21st Century Work Life - Remote Working, Virtual Teams And Flexible Working

This is the first part of the celebratory episode 300!  Some of our guests return to the show to share how they see the world of remote work changing, how their own ways of working have changed and what they'd like this podcast to cover over the next 100 episodes (or is it  next 300!). We'll  hear from: Maya Middelmiss Dr Richard MacKinnon Mark Kilby  Tim Burgess Simon Wilson Bree Cagiatti Eva Rimbau-Gilabert Theresa Sigilito Hollema Ross Winter Pinar Akkaya Anish Hindocha and your host, Pilar Orti  This part consists of:  00.00 Pilar introduces the 3 parts, talks about the guests and gives lots of thanks 09.30 The guests start answering the question: What do you think is going to stay the same in remote work most knowledge workers for the next three years and what do you think it’s going to change? 13.25 A less rosie view of what's going on. 19.00 What skills, mindset, behaviours will we need? 28.00 Pilar's rant about the need for understanding asynchronous communication 30.40 Diversity in virutal wor

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the mental health challenges in returning to the office space, the evolution of communication in the workplace and the reasons why many people do not want to work remotely – in Spain and other places. The set up of a hybrid workplace continues with its challenges. In episode 106 of My Pocket Psych, guest Dr. Hayley Lewis talked about how she was working with a government organisation whose chief exec wanted to reduce the office space in order to cut down on public spending.  However, when she looked into the living conditions of some of the employees, it was clear that asking (or offering) people to work from home would end up with some individuals working in difficult conditions.  While we’re making sure we can have the conversation so that people can work flexibly, there’s also a need to help people speak out when they feel they can’t use their homes for work. In any case, saving money by reducing the office space might not be as straight-forward as it looks. Accord

We welcome Laurel Farrer to the podcast, to talk about how to lay down the foundations to provide an equitable experience for our employees, in a hybrid setup. The conversation was inspired by Laurel’s article 10 Habits to Ensure Equality in Your Hybrid Team. But before we get into the content of the article, we hear from Laurel about her aspirations for the adoption of remote work. In her LinkedIn profile, she says that she “leverages the power of workplace flexibility to impact business operations and socioeconomics.” She named her company “Distribute Consultancy” – they’re not just talking about working with people who are physically distributed, but they also champion the opportunity to distribute wealth and opportunity. Enabling remote work is about changing the way we work, and changing the world at an economic level. Laurel reminds us that the kind of work that happened during the pandemic, was not “remote work”, it was a contingency plan. This has led to controversy about whether this has helped or h

In this bonus episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, Ana Neves talks about how she’s structured the conference Social Now, which covers how enterprise social network tools can help organisations in the day to day, ”rather than being an extra thing we have to do”.Your code as listener to get the early bird discount until 8 April is WCL21.The conference started in 2012, and has a fictitious company at its centre. The people in the company have challenges that will resonate with most employees in organisations, and the conference is structured around helping people in the company. Ana blogs as a new employee in this organisation, so that attendees have a background on the case study through the blog http://houseofcables.socialnow.org/ Many organisations have implemented these tools, but are not making the best use of them, being used at a superficial level. Pilar was under the impression that online tools are being used efficiently and deliberately at a team level, but this is not the case.  Ana talks ab

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the different communication rhythms that remote teams adopt. They also cover the concept of documentation, as something that can help slow down a team's rhythm, or at least help it towards "burstiness", a characteristic of successful teams. Plenty here to reflect on.Communication in an online team requires a different mindset to that of when you are collocated, and requires different ways of interacting which might feel unnatural, or even uncomfortable. It all started with this tweet:https://twitter.com/PilarOrti/status/1499370551596527617 “Over the last years, I’ve worked & collaborated with a wide range of people online. 1 thing that strikes me is that the rhythm of communication & the speed of the workflow become apparent. I’ve noticed when somebody’s rhythm clashes with my own. Is this something you’ve noticed?”Saskie replied that she also noticed when it WAS in sync, and gave this metaphor: “Musing on your tweet brought to mind an image of 3 legged races a

