocate. https://www.rowenahennigan.com/ 22.45 tech round-up - what a lot of changes we have seen, in the tools available for remote working and 59.15 loneliness and mental health in remote - an issue we'll surely hear more about in future. We have lots more to bring you in 2020, including a new podcast mini-series with a brand-new collaborator to share with you. We also want to answer YOUR big questions about work/remote work in 2020, so please contact us. Or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas And meanwhile, we wish you a very happy end of year break however you are celebrating, and every good wish for 2020 - from Pilar, Maya and Ross at the 21st Century Work Life podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd, and full shownotes can be found at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/south-europe. We bring you 3 guests today, talking about remote work in Portugal, Italy and Spain, as well as further afield - for a different perspective on changing trends and attitudes, in this global societal shift.  Is there a North/South divide (or even an East/West one)?  07.57 Felippe Silveira Felippe the co-founder and Executive Creative Director at Mowe Studio. He is originally from Brazil, and travels regularly in Costa Rica and Italy, while presently living in Lisbon, Portugal.  You can keep up with Mowe Studio on Instagram here. 26.20 Giovanni Batista Pozza Giovanni has lived all over Europe and South/central Americas, and as well as running Be Happy Remotely, You can connect with Giovanni on Linkedin and follow Be Happy Remotely’s community on Facebook.   40.20 Eva Rimbau-Gilabert Spain remains a late adopter of remote, and the research Eva refers to looks at homeworking, indicating 8% uptake (compared to Northern Europe/Nordics, approaching 30%), and the trend is still around self-employment not employees. You can connect with Eva to further conversation on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, where we help teams transition to office-optional work lifestyles - find us at https://virtualnotdistant.com For full shownotes to this episode please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/artificial-intelligence, For now here's our list of 'what's going on' (recorded 30/10/19) Zoom is incorporating chat - and reflecting the trend of platform convergence, whereby everything wants to do everything. Do we need this? Or is there room for more differentiation - which has to be good for consumer choice. You can now email from within Teams client and Teams mobile… Why..? Slack also tells admins they can welcome people by email - but surely the whole point of these platforms is to move us away from email? IT managers thoughts on workplace messaging - new research indicates Slack is still most preferred, and most workplaces use more than one. Different functionality, shadow IT, or an experimental mindset… what do you think? Banning ‘out of hours’ email - surely this is treating the symptom not the cause? Reducing autonomy can surely only increase stress. But reminds us how important email still is...(Thanks for this link Teresa) Judy Rees (episode 60) has curated a great set of articles about online meetings, now published at InfoQ. Bad meetings get in the way of the work being done, but not for the reasons first thought of: ‘technology is no longer the problem, the problem is the people’  InfoQ recognised their own needs in this area and were glad to support this extended publication, to really help teams of any size and composition manage their online meetings better. From the tech to the culture to relationship buildings, this guide covers a great deal, so do check it out, and as well as Pilar you’ll recognise contributions from many of our podcast guests.  Judy has training coming up too which will interest listeners judyrees.co.uk @judyrees  Listener question, from Brigitte: Should she pre-screen job applicants by email, for an online role? Well, if writing email is going to be a key part of their job then you need to know if they can write a good email… Otherwise, or additionally, it makes more sense to use selection tools which will reflect the demands of the job they’re seeking. Please send us your questions! Maya is multitasking… and listening to more and more audiobooks, as a way to learn and do research while getting away from the screen. You can exercise your body while resting your eyes, and still enjoy books!

