The Human Behind The Screen

Today we're talking about transitioning to full remote work for the first time. We have Benjamin Crudo from Diff Agency to talk about their transition, the challenges that came with it, and his thoughts and practices on leadership.

Benjamin is the founder and CEO of Diff Agency. With 100+ employees, three offices worldwide, and as one of the world’s top Shopify partners, Diff takes a full-service approach to e-commerce: planning, designing, building, integrating, and optimizing e-commerce products to drive success online. While known for his technical expertise, Ben remains passionate about demystifying e-commerce for his customers: communicating clearly in the language of retailers to ensure cooperative and successful projects. Some of his notable clients include Boll&Branch, Popsockets, YM,inc., WWF, Ecobee, and Yellow Shoes.

To book a time to chat with Shauna, head on over to www.operateremote.com

Today we're talking to Roy Sunstrum about what are the best practices for leading teams in these times when a lot of companies have been forced to go remote for the first time without any experience.

Roy has over 25 years of senior leadership in a diverse set of companies and industries including Nortel, JDS Uniphase, DNA Genotek, and Shopify. Now retired from full-time work but highly active in the business community Roy has a stellar reputation in helping teams be more effective and developing great leaders. He has demonstrated this in disciplines including Manufacturing, Supply chain, Quality, Product development, Business Strategy, Customer Service and Support.

If you want to learn more about leading remote teams successfully don't miss the opportunity to join my workshop on May 28th https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inside-high-performing-remote-teams-tickets-103846156650

Remote work and online meetings are something that a lot of us are experiencing daily during this time of isolation. But how does this affect our human connections? What are some good case practices from companies that have been working with remote teams for several years?

Today, Shauna Moran talks to Tim Burgess, the co-founder of Shield GEO. In the past 20 years, Tim has dealt with thousands of international workers, and he's seen the benefits businesses get from international employment. So through his company, he's trying to make it simple for companies to employ staff quickly and compliantly anywhere in the world. Tim's remote team is spread across 16 different countries and is 80% remote.

Learn more about Tim Burgess and his work at Shield GEO by connection with him on Twitter or exploring their website here.

It is the international workers day today, and we have a special episode where we're going to discover the best practices to create a healthy and productive work environment.

Today's guest, Brian Crooke, is the founder of Workplace Wellbeing Ireland and an expert in the field of workplace well being. He also acts as an educator and speaker, advising and supporting a large number of Irish organizations to promote and sustain well being within their workplaces.

Surprisingly, Brian's background is actually in IT. The shift in his career happened when he realized that the stress and struggles he was experiencing daily in his consulting job are not something that should be considered normal.

Brian Cooke hosts nationwide events for people interested in workplace wellbeing. You can find out more by joining the Workplace Wellbeing Ireland Community on LinkedIn.

How can we help our company to grow without perishing in the attempt, learning what tools we must improve, how we can keep vital information available to everyone, and maintain fluid communication? How difficult but important is it for leaders to manage their time to guide their teams and be effective in their work without overdoing themselves? How important is face-to-face for a remote company and how can we use this to avoid long-term losses? And how important is empathy as part of the corporate culture? All these questions get their answers through Chanthri Ali.

In this episode of The Human Behind the Screen, we are going to speak with Chanthri Ali, who is the Chief Operating Officer for ReCharge, the leading subscription billing platform designed for physical subscription goods. She currently oversees the sales, marketing, customer success, and people operations, teams. ReCharge has achieved fast growth and currently powers over 10,000 e-commerce stores including Hubble Contacts, Native Deodorant, Dr. Axe, and Billie.

Keeping a conversation with Leah Knobler, we will learn about how can we modify the hiring process, to generate a better relationship with new employees, how important is creativity when creating an inclusive environment within a remote company and difference between the growing and the scaling of a company.

In this episode of The Human Behind the Screen, we got the chance to speak with Leah Knobler, a former high school teacher from New York, who found her passion for helping people as the director of talent acquisition for Help Scout.

Leah has been creating inclusive environments since 2005 when she started her career as an NYC public school teacher. After years of educating the youths and working in higher education, she discovered her true love of People Operations when she heard about Help Scout, a remote-first tech company building helpful, human customer messaging tools. She took a chance, changed her career path, and for the past 4.5 years, she's grown the team from 20 to 110 people. Leah loves talking about recruiting like a human, diversifying tech, and Beyoncé.

In the business world, especially in remote work, being a good leader brings many benefits for the team. How do we know if we have the necessary qualities to be a good leader? How can we help our employees develop independence and ownership? What parameters must we have to guide our employees correctly? Is there a way to give our remote team the same benefits that our local teams have?

In this episode of The Human Behind the Screen, we are joined by Job Van der Voort, who has a background in neuroscience. Job went into tech by starting a start-up, joining gets lab as Vice President of product. And he was fundamental in helping get lab scale from five people to unicorn have over 500 employees. Also, He's now helping the world work remotely as the CEO of remote.com, a company that allows both employers and remote workers around the world.

Having a remote work team, added to the one we have in an office, is an excellent opportunity to expand our reach as a company and add diversity to our work team, but what happens when our work team is entirely remote? How much can the experience gained over the years help us, when we undertake a project as innovative as risky? And, how important is a leader to help us grow and achieve our personal goals?

There are a lot of us who have worked remotely for years, but, how should we deal with these new circumstances? How do we cope with the challenges that are implied with a generalized lockdown? And also, how do leaders manage a team that is transitioning to remote work now?

We have Shawn Winters with us today in The Human Behind The Screen to share his experience as a leader of remote teams as well as his interesting point of view on topics like mental health and motivation for remote workers in these times of crisis.

Working remotely is a huge resource when it comes to having a flexible schedule, to fulfil our dreams or goals, but we could find some obstacles inside this kind of work. How we get the same visibility as our pairs, that work in an office? and how we, as leaders, can use standardization to help all our team members to be more efficient and have better communication?

We are joined by Brandee Sanders, the owner and director of marketing operations activities of Planet Brandee, which is an award-winning visual storytelling, multimedia and content consultancy strategy business and the director of marketing operations activities.