21st Century Work Life

To counterpoint the wave of content to support people new to working from home, here at Virtual Not Distant we wanted to take time to reflect on the current state of knowledge work in the age of corona and the way things have changed already, and might continue to change in the future.

(If you are new to this and looking for support in suddenly working from home, then we'd advise you to check out this short bonus episode in the first instance, as well as episode 60 of My Pocket Psych podcast. And contact us if we can help with anything specific to keep you going).

While we'll always advocate for working from home as an option in the mix, the world is short on options right now. Even for Pilar, doing voiceover work in studios is presently on complete hiatus, and work is changing at Virtual Not Distant with a surge in requests from work with Spanish companies - not traditionally keen to embrace 'teletrabajo' (see episode 214 for more on this) who are now looking towards long-term shifts in how they collaborate for the future).

And today we talk in depth to 3 experts in remote work and long-term home-based working, all of whom will be familiar voices to regular listeners, and can help us think about the trends and shifts we're identifying in the way we work together - wherever we are:

Marcus Wermuth from Buffer - connect on Twitter and via his website.

Teresa Douglas, author and long-term remote employee - connection on Twitter and also her website.

Maya Middlemiss - regular show co-host and Virtual Not Distant associate, connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

You'll find full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/not-business-as-usual

Welcome back to our special series in association with ShieldGEO on connection and disconnection in remote teams, which is receiving fascinating feedback. Today we examine the critical question of whose responsibility is it, to maintain connection and ensure people don't drift and become demotivated?

Please see full shownotes at: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/connection-disconnection-responsibilities

In today's episode, we cover the concepts of Visible Teamwork, essential to working as a remote team, after Maya and Pilar talk about what's going on; and feedback from listeners. For full show notes, visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/technostress-and-visible-teamwork

03.10 mins What's going on… Coronavirus is going on

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, helping businesses transition to successful remote working.

Today we interview

Dr Caitlin McDonald is a digital anthropologist at the Leading Edge Forum, an organisation which works with senior leaders to help them reconsider decisions and outcomes, through research, events, and advisory services.

Pilar participated in recent research for the Forum on Reconfiguring the collaborative workspace, which took a deep anthropological dive into workplace organisational structures and digital tools - in particular the ways we interact differently on and offline.

Recent policy shifts in remote working and travel restrictions will affect many organisations for the first time, and Caitlin was keen to point out that 'remote under duress' is not a recipe for success, as we have discussed in this podcast previously. And in urban areas particularly, not everyone has a home environment suitable for work - it could be noisy, shared, unheated, etc. Asking employees to set up their own space doesn't always work, people need support and resources from the organisation.

We strongly recommend checking out the executive summary of Caitlin's research here, and you can connect with her on twitter to continue the conversation.

And do keep your feedback coming, we really enjoy it - please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas.

A short impromptu conversation between Pilar and guest Jacqui Walpole, on some of the issues knowledge workers might face from suddenly having to work from home.

You can connect with today's guest over on https://twitter.com/JacquiWalpole and https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquiwalpole/

For help to make your online collaboration work, and lead your team from a distance, visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

This is Virtual Not Distant's third podcast episode in our special series with ShieldGEO, and you can catch the first and second one if you missed them (and subscribe to them in our main feed wherever you get your podcast).

We're thrilled with the feedback received on this series from our listeners, including from many of our previous guests (and Pilar's mum :-) ). We love the way it's helping us think about the way podcasts themselves build connection, so we'll return to that theme very soon.

But today, our guest host Bree Caggiati explores what happens when we find ourselves disconnected, from the people we work with and the work we're doing?

Dr Julianne Hold-Lunstad reminded us that humans have evolved to be social animals, and that kind of collectiveness has helped us survive - so loneliness is a similar biological drive to hunger or pain, we crave its resolution.

But we don't always follow our best biological imperatives, and Brian Rhea talks about how easy it is as an introvert to avoid meetings and encounters when inconvenient, and therefore to avoid investing in the networks that can support you when you really need it. And Marcus Wermuth reminds us that we all need different levels of interaction with others anyway, especially when it competes head to head with focused working time.

