A special episode, as it was inspired by a message from one of her listeners, who wanted to find out about more about the role of Head of Remote. Pilar reached out to Tyler Sellhorn, a teacher-oriented technologist who maintains the website headofremote.xyz. For the full show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts /head-of-remote-position

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar talk about the range of features in collaboration technology that could affect the way in which we work together, without us even noticing. Recorded on 23 March 2023, you can find the show notes over at 

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/control-the-tech

00.30mins Beware of the technology! 23.30mins Integration of AI 33.00mins Phones, phones, phones 35.50mins We love the tech, really! 40.40mins Other News 47.20mins Listener input

Do let us know your opinion on all of this! We’d love to hear from you.

Pilar welcomes returning guest Robert Glazer to talk about helping people develop and thrive in an organisation, the subject of Robert’s latest book “Elevate Your Team: Empower Your Team To Reach Their Full Potential and Build A Business That Builds Leaders.“

You can check out the full show notes over at: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/elevate-your-team

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar discuss recent research into what people do with the time they save not having to commute to work, why people use third spaces of work and other tech updates. Recorded on 22 February 2023.

Below are some time codes to guide you through the episode, but for the full show notes, please visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/third-places-of-work  00.30 Stats on working from home time savings and the 4-day week 21.25mins Research into third places of work  29.20mins Technology updates  Do let us know your opinion on all of this! We’d love to hear from you.

Pilar talks to returning guest Mark Kilby about the different ways in which leaders can gain visibility in remote organisations, the need for pervasive and transparent communication, as well as the benefits of visualising our work.

Check out Mark’s book: From Chaos To Successfully Distributed Agile Teams . You can find Mark over at markkilby.com and modusinstittute.com  .

For the full show notes, go to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/visible-leadership

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar take inspiration from a post (not a very sophisticated one) generated by ChatGPT about the challenges facing those working from home this year. They also review articles by humans, on the future of work and the future of office spaces. Recorded on 24 Jan 2023.

For the show notes and links to the articles we mention, go to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/chat-gtp

In this episode, Shannon Teague shares her story scaling a remote business, and some of the things she learned along the way. For the full show notes visit  Links:

You can find Shannon and her course over at www.scalingupsimplified.com - and she’s got a free course on hiring remotely to get you started if you need help right now. And if you want to hear more from Sharon, check out her YouTube channel.   The episode that Pilar mentions from Management Café is episode 34 Is delegation hard?

We'll be back to our normal programme next week, but in case you're looking for something to listen to around leading remote teams, here's a conversation between Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti on tackling the challenges of the asynchronous environment as managers/leaders. This is episode 38 from Management Café, where the co-hosts talk about an aspect of management for about 20 minutes. Join them for this informal style every week!

Search for Management Café in your favourite podcast app, or head over to the Management Café site for timecoded show notes.  If you'd like to be a test listener for our new audio-first course on asynchronous communication, register here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/your-opinion  Today's conversation: What happens for managers when work moves away from real time meeting focussed and more towards asynchronous? Communication and team interaction can be as unique and nuanced as each individual human. So how do we navigate management when our team are spending large parts of their time working async?

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar review how new ways of working have landed in organisations and how the freelance landscape is evolving - mainly in relation to remote work. Recorded on 5 December 2022.

They cover the following articles:

Is it time to revisit unproductive flexible working arrangements? https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1803235/time-revisit-unproductive-flexible-working-arrangements

Article about hybrid at Hubspot https://www.hubspot.com/hybrid 

Resource from GitLab on Head of Remote: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/head-of-remote/

Pointer Remote newsletter: https://pointerremote.com/newsletter/ 

Freelancing: The Future is Freelance podcast https://futureisfreelance.buzzsprout.com/ They refer to guest John Lee speaking on tax rules 

The Number of U.S. Independent Workers Continued to Surge in 2022: number-of-us-independent-workers-continued-to-surge-in-2022.html"> https://www.smallbizlabs.com/2022/12/the-number-of-us-independent-workers-continued-to-surge-in-2022.html

Pilar mentions the podcast After Hours, episode 17 Nov 2022.

Solopreneurship and e-⁠residency: when small is beautiful. resident.gov.ee/blog/posts/solopreneurship-and-eresidency">https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/blog/posts/solopreneurship-and-eresidency

(Check out the section on digital nomads in episode 309 https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/august2022)

You can find the full show notes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/recap-2023

We'd love to hear what you think about all this: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/contact-us 

Today's guest is Daphnée Laforest, who is also helping organisations adopt asynchronous practices to make remote work sustainable. 

Daphne is the host of the podcast The Remote First podcast, which started during the pandemic to help companies adopt remote work, and now it focuses on optimising new ways of working. Daphne works with small and medium enterprises transitioning to remote or hybrid ways of working, helping them adopt asynchronous operations, improving their onboarding etc. Her and Pilar talk about the slow widespread adoption of asynchronous practices, the importance of culture and the difficulty of "working out loud". For more show notes and to subscribe to our newsletter, check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/async-operations 

We had a problem with our previous file, so just in case you couldn't access it from your app earlier on, here it is.  (We had to edit something at the last minute...)

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar talk about how online education is evolving and what this means for the future workforce, the rise of births linked to remote work, as well as a couple of news around tech and our community.  Recorded on 15 November 2022. The beginning of the episode covers online education for children and young people.

16.00minsComment on this article: https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-remote-work-behind-the-spike-in-us-birth-rates 24.50minsLooks like everyone is becoming a one-stop collaboration space, with Zoom and Canva widening their features.  33.12mins Thanks to listener Scarlett, and hello to Catherine! Sign up to Judy's course Buzzing online workshops for change-makers starts 5 Dec, listen out for the discount code https://maven.com/inoncollab/buzzingonlineworkshops And Richard MacKinnon has a free and premium community (Community Plus) over at Work Life Psych. https://www.worklifepsych.club/

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar talk about how online education is evolving and what this means for the future workforce, the rise of births linked to remote work, as well as a couple of news around tech and our community.  Recorded on 15 November 2022. The beginning of the episode covers online education for children and young people.

16.00mins Comment on this article: https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-remote-work-behind-the-spike-in-us-birth-rates 24.50minsLooks like everyone is becoming a one-stop collaboration space, with Zoom and Canva widening their features.  33.12mins Thanks to listener Scarlett, and hello to Catherine! Sign up to Judy's course Buzzing online workshops for change-makers starts 5 Dec, listen out for the discount code https://maven.com/inoncollab/buzzingonlineworkshops And Richard MacKinnon has a free and premium community (Community Plus) over at Work Life Psych. https://www.worklifepsych.club/

Today’s episode is a bit different. Pilar is joined by Theresa Sigilitto Holleman, who specialises in leadership for global virtual teams, and is the author of the book Virtual Teams Across Cultures: Create Succesful Teams Across the World. They discuss how Pilar’s article Key Mindset Changes for the New Remote Manager , written in 2020 to help those suddenly working from home, can be adapted to the global context. You can find the show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/virtual-leader-mindset

In this What’s Going On episode, Maya and Pilar cover a small set of articles all related to the growing danger of presenteeism at work.  Recorded on 17 October 2022. For the full show notes, check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/async-privilege 

Michele Ong has been working remotely in global teams for over 10 years - and she loves it! She tells us why and shares how the profile of remote work in Australia has changed over the last years. For the long form show notes, head over to  https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/joys-of-remote-work 

In this episode, Maya and Pilar take a step back to look at the possible effects (both positive and negative) of widespread adoption of remote work. For the links and a full summary, check out: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-inclusivity-inequality

A different kind of episode for today, and we would love your feedback.

What does psychological safety look in a team that has embraced asynchronous communication? Pilar and Simon Wilson share a work in progress module of the course they working on. We’d love to hear from you what you think, through our page Your Opinion . For the full show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/psychological-safety-asynchronous

In this episode we go into the detail of how to best use a collaboration tool like Asana - even though we concentrate on this particular tool, much of what we talk about is applicable to many other platforms that allow us to visualise our workflow.

To connect with Bastien, you can find him on LinkedIn, and you can check out his website: clarity.com/">ido-clarity.com/ For the full show notes, check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/using-asana

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss recent figures about the adoption of remote work, the increasing costs of working from home as energy prices rise, first aid in a hybrid workplace, what co-working stipends say about a company and recent protests against digital nomads. For the show notes, visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/august2022

In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Rachel Happe, who is a consultant helping leaders in organisations to boost engagement. They talk about the mindset leadership needs to build digital communities in the workplace, and all the things that get in the way. 

For the full show notes, check out

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/engaged-communities

If you want to continue exploring this topic, check out Rachel’s blog post Building a Hybrid Workplace: How Communities Transform Work. https://engagedorgs.com/building-a-hybrid-workplace-how-communities-transform-work/ 

You can connect with Rachel on Twitter @rhappe, or if you prefer a work-related series of tweets follow the Engaged Orgs account: @engagedorgs

You can also connect with Rachel Happe on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhappe/

In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Niklas Dorn, co-founder and CEO of Filestage about how they recruit in the company, the role of values in the day-day and what async communication looks like in the company.