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd. There’s more to remote work than improving life and work for those exploring its potential. Remote work can be a tool for social change - and today’s episode explores different ways that remote work can have broader impact, with a diverse range of stories and approaches. One quick update before we meet our expert interviewees: Pilar has a new podcast with the International Association of Facilitators - so if you’re interested in stories from the frontline of facilitation and learning and meetings, then do check that out and enjoy. Now, onwards with the social impact of remote: 04.13 Chris Slemp Chris Slemp is a Customer Success Manager for Modern Workplace, at Microsoft UK, and long-term friend of this show (joining us in episodes 123, 144 and 202) I asked Chris how remote work can help us build and be part of our community (wherever we want to build that, rather than necessarily at work)? He reminded us that commuting culture put responsibility on the workplace to provide ‘community’, and hubs like WeWork strive to provide everything the worker needs apart from sleep. But we have options now, and employers can dial it down a bit - Chris after all introduced us to the term ‘office optional’, and participating in office cultural activities (as opposed to work activities) should be optional too, freeing people to engage in their local communities as appropriate. Chris takes a fluid view of location-dependency and work, reminding us how flexible things can be, and that we all have a right to extend that optionality at other times. We can advocate for that flexibility for all workers, to take advantage of the technology now available to us. Chris also talked about the way remote work is affecting how and where people choose to live, and the social impact of this, a moving target for the future. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn (and tell him we said hi!). Remember that remote does not always mean flexible, and vice versa… check out episode 21 of My Pocket Psych for more on this point, while we meet: 17.06 Mandy Gardner   Mandy is the managing editor of Working Mums and Working Wise (specialising in employment for over 50s), and joined us way back in episode 74. So she’s been working with the idea of flexible working for years, since Working Mums started in 2006 (now joined by Working Dads as well as Working Wise, to advocate for and promote best practice around working flexibly for all). They work with employers to help them improve their recruitment and hiring, and has seen many changes in the flexible working agenda over that time. Employers are more open to the concept now, as the evidence is in to support flexibility. But there are still misconceptions (eg flexible = part time) among bigger less nimble organisations. Career progression remains an issue, as does being explicit about remote in recruitment advertising. Mandy sees flexibility becoming increasingly normalised into the future, as life grows ever more complex for parents, carers and all of us. 34.01 Nacho Rodriguez Nacho is the founder of the Nomad City conference run from Gran Canaria - a region working hard to attract remote workers, initially as digital nomads and now increasingly as employees. We talked about the conference with Nacho in episode 210, and we’ll have an update soon from Nomad City 2019 (in progress as this episode drops!). Revitalising traditional tourist areas with remote opportunities brings new blood and fresh ideas, as well as creating opportunities for local people to get involved, and the conference has evolved over its 4 year history to embrace ideas ranging from economic development to onboarding remote colleagues to collaboration tech, as well as an invitation-only summit for experienced advocates and consultants. On the social impact front, the event includes a job fayre to connect local people with remote employers - opening up new opportunities for all.   Lorraine Charles Remote means no borders - and Lorraine Charles is working with refugees in Jordan and Turkey to facilitate employment opportunities in the refugee population there.  Protectionist labour market laws often restrict employment locally, so technology and the right training can enable broader opportunities for all the population.  Location-independent livelihoods provides refugees with resilient futures, and helps stimulate the local economy, in countries which are themselves developing and struggling to deal with an influx of new residents.  Remote work can do so much to change the narrative for employment and make everyone’s lives better - not just for refugees, but parents, disabled people, those who don’t want to migrate to a mega-city somewhere... But as well as hard and soft skills training, there are needs for better infrastructure, technology and support. Lorraine is actively seeking partners, to help them train refugees, and commit to hiring - can you help, or make a connection? Contact Lorraine via LinkedIn or email, and check out her research paper, or contact us and we’ll put you in touch. Impact investment is also needed, to create sustainable pathways to growth in emergent markets, while also leveraging the initiatives and expertise of those who have been courageous enough to uproot their lives and start over.   1.02.30 Laurel Farrel Laurel consults and advocates for remote working through Distribute Consulting, and joined us in episode 189 when we discussed loneliness and remote. She sees the real power and value of our lives in the ripple effects of social change, impacting on equality, the environment and economic development amongst so many other things. Reversing the cycle of traditionally having to bring businesses in to attract employees, remote work can do so much to support declining areas from the US midwest to rural Africa - this article of Lauren’s, Could remote work be economic development’s new secret weapon? may be two years old, but every point remains relevant somewhere! Local advocates are needed to build trust on the ground, and solve specific local challenges - every community is unique, and solutions must be tailored and bespoke. People need and want different things from where they choose to live, and once that is decoupled from a job place the possibilities can be overwhelming.  Locations need to learn to promote themselves differently, to attract remote workers seeking particular lifestyles, rather than attracting businesses - and this is a win-win for all, as new residents pay tax and spend their income earned remotely. Initiatives encouraging people to relocate include financial incentives in places like Tulsa and Vermont, and ever more creative solutions are continuing to emerge.  As remote work creates more diverse and rich populations, as people are able to choose where to live, completely separately from choosing the work they do. This is changing communities, as well as changing lives. Don't forget to keep in touch and let us know what you think, at Virtual Not Distant, or tweet us at @Virtualteamw0rk. Hope this episode inspired you as much our guests inspired us! Please do share your thoughts and ideas.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd - head over to our detailed shownotes for more depth on the main discussion, as well as links to all our other episodes, services and content. Today’s episode is all about planned spontaneity. But firstly our regular news round-up: 01.30 What’s going on Owl Labs has released their ‘State of Remote Work 2019’ report. It highlights a huge variety in the meaning and scope of remote work, a reminder that we should not assume it means the same thing to different people On the other hand, research from Airtasker published by Yahoo tells us that remote workers work more and have poorer work-life balance, and paints a very different picture to the report above. But that just goes to show how hard it is to compare like with like in this fragmented space. What do you think? Here’s the link to the original research. Co-working - apparently the best low-cost option in San Francisco is a parking space - and why not! It might not work quite so well in London… Lots of interest here, including the idea of co-working becoming unaffordable in city hotspots, and the human connection of this ties in nicely with today’s theme of spontaneity New co-working options like And Co (UK), and CoCo (US/International) are seeking to reclaim work space on a more flexible and fractional way, so maybe this will be the future? More grassroots and user-centric than the WeWork corporate top-down stuff, maybe that’s what we need to get back to… Slack released a load of updates this week, including a tool to invite up to 1000 users to a channel. Do we want to be in Slack channels with thousands of users? Well, these tools continue to evolve in response to users, and they’re replacing intranets in large organisations. Let’s hope everyone knows how to manage their notifications! Looking ahead to an upcoming episode on social change, and the general idea that ‘remote work is the future’, we do need to make sure we’re not excluding whole industries or categories of work. Remote may be the future for knowledge workers, but let’s be careful not to generalise and create divisions. The future is blended and flexible, rather than specifically ‘remote’.   26.44 Planned Spontaneity Please see https://virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/planned-spontaneity - or simply enjoy the conversation.

