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Photo: Bill Oxford

5 Ways To Foster Belonging At Work

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What’s the worst thing an employee can say on any given day? How about, “I don’t belong here?” The schism that takes place when an employee doesn’t feel connected with the work culture can have wide-ranging impacts across engagement, performance, team dynamics and the bottom line. Companies need to ensure they cultivate a workplace where employees feel a sense of belonging, whether that workplace is in-office or remote. As much as we talk about the power of employee experience and the dynamics of employee engagement, we first have to address the primary need to belong. That sense of true connection is the foundation for how we feel about work — and indeed, how we work.

I’ve been having some really insightful conversations with Iain Moffat, Chief Global Officer of MHR International, about belonging. It feels right for the times we’re in right now. Some employees have been rapidly sprung out of the tangible community of the workplace and are now working from home. And some workforces are still in the physical workplace, but under increasing pressure as we continue to endure the pandemic and its fallout. But building a sense of belonging isn’t just a fix for now. It’s a powerful talent strategy that has long-term outcomes.

Iain and I agreed that building a sense of belonging needs to be part of any serious endeavor to build an exceptional work culture. We also both noted that while some organizations are surprised by how comfortable employees are working from home, it may be, ironically, because they’re home. So how can businesses provide employees with that same sense of being in the right place?

First, five key points on belonging and businesses:

  • Given the push-pull of working from home or working through the turbulence and challenges of COVID-19, belonging bolsters our realization that we’re in it together, no matter where we are. It’s been linked to improved retention and a far more successful employer brand. Employees who feel like they belong tend to invite others to experience that as well. 
  • We all need to feel like we belong — and when we do, there’s a marked increase in our engagement, overall happiness and health. In that sense, belonging is a benefit that should be part of the employer’s offering to employees: working with us, you will feel like you belong, and we will be intentional about that. 
  • In our consumer-driven society, belonging is more than just a feel-good. It’s a strong driver of brand alignment. When we feel comfortable with a brand, we tend to stay with it. We feel like it speaks to our values, our sensibilities. That loyalty easily translates into the workplace context: employees want to stay with their employer because they believe in the brand and are comfortable with its values and purpose. 
  • Belonging isn’t just a social component. It should be seen as a business strategy that considers and addresses the real needs of your employees in terms of safety, career growth, feeling a part of a work community, and balancing work and life.
  • A culture of belonging doesn’t aim to homogenize everyone into a shared identity, but rather fosters diversity and inclusion as a way of improving and enhancing a shared culture. There’s a big difference. You don’t need to steamroll over differences to find the common ground, particularly in the workplace.

Marshmallows, Spaghetti, and Teamwork   

That said, what does a culture of belonging look like? Iain provided a telling example of the complex dynamics of belonging in action: the marshmallow challenge, originally created by Peter Skillman — and the subject of a great TED Talk by Tom Wujec. In this collaborative training exercise, teams of four have a fixed amount of time to build a tower out of spaghetti and tape that can support a marshmallow. The team with the highest tower wins.

“What’s interesting about the challenge is the pattern of consistently high-performing and low-performing teams,” when you compare kindergarteners and business school graduates, he said. What I found interesting as well is that in general, the five-year-olds outdid the business school grads. 

The children walked into the challenge with no training or preconceived notion of how to work together. So they just did — “in short bursts of collaborative effort, prototyping to find the best solution,” as Iain described. “They have no pre-fixed view of how they should act in the group and no hierarchy. Instead, they just focused on how to solve the problem.” They worked inclusively, unconcerned with status or protocols. 

 But the business school grads got hung up on who would be in charge, wasting valuable time jockeying for position. “They acted in a way they think they should behave given their lengthy investment in an advanced education,” Iain said. “They focused on trying to come up with a single solution rather than collaborating, prototyping, trying and doing. They were held back by a set of assumptions of how they should behave.” Often they ran out of time, or built a tower that collapsed.

We’re not building spaghetti towers, to be sure. But we do tend to walk into work with a sense of hierarchy and how we’re supposed to behave. If, instead, we’re free to abandon our certain assumptions on status and protocols and just work together, we forge a new kind of teamwork that’s far more productive. A team in a culture of belonging can simply focus on the task and the output, and is comfortable enough to be open to each others’ ideas and relish the collaborative process. The overarching attitude is: “Let’s try it, if it doesn’t work, let’s try something else.” Without anyone in charge, there’s no agenda besides tackling the problem. Instead of being driven by ego, the team is driven by the energy of working together. Instead of feeling pressure to arrive at a perfect solution, the team has the freedom and confidence to prototype until they get it. 

Two factors changed the outcome for the business school grads, Iain said: “First, when someone with facilitation skills joined the business school graduates, they often performed better, as the group was organized around the task.” Second, “If the group received feedback on their performance, and had the time to reflect and then perform the task again, they outperformed by several hundred percent.” 

We have a remarkable opportunity right now to foster a sense of belonging within our workplaces. So many of us have taken the veneer off: we’re meeting from kitchens, we’re video conferencing with children in the background; we’re seeing each others’ lives. We’re seeing how important it is to protect employees working on the front lines or out in public, and how to include their perspectives in how we better safeguard our workforce. 

The climate of working during a pandemic has removed so many of the assumptions we bring into the workplace, and replaced them with a basic understanding that on a fundamental level we are people, working together. When you can build on that understanding by meeting one of our most fundamental needs — to feel that sense of belonging – it drives peace of mind, focus, productivity, collaboration and performance. In so doing, it fosters everyone’s success — that of the business, and that of its workforce. If you want to see how cohesive and collaborative your work culture really is, break out the spaghetti and the marshmallows. Then build on that until those towers are as high as they can be.

This post is sponsored by MHR International.

Photo: Chris Montgomery

#WorkTrends: Navigating the Obstacles of Remote Work

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Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, so you don’t miss an episode.

Working from home has been a learning experience for many of us. Maria Orozova and Scott Thomas, co-founders of MODintelechy, joined me on #WorkTrends to share their perspective on how to navigate the many obstacles of WFH, from kids to focus to time management — and how to reap the benefits of remote work. 

Maria and Scott are veterans of working from home — their strategies have proven invaluable for their hectic days. And full disclosure: they not only work together, they share a family and a home as well. They’ve learned to stagger work hours so they can spell each other on the day-to-day. And instead of video calls all the time, they decided it depends on the client. What a relief to balance “strategic video versus no video time on Zoom calls,” said Maria. Scott swears by “simple stuff,” like taking a quick swim or walk to stay sane. I can relate.

Of course it’s not just about the leaders and managers. It’s about employees. One way this power couple keeps their employees engaged and balanced now is by “really being conscious” of how and when to show their human side. They know when to keep the camera off, and they stay present for people. Maria talked about the importance of giving people “some grace” for the mundane disruptions that can occur with WFH. After all, we agreed, this isn’t just bringing our whole selves to work. It’s bringing work to our whole lives.

Embrace it, they said. “Sharing your own vulnerability first kind of gives people the task or permission to share,” said Scott. When the Zoom fatigue is real, take the pressure off by just picking up the phone. Is there a bright side to all this? I asked them. Absolutely, they said: WFH enables us to gain new focus and clarity into how we work, and how we can work better together.