For more detailed show notes, visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/async-feedback 

Today’s guest Stefan Zavalin goes into detail about how he works with teams in organisations to sit less. There is plenty here for you to incorporate into your team. Plus, the conversation is also relevant to those involved in introducing change.

You can find out more about Stefan go to stefanzavalin.com and check out his book “Sit Less: Evolve Your Work and Life Without Compromising Your Health”. For the full show notes, visit www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/sit-less

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the the recent developments around the 4-day week experiments in the UK and Spain, they reflect on whether audio quality might give rise to a new kind of unconscious bias and they have a go at introvert/extrovert stereotypes. Plus, bits and pieces around collaboration tech and news from our network.

The approach to the 4-Day Week has many parallels with remote work. Organisations need to have the appropriate culture, and it will look differently in different companies. A chip shop featured in The Guardian’s article Thousands of UK workers begin world’s biggest trial of four-day week is a prime example of this, where they’ve implemented a whole new set of shifts, to make sure that customers still get the same level of service.

18.05 MINS Pilar, who pays unusual attention to audio, has noticed that her first impressions of people online, specially those featured in events, is affected by the quality of their audio. If remote workers want to show up as their best in meetings and presentations, it’s worth organisations, or individuals, investing in external microphones. (We recommend a YETI microphone.)

29:40 MINS There are still many misconceptions of what introverts are, thinking that they are always shy. There are some introverts who are shy, but there are also shy extroverts. It’s all about how energy is managed, and what energises us.

A short and fun one to end with: are we in danger of “slack-splaining”? We discuss this article which talks about how so many people are overthinking their written messages (on Slack, etc) and the stress it’s causing.

Full show notes here https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/4day-week 

David Stoddard is COO and Partner at Barnett Waddingham, a leading independent UK professional services consultancy at the forefront of risk, pensions, investment and insurance, with almost 1,500 employees in 9 offices. 

(By the way, Pilar was very impressed by their website, waddingham.co.uk/comment-insight/news/2022-best-companies/"> have a look.)

David is the Chief Operating Officer, one of 100 partners, and he leads the non-client facing areas of the business, including the transformation across the business - Work Smart. The company has 9 offices across the UK. Pre-pandemic, the office was at the centre of the work and the hub of connection.David and his team surveyed the employees through a regular pulse check throughout the pandemic, as they were concerned that people felt disconnected and were going through difficult times. They surveyed how people were feeling, what was working well, what wasn’t working well, etc.Some of the things they found when they surveyed their people confirmed their expectations, like people seeing a benefit of working together, and the benefit of having more time to work in a focused way, and the work life balance that the pandemic had provided. It was also very clear that everyone’s experience was personal, and had different views on what the best ways of working were. The team also found a few surprises amongst the survey replies, like the fact that some people had adopted pets during the pandemic and so were concerned about having to leave them in order to go to the office.The organisation is now adopting the Work Smart framework, but with the knowledge that each part of the business is very different, eg some dispersed team which are client-facing, some teams where individuals benefit from focus solo time etc. Clients shared much of the feedback with what they’d had from their colleagues. Clients also find the benefit of getting together in person, for example every three months, or at the beginning of the relationship. However, when there is already trust within a relationship, this is not as important, and meetings can take place online. In fact, throughout this process, they have been able to share some of their learnings with their clients, as they were also adapting to different ways of working. 18.50mins

The intention of the Work Smart framework is to create a framework that’s best for clients, colleagues and culture. Underpinning it is the belief that some activities at Barnett Waddingham are done best face to face, for example being immersed in a call when you have just joined the company. Apprentices and graduates can learn by osmosis by being in the same physical space. 

At the same time there are some activities which are best done in quiet spaces, and for some people that will be the home - but some people will prefer to do these activities in the office.

Being conscious of what you’re doing and why during these experiments is important. Asking people to come back to the office needs to be more deliberate and the benefits of people being physically together need to be made explicit. The “contract” with work has changed from the default being to go into the office, to consciously choosing to do so, or request so. Leaders in the organisation also need to change how they work, as working with an office-based team is different to learning a hybrid team.

29.15mins There is a risk of “cultural drift” happening over time, if you don’t deliberately work to sustain the culture of the organisation. People tend to be members of different teams, so there is the question of where do you form the greatest sense of connection or belonging? Probably with your immediate team, but then how do you connect to the broader culture? Social events are one example of bringing people together from different parts of the organisation. There will be a period of adjustment as people discover what it’s like to be in the office now, as opposed to in the past.  Meanwhile, David and his colleagues are still testing new ways of working, refining the technology, adapting their facilities and training their people. David believes hybrid is here to stay, and you can resist it, or embrace it. If you embrace it and get it right, you can create a sustainable and competitive advantage. 

Below are some brief show notes. For a longer summary, check out: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/hybrid-leadership-competencies Roberta’s research is around remote work/hybrid work/work from anywhere.

“You have to be willing to take the responsibility, if you’re asking for the flexibility.”

 Roberta has had an interest in and has been involved in leadership her whole adult life, leading teams, or in a volunteer capacity. Whenever people are in a position of leadership or something less formal, leading by relationship, they have a responsibility to take it seriously, as they are influencing people. 

Roberta’s recent research started in 2019, looking at the core competencies of remote workers.  She then decided to build on that research, but focus on leaders, so she extended her study leave. 

“Never underestimate the impact of culture shock.” Check out Roberta’s post. 

16.00 MINS

The research into leading hybrid teams

Proximity equity:  the unconscious treatment to give preferential treatment to those in our vicinity.  Hybrid:  Some people are colocated in the same physical space, or in the same town but not working in the office, while there are other members of the team working in other parts of the world.  

Robert Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership encourages questions like “Do those served grow as persons?” “Do they become healthier when being served”? 

26.30 MINS

In the end, the philosophy behind what we do is important. What is a leader’s philosophy of leadership becomes important because of their impact over others’ lives, so Roberta started to ask questions around that. She mentions the book “Humankind by Rutger Bregman”.

“Autonomy in the workplace is not about passively letting employees be independent, it’s also not about working in isolation or doing work without guidance, boundaries, supervision or collaboration. What it is, is about allowing people to work the way that is most conducive to their own best performance.” 

42.24 MINS

After covering the actions that leaders can take to nurture their teams and team members, Roberta turns to the leadership competencies. 

Someone leading a team can grow these competencies and be aware of what they are already good at. 

Link to Competencies for Successful Hybrid Leadership by Roberta Sawatzky 

Roberta hopes that this research will reach leaders and will be incorporating this into her classes in September, as well as her consultancy and coaching work.  

Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn and check out her research and company, Sam is Remote.

Thanks to everyone who commented on our 300th episode! You can now find all the interviews over at the new podcast Work Life Changes and Remote Work in Organisations.

We kick off looking at “what might be going on”. Maya has written “resident.gov.ee/blog/posts/virtual-e-residency-a-future-in-the-metaverse?utm_sq=h1oqd4a6ps">Virtual e-residency, a future in the metaverse?”, a piece looking at the potential of emerging technologies, and how we might make use of them as part of work in the future. Will “hybrid” mean we use both the metaverse and the office? Will there be a place online where all Estonian e-residents and businesses can meet? And how will taxation work?

12.45 mins We bring in the voices of two of our guests from episode 300, for this section on asynchronous communication. (We like to practice what we preach!) Mark Kilby tells us about a new experiment he’s set up using asynchronous video. He’s using the app Volley to bring people together who are reading his book and have questions and comments. It was not feasible to set up online meetings to bring everyone together, as readers are spread all over the world. Following episode 294, where we covered a couple of articles on emojis, Ross Winter, our own “podcast polisher” has some further questions on the use of emojis: Why do we only have a handful of emojis? Should we ditch them? Are they harming the quality of our communication? What about predictive replies? Or is it just a matter of sending a quick reply vs no reply at all?

31.16 mins John Hopkins, has recently completed some research on hybrid work in Australia. It outlines the three main hybrid work structures, and how happy workers are with them. Pretty happy by the way. Back in the UK, two government politicians are determined to get everyone back in the office. One of our listeners asked for commentary on the news that an unnamed politician (we don’t want to give him the space here in our blog, but we name him in the episode) has been leaving notes on civil servants’ desks telling them they are much missed at the office. He wants everyone back and one of the reasons is that the tax payer is paying for the buildings. (Yes, you read right.) One of our listeners sent us coverage of this story, with his own thoughts about how the different departments in the civil service are still recovering from the pandemic backlog, are at different points in their “digitalisation” and how some jobs can be done remotely while others can’t.

46.08 mins Finally, if you are looking for an activity for your team, check out these online puzzles from Google Arts and Culture. And let us know if you try them yourself! (Pilar heard about this in the After Hours podcast.)