A Thoughtful Thursday bonus episode, no music, no intro, no segments, just a conversation between founder of Nomad City Ignacio (Nacho) Rodriguez and our host, Pilar Orti. Some of this conversation will be included in episode 212 on Remote Work and Social Change, but just in case you want to get to a very diverse, thoughtful conference covering many aspects of remote work, and designed for a range of remote workers, we wanted to introduce to you Nomad City, which runs from 7-9th November 2019 in Gran Canaria. https://www.nomadcity.org/ Nacho explains why the conference was set up, how it's linked with Gran Canaria's broader aims and then he describes the event itself. You can get in touch with Nacho over at LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciorodriguezcastellano/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/IGROCA And of course, say hello to Pilar on Twitter https://twitter.com/pilarorti and visit our website www.virtualnotdistant.com  

Today Pilar explores the paths that a diverse range of leaders of remote teams have travelled, to reach their present roles. Journeys of learning, self awareness and personal growth… Some inspiring conversations, which we will share with you in full later in the year. But first... What’s going on? Our quick round-up of remote work news and conversations: Online meetings: A new series of articles curated by Judy Rees, and featuring many of our previous guests, as well as Pilar herself, discussing the social connection aspect of online meetings, and we’ll have Judy on the show to talk about all the issues that emerged. Minds at Work contact us about learning and development in remote teams, so we referred them to Buffer and their exemplary approach to managing and funding professional development - growth mindset, rather than training, for a start.  Breakout rooms - a feature of face to face workshop facilitation since forever, and so far limited to Zoom online. But you can hack MS Teams, or Skype, or anything else, to do breakout sessions if you use different channels, for each room. Reminds us all that it’s not which tool, but how you agree to use it, that matters… Even if it takes a little more prep. Don’t forget to share with us ‘what’s going on’ for you, and there’s more news, of course, in our newsletter. Now lets meet our remote leadership guests, who discussed multiple dimensions of remote leadership in a series of in-depth conversations with Pilar (please see full shownotes for details) Laïla von Alvensleben Laïla is Head of People Ops at Mural, a visual collaboration tool for planning and brainstorming Marcus Wermuth Buffer Mobile Lead Tim Burgess Shield GEO Millie Blackwell Showcase Workshop  If you enjoyed these insights, do look out later in the year for the full interviews with each of these inspiring guests

For once we are truly working from home, because we’re recording this episode in Maya’s home office! Usually we record from different countries on Skype, but it’s quite fun and very appropriate to do things differently today.   This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, a London-based consultancy helping organisations transition to successful office-optional working. What’s going on? Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker recently unveiled an $18 billion transportation investment bill that includes a tax credit that will give companies more flexibility in offering work from home perks to their employees - more on LinkedIn here. Employers are not supporting tech learning, at least not as much as their employees would like. This UK research in People Management was disappointing to read. The reasons why are not clear, but the expressed frustration certainly is. Leaving people to figure things out for themselves is NOT the way to implement effective digital transformation! WeWork have cancelled - sorry, postponed - their forthcoming IPO Pilar and Maya don’t really get it, the corporate co-working movement and replicating the office you’ve left behind, but clearly some people love it… Not enough to fundamentally shift the problems of office space costs, but maybe it’s good to remind us of the many different options in terms of co-working alone. Work From Home Week - listen to Rebecca Corliss, VP of Marketing at Owl Labs, recapping on this interesting initiative they promoted in July, encouraging corporate partners to experiment systematically with home working.  It’s great to learn more about their ‘Meeting Owl’ product as well, a 365 degree conferencing camera that puts the remote participants in the centre of the hybrid meeting, instead of stuck up on the wall somewhere. Work From Home Week was a great experiment which taught participants a great deal, and the blog post shares these fascinating insights.  “#WFHW” will be repeated, but you don’t have to wait : Why not have your own ‘work from home week’ within your organisation? BBC Bitesize have been writing about ‘workplace perks’, and we all went ‘ahhh’ about the concept of ‘Fur-ternity’ leave - offering new pet-parents the option of working from home for a week while settling a new non-human family member. Anything that brings on experimenting with remote working is fine by us, as is any embrace of the diversity and individuality of human motivation. Pilar has been a panelist this week for a Minds at Work event, which was run as a hybrid event in London plus a parallel remote one, while the two cohorts were kept completely separate.  