21st Century Work Life - Remote Working, Virtual Teams And Flexible Working

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 the

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: https://www.smallbizlabs.com/2022/12/the-number-of-us-independent-workers-continued-to-surge-in-2022.html Pilar mentions the podcast After Hours, epi

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 a

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: 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 meeti

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, 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 t

Roberta Sawatsky is a “research storyteller”.   As well as running her own consultancy, SAM is Remote, she is a business professor at Okanagan School of Business, Canada with a focus on HR and management. She blogs at Probe and Ponder… learning from life and travels.  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

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 “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 spr

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