21st Century Work Life

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.

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 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:

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.

AI-Driven Accountability,

https://tldv.io/ "too long, didn't view",

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

Building Work-Life Boundaries in the WFH Era -

Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce -

The Basecamp/Rework team built a new email app Hey,

Built to Last – Audio Conference for Brand Builders.

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.

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.

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: Fujitsu Embarks towards 'New Normal', Redefining Working Styles for its Japan Offices:

Compare this to our podcasting buddy Robert Kropp's reflection on the remote transition at Siemans - another powerful reminder of just what a big deal it is, to transition to remote at this global scale, and a fascinating comment thread to dig into on this LinkedIn post.

Meanwhile closer to home at Essex County Council they have also been reflecting on recent changes and done some primary research: Digital remote working - research findings - Service Transformation, and produced this transparent and insightful report.

This depressing article from the Guardian about 'the quiet grinding loneliness of working from home' made Maya groan (especially when people kept tagging her in it), but it's good to be reminded how hard this has all been for so many people - even when journalists conflate living through a terrifying pandemic and all the impact that has on people's mental health, with the effect of working from home.

Some serious multi-modal findings here from the big budget of Microsoft in The future of work—the good, the challenging & the unknown, we always love good solid evidence, and now we have the data.

And a big report from the EU, Regulations to address work–life balance in digital flexible working arrangements, takes a deep dry dive into the legal frameworks including the Work–Life Balance Directive (EU/2019/1158), adopted in June 2019 and due to be implemented by Member States within a three-year period.

• 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.

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.)

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).

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.

Both doing our job well and learning to improve, are important here - so asynchronous, flexible communication supports this, promoting deep work without disruption.

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.

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To find out more, and put the concepts of visible teamwork to work in your team through our bespoke coaching and facilitation, then make sure you contact us. And look out for our forthcoming 'podcasting for connection' service, to help you strengthen those connections, wherever you are and whatever work you're doing.

Welcome to our regular news round-up episode, that has become a monthly feature in the light of such fast-moving change in the world of remote work. In these episodes, Pilar and Maya discuss a selection of recent news items, announcements, and publications, which reflect the way issues and policies are unfolding.

This conversation was recorded on 30th June 2020, please see full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/WGO-July-2020

Productivity monitoring: Considerations for HR, from compliance to culture More and more companies are resorting to 'employee monitoring solutions', to manage their remote workforce. . Our favourite quote: "Surveillance is not a replacement for leadership".

However, in We Work Harder When We Know Someone's Watching, HBR reminds us that external accountability definitely can make us more productive.

Spain is introducing new legislation around 'teletrabajo' - El Pais has been discussing it, and the Future for Work institute have published research

Teresa Douglas shared this article on LinkedIn about performance review: 4 Different Approaches Companies Are Taking to Performance Reviews This Year.

And in the UK, Only 13% of UK working parents want to go back to 'the old normal' .

Slack has a brand new emoji pack to help with remote work, and Slack Connect (here's a round-up of announcement articles from Angel List).

Listener and community news

Shout out to Chris Coladonato, for joining the conversation about task interdependence and visible teamwork, reminding us how much there is to unpick there… Essential listening, episode 239 - if you work with other people in any way, do check it out. Thanks Andy Brogan for sharing it too.

The IAF England and Wales chapter are planning an online conference at the end of OCtober, so do take a look at that.Annual Conference 2020 - the Power and Practice of Facilitation

Over on LinkedIn, Diego Von Söhsten has been looking at Lessons Learned From Our Early Adopters in Their Forced Shift to Remote Work - interesting perspective on Agile and remote, so well worth checking out this concise read.

Sharath Jeevan is developing a short LinkedIn series on re-igniting inner-drive in our working lives.

Maya has been attending (online) some sessions at the Future of Work summit… You can buy access to sessions you have missed here.

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

This show is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, helping teams with remote transformation and transition,

In today's episode we have two excellent interviews on the theme of economic development and social change, being the bigger picture of remote work and its community impact - do check out full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/beyondwfh-socioeconomic-change.