The remote side used Remo, a new tool for remote events, which worked very well - offering lots of flexibility for participants to ‘choose a table’ and talk to each other, then listen to broadcasts in bigger sessions. Event sessions included finding your community at work, and how that differs in the remote space (do people still meet their best friends or their life partners at work?), as well as the ways we communicate and changing degrees of formality and the evolution of the business conversation generally.  So many shifts, and the question of how to make remote work better are often questions about how to make work better generally… this event and others are really helping to broaden the conversation, and if you get the chance to participate in one in future, why not check it out? You can do so from anywhere in the world, for example somewhere like Maya’s home office - which she has recently reclaimed from a shared space, banishing her other half to his own home office in another room! She has added a comfortable arm chair for reading and research, and also a standing desk zone (though the way this is being used as a bookshelf reveals that not a lot of standing up takes place every day) - at least the theory is there, and it’s good not to sit too much!  Also to change your focal point, by looking at something further away than the screen in front of your nose. A work in progress, Maya is doing her best to organise the space - small as it is - by function, to create different zones for different activities, which is a powerful way to overcome any feeling of being “stuck in one place” all day, as well as switching up the energy: Pilar does a similar thing moving around her apartment, and both enjoy getting out of the home office and interacting with other people in the neighbourhood too. And how about if more employers encouraged people to do things in their community, safeguarded the time needed to take a class or do some exercise? Surely everyone’s health AND productivity would improve.  But you can always find ways to connect when remote working, such as apps like FocusMate - which pairs you with an accountability partner to work alongside  remotely via webcam. Anything which helps you get things done is worth a try, though some people might find it distracting or want to talk to the other person and get to know them - which is the opposite of the whole idea. We would love to hear your thoughts about working from home - which is just one aspect of remote working and wholly optional one. Let us know what you thought of this episode, what you think of working from home, and what you’d like us to explore and discuss next. Send us your comments, or catch up on Twitter to join the conversation.

In this episode, we hear from how different people are going about growing their companies. They have different customers, different recruitment processes and different ideas about the size and make up of their workforce. However, they have one thing in common: their employees are distributed over different geographical locations. What's Going On section links: Harvard Business School’s research summary “How Companies Benefit When Employees Work Remotely” Highlights from Flexjobs 2019 Annual Survey. ">Appear.in has changed its name. Find out why here: https://whereby.com/information/brand Judy Rees and Lisette Sutherland are running a series of workshops on Running Remote Meetings. Starting 18 Sept 2019, book here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/remotetogether/289398 Info Q is publishing a series of articles on Remote Meetings, and celebrating the series with a session on Mastering Remote Meetings, on 1st October! Details here. Finally, news from Virtual not Distant: Our online course Leading Remote Teams through Visible Teamwork is cooking in the online oven, register here to be alerted of when it goes live. ">Growing a Remote Organisation 22.56mins. Wade Foster and Jeremiah Smith talk about their first steps in setting up the company and why they decided to set up their businesses. Our guests explain why they started to employ people at Zapier and Simple Tiger. 29.40mins. Pilar explains the nature of employment at Virtual not Distant; Wade explains how they recruit at Zapier; Jeremiah talks about his own process when looking for other people to hire; while third guest Tim Burgess takes on a different strategy when looking for employees for Shield GEO.
 
 43.40mins. So far, hiring for remote seems very similar to hiring for colocated. However, there is one thing that makes a huge difference when you’re growing a remote company: Timezone differences. Tim and Wade discuss their thoughts and experiences around hiring globally and asynchronous (and text-based) communication specifically. 54.00mins. Hiring globally means that you can grow and grow and grow and grow… but that’s not on everyone’s mind.