We covered so much ground in this discussion, and I encourage you to have a listen for yourself. And feel free to weigh in on Twitter or on LinkedIn with your feedback. (Just make sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag so others in the TalentCulture community can follow along.)

 Twitter Chat Questions
Q1: How can brands create and drive a positive remote work culture? #WorkTrends
Q2: How can brands help remote workers adjust and be productive? #WorkTrends
Q3: What tactics can remote workers use to maintain their mental well-being?#WorkTrends

Find Maria Orozova on Linkedin and Twitter

Find Scott Thomas on Linkedin and Twitter

(Editor’s note: In August we’ll be announcing upcoming changes to #WorkTrends podcasts and Twitter chats. To learn about these changes as they unfold, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.)

Photo: Jose Mizrahi

#WorkTrends: Building Trust In Uncertain Times

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Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, so you don’t miss an episode.

It’s safe to say uncertainty is universal these days. But how do we get past it and stay engaged in our work? Remember the T-word: trust. So I invited Iain Moffat, Chief Global Officer of MHR International, to #WorkTrends to share his best practices for building workplace trust during these uncertain times.

Iain said we need to be better listeners to be better communicators. And organizations really need to step up their game on this, and “address and communicate aspects around safety, the relationship, and the connected aspects of work,” he added. I wanted to know what else companies can do to enable their employees to trust them and feel trusted. 

Iain’s answer: make a conscious effort. Managers must regularly communicate, actively listen, and continue to work through the kinks of being remote and virtual. You only learn by doing, so start now. Treat trust as a collaboration. 

Here’s another straightforward way to build trust between managers and employees:  invest time in really checking in. Don’t just run a checkup. Regular check-ins can help employees stay motivated. Plus, it’s an opportunity to tackle deeper questions about where your organization is heading and how that employee fits into it all. Creating this sense of belonging can even lead to better employee performance. And besides, it makes everyone feel better.

We covered a lot of ground in this discussion, so I encourage you to have a listen for yourself. Got feedback? Feel free to weigh in on Twitter or on LinkedIn. (And make sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag so others in the TalentCulture community can follow along.)

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why do organizations struggle with building trust? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can boost trust and a sense of belonging remotely? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders overcome uncertainty and promote a sense of trust? #WorkTrends

Find Iain Moffat on Linkedin and Twitter

This podcast is sponsored by MHR International.

(Editor’s note: In August we’ll be announcing upcoming changes to #WorkTrends podcasts and Twitter chats. To learn about these changes as they unfold, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.)

Photo: Nick Fewings

How to Perfect the Skill of Listening

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Coronavirus has changed the way American businesses operate, to say the least. And from work-from-home mandates to reopening strategies to locking down again in the face of virus spikes, it’s taken a toll on effective communication in the workplace. 

Communication is a two-way street. But it’s not just about what we say. As the old saying goes, we have two ears and one mouth — so we ought to be able to listen twice as much as we speak. Or consider the inverse, as Ken Blanchard says: “I often like to joke that if God had wanted us to talk more than listen, he would have given us two mouths.” 

But in reality we aren’t listening very well, and it’s not new news. The Harvard Business Review published a famous article way, way back in 1957 about a study of manufacturing executives in Chicago: it found that listening is a much neglected skill. Benchmark research found that the average listener remembers only about 25% of what they heard, and that number has been repeated in many posts on why we can’t listen, time and time again. Flash forward more than half a century and for all the work on refining and clarifying our message, the weakest point of how we communicate is what we actually hear. Compound that by the fact that so much of our work is happening online and remotely, and it makes the listening part of communication even harder.

But we need to be better listeners, especially now. To be able to actually listen, take in someone else’s points and retain the information is not only better for whatever work process is going on at the moment. It also builds far more trust, promotes empathy, and forges a work culture of engagement and exchange. You can’t tout transparency if there’s no emphasis on listening, either. So here’s a refresher with eight ways to improve your skill at listening now, including some tips that will greatly boost the quality of remote communication:

1. Allow for Silence

Give the person speaking time to pause and collect their own thoughts as they’re talking. Everyone talks with a different style and pace. Some get nervous when they’re talking and tend to need to slow down and clarify for themselves before saying an idea out loud. Some may be broaching a difficult topic and try to circle around it. Listening requires patience and slowing down our own rapid-fire internal thought process: we think faster than we speak. Don’t try to fill in the silences with your own interjections. Let the speaker have the room and the time to say what they need to say.

2. Repeat Back in Your Own Words

Don’t respond to the speaker with your thoughts right away. That’s the default setting for listening, but it’s far more effective to restate their thoughts in your own words. It cements the fact that you understood it — and if you didn’t, they can clarify. For example, start with “I hear you saying that …” and reiterate carefully. Not only do you demonstrate that you are actually listening, but the speaker will, in turn, be more receptive to your point of view knowing you understand theirs.

3. Ask Useful (and Relevant) Questions

Asking useful questions can help you better understand what the other person is saying. To encourage further discussion, make them open-ended prompts that give them the opportunity to further elaborate. Try asking, “What do you think we should do about this?” Asking questions is not about controlling the conversation or pushing back on someone’s perspective. It’s about understanding.

4. Work toward Empathy

We all fear being judged as we talk. Make a concerted effort to truly understand and acknowledge how the other person feels; to put yourself in their shoes. By carefully reiterating their feelings as you understand them, you build empathy and set them at ease.

5. Do a Recap 

We may listen, we may hear, but do we remember? One highly effective way to recall a conversation is to recap what was said. Restate the point of the discussion, and list the action steps each party is going to do in response. This doesn’t need to be word for word, just an overview. And let the person who spoke weigh in, so they’re comfortable with your summary. 

Remote communication has its own set of issues and conditions, including how people behave, multitask, and receive information; and how technology can suddenly go haywire at the worst possible time. These three final tips will help: 

6. Have a Backup Plan for the Tech

Always have a Plan B when it comes to remote meetings and discussions. If the tech you’re depending on happens to fail for whatever reason, you can pick up the thread without a mad scramble. Many of us know the frustration of a 15 minute video call that turns into an ordeal of pixelated video or frozen presentations. Having a backup plan prevents the goal — communication — from being hijacked by tech problems. 

7. Use Names in Remote Meetings

During an in-person meeting, there’s no doubt as to who is speaking or whom they’re speaking to. Online meetings aren’t as clear. Use names when addressing people, and encourage everyone to refer to themselves by name as well. And when you are discussing the points someone made, reiterate who said them to keep everyone on track. 

8. Take Your Time  

Video meetings allow us to see each other but not always discern the nonverbal subtleties that are part of communication. Tiny delays are nevertheless long enough to prevent how we perceive each other’s expressions. Eye contact is altogether different: if we really want to look at someone’s face, we need to stare at the camera, not their face. But people don’t just speak with words. Take the time to consider what’s being said rather than jump in with a response. If you’re not sure of the intent, ask. Virtual is not the same as in the same room. 