47.30mins

We have some things to report from our network, but before that, Maya is hosting a new podcast: The Future is Freelance ! Thanks to everyone who commented on the 300th episode! And remember we now have a new show: Work Life Changes and Remote Work in Organisations. Many thanks to Hans Gaertner for sharing episode 298 with Laurel Farrer, all about biases in the hybrid workplace, and to Zahra for letting us know that our work resonates at her end too. Nancy Settle-Murphy recommends remove.bg to remove backgrounds from profile photos and make quick edits, and there is still time to get a 10% discount on Penny Pullan’s book Virtual Leadership, Practical Strategies for Success with Remote or Hybrid Work and Teams when you get it directly from the publisher’s site. (But you need to listen to the episode!) Let us know what you think over at virtualnotdistant.com 

Pilar talks to Brian Casel about asynchronous communication and how he uses his product, Zip Message in the day to day running of his business.

Links:

You can communicate asynchronously with Brian through his Zip Message page: https://zipmessage.com/brian

And you can find him on Twitter too https://twitter.com/CasJam 

https://briancasel.com/podcasts For more show notes, check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/asynchronous-video 

In this episode, we focus on the 21st Century Work Life podcast: how it’s evolved and what it could cover in the future. And our guests have come wise words for you, our listeners. 00.00 mins Pilar shares how the show has evolved over the last 100 episodes. Some of the episodes she mentions are: episode 209 The Journey of the Remote Leader, episode 263 “Remote” is not the Only Challenge, episode 282 Asynchronous Facilitation and Online Collaboration, episode 286 The Challenges of Adopting Asynchronous Communication.

09.05 mins Bree and Pilar talk about the Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams series and how the conversations around remote work in general changed during the pandemic. 15.39 mins We hear some general suggestions from guests about what they’d like a podcast like ours to cover in the future. Tim Burgess is first, he’s been leading a distributed company for a few years - he would like to hear more “secrets” from people who are in the remote space. Then we hear from Theresa Sigillito Hollema, who as a guest has talked about leading global teams, her speciality. She’s interested in the psychology of working away from each other. Theresa refers to My Pocket Psych, so its from its host, Dr. Richard MacKinnon, who we hear from next. He’s also appeared on this show as guest, and as part of the Connection and Disconnection series. He would like the show to cover the “how to” for those new to the space (especially if it’s evidence-based). He’s followed by Mark Kilby, who’s also been on this show a lot, (and who Pilar got to meet in person, in London!) and would like a mix of the “how” and the “why”. Then we hear from Pinar Akkaya, it’s the first time she’s guested on this show. She’s looking for inspiration and “what if” scenarios. 24.49 mins Other guests have more specific suggestions. Simon Wilson kicks this bit off. He’d like to hear more - and be involved in conversations - about what asynchronous communication looks like in those teams embracing it, plus deep conversations about organisational culture. We then hear from Ross Winter, our podcast polisher, who would like to hear answers to questions like, Why are we spending so much time looking for connection online? Eva Rimbau Gilabert suggest we cover the transition to hybrid (of which there are many versions), especially when we can back it up with academic research, while Bree encourages us to continue with the diversity of perspectives and deepening the conversation about the future of work. 31.32 mins Finally, the guests have some final words for listeners of the show, and Pilar. We hear from Maya, Simon, Eva, Pinar, Richard, Tim, Ross (and cat!), Bree, Mark, and Theresa, who leaves us with an inspiring aspiration. And thanks to Anish Hindocha, for contributing to the two other parts of this episode! (By the way, Pilar has “podcastinitis” and hosts many shows!) And we have some outtakes from 40.03mins for your amusement after our MANY THANKS to all of you!

03.45 After an introduction to the episode, we hear from Theresa about how the delivery of her training and consultancy has changed, Pinar tells us about delivering her wine tasting workshops online and Maya reflects on what has changed at her end.

09.30 We hear from Richard about travelling less for work, Bree tells us how she’s changed where she works from and Simon reflects on all the things he’s gained from working more online.

How about what’s at the core of our work, ourselves as humans? How has the way in which we look after ourselves changed over the last three years? How about the way in which we connect with others? Mark points out the importance of “energy management”, we’ll hear again from Richard about using technology efficiently,  and Eva tells us how she’s expected at more meetings now than before the pandemic - although they’re also incorporating more async. Tim and Pilar reflect on how the desired levels of interaction change.

Bree, who hosted our season on Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams, shares how working on that season made her more aware of her own needs. 

20.52 What about our relationship with technology? Tim talks about how he experiments with different communication media as business leader and Ross tells us how the way in which he works with clients has evolved.  24.34 Pilar suggests that remote work can be a great option when we don’t get on with our colleagues… And that we can control our communications more. Richard reminds us to take a break, Bree has started to experiment with her working patterns 

Richard has also developed fluid boundaries between work and non-work time and Pilar has swapped her Saturday for the Friday. Is it allowed, to work on the weekend?30.50 Eva describes how the difference between separators and integrators is now more visible, Pilar suggests the work-life balance conversation is out of date and Simon thinks most knowledge workers can change our relationship with work - and shares why he thinks he’s “got it wrong”.Mark talks about getting value from his work, Tim describes his new view of his role as a business leader, while Ross describes work as a mixture of insight, knowledge and experience.37.45 Eva shares how her own organisation has changed the focus of how they work. Anish would like to know what people are using the time they save in commuting for - building a new business or career, etc? Are we going to see the rise of the portfolio worker? Tim talks about cognitive consistency between who we are and who we see we are at work. Simon points out that the missing conversation at the moment is about how the working lives are going to be different.45.00 We tackle the broader question of what we’re hearing from others. We start with the work from home experience. Mark has been thinking about the craftsmen working a few centuries ago whose workshops were tied to their homes, Richard has noticed how people have discovered the benefits of not going into an office every day, while Pinar suggests we’re looking for more meaning in our work. Tim wonders whether we’re closer to becoming a “self we recognise” at work, and this will lead to a better life experience. Ross wonders whether we’re becoming different personalities when we are online. 50.31 The conversation around purpose at work, why we work, etc will continue. Pinar goes as far to suggest that the meaning of work is being redefined. Finally, Maya suggests that all the words we’re using now to describe the location of our work and other aspects of it will disappear, and we’ll just talk about work.

Find us on https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/300-part2

This is the first part of the celebratory episode 300!  Some of our guests return to the show to share how they see the world of remote work changing, how their own ways of working have changed and what they'd like this podcast to cover over the next 100 episodes (or is it  next 300!). We'll  hear from: Maya Middelmiss

Dr Richard MacKinnon

Mark Kilby 

Tim Burgess

Simon Wilson

Bree Cagiatti

Eva Rimbau-Gilabert

Theresa Sigilito Hollema

Ross Winter

Pinar Akkaya

Anish Hindocha

and your host, Pilar Orti  00.00 Pilar introduces the 3 parts and introduces the guests.

09.30 The guests start answering the question: What do you think is going to stay the same in remote work most knowledge workers for the next three years and what do you think it’s going to change? Bree predicts lots of changes as people recover from the shock of being forced into working from home, and Simon has seen some organisations rushing back to the office, while some have embraced the possibility of working remotely. Theresa reckons the desire for flexibility at work will continue, while Maya says that this raised self-awareness is here to stay.

13.25 But there’s also a less rosy view of what's going on. Anish gives us the devil advocate’s answer (and what he’s observing in the UK), Maya thinks many people are keen to have more “analog conversations” and some resistance to sustain the change, while Eva is seeing a reluctance in seriously adopting remote work in Spain. Mark has his doubts about whether hybrid is going to survive, while Simon has seen a polarisation in how organisations approach the ability to work in person and online.

19.00 What skills, mindset, behaviours will we need? Richard would like to see more sharing of what’s working and what successful remote work looks like, Tim thinks collaboration, communication and burnout will still be a problem - as they are a fundamental part of work. Pinar reckons we have developed some of these digital skills we’ve been needed for a while, and improved our interpersonal skills. Theresa has seen micromanagers become more facilitative, and Simon reckons that the organisations that survive are those that will adopt asynchronous communication successfully. 28.00 Pilar does her usual rant about the need for understanding asynchronous communication.

30.40 Theresa specialises in global teams and is interested in nurturing cultural awareness and creating inclusion in global teams, and she shares how virtual teams have affected these. 36.45 Pilar reminds us of the “remote work for social change” conversation, which was lost during the pandemic. (But you can catch up with it in episode 212!) 37.00 What will be next on our minds? Maya reckons organisations and teams will consolidate their technology and apps, and look out for stuff like digital identity and blockchain. Meanwhile Ross, with an eye out on the parallels between social media and remote work, predicts a more decentralised way of working in many ways. Pinar reckons there will also be changes in talent acquisition and retention, while Theresa has seen an increase in interest in how to work better with international colleagues. We end the episode with a reminder about “subcultures” in organisations. Tune in for the second part, where our guests reflect on how their own ways of working have changed and how they view the world of work in relation to the rest of their lives - and what they're hearing is going on with others. 

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/300-part1

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the mental health challenges in returning to the office space, the evolution of communication in the workplace and the reasons why many people do not want to work remotely – in Spain and other places. The set up of a hybrid workplace continues with its challenges. In episode 106 of My Pocket Psych, guest Dr. Hayley Lewis talked about how she was working with a government organisation whose chief exec wanted to reduce the office space in order to cut down on public spending. 

