Off Mute

Through the work of Na’amal, Lorraine Charles helps prepare refugees for the global workforce.

Since its founding in 2019, Na’amal connects displaced people to potential employers, partnering with leading organizations to support people who have been displaced by hardship through skills training, mentorship, and remote work placement opportunities. 

Labeling herself as a “reluctant entrepreneur,” Lorraine’s background is in academic research. She remains a research associate at the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge, and today she combines her expertise of refugee education and employment with a particular focus on digital work. 

In this episode, she shares with Job the many challenges Na’amal and the people they work with have to overcome to ensure refugees can work remotely. She explains how shifting demographics in Europe, Africa, and beyond make refugee hiring the logical decision for employers seeking to recruit. And she reflects on contrasting European attitudes to refugees in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. 

Lorraine also makes a passionate pitch for employers to work with her to recruit interns as an opportunity to trial potential talent. For any employers interested, you can find Na’amal at naamal.org or contact Lorraine directly through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraine-charles.

When it comes to digital nomadism, Sam Matthew has walked the walk. 

Today, he heads the legal team at OnDeck, a platform for entrepreneurs with a fully distributed workforce. Before that, he was general counsel for Remote Year, a company that facilitates travel for those working remotely. 

In this role, Sam witnessed many of the challenges of facilitating the employment of digital nomads firsthand: he himself worked across 20+ countries in a three year period, linking up with other Remote Year employees in Latin America, Europe, and Asia along the way.  

Here he shares with Job some of the key lessons he took from his travels, including the different approaches one can take toward tourist visas and work permits. He explains how countries across the world will have very different approaches to digital nomads, from some that are creating laws to encourage nomadism to others that legally oppose the practice.

The conversation also turns to the legal difficulties companies can run into when hiring abroad, from complying with health and safety regulations to discovering the difficulties of terminating a contract. 

In the debut episode of Off Mute, Job speaks to one of the world’s top experts in remote employment law, Tara Vasdani. 

As the principal lawyer and founder of Remote Law Canada, Tara specializes in employment law, with a particular focus on remote working. She aims to show how proper corporate policies can facilitate remote work and digital nomadism, highlighting what companies need to know before hiring remotely. 

In this conversation, Job and Tara discuss how digital nomadism provides unique legal challenges for employers, including tax codes, information security, or health and safety compliance. They discuss the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on law, ushering in a new era of “Zoom court” in Canada. And Tara recalls becoming the first Canadian lawyer to serve a statement of claim through Instagram! 

Remote CEO Job van der Voort introduces the newest podcast in remote and distributed work: Off Mute. 

For startups, Fortune 500 firms, and everyone in between, this show tackles the hard questions about compliance, HR, finance, operations, and legal challenges that come with remote work.

SafetyWing CEO Sondre Rasch joins the show to talk about the challenges of offering benefits to contractors around the world and to discuss his philosophies on remote work leadership.

This week, Ellen Pao (CEO of Project Include) and McKensie Mack (CEO of MMG) join Remote CEO Job van der Voort to discuss their new report on harassment in remote workplaces and share strategies for companies to create welcoming remote environments for all.

Sarah Aviram, Fortune 500 HR expert and author of Remotivation, joins the show this week to share her story of working remotely around the world and her advice on how companies and remote employees can get more from the new way of working.

In this episode of Remote Talks, Hopin's head of remote Jonathan Killeen joins the show to talk about his new role and the future of the events industry.

Allison Barr Allen, co-founder and COO of Fast, joins the show this week to talk about Fast Flex, hybrid remote workplaces, and how to create more inclusive workplaces from the top down.

Tigran Sloyan, CEO of CodeSignal, joins the show this week to break down the biases of traditional hiring processes and provide insights on how to measure the performance of talent teams more effectively.