Communication is a fundamental part of who we are. At the workplace, it’s critical to be able to listen well, whatever context we’re in. Blanchard encourages all professionals to master the art of listening, but I’d take it one step further: it should be considered a skill, like any other, and we should all endeavor to practice it, especially in these times. A little understanding can go a long way in terms of collaboration, trust, and productivity.

Photo: Ali Yahya

#WorkTrends: Going Gig: Freelancing in HR

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Meghan invited both Chris Russell, the founder of HR Lancers, and Jim Stroud, VP of Marketing at Proactive Talent, to talk about the new trend in HR: hiring freelancers and consultants to fill in the gaps. 

COVID-19’s uncertainties are leaving no field untouched, including HR. As Jim said, “if employees hear the whiff of a rumor, or a layoff or have any kind of indication that their job might be in jeopardy or a furlough,” they might venture to freelance as a quick way to gain income and stay afloat. Further, freelancing is on the rise among millennials who are leaving the city. They can make their living at home — now more than ever before, noted Meghan. 

But not everyone’s cut out for the gig, Jim said. It takes self-discipline and the ability to self-structure, particularly now. Schedules may be more flexible, but kids and mounting responsibilities can add up. But the demand is there: Companies are hiring experts to help bridge the gaps, and sourcing out project-based, niched assignments like crafting job descriptions or writing a handbook. For smaller companies, this may be an effective solution. 

And if we see universal healthcare, said Chris, we’ll also see an explosion in freelancers. Meghan concurred: If benefits weren’t tied to employment, a lot more people would go independent. And that’s something companies need to think about, Jim added. Companies could be much more competitive at attracting top freelancers if they offered to cover healthcare expenses for the duration of a gig. And Meghan predicts we’ll see HR shifting along with the rest of the gig economy‚ and it’s going to be interesting to see how that changes our practices. 

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode.

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why are more organizations hiring freelancers for HR? #WorkTrends
Q2: How is freelancing changing the nature of HR? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders better attract top HR freelancers? #WorkTrends

Find Chris Russell on Linkedin and Twitter

Find Jim Stroud on Linkedin and Twitter

Photo: Ben Stern

#WorkTrends: Incorporating New Hires into Work Cultures

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The big question: Can managers effectively integrate new hires into a company work culture when everyone is working from home? The answer is a resounding yes. But how?

To explore this question further, Meghan invited John Baldino to share strategies that can help businesses successfully hire and onboard top talent remotely. John is the president and founder of Humareso, an HR firm that’s helping organizations not only manage their talent, but better onboard new hires into the culture.

John stresses communication as a key component of any culture, but especially important for remote workplaces. Seasoned employees may have the advantage of familiarity, “but that’s not really fair to the new person coming in,” John said. Managers need to take an intentional approach to communication that isn’t just about the nuts and bolts of tasks at hand, as Meghan noted. It’s got to have plenty of room to be human and have real conversations. 

Where are the blind spots? Look at the camera, John said. Too many of us don’t know where to look, and that can make for very awkward meetings. And that’s as true for managers as for anyone. So we all have to make sure we’re comfortable with the tech. And don’t try to make eye contact, because it doesn’t translate on video. You’ll look like you’re not looking at the person you’re talking to. Just making sure the tech is up to date is important as well, and that’s every company’s responsibility. We all have to get more comfortable with the technology and being remote, Meghan said. It’s a steep learning curve, and we’re still on it. 

So much has changed in the process of hiring. Consider the old normal orientation schedules — which played an effective role in portraying a company’s culture. Now we need to deliver that via chat across managers and departments, said John. But you can’t glean the essence of a culture (let alone participate in it) in just a few days of Zoom calls, Meghan said. Build in the time to let it all sink in. And make sure your managers have the resources they need to support new hires, and can provide flexibility to accommodate the new work/life construct.  

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode.

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why do organizations struggle with onboarding? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies help bring new hires into the work culture? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders better shape an onboarding strategy? #WorkTrends

Find John Baldino on Linkedin and Twitter

Photo: Berkeley Communications

The Contact Center Evolution Will be Remote

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The pandemic has thrown nearly every industry into a state of rapid-fire transformation, and that includes contact centers. Chances are, nearly everyone reading this has reached a contact center and talked to an agent; during the pandemic, agents have become a direct and human — and welcome — point of contact. And if you’re an employee at a contact center, you’re likely experiencing a whole different way of working right now, on the virtual front lines, in some cases, and I have to say this directly: thank you for being there.  

Nearly overnight, as we launched into lockdown and work-from-home orders, the on-site call center had to be replaced by remote locations with agents and managers working from their homes. Given the high-touch, fast-moving, highly managed nature of call center work, would such a shift be successful? Given the traditional model of a call center workspace, would it work for agents to operate from home? 

According to a new report by Calabrio in collaboration with Ravel Research, the answer to both questions is yes. The just-released study surveyed contact center managers from a broad range of industries, in both the U.S and U.K., to find out what major changes the pandemic has caused for contact centers. Among the factors investigated: how the pandemic has created changing customer expectations, how it changes the dynamic of employee management, how viable remote working is for contact centers, and how business intelligence plays a role in customer-centricity, innovation and operations. 

Such are the issues we all need to focus on as we collectively make the leap from the way we used to work to the way we work now — and beyond. And the study found that overall, the shift to remote working has been good — it’s had a positive impact on engagement, performance and results among agents, as managers note. What’s so compelling to me is that this new, transformed landscape wasn’t hard to navigate at all. In fact, it’s made the job easier and the experience better for call center agents and managers in no less than five key areas:

 1. Remote Improves Performance and Satisfaction

It’s worth noting that pre-pandemic, some contact centers already had a remote component: 36% of contact centers had at least half of their employees working remotely. But with the onset of the pandemic, that number soared, with 89% of contact centers having at least 50% of their employees working remotely. While the shift was triggered by necessity, there has been a groundswell of approval on the part of agents. Necessity triggered the shift, but once agents settle into their remote roles, what’s clear is that many see it as an advantage. Call center managers believe 72% of agents are happy working remotely. 

As far as the positive impact on productivity, again, the numbers are in remote’s favor: 73% of managers surveyed express satisfaction with the productivity of employees now working remotely, and 85% are satisfied with employee productivity on account of flexible hours. Moreover, this is not just a passing fad: the adjustment is expected to stick. Citing remote’s benefits for employee satisfaction, service flexibility, and overall employee performance, 72% of managers say a remote environment is likely to continue in the long-term. It’s a clear sign that to many in this workforce, the changes were not only welcome, they may have been overdue. That’s a relief considering that across the country, reopening plans aren’t exactly going as, well, planned. We may have to shutter those back-to-the-workplace goals in favor of maintaining remote arrangements for everyone’s safety. The good news is that in terms of contact centers, that should not have a negative impact on how well agents are doing, or how they feel about their jobs.

2. An Emphasis on New Skills 

For countless employees, shifting to remote (as well as to flexible schedules) has also shifted the emphasis to new skills; the same is true for contact center agents. Managers in the study report that 49% of their employees are better at self-management, 42% have improved their problem-solving abilities, and 42% are better at both technology set-up and security awareness. 