However, when she looked into the living conditions of some of the employees, it was clear that asking (or offering) people to work from home would end up with some individuals working in difficult conditions. 

While we’re making sure we can have the conversation so that people can work flexibly, there’s also a need to help people speak out when they feel they can’t use their homes for work. In any case, saving money by reducing the office space might not be as straight-forward as it looks. According to a set of yet to be released data that Maya’s had access to, to make remote work permanent in some organisations, they will have to invest heavily in IT and cybersecurity, etc. Something they maybe didn’t do during the pandemic. 09.45 MINSThe return to the office is bringing some unexpected challenges and this article covers a few of them: to-office-mental-health.html"> Everyone Is Not OK, but Back at Work Anyway.

For example, the dynamics of a team that used to be colocated might have changed when it went suddenly remote. And now that they have to return to their previous workspace… it might not be easy. Many people have changed, and had different experiences of working remotely during the pandemic. 

We need to continue talking about how we’re doing, we’re still in transition. What medium people prefer for being open about how they’re feeling might vary. For some, the best medium might be face to face, others might prefer to tell you how they are on Slack, there’s great diversity in this. 

Different people and different teams will figure it out as they go along. What’s common is that there is still a lot of uncertainty around what the future of the workplace will look like, and still around the pandemic. (And have you heard of “Schrodinger’s Covid”?) 

19.00 MINS

On a lighter note, Slack has published this article about how written communication at work is changing and becoming more informal: From jargon to emoji, the evolution of workplace communication styles. Instead of business jargon, people prefer to adopt more informal ways of talking to colleagues, using GIFs and emojis. Is this a hangover from the way we were taught to write “properly” at school? Or is it that we communicate much more in writing with colleagues and therefore can adopt more informal and playful ways of doing so?  However, we can’t let informality bring a lack of clarity (Maya’s words!) and we still need to adopt formal ways of writing when needed. Pilar doesn’t like emojis that duplicate a message, like the article with a smiley face followed by “enjoying” in the text. Sometimes it feels like information overload. But some of these emojis have a lot of energy behind them, and they have their place. 

Different teams will evolve their own ways of communicating, even how you react to messages, or even having their own designs. 

(Let us know what you think of this!)

29.20 MINSWe move on to a recent article about how telework is being adopted now in Spain, post-lockdown, “Dos años después del confinamiento, ¿qué pasa con el teletrabajo en España?”(It’s been two years after lockdown. What’s going on with telework in Spain?). It’s been written by regular guest on the show Eva Rimbau-Gilabert.

(You can hear her talk about the state of remote work in Spain pre-pandemic in episode 214 The View from South Europe.)

“The most prominent reason why there is not as much teleworking as possible is that a large part of the people who could telework prefer not to do so (58.5%). The reasons for wanting to work face-to-face include disadvantages of teleworking such as lack of social contact with colleagues, difficulties disconnecting from work or work overload. Added to this is the fact that the private home may not be suitable for teleworking.”This reflects much of what we were talking about earlier and we’re sure this is not the case only in Spain. It’s still difficult to disconnect from work, this sometimes has to do with culture, sometimes with individuals, and mobile phones don’t make it any easier!This research says 58.5% people don’t want to continue teleworking, which is similar to what we heard from previous guest Laurel in episode 298, that the number of people in the US asking to work remotely hasn’t increased, it’s just their negotiation power has changed.

“The majority of people who have ever teleworked indicate that, once the pandemic is over, they would like to telework every day (23.5% without ever going to the workplace, and 24.7% going occasionally), with an average preference of 3.8 days of telecommuting per week.”Even though we hear that the main reason for going back to using the office is to see our colleagues, it looks like a decent percentage of people don’t have a need to go back to the workplace. It’s a minority, but it’s there. (Maybe it was always there, but we didn’t know about it…)

Finally, the article talks about complex vs simple communication, and how they benefit from different spaces. It helps to define “communication” and “collaboration” when we’re talking about how to best do it. 

Some people might prefer the office for complex communication, while others might prefer to do that kind of communication away from each other, taking their time. (Thanks to listener Pedro for this latter point of view, the conversation on LinkedIn is here.) Different spaces are more suited to different kinds of interactions, and these will vary between teams, and even at different stages of the work. Coworking spaces don’t seem to have gone mainstream yet in Spain, even though they can provide a good alternative to working from home. 

To talk about all these different things takes time, so it’s worth thinking about moving some of our more transactional, simple team communication to the asynchronous space so that we can use our time together to talk through the next iteration of how we work. 

Finally, a shout out to Omnipresent and Oyster for their April Fool’s memos! They almost got us!

We welcome Laurel Farrer to the podcast, to talk about how to lay down the foundations to provide an equitable experience for our employees, in a hybrid setup. The conversation was inspired by Laurel’s article 10 Habits to Ensure Equality in Your Hybrid Team.

But before we get into the content of the article, we hear from Laurel about her aspirations for the adoption of remote work. In her LinkedIn profile, she says that she “leverages the power of workplace flexibility to impact business operations and socioeconomics.” She named her company “Distribute Consultancy” – they’re not just talking about working with people who are physically distributed, but they also champion the opportunity to distribute wealth and opportunity. Enabling remote work is about changing the way we work, and changing the world at an economic level. Laurel reminds us that the kind of work that happened during the pandemic, was not “remote work”, it was a contingency plan. This has led to controversy about whether this has helped or hindered socioeconomics. 

How does “hybrid” fit into this? Laurel’s research shows that the number of workforce requests from those who want to work remotely and want workplace flexibility has not increased since before the pandemic. What has changed is their negotiation power, having shown that it’s possible to work productively even when you’re away from the office. 

This can lead employers to feel pressured into offering flexible working, and offering this from a point of fear, they will be resentful. Whereas if they truly understand the benefits, like more efficient outputs, it can be a great option for everyone.

10.53 MINSLet’s get to Laurel’s article now and discuss the habits she mentions, under different themes.

Mindset 

Management resistance is the first barrier to success in adopting remote work. There is a danger of people being seen as more committed just because they choose to work from the office and this can lead to proximity bias, where those closer to you are perceived as more valuable.

In order to be successful as a hybrid team, we need to operate as a remote team. We need to stop talking about “location”, it shouldn’t be a factor in how your work is recognised. The more we can employ the principles of “virtual first”, the more successful we’ll be. The office can be seen as a tool, somewhere else where we can get the work done.

It’s not always the remote workers who feel left out. Laurel quotes Lara Owen, talking about the “coffee vs pants debate”, where each type of workforce thinks the other side is better off. 

One of the conversations that is currently missing is why people need to come into the office and when, even if they’re being given a choice of when to do so. Team members start to make decisions on where to work from, depending on personal life factors (e.g. having to pick up a child at a certain time), rather than thinking about what tasks and conversations are best had where. These conversations create a new type of value for the office, and the different environments.

20.55 MINS

Blending workspaces: designing consisten workplaces 

We’ve been working in offices for a very long while and so there are aspects of the workplace we take for granted, like health and safety regulations which also make us more productive.

If we shift from the carefully curated environment of the office to our home, (or a noisy coffee shop) we run the risk of being less productive. So as we are talking about having a choice of workspaces, organisations need to make sure that people working away from the office can still be safe, connected and access the resources they need to do their work.

At the same time, office spaces need to be comfortable for people too, which is tricky as different people are comfortable in different environments. (e.g. Pilar is always cold in offices with aircon!) Some people might prefer to work from home, even if they miss the social connection, because they’re more comfortable than in the office, so what changes can we make in the office so that it becomes a place where people want to work from? This is also a conversation worth having with employees. 

27.32 MINSCollaboration practices

In an office, one of the greatest channels of communication is implicit communication and observation. We can make small changes, so that remote workers don’t feel left out of the hybrid experience. Having more explicit announcements and communicating in public channels rather than direct messages (e.g. in Slack) and paying attention to how we’re using the technology, rather than what technology we’re using.

We need to be more deliberate about how we communicate, and pull back on its spontaneous nature, so it’s difficult, and it’s easy to resist it. However, what feels natural after many years of working in the same way, was at some point also intentional. In a way, we are creating our new “organic” way of working. We can still be emotional in our interactions, and facilitate empathetic leadership, but it requires intention. 

We are innovating in the ways we communicate and collaborate. And just because we used to do things in one way (e.g. monitor presence rather than output) doesn’t mean that they were the right ways of doing them. Something for change advocates to hang onto.

36.08 MINS

Inclusivity 

We are different in many ways, more than we’ve been used to thinking about. How we like to communicate, what tech we prefer, where we like to work from. Maybe before they weren’t relevant, or that visible… eg many people are now asking themselves how to engage introverts in online meetings, whereas they’d never considered how this was being addressed in the in-person version… 

How can you design your rituals, communication practices etc to be as inclusive as possible? Global and standardised tools, including asynchronous communication, etc. We can let go of some of the systems and ways of working that might have held certain people back.

