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

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (virtualnotdistant.com), where we help people work better together apart.   Today’s episode explores the themes of loneliness for the remote worker. This is an edited summary of a live talk with Dr Richard MacKinnon on loneliness and disconnection in remote teams back in July, as part of the Learning Lounge of the Emotional Intelligence (EI) Evolution. The live EI Evolution event it's on October 12th, featuring the godfather of EI Daniel Goleman - you can learn more and book here, using code PILARORTI10 for 10% discount.  Beyond the #watercooler 19.14 Self awareness  27.44 Remote vs colocated work 34.30 Talking about emotions You can find the full show notes over at: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/​​beyond-watercooler-loneliness

Today's episode explores facilitative leadership in remote teams, and how to successfully blend asynchronous and synchronous practices to help teams work effectively together. Pilar Orti interviews Simon Wilson, co-founder of Wilson Sheriff, and certified master facilitator with the International Association of Faciliation (IAF). He’s been working with the online space as part of his practice for many years, and co-authored Virtual Meetings a Practical Guide.  Connect with Simon on Twitter, and online for more. For the full show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/asynchronous-collaboration-facilitation

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com) Today Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss explore topical themes and publications in remote work, including: 03.10 Going back to (the) work (place)  Work at the Office, Win a New Car!  Seriously! But there are better ideas from  Ocado Group offers staff remote working abroad.    13.54 Regulating ‘work from anywhere’: Your Company Needs a Digital Nomad Policy (HBR)  Top CHROs Believe 'Flexibility Within a Framework' Is the Future of Work (Gallup, June 2021). What to do about "Global COVID Nomads",  34.10 The future is flexible… Let’s remember, in all this talk of location-hopping, that flexibility as a principle is about much more than where you work.  Future Forum study of 10,000 knowledge workers shows that 93% want flexibility in when and how they work; more than half are open to a job change. (Slack are taking care of our emotional wellbeing in an app update, and advancing their audio offering too). 41.30 Company news New cowor

From Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com), today’s episode explores the use of the office and other environments for deliberate and mindful work in teams. We are joined by Justin Morris, Senior Customer Success Manager - Modern Communications, at Microsoft.   We discuss ‘reopening anxiety’, onboarding during lockdown, courageous and flexible leadership, and Microsoft’s 3 pillar frameworkof people, place and process. The right policies, underpinned by the right cloud-based technology, can make this work for everyone - but it requires an agile and experimental approach.   Mindful teamwork is the way Justin describes it, and being able to nurture ideas from the spark to production means involving the right people at the right time.    Our in-house Visible Teamwork framework structures this concept around a set of principles and practices which work effectively in long-term distributed teams, so here’s a quick reminder of the    Deliberate communication - passing on the right information

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help people work together wherever they are https://virtualnotdistant.com Today’s episode is dedicated to coworking spaces, because we’re all about choice and office-optionality - so we need to remember that remote work does not always mean working from home.  3.18 Asia Hundley and Bree Caggiati from Shield GEO discuss the role that coworkings played in their pre-pandemic lives. 8:21 Bernie Mitchell, coworking and future of work advocate; European Coworking Assembly,  and what if everyone could walk to work? Connect with Bernie at Berniejmitchell.com, and sign up for his newsletter there too. Meanwhile do check out our brand-new podcasting for connection service - and connect and share your feedback with us.

WLP278 What's Going On: Office Dilemmas and Virtual Watercoolers Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (http://virtualnotdistant.com) In today’s episode Pilar and Maya explore ‘what’s going on’ with an evergreen perspective, looking at issues about returning to the office, some new research, and more, including: Location-independent employment in Norway Regjeringen vil ha flere på hjemmekontor, som Guro Aanerød i Lofoten. Kan skape jobber i distriktet – NRK, Facebook are going to allow Irish staff work from other European countries, The 'Zoom towns' luring remote workers to rural enclaves.  ‘You shouldn’t feel pressured’: Many Americans dread returning to the office.   A Field Experiment on Virtual Synchronous Interactions and Performance of Organizational Newcomers - data-driven contemporary research, looking at how well interns integrate and find long-term success in virtual teams, according to different ‘virtual watercooler’ protocols. You can now schedule messages in Slack Our LinkedIn que

For this bonus episode, Nadia Vatalidis talks about the onboarding process at the distributed company Remote. This show is brought to you by Virtual not Distant. You can find the full show notes over at www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/onboarding-remote-teams  

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help teams work better together wherever they are: https://virtualnotdistant.com. In today’s episode Pilar Orti interviews Mark Kilby, Mark has a course in the Lucid Meetings platform, How to Discover, Interview, and Hire Amazing Remote People, The discussion includes points of difference between remote and face-to-face recruitment and hiring, and highlights lots of positive potential created by the remote environment. Learn more about Mark at MarkKilby.com, and check out his former appearances in this podcast, especially episode 219 for more on onboarding/integration.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, this month’s ‘what’s going on?’ remote news round-up was recorded by Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss on 1st June 2021. https://virtualnotdistant.com Under discussion: The evolution of hybrid work in context, and the impact on lockdown on things like creativity (because it's not just productivity that matters). Pilar’s twitter space, held at midday UK time every Wednesday - do come and share, or just listen if you want. The ‘Virtual First’ policy at Dropbox: Why Dropbox’s ‘Virtual First’ model could be the future of work; Featured Collection Virtual First Toolkit.  Global trends: Major New Zealand bank makes working from home model permanent and the Estonian e-residency scheme  expanding  e-Residency new locations | e-Residency. Google is exploring the future of video conferencing, with Project Starline: May 18 / Research Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together. And shout-outs to our listeners and LinkedIn community - we always love to hear from you.

