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

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, where we help managers and teams transition to an office-optional approach. For full show notes please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/learning-and-sharing   What’s Going On  This topical segment was recorded on April 6th 2020 Maya experienced a meeting that was ‘Zoom-bombed’ - one of those new words 2020 will add to the lexicon. This phenomenon has attracted a lot of media coverage, and Zoom has taken steps to secure their own networks - so make sure you’re running the most up to date version of the app. A good example of why transitioning shouldn’t, in normal circumstances, happen without learning and planning… And Zoom is not the only meeting app out there! Google has rolled out free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite customers globally, and we found this list of hundreds of other possibilities to choose from as well, with different properties and integrations for different industries. Among the plethora o

To counterpoint the wave of content to support people new to working from home, here at Virtual Not Distant we wanted to take time to reflect on the current state of knowledge work in the age of corona and the way things have changed already, and might continue to change in the future. (If you are new to this and looking for support in suddenly working from home, then we’d advise you to check out this short bonus episode in the first instance, as well as episode 60 of My Pocket Psych podcast. And contact us if we can help with anything specific to keep you going). While we’ll always advocate for working from home as an option in the mix, the world is short on options right now. Even for Pilar, doing voiceover work in studios is presently on complete hiatus, and work is changing at Virtual Not Distant with a surge in requests from work with Spanish companies - not traditionally keen to embrace ‘teletrabajo’ (see episode 214 for more on this) who are now looking towards long-term shifts in how they collaborat

Welcome back to our special series in association with ShieldGEO on connection and disconnection in remote teams, which is receiving fascinating feedback. Today we examine the critical question of whose responsibility is it, to maintain connection and ensure people don’t drift and become demotivated? Please see full shownotes at: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/connection-disconnection-responsibilities  

In today's episode, we cover the concepts of Visible Teamwork, essential to working as a remote team, after Maya and Pilar talk about what's going on; and feedback from listeners. For full show notes, visit https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/technostress-and-visible-teamwork 03.10 mins What’s going on… Coronavirus is going on 15.10mins In Non-Corona Related News… 35.10mins Listener feedback, and what’s coming up at Virtual Not Distant 43.26 mins Visible Teamwork  

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, helping businesses transition to successful remote working. Today we interview 6.07 Caitlin McDonald Dr Caitlin McDonald is a digital anthropologist at the Leading Edge Forum, an organisation which works with senior leaders to help them reconsider decisions and outcomes, through research, events, and advisory services.  Pilar participated in recent research for the Forum on Reconfiguring the collaborative workspace, which took a deep anthropological dive into workplace organisational structures and digital tools - in particular the ways we interact differently on and offline. Recent policy shifts in remote working and travel restrictions will affect many organisations for the first time, and Caitlin was keen to point out that ‘remote under duress’ is not a recipe for success, as we have discussed in this podcast previously. And in urban areas particularly, not everyone has a home environment suitable for work - it could be noisy, shared, unheated, etc. A

A short impromptu conversation between Pilar and guest Jacqui Walpole, on some of the issues knowledge workers might face from suddenly having to work from home. You can connect with today's guest over on https://twitter.com/JacquiWalpole  and https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquiwalpole/ For help to make your online collaboration work, and lead your team from a distance, visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

This is Virtual Not Distant's third podcast episode in our special series with ShieldGEO, and you can catch the first and second one if you missed them (and subscribe to them in our main feed wherever you get your podcast).   We’re thrilled with the feedback received on this series from our listeners, including from many of our previous guests (and Pilar’s mum :-) ). We love the way it’s helping us think about the way podcasts themselves build connection, so we’ll return to that theme very soon. But today, our guest host Bree Caggiati explores what happens when we find ourselves disconnected, from the people we work with and the work we’re doing? Dr Julianne Hold-Lunstad reminded us that humans have evolved to be social animals, and that kind of collectiveness has helped us survive - so loneliness is a similar biological drive to hunger or pain, we crave its resolution.  But we don’t always follow our best biological imperatives, and Brian Rhea talks about how easy it is as an introvert to avoid meetings a