Catherine Nicholson is the Director of The Virtual Training Team  She last appeared on the show in episode 274, almost a year ago. Now she is back to let us know how the work with their clients has evolved, and how they have changed how they work as a team. The novelty of having to move online because of the pandemic has faded. Trainers, as well as other knowledge workers, are now looking at how to make the most out of the online space, once everyone has embraced the mindset that things can be done through technology.  Trainers can move onto the next level by taking “learning loops'' as a first design point, by looking for a routine that learners are used to so that they feel familiar in the environment. Before this familiarity turns into predictability and people “stop trying”, it might be necessary to “shake things up a bit” – but how? We need to enhance the learning experience, but maintain purpose. One of their approaches is to “be a kid in the sweetie shop”, the sweetie shop being the huge amount of too

In the last What's Going On episode, which was actually a hybrid of WGOn and ReThinking Thinking Remote, Maya and Pilar discuss Maya's chapter from our book Thinking Remote, "Sick and Tired, Working and Not Working in a Remote Team". This add-on episode is the audio version of that chapter. You can read the blog version of the chapter here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/sickness-remote-teams  

WLP294 What’s Going On: Wellbeing and Emojis This episode is a hybrid of What’s Going On and Thinking Remote. Maya and Pilar revisit the chapter from Thinking Remote: Sick and Tired, Working and Not-Working on a Remote Team. They also discuss asynchronous communication and how it’s being adopted in the workspace, they talk about the role of emojis and finally, they share a couple of social media discussions.  4.05 mins  In the past (before the pandemic), taking time off work meant you had one of two choices – both were difficult processes.  The first option was to go into work, even though you were ill - unless you were very ill, it was almost expected you would go into work, plus, we did not want to let our teammates down.  The second option was to stay at home, but even then you were not fully away from work, as you could still do some work online and lessen the workload for your colleagues to feel less guilty. In both cases there is a sense of fear of work piling up that is still prominent even in current

In this episode, Pilar speaks to Chase Warrington, Head of Remote at Doist. Chase shares how he is challenging how remote work is approached at his organisation, and what he has learnt in his new position that can be used to improve the business and its people.   You can find the show notes below, and there's a transcript over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/head-of-remote-doist  Chase discusses his new position as Head of Remote and talks about how as a community we can help each other learn and grow, and figure out what is the best way to overcome the challenges remote teams face. 24.36 mins Chase discusses the importance of bringing a team of people from different departments together to socialise and work on a new project, to help overcome feelings of isolation, loneliness, disconnection and disengagement.  Working remotely does have its own set of challenges to overcome, not in the way of changing the entire system, more so that we have systems in place to implement when facing these challe

Following episode 292's conversation on working out loud, here are the two chapters from Thinking Remote we covered. 

In this episode, we revisit the chapters from Thinking Remote which addressed the concept of “working out loud”.Adopting the concept helps to keep the team spirit, how to stay aligned and creative. Working out loud allows those who thrive on interactive energy - we can think of “working out loud for productivity, creativity and collaboration”.The concept of working out loud has been around for a while, since the online world started thriving. (For more on this, check out episode 170, with guest Jochen Lillich https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/wlp170-working-out-loud )8.50mins  How have things changed since we wrote those blog posts?18.01minsAn example of the power of “working out loud” and “thinking outloud”.We quote from this article: Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet? 25.40  We revisit the chapter from Thinking Remote The Dangers of Working Out Loud ,  First published as a blog post in 2016. 30.40Next up, we turn our attention to the team member, and revisit the chapter by Maya: Now that I’m

In today’s episode Pilar catches up with long-time friend of this podcast, Marcus Wermuth to talk about his mid-pandemic transition into new role as the full-time senior engineering manager at Remote.com. This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. For detailed show notes, visit our podcast page. 