Collaboration promotes creativity, Julianne points out, so it's worth all of us being aware of its value in terms of our output as well as our mood and well-being. And Richard MacKinnon agrees, that we should not see social contact as subtracting from productivity in a zero-sum game - instead, it's an important investment in the success and performance of the team as a whole. He reminds us that feelings of loneliness have very little to do with actually being alone - instead it's all about the perceptions of the quality of relationships and the social connections we have, and it has a direct impact on the engagement of the whole team.

ShieldGEO's Tim Burgess agrees, and has that employee engagement builds commitment which helps overcome the inevitable bad days and bumps in the road that we all experience at work. And when you work from home in particular, bad days and bad moods can do more extended psychological damage, with the absence of the decompression buffer zone a commute represents. Emotional contagion can impact on your household and community too, spreading ripples outward in unexpected directions.

Julianne's research has added to the growing evidence that our relationships influence our emotional well-being, but also affect our physical health - a connection which is often poorly recognised and understood. More socially connected people actually live longer, on average, and loneliness has similar mortality risk factors to obesity and air pollution.

ONS data suggests that 2.4m UK adults suffer from chronic loneliness, so we need to deal with this on a societal level, not least as it has measurable economic costs.

So, the next episode in this series (21st Century Work Life episode 227, releasing on 19th March 2020), will start exploring some of the remedies and strategies to try and fix this problem, which goes way beyond the remote work sphere.

But we'd love to know what you think about these vital issues, and anything else. Please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas.

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd.

For full shownotes, and details of Pilar Orti's new book Online Meetings That Matter, please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/online-meetings-connections.

And here's What's Going On:

• Coronavirus Forces World's Largest Work-From-Home Experiment - This article reflects a moving target in a fast-moving situation, as it was published 2nd February, but it indicates an ongoing phenomenon. Virtual Not Distant do not advise waiting for a global health crisis as a strategy for transformation, but it's great if technology can rise to the occasion and encourage people to try new things - so long as they don't judge the remote-first approach from the outcome of an ad-hoc reactive solution.
• Google's Plan to Reduce Its Carbon Footprint - For us, this piece triggered lots of reflection about the carbon footprint of digital 'things' in general. We think of remote as very 'green', but data, tech and storage does have a cost in terms of energy, when you scale up. Or even how they suck power on your own laptop… See also: Why Irish data centre boom is complicating climate efforts.
• Flexible Workers Held Back by Tech Trouble - Some interesting research about how people feel about the tech they use, and when they're remote they're typically less 'supported' with this than in a colocated office. Do we need better training, or better tech? Possibly both, and there's a degree of convergence. And we also need a strategy about how we use them to support our collaboration (PSA: Virtual Not Distant can help with this!)
• You really need to lock down your Trello boards... right now - Oops. Public Trello boards are just that, meaning search-indexable. And this researcher from Wired found things in some public boards which definitely should not be there. And in other apps too, it's easily done - so this is a timely reminder to check that you understand how the apps you use are secured, who you are making content visible to at all times, the implications. It might mean digging into some settings and instructions… which is time well spent.
• https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2020 - This comprehensive annual report has just been released. Please take part in research like this, policymakers need it! Comparative data now shows that the more report you are, the happier you are, on balance - including 'how remote' your organisation is (hybrid set-ups are more mixed in satisfaction, and this segment is fastest-growing). The challenges and downsides identified will not surprise any of our regular listeners… But there is SO much to dig into in this research, we urge you to check it out and read it in detail.

This topical segment was recorded on 12th February 2020

Welcome to the second in our special series in association with ShieldGEO, with our guest host Bree Cagiatti, in discussion with an amazing panel of guests:

In this episode we explore how disconnection presents itself, and we started by talking to Laurel Farrer, remote work advocate and founder of Distribute Consulting.

Developer Brian Rhea has identified this too, and is building an app to help — in response to an enquiring tweet which blew up into a huge validation of the existence of a problem of loneliness for remote workers.

Teresa Douglas, author of Working Remotely, is presently researching psychological safety in remote teams.

Tim Burgess, ShieldGEO co-founder, first experienced loneliness and disconnection in his first job, where he worked alone in an office in a new country — not remote then, but deeply isolated.

Asia Hundley (also from ShieldGEO) pointed out the way that excitement can mask such feelings at first in a new situation (in her case, a new country).

Occupational Psychologist Richard MacKinnon says it's difficult to spot, because people can seem outwardly very happy, while reporting feelings of loneliness only if asked. And Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who has researched this area extensively, reminds us of the persistent social stigma and shame around admissions of loneliness and other emotional needs.