Being a contact center agent has always required excellent soft skills — ask an agent what he or she thinks and I’d bet the answer is that these are hard-won, carefully developed, and endlessly practiced; they’re not really “soft” at all. But now add these three critical skills to the toolbox of abilities — soft or not — that call center agents need, such as clear communication, empathy, patience, attention to detail, and the ability to maintain a positive attitude, and you have the new paradigm for recruiting. It’s not just about being able to ‘give good phone,’ as they used to say, but now also about being able to stay on track no matter where an agent is working from. And again, this reflects the overall trend in remote working: we’re all learning how to balance, integrate, and think on our feet in a new context. The difference is that we don’t always have a customer on the other line, with urgency, possibly stress, and an increased need for our empathy, responsiveness and great service. 

 3. Evolved Training and Coaching

The Calabrio/Ravel survey also reveals that while training and coaching have been able to continue without too much interruption, there will be a greater need to develop new methods and leverage the shift to a virtual workspace. As their top three training resources, managers name video calls and web conferencing (53%); live online training classes (44%); and recorded online training classes (35%). More than half of managers anticipate that moving forward, they will inevitably be able to do less in-person, one-on-one training. 

From a talent development perspective, this is an immense possibility — to harness the remote environment to bring new modes of training and coaching to contact center hires. Virtual Reality could provide new hires with an experiential and impactful way to learn. Digital resources, such as mock scenarios that reflect larger social and behavioral changes, and other “walk in their shoes” approaches may help to mitigate concerns such as unconscious bias or help raise the threshold in terms of patience. By carefully crafting these to begin with, employees have a holistic but modern tool at their disposal. Another option: on-demand and self-service modules, speaking to people’s need for greater flexibility.  

4. Quality Evaluations and Predictive Analytics

Working in a vacuum is a common lament for remote employees. But there are certainly ways to counteract that sense of isolation — and an opportunity to increase feedback and coaching with digital tools. To improve brand impact and with a sense of increased customer urgency (a byproduct of life during a pandemic), managers have ramped up evaluations. According to the study: 1 in 3 contact centers have increased the number of quality evaluations of customer interactions. And while it’s true that evaluations can be a thorn in a manager’s side if done entirely manually, in this case managers are getting smart, leveraging digital tools to ease the heavier load. 44% of managers are using predictive analytics and/or automated quality monitoring. These tools are boosting their effectiveness when it comes to agent coaching, speeding up the process and promoting responsiveness in real time. Being able to spot key trends for the full 100% of interactions means that manual evaluations can be far more targeted. And managers are freed from the traditional reliance of “walking the floor” in favor of a smoother and more fluid agent development process.  

Is this the wave of the future? Managers’ responses on this may be an indication: only 30% think quality evaluations will be the same as they were before and 27% believe they will be doing more evaluations. Yet clearly, some are more forward-thinking than others: 20% believe they will be seeing more automated quality monitoring, and 19% say they will be using more analytics. What this speaks to, from my perspective, is that these tools are on the horizon for some, and already in use for others. And instead of seeing tools like automation or predictive analytics as a norm, managers may see it as a stopgap, envisioning a point when things get “back to normal,” and they can go back to how they conducted evaluations before. That may indicate a gap in perception: these are the same managers who believe remote contact centers will continue into the future; and sentiment around predictive analytics and automation will likely grow. We’ll see how this plays out.

5. New Technologies Offer New Opportunities

The new technologies coming to contact centers are having a profound impact on employee as well as manager experience, and offering new opportunities for support as well as growth. The old adage: If you build it, they will come, applies to a call center — and as we’ve seen as we pivot to remote, instead of agents and managers coming to a physical workspace, now remote innovations are coming to them. The survey asked its respondents: How have your contact center’s investments changed in the following areas, because of the pandemic? Not surprisingly, the biggest investments are in remote working solutions (65%); video conferencing tools (62%); and then, expanded channels for customer communication (52%). All are helping to modernize the manager and agent experience. And it may or may not be a kind of workplace irony to have a human call agent aided by a chatbot or virtual assistance, but these are not as high on the list. 

What is markedly on the rise is business intelligence (BI). A full 90% of respondents say they are maintaining or increasing their investment in BI solutions. And contact managers expect a higher demand for contact analytics to come from every department. We’re going to see call centers increasingly rely on data and more accurate reporting to better assess performance and set strategy — yet another sign that digital tools are leading the evolution. For a remote workforce, BI knits together people, interactions and operations in real time, allowing for a far greater sense of the big picture, elevated flexibility when it comes to key questions asked, and an increased sense of connection between individual effort and overall results.

None of these developments are going to take the place of human connection, however. The rationale behind grabbing the brass ring of better and better technologies is as a means to improve the interactions between agents and customers — by enabling agents to better do their job, from training to maintaining their performance. That includes the interactive dashboards being used by some call centers to provide agents with real-time data on how they’re doing. Designed to answer the questions an individual agent might ask, these provide a graphic as well as numeric scoreboard they can continue to monitor to track their own improvements. 

Self-accountability and a sense of personal stake in excellence may turn out to be our best asset of all. For agents and managers in call centers, these traits are clearly driving the evolution as much as any external forces — and pointing to an overall growth in workplace culture we may not have expected, but as the Calabrio/Ravel survey shows, it’s happening right now.

To find out more, download the study.

This post is sponsored by Calabrio.

Photo: Kevin Butz

Encouraging Civility Among Remote Employees: 7 Strategies

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These continue to be uncertain times, creating unfamiliar territory. In such conditions, it’s even more important for the company, leaders and managers, and individual employees, to focus on civility with each other and with customers. In essence, civility is being courteous, treating others with respect — being thoughtful of others, and being aware of how your actions (and those of other people) might affect someone. We are all fraying at the edges. Courtesy and respect go a long way. 

Fewer Social Cues

Working remotely, we have fewer social cues to provide feedback about whether we’re being respectful and courteous. It’s harder to determine if someone’s having a bad day, or bad hour, unless they tell us, but we can’t stop by their area to check in. Yet those multiple, tiny in-person interactions help us get a sense of people and their moods, and give us a way to maintain a sense of connection. 

Moreover, unless their homelife is onscreen, we can only know what’s going on for them — what their mental load is like — if they tell us. So leaders and managers need to encourage discussions about what civility means during this pandemic, and ask what’s going on in people’s lives. Make a point of not only asking, but also responding to what they say appropriately, saying something like, “I’m so sorry to hear about what’s happening. I appreciate your sharing that with me. What can I do to help?” 

7 Effective Strategies

It pays to take a few extra steps to make sure communications with colleagues and customers are respectful and civil, particularly in this environment. Healthy relationships are the gel that holds us together, instead of breaking us apart. It’s the stuff that makes the difference in our daily outlook and the level of motivation. These seven  strategies will help:

Small Talk is Big. Encourage employees, especially those running meetings, to make sure there are check-ins and some personal conversation prior to leaping right into talking/writing about work. Managers and leaders should ask about employees’ self-care and share about their own. Let employees recognize each other as people. It’s the same thing when talking to customers. That said, not everyone may want to partake, and individuals should respect that.