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd.  For full shownotes, and details of Pilar Orti's new book Online Meetings That Matter, please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/online-meetings-connections. And here's What's Going On: Coronavirus Forces World’s Largest Work-From-Home Experiment - This article reflects a moving target in a fast-moving situation, as it was published 2nd February, but it indicates an ongoing phenomenon. Virtual Not Distant do not advise waiting for a global health crisis as a strategy for transformation, but it’s great if technology can rise to the occasion and encourage people to try new things - so long as they don’t judge the remote-first approach from the outcome of an ad-hoc reactive solution. Google's Plan to Reduce Its Carbon Footprint - For us, this piece triggered lots of reflection about the carbon footprint of digital ‘things’ in general. We think of remote as very ‘green’, but data, tech and storage does have a cost in terms of energy, when

Welcome to the second in our special series in association with ShieldGEO, with our guest host Bree Cagiatti, in discussion with an amazing panel of guests: In this episode we explore how disconnection presents itself, and we started by talking to Laurel Farrer, remote work advocate and founder of Distribute Consulting. Developer Brian Rhea has identified this too, and is building an app to help — in response to an enquiring tweet which blew up into a huge validation of the existence of a problem of loneliness for remote workers. Teresa Douglas, author of Working Remotely, is presently researching psychological safety in remote teams.  Tim Burgess, ShieldGEO co-founder, first experienced loneliness and disconnection in his first job, where he worked alone in an office in a new country — not remote then, but deeply isolated.  Asia Hundley (also from ShieldGEO) pointed out the way that excitement can mask such feelings at first in a new situation (in her case, a new country). Occupational Psychologist Richard

Hello and welcome to this multi-guest episode, where we delve into the world of online communities in the context of remote work.  This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd.  Please see full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/online-communities-remote-work. Guest interviews: 7.48 Lisette Sutherland - Collaboration Superpowers 28.58 Alex Hearst: Hoxby 48.13 Mark Kilby, Agile Florida 1.06.34 Martin Gilbraith Chair of IAF England Wales    

Welcome to our new series of 7 episodes on the theme of “connection and disconnection in remote teams”, in association with Virtual Not Distant partners Shield GEO. Shield GEO help businesses employ people globally by taking care of all the associated administration, legal and financial - supporting truly global remote work, in a way that’s a great alignment with everything we value at Virtual Not Distant. So we’re very excited to be expanding our podcasting repertoire with this new collaboration. Our host for this series is Bree Caggiati, and for this inaugural episode she is joined by Shield GEO Tim Burgess, as well as Pilar and Maya of course. The chosen theme began as a conversation initially about loneliness in remote teams - a natural part of the maturing of the remote work conversation, as more and more people open up to the possibilities it offers. But this evolved into an exploration of both sides of the coin: connection and disconnection.  Tim reflected on a research they had conducted with Sydney U

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant ltd - please see full shownotes and much more, at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/unexpected-risks. What’s going on? What are the trends for Human Resources in 2020? Here are 20 of them, covered in breadth rather than depth - we could group them under themes of transparency, collaboration (“Slack” is a trend now apparently!), and making work visible. Interestingly this is not a list aimed at remote teams, but that’s not immediately obvious. Good news for collaboration tool deployment:  How Zoom Better Enables Patient Care, Employee Development at Moffitt Cancer Center and London Ambulance trials phone video stream platform  It’s fantastic to see online meeting tools making a difference, even saving lives, in diverse settings which are so far removed from our knowledge-worker bubble, and here are two great examples from the world of medicine. Templates in MS Teams - now for medical and all sorts of other organisations and teams there are pre

Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2020!  This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd.  Please see full shownotes at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/onboarding-integration 02.40 Marcus Wermuth Engineering Manager for the Mobile Team at Buffer. You can with Marcus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and via his website.  7 Ways to Set Up a New Hire for Success,” by Michael D. Watkins. 27.43 Mandy Garner, managing editor of Working Mums and Working Wise 33.30 The Role of Bots in Onboarding How to Improve New Hire Engagement and Onboarding for Technical Employees Using AI and Chatbots. 38:05 Mark Kilby, Agile Coach You can hear more from Mark in Episodes 95, 175, 197, on twitter, and his website. We want to answer YOUR big questions about work/remote work in 2020, so please contact us. Or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas

Welcome to episode 218 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, which is actually a bonus episode, made up of my conversation with Laila von Alvensleben from Mural. mural.co https://twitter.com/lailavona LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lailavon/ https://lailavon.com/ If you're a regular listener, you will know that the last batch of guest episodes have focused on a topic, with contributions from different guests. And the way in which I have been working on this has been by recording full interviews with them, and then finding the bits that went together best. What this has meant is that I've got some longer pieces with some guests that I'd quite like to share with you. And what better way to do this than at the beginning of the year, while we wait for the first episode on our schedule to be released on 16th January 2020. So remember that this show is brought to you by Virtual not Distant, a London-based company helping managers and their teams transition to an office-optional approach, and my name is Pil