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. In today’s episode Pilar and Maya reflected on the changes which have taken place in remote work throughout 2021 - differentiation of terminology, the rise of asynchronous communication, new apps, and the endless talk about hybrid! We also thank our community, and share news about upcoming workshops and themes for the new year. 36.08 Virtual Not Distant news 40.52 Thank you to our community

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. In today’s episode Pilar interviewed Carlos Jonay Suarez and Elsa Rodriguez from Pueblos Remotos: https://www.pueblosremotos.com/ about their exciting initiative to bring remote workers and rural communities together in Spain’s Canary Islands. Connecting local entrepreneurs with international nomadic workers synergises creativity and idea sharing, while creating lasting friendships in a sustainable ecotourism environment, to benefit all participants. Carlos would rather network with you in person than online, but meanwhile can be found on LinkedIn and also (in Spanish) SinOficina, and LinkedIn is also the best place to find Elsa - as well as keeping up with all the news and information on the main Pueblos Remotos site. You can find out more information and get in touch with us over at www.virtualnotdistant.com

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. In today’s episode, Pilar and Maya kick off a series reflecting on Thinking Remote: Inspiration for Leaders of Distributed Teams, which was published in 2018 - a geological epoch ago, in remote work terms. What has changed, what has stayed the same, and how have Pilar and Maya changed and evolved their own thinking on these themes? The first chapter of the book dealt with designing the digital workplace, and you can read the original blog post from which the chapter derived here: Designing the Digital Workspace: What We Can Learn from the Physical Space — Virtual not Distant.

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. In today’s episode host Pilar Orti speaks with Corine Tan from emotional wellbeing platform Kona. They discuss their recently published Remote Manager Report 2021, and the product they have created - which helps teams check in with each other and share their context and emotions, via a slackbot which presents as a cute dog avatar. Download Kona’s team building guide, and keep up with Corine and Kona on Twitter.

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. Today’s episode features Tammy Bjelland founder and CEO of Workplaceless, and features a deep-dive into their new product Placeless Coach. Tammy talks to Pilar about the background to Workplaceless, and the evident need for Placeless Coach, which helps teams and individuals develop better habits and behaviours around asynchronous working. Check it out at Placeless Coach - Reserve Your Spot. And keep up with Tammy on LinkedIn and Twitter, to see what else she is working on.

In this unusual episode (we rarely release an episode just about our own services), Pilar talks about the new (and not so new) workshops and programmes at Virtual not Distant, mainly for managers and leaders of remote teams.  With the increase in training for managers of remote teams by companies who have been working "in the space" for a while, as well as new consultants who have learned about working online recently, we've decided to narrow our offering to offer what we can uniquely offer.  In this episode, you can hear a little bit about each of the new 4 workshops for managers of remote teams, all delivered in-house. And Pilar shares how Podcasting for Connection could actually work in an organisation.  You can find out details on the workshops through here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/training-for-managers-overview 04.45mins List of all workshops and talking about Motivation and Visible Teamwork workshop 07.37mins Mastering Online Facilitation for Engaging Meetings 09.32 Let's Meet Less! Adop

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com) where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. Today Pilar and Maya explore 2 recent research publications which both touch on boundaries in remote work in a range of ways, (just like Maya’s recent book ‘Finding Your Edge: Establishing And Maintaining Boundaries When You Work From Home’): How to create psychological safety in virtual teams and The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers  

This episode is repurposed from the Northcentral Universtiy Podcast Series, from their CAVO series.  Theresa Sigillito Holleman and Pilar Orti talk about what examples of hybrid workplaces they're coming across, the challenges that this set-up brings as well as how to spend less time in meetings!  Check out more from CAVO here: https://www.ncu.edu/center-advancement-virtual-organizations Find out more about Theresa's work here: https://www.interact-global.net/ And check out Virtual not Distant's work here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/