So if you're feeling disconnected and alone as a remote worker, we hope this episode has been both reassuring and insightful — your situation is not uncommon, and we'll have more to come in terms of how you can help yourself and your colleagues throughout this series. Starting from self awareness, you can begin to identify where you might be able to make changes in your total set of work-life circumstances, and use that insight to help others too.

Hello and welcome to this multi-guest episode, where we delve into the world of online communities in the context of remote work. This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd.

Please see full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/online-communities-remote-work.

Guest interviews:

28.58 Alex Hearst: Hoxby

48.13 Mark Kilby, Agile Florida

1.06.34 Martin Gilbraith Chair of IAF England Wales

Welcome to our new series of 7 episodes on the theme of "connection and disconnection in remote teams", in association with Virtual Not Distant partners Shield GEO.

Shield GEO help businesses employ people globally by taking care of all the associated administration, legal and financial - supporting truly global remote work, in a way that's a great alignment with everything we value at Virtual Not Distant. So we're very excited to be expanding our podcasting repertoire with this new collaboration.

Our host for this series is Bree Caggiati, and for this inaugural episode she is joined by Shield GEO Tim Burgess, as well as Pilar and Maya of course. The chosen theme began as a conversation initially about loneliness in remote teams - a natural part of the maturing of the remote work conversation, as more and more people open up to the possibilities it offers. But this evolved into an exploration of both sides of the coin: connection and disconnection.

Tim reflected on a research they had conducted with Sydney University students about the remote work community and what their needs were - what questions were being asked online, and not being well answered. The idea of disconnection due to distance emerged strongly there, as part of the context of greater awareness of emotional well-being more generally in the social and business discourse (and let's remember as well that people in traditional colocated workplaces can also feel isolated and disconnected).

The extent to which hirers and employers are responsible for the mental health of their team is also under the microscope, but perhaps not all managers are comfortable talking about it at any stage (and this too is not an issue limited to remote work). Where do the boundaries emerge, between duty of care, self-sufficiency, privacy, and productivity, in these sensitive conversations, as people emerge from the 'honeymoon period' of a new role?

Bree herself is physically isolated from the rest of the ShieldGEO team, being based in Canada while the others are in Australia - making this a truly global, 4-country collaboration, incidentally. Bree has found using a co-working space more regularly has helped overcome isolation. But the issue is very polarising, and early adopters of remote work (especially advocates, and dare we say, podcasters in this space…) are highly self-selecting. Many of us have never experienced loneliness, working in the way we chose - but as more organisations 'go remote', it inevitably becomes less about individual choice for every remote worker.

Disconnection can come from many sources in addition to loneliness. It can be related to trust and autonomy, and the visible teamwork activities we consult on in Virtual Not Distant are all about connecting through the work itself by making that manifest. And this is important because sometimes we feel more connected to our colleagues at work, than those in our local communities and social networks. In the mainstream conversation, often technology gets blamed for alienation and disconnection, but actually it can play a really positive role, if we use it in the right way, and remote work can lead by example on this.

Perhaps it's easy to blame the factor of remote work, particularly working from home, if we feel disengaged from other people generally, but there could be many causes. Work can provide structure and tangibility in our day which might be absent in our personal lives, and maybe we need to better tune in to our own emotional and physical needs, when there's no manager or colleague to reflect off in our immediate environment. We talk about great remote workers having personal attributes of resilience and flexibility, and emotional self-awareness is a part of this - the ability to understand our own needs for self-care or rest or exercise or space, and ensure they are addressed before a crisis happens. This includes knowing how and where you work best, and constructing that environment around you.

Recruiting for these personal qualities, instilling a culture during onboarding that these issues are for real, these are challenges for any onboarding process. Tim and the Shield GEO team have recognised that in training new hires generally, that there's a difficulty in taking on board large amounts of complex information, so finding the right time to bring up these issues of how they're really feeling emotionally needs a lot of thought. But by planting the seeds with new people that the organisation cares how these concerns might at least make it easier for new colleagues to explore more openly when the time is right.

And with so much to explore during this series, we're really looking forward to hearing from listeners about how these issues are impacting you, what your concerns are with connection and disconnection our remote teams. Please do join the conversation in any way you choose, including anonymously/confidentially if you prefer, via email or our contact form.