Welcome to episode 217 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, which is actually a bonus episode, made up of my conversation with Marcus Wermuth from Buffer. Find out more about him over at www.marcuswermuth.com and follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/mwermuth If you're a regular listener, you will know that the last batch of guest episodes have focused on a topic, with contributions from different guests. And the way in which I have been working on this has been by recording full interviews with them, and then finding the bits that went together best. What this has meant is that I've got some longer pieces with some guests that I'd quite like to share with you. And what better way to do this than at the beginning of the year, while we wait for the first episode on our schedule to be released on 16th January 2020. So remember that this show is brought to you by Virtual not Distant, a London-based company helping managers and their teams transition to an office-optional approach, and my name is Pilar Or

In the final episode of the year, Pilar shares a wide range of listener's thoughts, yet again widening the conversation around remote work. We announce our new podcast collaboration with ShieldGEO and talk a little bit about some new Virtual not Distant services. Find out more about us over at virtualnotdistant.com  

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Looking back at 2019, it’s been a busy year - we’ve a lot to look forward to in 2020, but first it’s time to reflect on a transformational time for remote working. We discuss research, infrastructure, technology and wellbeing issues and how they have shifted through the year - while we also look ahead at what's to come. For full shownotes please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/remote-now-what, where highlights include: 22.46 interview with Rowena Hennigan, remote work advocate. https://www.rowenahennigan.com/ 22.45 tech round-up - what a lot of changes we have seen, in the tools available for remote working and 59.15 loneliness and mental health in remote - an issue we'll surely hear more about in future. We have lots more to bring you in 2020, including a new podcast mini-series with a brand-new collaborator to share with you. We also want to answer YOUR big questions about work/remote work in 2020, so please contact us. Or you can tweet Virtual Not Distan

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd, and full shownotes can be found at https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/south-europe. We bring you 3 guests today, talking about remote work in Portugal, Italy and Spain, as well as further afield - for a different perspective on changing trends and attitudes, in this global societal shift.  Is there a North/South divide (or even an East/West one)?  07.57 Felippe Silveira Felippe the co-founder and Executive Creative Director at Mowe Studio. He is originally from Brazil, and travels regularly in Costa Rica and Italy, while presently living in Lisbon, Portugal.  You can keep up with Mowe Studio on Instagram here. 26.20 Giovanni Batista Pozza Giovanni has lived all over Europe and South/central Americas, and as well as running Be Happy Remotely, You can connect with Giovanni on Linkedin and follow Be Happy Remotely’s community on Facebook.   40.20 Eva Rimbau-Gilabert Spain remains a late adopter of remote, and the research Eva refers to looks at

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, where we help teams transition to office-optional work lifestyles - find us at https://virtualnotdistant.com For full shownotes to this episode please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/artificial-intelligence, For now here's our list of 'what's going on' (recorded 30/10/19) Zoom is incorporating chat - and reflecting the trend of platform convergence, whereby everything wants to do everything. Do we need this? Or is there room for more differentiation - which has to be good for consumer choice. You can now email from within Teams client and Teams mobile… Why..? Slack also tells admins they can welcome people by email - but surely the whole point of these platforms is to move us away from email? IT managers thoughts on workplace messaging - new research indicates Slack is still most preferred, and most workplaces use more than one. Different functionality, shadow IT, or an experimental mindset… what do you think? Banning ‘out of hours’ email

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd. There’s more to remote work than improving life and work for those exploring its potential. Remote work can be a tool for social change - and today’s episode explores different ways that remote work can have broader impact, with a diverse range of stories and approaches. One quick update before we meet our expert interviewees: Pilar has a new podcast with the International Association of Facilitators - so if you’re interested in stories from the frontline of facilitation and learning and meetings, then do check that out and enjoy. Now, onwards with the social impact of remote: 04.13 Chris Slemp Chris Slemp is a Customer Success Manager for Modern Workplace, at Microsoft UK, and long-term friend of this show (joining us in episodes 123, 144 and 202) I asked Chris how remote work can help us build and be part of our community (wherever we want to build that, rather than necessarily at work)? He reminded us that commuting culture put responsibility on the workplace t