Remote First

In the past two years, we've seen many companies experiencing remote asynchronous work for the first time. But many people still have questions and concerns around remote work and async work. What are the pros and cons? When is it time to go async? What systems do you need in place for it to actually work?

Today, we have Julia Szatar from Loom, Ryan Burke from Qatalog, Nathan Barry from ConvertKit, and Samantha Fischer from Okta joining us in this conversation.

In this episode, we’re discussing one thing, ‘should most remote work be asynchronous?’

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Visit remotefirst.fm for full show notes.

For the longest time, education has always been inside the four corners of a classroom. But as we continue to evolve and uncertainties happen, people have learned to be creative, flexible, and adapt. If there’s a remote-first setup in the workplace, there are forward-thinking schools for self-directed learners.

In this episode, I’ll be chatting with Kelly Davis, she is the co-founder and Chief Education Officer of Galileo, a new and innovative self-directed online school for world schooling and unschooling families. Join us as Kelly enlightens us on how self-directed learning can give your family the freedom and flexibility you've been searching for.

Onboarding is the process of integrating new hires into an organization or company. For some, that only takes one day of orientation, however as the pandemic emerged, many companies have become creative and found ways to transition effectively to a remote-first setup, including the onboarding process of new hires. One of them is Cimpress.

Today, we have invited Brittany Sohns. She is the manager of Remote Onboarding and Learning & Development at Cimpress. A manufacturing company that was a remote adverse company in the past but has successfully transitioned from office-centric culture to a remote-first culture.

In this episode, Brittany shares how she strives to create the best work experience through developing their own 100-day remote onboarding experience.

Visit remotefirst.fm for full show notes.

It's a fact that good communication skills are essential in today's remote workplace. People tend to work better when they can understand each other. But what does that mean, really?

It's easy to throw around buzzwords and phrases like "communication skills" and "interpersonal skills." But in reality, being a great communicator boils down to one simple thing: showing empathy. This is especially true when it comes to working with remote teams.

In this episode, I’m joined by Heather Hansen, a global communication specialist, TEDx speaker, and author of the book, Unmuted: How to Show Up, Speak Up, and Inspire Action. She’s the founder of Global Speech Academy, whose mission is to empower global voices to contribute to conversations that matter in business, politics, and life.

In our conversation, Heather shares how we can create a more inclusive workplace by encouraging people to speak up, the Unmuted Framework, and strategies to effectively communicate with confidence and clarity.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that remote work is here to stay. But how can we maximize employee productivity and collaboration in the new hybrid workplace?

To answer this question, our host spoke with Kate Lister, President of Global Workplace Analytics. Kate is a leading expert on trends in workplace flexibility, remote work, and telecommuting. Her data-driven research sheds light on why companies are increasingly moving towards remote work arrangements and what it means for the future of work.

In our conversation, Kate shares the benefits of hybrid and remote work practices, as well as how they can be optimized to foster better work-life balance. We discuss the psychological, social, and physical differences between remote and hybrid workers, and how these differences can be leveraged to improve performance.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

"Once you give that flexibility, people can also take ownership of their own destiny, their own setup, which will allow them to be a better version of themselves." 

Alexander Westerdahl, leads the Work-From-Anywhere program at Spotify and his team did an impressive job at offering the best location flexibility to 7000+ employees, while staying compliant and liable which comes with its set of challenges. 

In this episode you'll hear 

Read more about The Reality of Working from Anywhere : https://hrblog.spotify.com/2022/03/29/the-reality-of-working-from-anywhere/ 

Mentions: 

Reach out - You can reach out to the host Daphnée Laforest on Linkedin :) 

Leave a review, and help us get discovered! - If you found value in this show, we'd love your review on your listening app of choice. It really helps to get the podcast discovered by more and more people. RateThisPodcast.com/remotefirst  

This episode was previously published on The Digital Workplace Podcast where our host joined Niel Miller to discuss the five levels of autonomy at work and how open-source principles influenced the best distributed-work practices. 

While sharing an appreciation for Matt Mullenweg’s ideas of the 5 Levels of remote work, Daphnée pointed out that most of the companies that are leading the discussion about distributed work have something in common. They have a deeply distributed bias.

Automattic, GitLab, Elastic, and many others were initially open-source projects that later formalized into companies. When a company has its origins in a decentralized and distributed community, it makes sense that they would also bring those principles to building a remote, or distributed company.

And they’ve succeeded as distributed companies in large part because of their foundational principles. By pushing trust out to the margins and embracing asynchronous work (out of necessity often), they found a system that worked great.

However, when a company doesn’t have the same foundations and tries to shift to remote work, they often run into issues. Remote work is not the hard part. The difficulty is the years of practice in asynchronous communication, decentralized authority, and building digital culture.

Show Links

Connect with Niel Miller on Linkedin

Subscribe to the digital workplace podcast

Connect with Daphnée Laforest on LinkedIn

Reach out - We would love to get to know who you are and also hear any feedback about the podcast. You can reach-out anytime and we always reply! contact @ remotefirst . fm

Leave a review, help us get discovered! - If you found value in this show, we'd love your review on your listening app of choice. It really helps to get the podcast discovered by more and more people. RateThisPodcast.com/remotefirst 

Startup for Remote Work Series // As you know, our host loves discovering new products and services designed to change and improve the way we work. Which is why we are continuing this series to discuss specific remote work challenges that need solving and feature a startup just doing that. This week, listen to Euan Cameron, CEO of Willo, an Asynchronous Video Interviewing Software. Mind blown right? And you thought you had Async all figured out...

Show Links

Connect with Euan on Linkedin

Try Willo - https://www.willo.video/

Connect with Daphnée on LinkedIn

We would love to get to know who you are and also hear any feedback about the podcast.

You can reach out anytime and we always reply!  contact @ remotefirst .fm

Found value in this show? We'd love your review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps us build trust with new listeners and provide more value for you! RateThisPodcast.com/remotefirst