Take a Breath. Help employees develop greater tolerance and patience. For instance, if an employee bristles at something a coworker has said, done, or written, the employee can be encouraged to take a diaphragmatic breath — on an inhale, let their belly expand with air, hold briefly, and then slowly exhale. This is an easy skill for most employees to learn, and will actually will fake out the person’s brain to make him or her feel relaxed. 

Be as Clear as You Can. Keep in mind that during the pandemic, it’s harder for most people to maintain the same level of focus as they could before. Try to be as clear as you can be so there’s less opportunity for miscommunication and misunderstanding.

When in Doubt, Ask. It’s easy to assume we know what someone means, and when we’re multi-tasking or distracted, we may be more likely to infer incorrectly. Don’t make assumptions about what someone meant. Help promote a culture in which it’s appreciated when a colleague asks for clarification. Asking instead of assuming will save time, energy, and heartache.

When Using Video Communication. Those “leading” a meeting should use agendas, distributed in advance, to make sure what needs to get discussed is actually discussed. Take extra time to consider who and who doesn’t need to attend a given meeting. Maybe a meeting needs to be more inclusive? Maybe it needs a smaller working group? Given the isolation of working at home, the criteria for inclusion may need to change. Additionally, reconsider how meetings are structured and run: How much of the meeting should be simply to connect with each other? The person running the meeting should set expectations for participation at the beginning. Try to set up the meeting for full participation so each person knows why they’re there and how they can contribute. That said, decide how much time should be spent with small talk. There should be at least some, unless you are all in frequent contact with each other during the day. 

When Using Text-based Communication. People can make mistakes and read unintended emotions into words. At least with video calls, participants get non-verbal cues to help understand what other people’s words mean. Not so with text-based communication. Also, words can be vague. Even when a person thinks they are being clear with his or her writing, it may not necessarily be so.

Photo: insung yoon

#WorkTrends: Improving Work Culture with VR

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Newsflash: We may be unintentionally undermining our working relationships. Remote working has brought with it some vexing challenges, including distractions, Zoom fatigue, and even incivility. Taken out of physical context, we tend to misread and misinterpret each other. And that can have some troubling side effects.

How can we repair this? To find out, Meghan M. Biro invited Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist and the CEO / founder of Live in Their World (LITW) to #WorkTrends. Robin is using VR technology to improve and strengthen our work relationships, face-to-face or not.

Even on a good day, we may not be as clear as we mean to be on text and emails, according to Robin. And while on video, “bodily cues or facial cues can help you decode what’s going on,” information can still get lost. Even the size of the video screen can be a distraction, noted Meghan. And a tiny delay means we don’t really see people’s reactions as they happen. All can create tension — the opposite of what we need.

With VR, Robin and her team are teaching us how to read each other better and get along again. It’s a particularly valuable tool in improving empathy among workforces when it comes to diversity, as participants learn not only how to authentically walk in each other’s shoes, but “in their feet,” noted Robin.

VR doesn’t need to be expensive and can be remote (a Youtube 360-type experience). Given how effectively it expands our understanding of each other, it may come to be a standard operating procedure in terms of how we tend to our work cultures.

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode.

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why do some organizations struggle with incivility in their work cultures? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can organizations use to help improve remote working? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders use Virtual Reality to improve culture? #WorkTrends

Find Robin Rosenberg on Linkedin and Twitter

Photo: Patrick Schneider

Five Industries Poised to Thrive Post-Pandemic

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The spread of Coronavirus has sent shockwaves across the global economy. With such a devastating human cost to the pandemic, the imposition of lockdowns has successfully limited the spread of the virus, albeit at the cost of production.

In the coming weeks and months, the world will return to varying degrees of ‘normality.’ But is the same true for various industries? It’s certain that different sectors will recover at different rates. No doubt, some will need more time to regroup and return to normal operations.

For other industries, the opposite could be true. Certain technological fields have been experiencing unprecedented growth even in this time of isolation, and both history and current trends indicate that other industries may be set to boom in the months after COVID-19 as well.

While many of us will remember the crash of 2008, the circumstances behind the current market crash will be unprecedented for the vast majority. So let’s take a look at what industry recoveries may look like after the pandemic, and explore which sectors might thrive following the return to ‘normality’.

Collaboration Technology

Since the arrival of Coronavirus, shares in Zoom, a video conferencing app, have leaped over 120 percent. Elsewhere, Slack’s collaborative platform has experienced a seismic rise of 25 percent in share price.

As global lockdown measures have forced the world to work from home (WFH), remote collaboration tools have experienced a profound rise in popularity. Given the circumstances, some may assume that the collaborative technology industry is experiencing a bubble that will inevitably burst once governments allow workers to return to their offices. However, for many companies, the pandemic has acted as a large-scale road test for WFH readiness — which, for many decision-makers, will have proved that a transition towards more remote work is possible.

The benefits of WFH are far-reaching: companies can save money on in-house supplies, servers and utilities, while workers can eliminate their commute and work in a more comfortable environment.

With future developments in the fields of augmented reality and virtual reality promising to make remote collaboration even more immersive, it’s reasonable to expect more businesses to embrace technology to enable WFH initiatives after the virus. Collaboration technology is undoubtedly set to flourish over the coming years.

Healthcare

The pandemic has also prompted widespread investment in global healthcare. $120 billion pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly recently joined forces with a biotech startup in a bid to fight the threat of Coronavirus. “We’ve never moved at this pace before,” explained Eli Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dan Skrovonsky.

The COVID-19 outbreak has reaffirmed the need for investment in both healthcare equipment and pharmaceuticals. While the industry is understandably volatile as world health services struggle to keep up with demand, it’s a safe bet that many governments will look to secure their future against future pandemics faster.

Expect to see plenty of investment in life-saving protective equipment and vaccinations in the months and years following Coronavirus.

Online Gaming

With millions of people unable to work due to the outbreak, it’s not surprising to see that online gaming has surged in terms of usage. With very few alternative ways to kill time while in isolation, more money is being spent on buying and accessing video games.

In China, the first nation to experience widespread isolation measures, players spent over two billion yuan (around $280 million) on one of the nation’s leading mobile games, Glory of the King, in a single day, marking a 50 percent increase year over year.

Coronavirus has caused the world to slow down somewhat, allowing time for people across the world to discover, or recapture, an enthusiasm for online gaming. With reports of Nintendo Switch sales more than doubling in March compared to the same time last year, along with increases in Playstation and Xbox sales, it’s fair to expect the burgeoning user base to continue to find time for video gaming long after the end of international lockdowns.

Remote Learning

Online learning is another industry that’s flourishing during Coronavirus-enforced isolation. In March, over 27.5 million hours was spent on Cornerstone Learning  — indicating that users are choosing to invest their newfound free time wisely.