Diversity needs to be turned into inclusion, by making sure different types of people are being recognised. When we talk about flexibility rather than “remote” or “hybrid” we can also look at the flexibility possible in jobs where location-independence is not an option. Schedule flexibility, access to the same digital tools and documentation as remote workers, etc are being explored by manufacturing companies worried about creating a gap between the different types of employees. Then we start to look at true equality.

To wrap up, Laurel shares her thoughts and experiences on how remote work is being adopted by large organisations. Her company Distribute helps organisations explore high levels of flexibility, through helping to evaluate their tools, write handbooks and policies, create training programmes etc. Key to making the change scalable is how success is measured. By being clear in our success metrics, we can evaluate whether hybrid work works.

You can find out more about Laurel through her website https://www.distributeconsulting.com/ or connect with her on LinkedIn.

She also appears on episode 212 on Remote Work and Social Change, episode 189 where she talks about information isolation, and the series on Connection and Disconnection on Remote Teams.   

In this bonus episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, Ana Neves talks about how she’s structured the conference Social Now, which covers how enterprise social network tools can help organisations in the day to day, ”rather than being an extra thing we have to do”.Your code as listener to get the early bird discount until 8 April is WCL21.The conference started in 2012, and has a fictitious company at its centre. The people in the company have challenges that will resonate with most employees in organisations, and the conference is structured around helping people in the company. Ana blogs as a new employee in this organisation, so that attendees have a background on the case study through the blog http://houseofcables.socialnow.org/

Many organisations have implemented these tools, but are not making the best use of them, being used at a superficial level. Pilar was under the impression that online tools are being used efficiently and deliberately at a team level, but this is not the case. 

Ana talks about Social Collaboration Maturity Benchmark Report 2021, which shows that teams are still using online tools for videoconferencing and direct messages, but not for what the tools are best, which is working out in the open and documenting. The concepts of “working out loud” or “working in the narrative” are still not being adopted. Eg from I’ve done this document vs I’m working on this document. Work in progress can be useful to others in your team or the organisation, but of course to share this requires a lot of psychological safety. For example, if you’re writing a report over a month, even the first sentences that you write down could already be of use to others. It’s all about having the right culture, not just the right tools. Before the pandemic, the number of direct messages was smaller than during. Before the pandemic, the teams and people using these tools were already behind the concept of working out loud, whereas now they’ve adopted them because that’s all they had. People are afraid of having their work in progress visible to all. At an organisational level, Ana has seen orgs try to compensate for the lack of being together in the physical space. However some of these ways of keeping employees “engaged” sometimes seem purposeless, and focused on the social. If this is not consistent with the organisation’s culture, it jars with people and can be worse than doing nothing. These tools work best when they are used to listen to people and what they have to say, around topics that link back to business. What brings people together is their work, not just their social ties. Creating organisation-wide dialogues about things linked to work eg internal processes, new products is where these tools become valuable. For some employees, it’s difficult to think about some of these spaces where we can have important conversations, not just “watercooler conversations”. The spaces are informal, but you can have good conversations. The key is to evidence that you have been listening, else there’s no point. These tools work best asynchronously and are great for documenting thoughts and ideas that don’t get implemented. For example, “we’ve made this decision, and if you want to look at other ideas that were generated, have a look at this conversation”. This also helps to see who was part of the conversation. It also helps to support the concept of “peer assist”, where people learn from others when they’re kicking off a project. Asynchronous conversations stay as a record for others to 1) identify the people who can help them, and then have a conversation with them and 2) to access thoughts of people who have left the organisation, through their posts19.30 mins 

Ana talks about the conference Social Now, on the different ways in which these tools can be weaved into how the day to day looks like in organisations. The focus this year is about enabling engaged and high performing teams, aligned with the organisation’s values and culture. 

The conference is centred around the fictitious company Cablinc, and Ana is blogging as the Head of Marketing & Internal Communications at Cablinc. Through the blog http://houseofcables.socialnow.org/ she covers the challenges a new employee might have when joining a company, especially around the issues of knowledge management and communication.

Regarding the content of the conference itself, Ana talks about the focus of some of the sessions, including Pilar’s. You can find the whole agenda here: https://socialnow.org/agenda/ Some examples, how to run great hybrid meetings, and how to draft some of the posts to facilitate conversation in the enterprise networks. The conference will kick off with a “liberating structure”, tapping into the knowledge of the attendees straight away. The attendees share common context from the beginning, with the case study providing a common language for all. And the names of the characters are memorable, so they become part of the conversation. 

This is a good example of using an external (and fictitious!) focus to talk about our own issues, even something that we can use in your own teams. As well as advice from the consultants for the fictitious company, there are also live demos of some online tools, showing how they can be used in the day to day. This helps participants to get a sense of the impact these tools can have in the day to day. (And if participants feel like they’re being sold to, they can raise their flags!) The blog http://houseofcables.socialnow.org covers the challenges of the access and retention of critical knowledge, employee engagement, internal communication and teamwork & collaboration. Presenters, vendors and participants of the conference have access to these fictitious (but based in reality!) challenges, and on what everything is anchored.

There is also a session which follows the format of “peer assist”, whereby people in one part of the organisation can benefit from the experience of others in the organisation with similar experiences, or with experiences with transferable learning. The Social Now conference is taking place on 19 and 20 May 2022 in Lisbon. You can find all the details and book tickets here: https://socialnow.org/agenda/ And you can connect with Ana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananeves/ And Twitter: And if you speak Portuguese, you can listen to the podcast that Ana hosts, KMOL: https://kmol.pt/category/podcast/

We explain the terms “asynchronous communication”, “documentation” and “single source of truth”. For more on this, you might want to check out this newsletter from Remote Fabric: http://newsletter.remotefabric.com/issues/push-vs-pull-communication-issue-2-696532

Teams can start by pulling together different bits of information and gather them in one single space, so that it’s accessible for everyone. Think of it as a key area in your online office. You can also adopt the principle, thinking, “is this conversation or document something we want to keep for future reference, could it help someone?” It’s about making it easier to find where the expertise is in the company, so this is not only about content but also about knowing who can help you in the company.  Could this be relevant to learning and development roles? Shifting the mindset from how to run “engaging online workshops” to how can we curate the information and knowledge in the company? Technology is making this easier by the year… 

(For more on this check out next week’s episode on Knowledge Management in organisations.) 

19.00 MINS DIfferent teams have different rhythms and they are influenced by the nature and progress of task and task interdependence, perception of and real hierarchy and level of autonomy to make decisions and social culture.We begin talking about the rhythm around tasks and how this is affected by the nature of the task, the progress, and if we’re in a project, the stage of the project. Eg kick off and brainstorming at the beginning might require regular lots of exchanges, then a slower rhythm and less interactions as everyone “gets on with it”, and a faster pace. We can reflect as individuals and as a team whether the rhythm we have is useful to us. Also, don’t forget about our wider context and how this might affect the rhythm in which we communicate. Task interdependence will also affect your communication cadence, as well as whether you have a space where you go to communicate your progress. (You can find out more about this in episode 239, or read the show notes.)By the way, creating documentation is all about creating the space for meaningful conversations, and conversing when it’s the best way of getting things done together, not as the only way of getting things done together. It helps us avoid information being held in someone’s head. Documentation is live, so that improvement to our processes can be communicated too. But none of this helps if we don’t develop a culture of accessing documentation and other asynchronous communication. (We know, it can feel like a lot of extra work, but transitions are always difficult…)

As team leaders, we need to change our mindset and focus on creating an ecosystem within which people can work rather than always being the main point of contact for information. It can be difficult to figure out which technology can help us best though… Another challenge… 

And of course, none of this works without psychological safety… 36.00 MINSThe sense of hierarchy and real hierarchy, as well as the ability and trust to make decisions on our own also can result in constant communication, as everyone feels like they need to check in.

Presenteeism and the need to be seen as working really hard, can also result in lots of “push communication” when we complete the work – rather than the more calm cadence of making our workflow visible in an agreed way. 

If we don’t have a system for communicating innovations and experiments, one person can end up in the receiving end of lots of information requests, rather than people going to a specific place to find out more about this. 

As team leaders, we can take the coaching approach and document some of the answers people might be looking for, so that they can access them on their own, rather than relying on you. Personality also plays a part in this, and the ability to figure out things on your own, or finding your way through information is a core skill for remote workers.

43.00 MINSFinally, let’s look at culture.Is psychological safety as important in remote teams as in colocated? At least you have to know it’s ok to bring things up. In teams where people have a need to feel connected physically or emotionally to each other throughout the day, we might also get fast paced communication. 

There was some research done on the rhythm of communication done a couple of years ago: Successful Remote Teams Communicate in Bursts by Christoph Riedl and Anita Williams Woolley, published on 28 October 2020 HBR online

https://hbr.org/2020/10/successful-remote-teams-communicate-in-bursts

Bursts of rapid-fire communication with longer periods of silence in between are characteristic of successful teams. Bursts help to focus energy, develop ideas, get closure on  specific questions and condensing the synchronous time, can help those who really miss the ‘buzz’ of face to face interactions. 