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London: Https://virtualnotdistant.com Today’s episode we take a deep dive into the world of Online training, and how this has changed and continues to evolve. 3.03 Interview with Catherine Nicholson, Virtual Training Team Learn more about Catherine and the Virtual Training Team check out their YouTube channel (which includes loads of guides and support for your own online training), and do connect with her on LinkedIn. 35.50 Pilar’s thoughts on hybrid working We have always talked about ‘office-optional’ working at Virtual Not Distant, but this has never been such a complicated question! Keep an eye on Pilar’s Twitter at midday (UK time) on Wednesday, for ongoing discussions of this and similar themes. 

A bonus episode encouraging those who move events like All Hands / Town Hall meetings and conferences online, to approach the whole design process differently to how they would be run online. For the accompanying show notes, head over to https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/engaging-online-events

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com), Today's episode, recorded 04-05-21, brings you a discussion between Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss about  What people mean, when they talk about hybrid work? (Tl;dr - a lot of different things with no consensus on definitions); What the future might be for co-working spaces? What can we learn from the Basecamp story, about how asynchronous teams communicate and share? And our experimentations in Twitter Spaces - will we see (hear) you there?

Today’s episode features a conversation recorded back in February 2020 between Pilar and returning guest John O’Duinn about how he’s helping the government in California to show how remote work can benefit the environment, and how he’s seen people experience the sudden transition to remote work. Find out more over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-work-environment

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help leaders of remote teams thrive. http://virtualnotdistant.com In today's episode Pilar interviews Ann Collins from Bluebottle coaching, who has been conducting some fascinating in-depth research with leaders of remote teams and the impact of COVID on their work. You can read more about Ann’s work and this research on LinkedIn, and she’d be very glad to connect with listeners there and send further details of her findings. Her own podcast is Leaders who love what they do.

In today’s episode, Pilar talks to Anish Hindocha, who, after working as a change consultant for over 20 years, now helps organisations improve their culture. They talk about what organisational culture is, whether it has changed in organisations during the pandemic - and how - and the opportunities to make the world of work a better place.  You can connect with Anish here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anishhindocha/ And you can find more detailed show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/culture-conversation

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London (https://virtualnotdistant.com) Maya has recently published “Finding Your Edge: Establishing And Maintaining Boundaries When You Work From Home”, reflecting on issues on many minds right now as we all strive for balance between work and the rest of our lives. Pilar and Maya discuss integrators vs segmenters, using daylight and other sensory input as boundaries, and keeping tasks and roles in place when we work from home. 23.00 What’s Going On Interesting articles: I'm socially anxious, and working from home has been life-changing. Spain to launch trial of four-day working week. and 38:20 Tech updates: Being in a BBC virtual studio audience recording, How to use Slack emoji to simplify work (and cut out noise), Taming the hybrid work chimera: Tips from Slack, WordPress, & Salesforce chiefs; Why Microsoft wants Discord 59.45 Our community: Take a look at the conversations and our question of the month, over on our LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.co

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, today's episode explores mindset issues for new remote managers, and some changes which people new to this role may need to explore. (https://virtualnotdistant.com)  The episode is structured around Pilar’s article Key mindset changes for the new remote manager  and covers the need to: (4.09) 1. Adopt a coaching mindset (8.09) 2. Embrace delegation and avoid interference (10.04) 3. Make friends with your technology (Including an interview with agile coach Mark Kilby (at 18.24), about how data visualisation can help explore issues of disengagement in remote teams) (44.13) 4: Get Intentional (47.14) Finally, 5: Don't make yourself indispensable  

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant in London, where we help teams work together better online, https://virtualnotdistant.com In today’s episode Pilar and Maya take their regular look at what’s going on in the remote work and collaboration space (which goes beyond work to include education and other spheres now using the same technology), and then explore the theme of social connection in remote teams. 04.00 What’s Going On - a focus on education Pilar took part in a panel at PA2021 for Project Access International with Bernie Mitchell (Episode 158), and Niklas Huppmann from Human Aid and Covid Africa.  It’s so interesting how the tech is changing the way we learn, hopefully leading to greater opportunity for everyone.  Despite technical challenges ( likeSingle Sign-on for Programmable Video), the panel predicted that a hybrid approach blending online and face-to-face is what to expect in future, with interesting implications for building professional networks. Pilar has also been working with BeNext on vi

In this episode, Pilar talks to guest Francisco Corzo about the future of the workplace in Guatemala and the concept of Working Near Home. You can find the full show notes over at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/near-home-in-guatemala Links to articles we refer to:  Pilar and Francisco talk about the recent Forbes article: From Work from Home to Work Near Home, the beginning of a new office trend. Pilar’s article on LinkedIn from a few years ago called Sharing Office Spaces across Organisations