Thanks to a widespread transition among businesses offering more WFH options for employees, many of us will leverage online education platforms well after the Coronavirus pandemic. It’s also fair to expect more usage from employees who have found themselves between jobs due to the crisis, and are looking to pick up new skills as they re-enter the job market.

Automakers

Counterintuitively, car manufacturers could perform exceptionally well following coronavirus as well. It’s reasonable to expect sales to fall following such a disruptive event, but Seeking Alpha notes that following the 2002 SARS outbreak, it was actually the automotive industry that recovered fastest.

The logic behind the rise in car sales is relatively straightforward. When the public believes that commuting on public transport isn’t safe, the demand for automobiles will rise.

The months following Coronavirus could see a rise in road traffic as people return to work reluctant to put themselves at risk of infection. It may also be some time before people fully regain their comfort with taking public transportation — and sharing their space with other commuters — following a prolonged period of isolation.

Photo credit: @visuals

Make Remote Work Feel Human

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The shift to remote work has created a watershed moment, albeit under unprecedented circumstances. What passes for normal right now for many involves WFH — working from home, while juggling pets, kids, bandwidth, technology, worries, and a constant blur of work and home. This is not what we meant by improving work/life integration for the future. Yet here we are.

But I’m seeing leaders step up to the plate in amazing ways. I’ve talked to CMOs, CEOs and executives who are facing the responsibility of remote leadership with incredible grace, compassion and ambition — to ace this new reality and bring out the best in their people. They’re providing emotional, logistical, educational and technical support, and factoring in the importance of employee experience. And given that we’re experiencing work in a virtual space, that means finding ways to brighten up the workday.

So let’s get real and bring some fun into the virtual workplace. Try these approaches to lighten up your remote meetings:

Practice Intentional Interruptions

The imposed monotony of video conferencing is starting to be a thing: we’re seeing tutorials now on challenges unique to remote working, such as how to combat Zoom fatigue. Building interruptions into remote meetings on purpose can provide a welcome reprieve and work as an ice-breaker. If you’re on an hour meeting, schedule a five-minute break so people can get up and stretch, get a snack (working at home is big on snacks), take a bathroom break, or just switch gears for a moment. Make it clear: this is a break.

Create Virtual Water Cooler Sessions

Launching into long video meetings does little to reduce the sense of social isolation that can come with remote working. We are social beings — we get energized from interactions — but digital interactions deliver a lot less than face to face. So create a water cooler session and make the talk spontaneous (leave work off the table). Some ideas gaining traction in the remote workplace now: brown bag virtual lunch hour; half-hour highlights jams to share something that happened in the week (again, not work-related); online game sessions; book clubs; kitchen table hangout rooms. These should be by choice, not mandate, or it will just feel like more work. And one hint: don’t try to bring people together with a remote happy hour. According to the Wall Street Journal, as the novelty of remote work wears off, it’s going to take more than scheduled virtual cocktails to keep us engaged.

Let Kids Crash the Meeting                                                             

Why is it more comforting to not have to banish our kids from the room when we’re on a work call? There’s nowhere for them to go. We’re on lockdown, schools are closed. Some 98,000 public schools and at least 34,000 private schools in the U.S., have switched to remote learning. That accounts for nearly 50.8 million public school students and 5.8 million private school students.  Balancing work and parenting is never easy. Now? It’s a whole new ballgame. But we’re all working together in the same location — and instead of pretending they don’t exist, it’s far better to embrace these times. So let the kids crash the meeting to say hello. It’s great for them to see other kids and see a bit of what their parents do. Think of it as a very informal “take your kids to work” day. It’s also great for us to see we’re all in this together. Consider a round-robin to say hi to each others’ kids. Then get your team back to focus on the work at hand.

Bring Your Pets to Work 

Instead of hiding the pets, show them. Pets can reduce stress levels and provide tactile connection we’re not getting during social distancing. And they remind us to see the humor in all of this. Witness Illinois meteorologist Jeff Lyons, who decided to make his cat Betty part of his daily broadcast on Channel 14. A district sales manager has been declaring his dog employee of the month for years now, with endlessly popular posts. Create a social campaign to share your pets — and if possible, bring them to the conference. We may as well give into a little playful subversion here: who hasn’t wished they could bring their dog to the next team meeting?

Invite a Goat

Another way to break up the monotony of seeing the same faces in the video call: invite a special guest to the meeting — in this case, a farm animal. A California animal sanctuary, Sweet Farm, was looking for a new way to drive revenue and stay true to their mission. They came up with the idea of Goat 2 Meeting. (Yes, it’s a pun.) For a fee, you can invite a goat — or a llama, sheep, turkey or cow — to make a cameo on a live video call. It’s a great way to break up the same-old-same-old and get your team smiling. 

If we can give our employees a way to reduce their stress and anxiety for a moment, we’re helping. And this is the time to get creative and give your remote work culture a boost. Consider creating team Instagram pages with weekly challenges. Set up video conference yoga and exercise classes. One team I know swears by IG live dance classes with the irrepressible Ryan Heffington. Offer learning labs and plenty of opportunities for training: we’re hungry for knowledge now — as we see on our #Worktrends podcasts every week. Do quick check-ins via chat and text. Connect teams with volunteer opportunities. 

There are endless ways to bring some fun — and meaning — into the remote workplace experience. And whatever we can do to ease the burden and make work easier, we owe it to our employees. When we’re through this and we’ve returned to whatever the new normal we’ll have, we’ll all remember how we solved the problem of isolation as we worked remotely, whether it involved a llama, a toddler, a terrier, or a dance party.

The Results of a Remote Work Experiment

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Remote work has always been a heavily debated topic, especially among HR professionals, who frequently face challenges that relate to employee productivity and development. There’s pressure to figure out how employees can achieve peak performance, and how managers can enable productivity.

At Bynder, we’re always looking for ways to spark creativity and enhance productivity, and this past summer was no different. For the second year in a row we held a global Remote Week, where we closed all of our offices and encouraged employees to work from anywhere. Bynder launched its first Remote Week for two reasons:

  • To encourage employees to actually use their benefits, and not be afraid that management will look down on them for doing so. Benefits like unlimited vacation time and the ability to work from home look great on paper, but there’s a hesitancy (especially in the U.S.) around actually using them.
  • To test the power of our tech stack, and learn more about how collaboration within Bynder works and what we can do to make working remotely an even better experience.

Bynder is a global company, with more than 350 employees spread across seven global offices. From Amsterdam to Boston to San Mateo, our company is connected around the clock. Working remotely has always been a part of our culture, but for the most part, our employees tend to work out of our offices. Nearly 60 percent of our employees reported that working remotely was not a part of their regular schedule.

After a successful first edition of Remote Week, we knew it was something we should try again, while taking into consideration the lessons we learned. For example, our employees missed having spaces to meet, so this year we partnered with WeWork to offer a place they could go to meet with co-workers.

This year our employees worked from all over the place. One employee said Remote Week allowed him to rediscover Amsterdam, as he was always in search of new spots to work from. Another felt it was the perfect opportunity to schedule visits and meetings at clients’ offices.