Find synchronous time together and define it, rather than suddenly move to synchronous communication. This does not need to be set in advance, but can be built on what’s going on organically or can be emerging by sharing availability. 

From the article, “The bottom line: Worry less about sparking creativity and connection through watercooler-style interactions in the physical world, and focus more on facilitating bursty communication.”

Let’s not forget that artificial intelligence is making it easier for us to find information, including how real-time conversations are being recorded (in video, audio) and how they can be searched. We know none of this is easy – let us know if you need some help. 

54.00 MINSWe’d like to share an article by our friend Jennifer Riggins which is both timely and evergreen: How to Support Teammates Living in Ukraine — or Any War Zone.The article offers examples of how to support people in crisis situations in both practical and emotional ways. It’s very relevant to today’s context, but can also help in the future. We hope you enjoyed the episode, feel free to send us some feedback or any other thoughts you would like to share with us and the listeners. Sign up for our monthly newsletter below as a way of keeping in touch, or join us over at LinkedIn.

Catherine Nicholson is the Director of The Virtual Training Team 

She last appeared on the show in episode 274, almost a year ago. Now she is back to let us know how the work with their clients has evolved, and how they have changed how they work as a team. The novelty of having to move online because of the pandemic has faded. Trainers, as well as other knowledge workers, are now looking at how to make the most out of the online space, once everyone has embraced the mindset that things can be done through technology. 

Trainers can move onto the next level by taking “learning loops'' as a first design point, by looking for a routine that learners are used to so that they feel familiar in the environment. Before this familiarity turns into predictability and people “stop trying”, it might be necessary to “shake things up a bit” – but how? We need to enhance the learning experience, but maintain purpose. One of their approaches is to “be a kid in the sweetie shop”, the sweetie shop being the huge amount of tools, stories, research, technologies out there that they can use. (Although always coming back to the purpose of the training.)Once they explore one of these “gigs”, they focus on what is going to be essential to deliver the experience they’re looking for. But they don’t let everything go, in case it’s useful as supporting materials. Another approach, driven by clients whose main challenge is the need for participants to consume and understand long chunks of materials. Here the problem leads to the process, rather than the output. For example, the material can be turned into an audio that summarises the key points, to be listened to before they go to the full material. Catherine covers a few more approaches that can prime people before they interact with the content. (In some ways, we’re going back to “blended learning”, in the widest sense of the world.) 13.30mins

Learning pathways can be designed for learners: required and desired pathways, to help us curate the content and design the learning experience. This is a great way of fuelling the autonomy aspect of intrinsic motivation.  Internal trainers have another challenge which is delivering sessions where there’s a lot of content to be covered, through material designed by others in the organisations, sometimes even by another department, like communications. Catherine mentions a few ways to tackle this, like creating more slides. (More slides, you say? Yes!) Or if you can’t change the deck, you can use “hide and reveal”, or even using the pointer to direct people’s attention through the information. Look out for Catherine’s upcoming video on “Hide and Reveal”!(Their videos can be found here.)21.30Let’s leave the tech to one side and focus on the quality of the conversations that participants have in the session. When you first start to train, it’s easy to be scared by the “tumbleweed moments”, but these aren’t always bad, sometimes they mean that people are thinking, and sometimes they’re necessary. (Plus, they feel longer in the online space!)There’s a lot to think through when you’re delivering online, screen, chat box, reactions, slides, camera pointing at you… While still being in “delivery mode”. Having your questions planned in advance is key. 

Which will provoke deeper thinking in participants? Which can lead to more fruitful conversations? Thinking through these in advance will make delivery easier.

27.15There’s a parallel here with the challenges managers have when they’re leading meetings.Plus, we’re now having conversations we didn’t have before, more personal, more sensitive. Psychological safety is key. It’s also important to know who is present at the meeting, in what way, and what they’re supposed to be doing. For example, graduates might be attending to observe, can make this explicit during the meeting, and if they have their camera off, explain why. As a trainer (or manager), you can also keep a “contribution log” – being respectful that people want to contribute at different levels. Catherine covers some of the reasons people contribute less, and the fact that our introversion/extroversion preferences become more radical if we are uncomfortable. 

We can manage our presence in our meetings, and part of this is discussing/communicating how we use our cameras. For example, video is useful, but doesn’t always have to be on. There are times when it’s important for it to be on, and there are advantages, but it’s not an absolute. It’s important to understand our own preferences and not always design for them. Balance – that’s the word. 

37.00

The conversation turns to how Catherine’s team is experimenting with new ways of working. They’ve come across the challenge of balancing schedule autonomy, with the need to be available to each other when needed. One challenge some team members have is seeing a message and, even if it doesn’t need immediate replies, the message presence lingers, so they’re using the Schedule message function in MSTeams.“Flexible work” is great, but it needs structure. Catherine and her colleagues are experimenting with core hours, with flexibility within them. Through experimentation, we get clarity, and have to have conversations about working together. You can find out more about Catherine here: The Virtual Training Team

In the last What's Going On episode, which was actually a hybrid of WGOn and ReThinking Thinking Remote, Maya and Pilar discuss Maya's chapter from our book Thinking Remote, "Sick and Tired, Working and Not Working in a Remote Team". This add-on episode is the audio version of that chapter. You can read the blog version of the chapter here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/sickness-remote-teams

WLP294 What’s Going On: Wellbeing and Emojis

This episode is a hybrid of What’s Going On and Thinking Remote. Maya and Pilar revisit the chapter from Thinking Remote: Sick and Tired, Working and Not-Working on a Remote Team. They also discuss asynchronous communication and how it’s being adopted in the workspace, they talk about the role of emojis and finally, they share a couple of social media discussions. 

4.05 mins 

In the past (before the pandemic), taking time off work meant you had one of two choices – both were difficult processes. 

The first option was to go into work, even though you were ill - unless you were very ill, it was almost expected you would go into work, plus, we did not want to let our teammates down. 

The second option was to stay at home, but even then you were not fully away from work, as you could still do some work online and lessen the workload for your colleagues to feel less guilty. In both cases there is a sense of fear of work piling up that is still prominent even in current times. 

This has continued even in the pandemic. It takes a lot of self-discipline to step away and focus on resting and recovering. 

When visible teamwork is implemented, it should make taking time off to recover an easier process. As we are able to communicate our progress and give access to our work. This can help people rest and recover. 

Another part that is changing is our approach to mental health, as it is becoming acknowledged and more accepted to take a mental health leave in the workplace.

20.12 mins 

Pilar and Maya talk about the new space created by Salesforce called Trailblazer Ranch. It is a holistic and nature driven space with the purpose of getting people to connect with their team. They also discuss the article trends-2020.html"> Diving Deeper Five workforce trends to watch in 2021, which states that wellbeing is a part of how we are doing work, it is not a separate aspect of it. (Yes, it’s a year old but it all still feels relevant.)

We can give people autonomy to make meaningful decisions about their contributions to the organisation to help prevent disconnection. This means we don’t need expensive programmes to look after our employees’ wellbeing.

25.47 mins 

The Royal Society for Arts (RSA) has recently released Social security: The risks from automation and economic insecurity for England’s social renters covering the state of the UK’s social housing, used by those who cannot afford market rates. Part of this article states: 

“When employed, people in social housing are less likely to benefit from good work practices that support their economic and personal security: only 38 percent of social renters are in work which offers them an annual incremental pay increase, and three quarters (74 percent) never worked from home, even in the height of the pandemic.”

When we are considering why we are doing hybrid or remote work, the main aim is to achieve autonomy and flexibility , but we still need to prevent a two-tiered workforce being created. You therefore need to find ways to provide flexibility for those who cannot do their work remotely. 

31.49 mins 

Maya and Pilar shift to the topic of asynchronous communication, in the context of emojis. They discuss an article titled Do emojis represent the whole gamut of human emotion? The short answer is, yes they do. 

For this experiment they took 74 different facial emojis and observed how much valence and arousal they had communicated amongst a demographic of 1000 Japanese participants aged 20 to 39. To quote the article:

“They see our emotional experiences as falling along continuous scales of both valence - how positive or negative an emotion is -  and arousal. So, for instance, “sadness” has a negative valence but is fairly low in arousal; “anger” is also negatively-valenced but high in arousal; and “excitement” is positively-valenced  but is still high in arousal.” 

They have given us a cool graph with all of the emojis plotted of these different levels to show how different emojis have different effects. For instance, emojis that have accessories, such as the starry eyed or blue icicle, have higher arousal ratings.

When communicating with people from different countries and cultures we need to take these aspects into consideration. The article, Caution! These emojis mean different things in different countries, discusses this. For instance it mentions that the prayer emoji can have different meanings depending on the culture.  

50.52mins

News from the social media community and our connections: Follow the conversation on Twitter about helping people adopt asynchronous communication. https://twitter.com/marjolijndg/status/1491476316453052420?s=21 Pilar will be speaking at Social Now in Lisbon, in May. Check out the programme, centred around a case study. (And look out for organiser Ana Neves talking about it on this podcast.)

