Remote First

Elastic is a fully distributed company of over 2000 employees. They are also providing offices to the benefit of their teams all over the world. They've been a model for designing a workplace that is empowering the best of both world. Today I am so glad to chat with Leah Sutton, SVP Global HR at Elastic, a wonderful conversation that I am sure will help you re-think your idea of successful Hybrid. 

Hey everyone, here we are May 31st - as promised, I am here to announce the season two with all the guests who are going to have for the summer. And I'm very excited to show you the amazing lineup that is going to be there for the whole summer every week you'll listen to someone very amazing coming to explain their way of work. And especially in season two, I am focusing on the challenges of hybrid and the reason for that is that the whole year and 2021 so far. We talked a lot about the future of work is hybrid. 

Catching up on Season 1 and looking back at everything we've learned in company of guest from Shopify, Radical Candor, Prezi, Doist, Mural, OysterHR & Human Made. We are taking a break for the month of May to prepare for the launch of Season 2 on May 31st. 

Big thank you to remotive.io for supporting the making of this podcast. 

Transcript: 

Hey everyone. So this is a quick bonus episode to thank you for taking part in the remote first podcast for this first season, it's been an incredible experience and I am going to be telling you a bit more about what's coming. For the season one, we've had amazing guests. It's been an awesome time to listen to other leaders who add experience in a remote first workplace.

We've had guests from Shopify, Prezi, Radical Candor. We had people from Doist also from Oyster HR. It's been a really interesting, I loved to have all this conversation with everyone. We talked about remote leadership. We talked about hiring compliance, the limits of asynchronous communication and keeping your team engaged in a remote workplace.

I hope that like me, you really appreciated the content and the interviews and discussions we had with the leaders. It's been really fun for me as well to discover also the world of podcasting. So I hope you also liked the experience, I'm taking a little break for the month of May to prepare the lineup that will be launched on May 31st.

So on May 31st, I'm launching season 2 where we will be having amazing other guests again, but this time I'm so excited, because we have guests coming from larger companies. This time, we will talk a lot about distributed-by-design at scale. So this is very exciting and I hope that you'll be joining us.

Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you won't be missing out on the next season. And if you like to show. I would really appreciate and be so grateful if you could leave a review on any of your listening app of choice, it definitely helps the podcast getting discovered.

So thank you so much for taking part of this first journey of the remote first podcast and see you on May 31st. 

In this episode, you'll hear from Laïla von Alvensleben, Head of Culture & Collaboration at MURAL, who will share some of her precious insights around what makes a team stick together in a virtual workplace. From energizer, facilitating skills to a truly inspiring virtual offsite. 

Keeping your team engaged virtually has been a challenge many of you have brought up recently. For those who found themselves suddenly remote, it was like if you were a conductor that lost their orchestra. Many people completely fell out of their comfort zone and were lacking at the right facilitating skills to bring their team together and keep the momentum. 

Show note links 

Icebreakers: https://www.mural.co/blog/online-warm-ups-energizers

Virtual Retreat: https://www.mural.co/blog/2020-mural-virtual-offsite

In today's episode, I am having a chat with Chase Warrington from Doist, a company that is defaulting to Asynchronous communication. We discussed the benefits of working that way versus the back and forth of real-time work the "normal" office world has been used to. Never the less, I  love the debate around this topic and we also covered the limits of Async and play devils advocate a bit. 

Show note links: 

Read more about Doist Async Method

Loom for Async video content

Now that you might be redesigning your values to reflect the change you are living in the workplace, use them as a conductor of your orchestra. In a remote and hybrid setting, with the lack of face to face, it is especially important to take the time to think about the way we work and keep each-other accountable. I am so happy to have today Siobhan Mckeown, who is the VP People and Culture at Human Made. She is also the author of the book A life lived remotely and have been involved for years in the WordPress open-source community.

She is incredibly smart and down to earth. Someone who has been into remote work before it was cool. Listen in and learn the real impact remote can have on your culture and values. 

Show Notes Links: 

Human Made public company Handbook

How Human Made's values guide our approach to remote work - blog post

Siobhan's book: A Life Lived Remotely - If work is hell, then what is working from home?

Gitlab Handbook & Coursera

Shopify announced in May 2020 their move to adapt their work processes to be remote-first. To be more accurate: digital by default. Today I am chatting with Maureen Burke who is the Remote Strategy, Program Lead at Shopify, a role she got into right before the pandemic and ended up being more than needed. Listen in to hear more about her thoughts on hybrid culture, great knowledge management & much more. Read more about Work Anywhere

How have you been changing your working and communication behaviour to better fit the purpose of having a remote first approach in your current role? In this episode - Spencer Waldron, Director of Global Communication at Prezi, is sharing how we should re-think our day-to-day work habits to succeed in a remote setting. 

When most of todays interactions are done via written communications or video calls, it adds an extra layer of difficulty when it comes to leadership skills and communicating feedback. You can never really recreate that human feeling of having a frank conversation face-to-face, feeling the vibe of the other person you're talking to. For this third episode, I am discussing with Jason Rosoff, CEO of Radical Candor, a training and development company he co-founded with Kim Scott in 2017.  Applying the radical candor concept in a remote setting and the challenges that comes with it. 

Types of Managers framework

Remote First is powered by Remotive.io, the world’s largest remote work community. A job board and a media specialized in helping companies hiring remotely. 

Guest: Ariane Bobiash from OysterHR

Topics discussed

- What is considered a compliant contractor versus not compliant or misclassified?

- Learning about "Employers of Record" to hire internationally

- The benefits for your global team members to be all hired equal

- The social impact of remote work 

Links from the show:

Contractor Risk Assessment Tool

Oyster Salary Calculator

Contact us

Don't hesitate to reach out :) [email protected]