After running a company-wide experiment and survey, a few key takeaways emerged. The reality is there’s never a great time to be out of the office, especially at a fast-growing company. But that doesn’t mean employees should feel chained to their desks. Some people work best when surrounded by lively co-workers, while others prefer a quieter space. Embracing remote work is more than just telling your employees to work from home. There needs to be a structure in place for them to do so, and employees should feel encouraged to utilize the benefits that are offered to them.

Employees Felt Happier and More Productive

Seventy percent of our employees said they felt happy and relaxed when working from home during Remote Week, and nearly 40 percent said they felt more productive and focused. Those who felt more productive cited the quiet of their home and the flexibility to get things done as major benefits. For some, the office is great for collaborative tasks but too noisy or distracting for work that requires more focus.

This is one reason why workplace flexibility is so important — it’s about acknowledging that not everyone works the same way, and about finding solutions to help maximize everyone’s productivity. Sometimes you need to take a walk to ignite that creative spark and get your best work done.

Commuting Causes Stress and Wasted Time

An overwhelming number of our employees felt one of the best benefits of working remotely was that they were able to save time and money by not commuting. To many, the daily commute is an anchor on their work day, causing stress that hinders productivity — when really it should be a time to mentally prepare or debrief from the day. Our employees felt that when they didn’t have to commute, they saved hours that could be spent catching up on work, enjoying a personal hobby or being with family and friends.

Communication Is Key

As one of our employees put it, “Communicate. Overcommunicate. People can choose what they take away, and it’s better they have too much information than not enough.”

A sizeable number of our employees felt the key to building trust with team members was to communicate and be readily available. This is where the tech tools we’ve implemented at Bynder come in handy. When we asked our employees what tools they found useful to communicate, 88.5 percent cited Zoom, Google Hangouts and Slack. These are all tools that Bynder provides employees for daily use, which demonstrates how important it is to invest in tools that enable effective communication. Our employees also felt daily virtual meetups and regular check-ins were essential, and served as an alternative for the invaluable face time that usually occurs in the office every day.

A Number of Employees Missed Their Co-Workers

A good number of employees stressed the value of face-to-face communication, and felt that no tools can fully replace actually being in a room with someone. A number of employees said they missed seeing their co-workers, and felt that it was useful to be in the same room as someone when working through technical issues or brainstorming ideas. In fact, during Remote Week, 54 percent of Bynder employees actually met with colleagues in person, and 11.5 percent met with clients.

Anticipating Employee Needs Is Important

A full week of working remotely isn’t for everyone. In fact, some of our employees didn’t like working remotely. But that’s the point of offering flexible benefits — it’s all about anticipating the needs of employees and recognizing that what works for one person won’t always work for another.

Our developers are an example: One of the things they missed the most was dual monitors that were available to them in the office, but not at home. On the other hand, our sales and marketing teams had a much easier time adapting to remote work.

Ultimately, some employees thrive in an office environment, while others prefer the peace and quiet of their home to get certain tasks done. With 53 percent of Bynder employees never working remotely on a regular schedule, Remote Week either upended their workflow and pushed them out of their comfort zone, or allowed them to evaluate the way they work.

The reason we asked our employees how they felt about Remote Week is to make sure that we always strive to be better. Implementing change starts from the top, so it’s important that our leadership is as prepared as possible. While we offer all of our employees the ability to work from home, we know there needs to be a structure in place, and that’s something we’re prioritizing here at Bynder.

As we build out our remote-work policies, we’re making sure that they go beyond every individual feeling prepared. We’re going to make sure that our teams, as a whole, have what they need at their disposal. From our developers to our marketing department to our sales team, we will take different needs into consideration as we work to build out a more robust remote-work policy.

Remote Work: A Necessity, Not a Perk

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Despite the advantages remote workers bring to an organization, several big-name organizations have been in the news for bringing employees back into the office. One of the most recent, IBM, told thousands of its workers last year that they had to come back from working at home — or leave the company.

This is a mistake, and not just because companies can lose out on productivity and engagement — they’ll miss out on the leaders of tomorrow as well, says Bryan Miles, CEO of Belay, a fully remote virtual staffing company. “There’s a deficit in 40-somethings that companies need to hire for the next wave of leadership, and they don’t want to be in the office 40 hours a week,” he says. “There are enough remote jobs at that tier that they will find them. If that’s a hard stop for your company, you’re going to have struggles.”

Here’s what your company needs to know about remote work.

Companies Are at a Crossroads

Miles says there’s a growing rift between what hiring managers hear from front-line employees and what high-level leaders want for their organizations. “Midlevel and executives and business owners will say ‘it’s my way or the highway,’ but if they take that approach to remote work they’ll find themselves without good workers,” he says. “That’s clearly being communicated to hiring managers, but I’m not sure the message is resonating with executives.”

In the past, if employees brought up remote work there was often pushback from employers that didn’t want to let go of control, Miles says. “Employers think they’re losing something when they can’t see employees,” he says. But with advances in web-based technology and high-speed internet access, employees are actually able to provide better work more efficiently.

Remote work is no longer a fad, Miles says. It’s what employees expect and managers have learned to provide. “There’s going to be a leadership deficit for organizations that fold their arms against workplace flexibility,” he says. “Hiring managers tell me they can’t attract certain levels of talent no matter how much money they offer them, because those workers are used to working off their back deck at home. There’s a tsunami coming, especially to larger employers, when it comes to remote work.”

Building Engagement Through Remote Work

The advantages of remote work are well known — higher productivity and better employee satisfaction. A report by TinyPulse says remote workers are happier, while Gallup finds that employees who spend 60 to 80 percent of their time working remotely report getting through more tasks in a workday. But there’s more to it than that, Miles says. Telling employees that they can work from home is telling them that you trust them. “When trust goes up in any relationship, including employee and employer, you generally have higher engagement,” he says. That means employees will be more connected to the mission of your organization and the work they do, and will have a stake in providing a better result.

In addition, remote employees tend to be loyal, Miles says. Trust builds loyalty, and that’s a powerful currency. By giving employees a chance to work remotely, you’re giving them the opportunity to balance their life in a way that works for them. They shed long commutes and travel costs. “Think of the freedom it gives back,” he says. “That all comes back to the organization.”

Making the Change

Offering remote options isn’t a switch you can flip on your business, Miles says. If you’re thinking of migrating some or all of your workforce to remote work, you need to prepare to get it right. Miles suggests starting with a survey to determine which employees would value a remote-work option, and why. Then identify the kinds of technology and resources everyone would need to be effective in working remotely. Miles even suggests establishing a remote-like environment for employees to practice in, such as a co-working location that sounds like a coffee shop.

Through it all, companies need to communicate with employees about the change: “ ‘This is the direction we’re headed, we trust you and want to give this to you because it’s a growing need as well as a powerful growth strategy for our business,’ ” Miles says. “It’s a great opportunity for employers and employees.”

How to Offer Truly Remote Work

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If it seems like more people are working from home these days, they are.

Every year the organization I work for, FlexJobs, researches the state of remote work. Our 2017 State of Telecommuting in the U.S. Employee Workforce report shows that remote work exceeds public transportation as the commute option of choice in more than half of the top U.S. metro areas. And remote work has grown far faster than any other commute mode.