Penny Pullan has released the second edition of her book Virtual Leadership. You can get a 20% discount with the code FBM20 from the publisher’s website. Lucid Meetings have released a new course “Free Your Team From Unproductive Meetings”, If you would like to sign up to their March/April programme, this link will take you there. (Please note it’s an affiliate link, so if you sign up, you’ll also be supporting this podcast.) Have you got any news you’d like to share with our audience? Let us know through our contact form or Twitter. We also have a page on LinkedIn you can follow.

If you have any other questions about asynchronous communication or have any thoughts or ideas you want to discuss you can tweet at Virtual not Distant or at Maya or Pilar directly. 

In this episode, Pilar speaks to Chase Warrington, Head of Remote at Doist. Chase shares how he is challenging how remote work is approached at his organisation, and what he has learnt in his new position that can be used to improve the business and its people.  

You can find the show notes below, and there's a transcript over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/head-of-remote-doist 

Chase discusses his new position as Head of Remote and talks about how as a community we can help each other learn and grow, and figure out what is the best way to overcome the challenges remote teams face.

24.36 mins

Chase discusses the importance of bringing a team of people from different departments together to socialise and work on a new project, to help overcome feelings of isolation, loneliness, disconnection and disengagement. 

Working remotely does have its own set of challenges to overcome, not in the way of changing the entire system, more so that we have systems in place to implement when facing these challenges. Having a social calendar can benefit remote work as there can be a time set at the end of each month for people to come together and connect. However there are ways to make these gatherings more impactful. (You can read Chase’s article “How to Build Human Connections in an Async Workplace” from Doist’s website.)

Chase has created a “social crew” to have these gatherings be more structured,create innovative ideas and have a sense of leadership. Having a place  where individuals can come together to connect can be beneficial to not only the members involved but to the business as a whole. With these social crews there has to be intention behind the crews and the intention has to come from being connected at work, but not in the sense of being in the same departments. There are other factors that can connect people in the workplace, even when it is remotely. 

Connecting members from different departments to work on a project each month can help prevent feelings of isolation and disconnection. The most important aspect of the crews is to create this feeling of connection and get members of the business outside of their “bubbles'', to make them get to know each other under a common goal.  

 45.45 mins

Chase hosts the About Abroad podcast separately from his work at Doist, and it’s the result of him being an American expat in Spain. During his travels he’s met many other expats and digital nomads facing similar challenges to him. So he’s created the About Abroad podcast to discuss these various challenges, help other expats, or people travelling outside of their country for the first time. 

The podcast was originally set up to discuss living, travelling, and working abroad, but as his travels and discussions with people grew, the topic of remote work came into the discussion as well, as many expats do work remotely. There are a multitude of people from around the world who come on to the podcast and tell their own amazing stories, from building a community of nomads, to what it is like living in the South Pole.

42.57 mins

As for Twist: Future of Work, this is a video  series that promotes the use of various products and services that can help with the future of work. Twist is one of the products that Chase encourages listeners to use (it’s part of Doist, of course!)but  there are numerous products and services out there that seek to benefit the future of businesses. They have creators behind those products and services as well, and Chase is keen to feature them. Another aspect of this podcast series is to bring in founders of companies and discuss the ethics of the company, why they chose to start their own companies and any personal stories they want to share about the company and product. 

51.55 mins

Finally, Chase coversthe Estonia E-residency, which gives entrepreneurs and freelancers an opportunity to set up their own business in Estonia, and do business with other EU companies as well. Estonia E -residency does allow individuals to work remotely as an individual can live in another part of the world, for instance in Hungary, but they are seeking to do business in Estonia, they now have the means to accomplish this. 

Working remotely does have its own set of challenges, however there are advantages to it as well and ways to overcome these challenges. If there are any questions that remote workers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers have regarding remote work there are ways to find the answers to them.You can connect with Chase on LinkedIn, and listen to About Abroad on all podcast apps, or from the show’s website. 

Following episode 292's conversation on working out loud, here are the two chapters from Thinking Remote we covered. 

We revisit the chapter from Thinking Remote The Dangers of Working Out Loud ,  First published as a blog post in 2016.

30.40Next up, we turn our attention to the team member, and revisit the chapter by Maya: Now that I’m remote can anyone see how hard I’m working?

39.36 Community news, we share what others are tweeting and saying from our connections

For more links and transcript, head over to www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/revisiting-working-out-loud

In today’s episode Pilar catches up with long-time friend of this podcast, Marcus Wermuth to talk about his mid-pandemic transition into new role as the full-time senior engineering manager at Remote.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. For detailed show notes, visit our podcast page. 

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 Pilar and Maya reflected on the changes which have taken place in remote work throughout 2021 - differentiation of terminology, the rise of asynchronous communication, new apps, and the endless talk about hybrid!

We also thank our community, and share news about upcoming workshops and themes for the new year.

36.08 Virtual Not Distant news

40.52 Thank you to our community

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 Pilar interviewed Carlos Jonay Suarez and Elsa Rodriguez from Pueblos Remotos: https://www.pueblosremotos.com/ about their exciting initiative to bring remote workers and rural communities together in Spain’s Canary Islands. Connecting local entrepreneurs with international nomadic workers synergises creativity and idea sharing, while creating lasting friendships in a sustainable ecotourism environment, to benefit all participants.

Carlos would rather network with you in person than online, but meanwhile can be found on LinkedIn and also (in Spanish) SinOficina, and LinkedIn is also the best place to find Elsa - as well as keeping up with all the news and information on the main Pueblos Remotos site.

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.

In today’s episode, Pilar and Maya kick off a series reflecting on Thinking Remote: Inspiration for Leaders of Distributed Teams, which was published in 2018 - a geological epoch ago, in remote work terms. What has changed, what has stayed the same, and how have Pilar and Maya changed and evolved their own thinking on these themes?

The first chapter of the book dealt with designing the digital workplace, and you can read the original blog post from which the chapter derived here: Designing the Digital Workspace: What We Can Learn from the Physical Space — Virtual not Distant.

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’):

to-create-psychological-safety-in-virtual-teams.pdf"> 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: global.net/">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)
•  chros-believe-flexibility-within-framework-future-work.aspx">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.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help people work together wherever they are https://virtualnotdistant.com

Today’s episode is dedicated to coworking spaces, because we’re all about choice and office-optionality - so we need to remember that remote work does not always mean working from home. 

3.18 Asia Hundley and Bree Caggiati from Shield GEO discuss the role that coworkings played in their pre-pandemic lives.

8:21 Bernie Mitchell, coworking and future of work advocate; European Coworking Assembly,  and what if everyone could walk to work? Connect with Bernie at Berniejmitchell.com, and sign up for his newsletter there too.

Meanwhile do check out our brand-new podcasting for connection service - and connect and share your feedback with us.

WLP278 What's Going On: Office Dilemmas and Virtual Watercoolers

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London

(http://virtualnotdistant.com)

In today’s episode Pilar and Maya explore ‘what’s going on’ with an evergreen perspective, looking at issues about returning to the office, some new research, and more, including:

• Location-independent employment in Norway Regjeringen vil ha flere på hjemmekontor, som Guro Aanerød i Lofoten. Kan skape jobber i distriktet – NRK,
• Facebook are going to to-allow-irish-staff-work-from-other-european-countries-40521728.html"> allow Irish staff work from other European countries,
• The 'Zoom towns' luring remote workers to rural enclaves. 
• ‘You shouldn’t feel pressured’: Many Americans dread returning to the office.  
• A Field Experiment on Virtual Synchronous Interactions and Performance of Organizational Newcomers - data-driven contemporary research, looking at how well interns integrate and find long-term success in virtual teams, according to different ‘virtual watercooler’ protocols.
• You can now schedule messages in Slack
• Our LinkedIn question of the month:  In this current work environment, how can we help or encourage our teams and colleagues (and ourselves) to avoid burnout and too much computer time while still being productive?
• Pilar is doing a talk at The Inaugural Ei Evolution Summit+ - EI Summit, and also we have a discount code if you want to book for the main summit (PILARORTI10). 

For this bonus episode, Nadia Vatalidis talks about the onboarding process at the distributed company Remote. This show is brought to you by Virtual not Distant. You can find the full show notes over at www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/onboarding-remote-teams

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help teams work better together wherever they are: https://virtualnotdistant.com.

In today’s episode Pilar Orti interviews Mark Kilby, Mark has a course in the Lucid Meetings platform, How to Discover, Interview, and Hire Amazing Remote People,

The discussion includes points of difference between remote and face-to-face recruitment and hiring, and highlights lots of positive potential created by the remote environment.

Learn more about Mark at MarkKilby.com, and check out his former appearances in this podcast, especially episode 219 for more on onboarding/integration.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, this month’s ‘what’s going on?’ remote news round-up was recorded by Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss on 1st June 2021.

https://virtualnotdistant.com

Under discussion:

The evolution of hybrid work in context, and the impact on lockdown on things like creativity (because it's not just productivity that matters).

Pilar’s twitter space, held at midday UK time every Wednesday - do come and share, or just listen if you want.

The ‘Virtual First’ policy at Dropbox: Why Dropbox’s ‘Virtual First’ model could be the future of work; Featured Collection Virtual First Toolkit. 

Global trends: Major New Zealand bank makes working from home model permanent and the Estonian e-residency scheme  expanding  resident.gov.ee/eresidency-new-locations/">e-Residency new locations | e-Residency.

Google is exploring the future of video conferencing, with Project Starline: May 18 / Research Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together.

And shout-outs to our listeners and LinkedIn community - we always love to hear from you.

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 sound-9882.ck.page/posts/when-chat-is-quiet-it-may-not-be"> 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

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help those working apart rom each other feel closer together:

https://virtualnotdistant.com

5:21 Today, Pilar talks to Jennifer Riggins about the upcoming Aginext conference, (and why they're using the Spatial Chat app for their networking sessions), and then:

19.21 We share a panel recorded at Agile Tour London, October 2020, featuring:

• Beth Maguire from Hubspot 
• Gonçalo Silva, CTO at Doist
• Marcus Wermuth, engineering manager at Buffer, 
• Morgan Legge head of sales and success at Convert.com

Discussing personal learning styles, embedding learning in organisational culture, practices for sharing and reflecting on learning - and much much more. 

Enjoy!

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant (https://virtualnotdistant.com) in London, in today's "what's going on?" series Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss discuss:

02:08 The state of remote work right now

•  Pandemic working is not remote working
•  But this wasn’t what I meant, when I said working from home was great!
• Older employees are adapting to remote work better than younger workers

17.10 Location independent lifestyle

• Hawaii's Remote Work Program Comes With Free Flights
• Repeople (Nomad City) 

23.38 New tech for remote

• ‘Moodbeam’: A wristband that tells your boss if you are unhappy. The Future Of Trello Is On The Horizon: Take a Sneak Peek and Going Beyond The Board: A Whole New Trello Is Here.
• Healthy Happy Homeworking mailing list: Don't be a Zoom Zombie!)
• The launch of Microsoft Viva - the 'employee experience platform'. 

45.37 Virtual not Distant news

• A LinkedIn discussion which became  a blog post, 
• Making the Most of Virtual Facilitation: Using the Asynchronous Space
• Maya's community for homeworkers: Healthy Happy Homeworking Facebook group,
• Richard MacKinnon's WorkLifePsych.club 

These are not Virtual Not Distant communities, but we’re always listening to you too.

Hello and welcome to episode 262 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London.

Before we dive in the interview a quick reminder about our Podcasting for Connection service - podcasting is a great asynchronous tool that can help maintain a sense of belonging. 

04.29 Chris Coladonato

Chris Coladonato works in learning and development at a large insurance enterprise, and is a great advocate for remote work. She is very active on social media and we’ve long enjoyed the insightful content she shares and discusses, from virtual commutes to networking and connection.

17.00 Teamwork and staying connected

35.45 External social media

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn, Twitter and her blog.

Speaking of LinkedIn, we had a great conversation over on our own page, about getting started with working remotely… And if you love podcasting as much as we do, you’ll want to follow Adventures in Podcasting, for news about a new book from Pilar coming soon.

A special bonus episode, of this podcast brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (http://virtualnotdistant.com),

Today we talk to Bart Van Roey and Viviane Kock about their new book “Beyond New Ways of Working" - 'dialogue book' in Dutch, which is extending the conversation about remote work and the future of work in more ways than one.

Contact Viviane via her own website at Formation et consultance en télétravail - NestYourDesk and Bart at ihop : for people and business,

Welcome to our first recording of 2021, brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London.

https://virtualnotdistant.com

2.39 We share and discuss a great message from a LinkedIn connection in Guatemala, Francisco Corzo.

10.09 Tech round-up: apps offline, Hey for work, Deaf people and online meetings, and MSTeams updates.

20.24 Communications and collaboration in 2021

36.10 Community news, including Minds at Work and our own Podcasting for connection service.

Do keep in touch and let us know 'what's going on' in your remote work world.

Welcome to our first podcast episode of 2021, and happy new year to you wherever and whenever you are listening - from Virtual Not Distant in London (http://virtualnotdistant.com).

Today we reflect further on culture in organisations, and bring you a great interview someone whose job revolves around this critical issue.

04.47 Stella Huang, head of Talent and Culture in Shield GEO

Pilar spoke with Stella Huang in December 2020,

Shield GEO take their retreats very seriously as a globally distributed organisation, and shifting them online during the throes of 2020 was a highly tactical endeavour.

Being unable to do that the following year, they still wanted to connect people the best way they could, switching from a one-off annual get together to a regular cadence of monthly hour-long events.

Please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/culture-virtual-retreats for full shownotes.

28.09 Getting clear on organisational culture

Ensuring that human element of connectedness is at the heart of the new ‘Podcasting for Connection’ offering from Virtual Not Distant, which focuses on how we relate to and value one another outside of and around the work, which helps and supports the work we do together.

Pilar will be developing this theme through 2021, and working with organisations to focus on culture across boundaries as the future of work evolves. Please do share your thoughts with her and help us create the content and services you need, to support you through this pivotal and important time for all remote and hybrid organisations.

This episode first went out in October 2019, as episode 212. We don't want this aspect of remote work to get lost amidst the pandemic forced remote work from home conversation. 

Our guests include Chris Slemp, Mandy Garner, Nacho Rodriguez, Lorraine Charles and Laurel Farrer.  For full show notes visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-social-change

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London.

In the final recording of the year, Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss take a longer perspective on the recent transformational shifts in remote work - while being mindful of all that 2020 has taught us.

We discuss:

03.34 Serendipitous encounters (listener question from our LinkedIn page)

(see also episode 211 on planned spontaneity)

14.06 Designing for the interactions we want to see

 Why You Need a Head of Remote Work. 

Embracing a flexible workplace

25.20 A ‘work from anywhere’ future?

Should employers let staff work remotely from abroad during lockdown?

Google Asks Workers Who Went Abroad for Covid to Return.

Time to re-energise - workingmums.co.uk

 GitLab: work where you want, when you want

For full shownotes please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/beyond-wfh-remote-spirit, and learn about the range of services and support that Virtual Not Distant can offer you as you and your team go 'beyond wfh' into 2021.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London.

Today's imterview features Robert (Bob) Glazer who previously joined us 2 years ago back in episode 179,  CEO of global partner marketing agency Acceleration Partners and author and podcaster

Robert’s company is fully remote and has always valued flexibility, long before the upheavals of 2020, so is glad to see the legitimising of the remote-first approach for agencies.

Robert’s Friday Forward email newsletter helps reflect and disseminate Acceleration Partners’ values and vision, bringing these to a wider audience nowadays, and also modelling a culture of learning, ownership, and growth and improvement.

Do connect via his website http://robertglazer.com/, and check out the Friday Forward book too.

Don’t forget to share your own thoughts about culture, identity, and team cohesion in the online space, and do look out for our new service to help you deepen your own team’s connection and relationships - podcasting for connection.

For full shownotes see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/virtual-organisation-culture, and learn more about what Virtual Not Distant has to offer.

In the final episode of the mini-series How the World of Work and our Attitudes to Work are Changing, Pilar talks to Dr. Chris Mullen, Executive Director of The Workforce Institute at UKG, about their recent research into employees' concerns "for the workplace of today and tomorrow." You can read a summary of the study here:  https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200915005303/en/Physical-Safety-Psychological-Security-Job-Stability-Employees-Worldwide-Share-Top-COVID-19-Concerns-for-the-Workplace-of-Today-and-Tomorrow

And to connect with guest Chris Mullen, you can follow him on Twitter, https://twitter.com/chrismmullen or connect on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismmullen/  We'd love to hear your comments through our contact form on https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/contact-us   

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: Hybrid-Working-Ever-Work-Mangement-Today-special-report-2020.pdf"> 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 world.org/site/chapters/england-wales"> 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 from-home-rebellion-commuters-who-don-t-want-to-returns-to-the-office-20201021-p567bh.html"> 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 c90e-4ad9-a1f4-47309d693a5c.pdf"> 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 global.net/">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: time-off-backlash.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"> 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, ways-to-rally-your-remote-team-in-confusing-times.html"> 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.

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: 01.html"> 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.

theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/2020/jul/14/end-of-the-office-the-quiet-grinding-loneliness-of-working-from-home"> 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’ -   com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/elpais.com/economia/2020-06-27/empieza-la-pelea-para-evitar-las-trampas-del-teletrabajo.html?outputType=amp">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.world.org/site/events/annual-conference-2020-power-and-practice-facilitation">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 global.net/">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] 

com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/theconversation.com/amp/five-workplace-trends-will-shape-life-after-lockdown-138077"> 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.)

1. 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.
2. 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

Welcome to the final part of our ‘connection and disconnection’ series with ShieldGEO, brought to you by Virtual Not Distant. Today we look back at these episodes and what we’ve learned from them, during an unexpectedly transitional time for the remote work space.

For today we share a round-table discussion, featuring Pilar and Maya from Virtual Not Distant     , as well as Tim Burgess from ShieldGEO.

Please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/reflection-connection-disconnection for the full shownotes and links.