As of 2017, 43 percent of U.S. workers work remotely at least occasionally, up from 9 percent of workers in 2007. And in a survey of over 5,000 professionals, 81 percent said remote work is their most-wanted type of work flexibility, ahead of flexible scheduling, part-time schedules, and freelancing.

If you’re interested in moving your organization toward more remote work, keep reading.

Taking Remote Work to the Next Level: Anywhere

Along with the rise in the remote workforce has come a rise in a small subset of remote work opportunities: work-from-anywhere jobs.

At FlexJobs, we review thousands of remote job listings each month. Only about five percent of remote jobs can truly be done from anywhere, provided the worker has a reliable Internet connection and the equipment they need to do the job. That means 95 percent of remote jobs have specific location requirements.

For a variety of reasons, many that you’re probably familiar with, companies often require remote workers to be in a specific location. Often, it has to do with collecting employment taxes, being available for in-person meetings, or being near clients or specific airports for work-related travel.

As more professionals show interest in remote work, and the benefits of hiring remote workers become more apparent, companies should also start thinking about which of their roles can be done not just remotely, but from anywhere.

Companies Offering Work-from-Anywhere Jobs

If you’re just starting this process, there’s good news: a new list of the top 25 companies with the most work-from-anywhere remote jobs gives insight into which companies are hiring this way and what types of work-from-anywhere jobs they’re offering.

“We place the emphasis on outcomes, not physical presence,” says Andrew Cullen, lead product designer with company number 19 on our list, InvisionApp, a workflow platform for design professionals. “Being remote also lets us tap into talent that isn’t limited by physical location. We’re able to bring on team members who are great at what they do regardless of where they’re located.”

Breanden Beneschott, co-founder and COO of the software solutions company Toptal, number 16 on the list, agrees. “Being a remote company means that I can open up LinkedIn or any platform and hire just about anybody there. If you’re limiting your hiring search by location, you almost certainly won’t be hiring the best people because you’ll only be considering a tiny subset of all potential candidates.”

How to Offer Truly Remote Work

If you’re interested in moving your organization toward true work-from-anywhere hiring practices, there are a few things you should know.

Define your “anywhere.” If you’re not quite ready to hire remote workers anywhere in the world, start with baby steps — the borders of your country. Many of the companies on our list hire for “U.S. National” jobs, which are jobs that can be done from anywhere within the United States.

Think about employees vs. freelancers. Just as with traditional jobs, remote jobs can be classified as employee or freelance roles. Use the same guidelines as traditional roles to determine which designation fits what job. If you’re open to hiring remote workers in another country, learn their rules surrounding employee and freelance designations, too.

Get specific. Job seekers want to know the “level” of remote work you’re offering. If you’ve listed a true work-from-anywhere job, make sure your job description states that. Otherwise, be specific about where applicants need to be based, or how often they’ll be able to work remotely.

Start with jobs that are a good fit for remote work. Some of the most common work-from-anywhere job titles include writer, translator, customer service professional, tutor, researcher and editor.

Don’t forget about your company culture. Remote workers should be included in the company culture. You’ll need to make a concerted effort to extend the company culture into your remote workforce.

Set expectations about communication. Communication is the critical factor in a successful remote workforce. Set up communication methods ahead of time and be clear during the onboarding process. Let remote workers know when, by what means, and how often they should be communicating with coworkers and managers.

Train managers. Equip managers with the training they need to successfully manage remote workers, especially if they’re new to managing a remote team.

Golden Rules to Manage and Keep Remote Teams Productive

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More and more employees are working remotely these days. In fact, experts are expecting more than half of all employees will be working from home on a regular basis by 2022. That will present a significant shift in how employers manage their teams and keep employees productive. Working from home can be full of distractions for some people, and even those who are able to stay on task for eight hours a day may find it hard to say no to turning on the TV or taking a two-hour lunch. Fortunately, there are a few different golden rules employers can make use of to keep their remote teams productive.

Change your Hiring Process

How many times have you seen the perfect resume come across your desk only to meet the candidate in person and see that they have blue hair, a nose ring, or a large tattoo on their arm? For some employers, this is an immediate turn-off. They don’t want someone working in their office who may not fit in with everyone else. While there’s definitely debate about what is and is not an appropriate look for the office, that debate can be set aside if you’re hiring someone who will be working from home. In fact, many employers who are doing remote hires do a phone or online interview and don’t know what the other person looks like. Some employers do want to have a face to face interview, of course, if the candidate lives close enough to do so.

While appearance may no longer play a part in your hiring process, there is one thing that needs more focus: motivation and focus. If you hire someone who simply isn’t that motivated to go to work or doesn’t have the focus to do their job without getting distracted, you’re going to have a problem. When interviewing, it’s important to ask questions that will lead potential candidates to talk about their motivation and to stress that they have to meet deadlines.

You can also expand your search parameters to include those in other cities, states, or even countries. When it comes to working remotely, there’s no difference between an employee who is several miles from you and an employee who is several hundred. Looking further for potential candidates can mean finding better-qualified employees.

Focus on Goals, Not Work Time

If you’re working in an office, you expect to see your employees at their desks for the full work day. When employees work from home, however, you don’t necessarily know when they’re working. Some may get up early and have put in a full work day by three in the afternoon, while others might not start their work until ten or eleven in the morning and work later. Having this freedom is one of the biggest advantages of working remotely, and it’s one that you shouldn’t try to control. Trying to force too much structure on your remote employees is only going to make them less efficient and feel like they’re being micro-managed.

Instead, focus on goals. If everyone is meeting their deadlines and turning in quality work, when they’re working doesn’t necessarily matter. However, you don’t want to learn someone is missing a deadline on the day the project is due. That’s why you need to make sure you keep up with your employees in a few different ways:

  • Have regular virtual meetings with the entire team to discuss the status of each project and get reports on where each person is.
  • Have quarterly team goals for each team member to meet to keep them motivated.
  • Provide team members with the tools needed for them to track their progress and time on tasks.
  • Offer encouragement and help those who are falling short of their goals, learn new time management skills.

Make use of the Cloud

The cloud can serve as your virtual office, allowing you and your remote employees to share files and other information no matter where you’re located. With secure logins and other protection, you don’t have to worry about losing anything, and you can give each employee their own access level so they can only retrieve files you’ve cleared them for.

But the cloud can do more than that. For instance, you can make use of a cloud-based business phone system that will give all of your employees their own business phone number so customers and clients can contact them. There are several benefits of this system:

  • There are no long distance charges.
  • Employees don’t have to give out their home phone numbers.
  • Employees can make use of their cloud-based number on a variety of different devices, so they can take calls no matter where they are.
  • Cloud-based phone systems have all the features of a traditional phone system, including voice mail, call forwarding and conference calling.
  • Many of these systems offer video conferencing, too, which is great for team meetings.

Have Meet Ups

Even if you didn’t have a face to face interview with some of your employees, try to have meet ups from time to time. If your team is local, you might want to do this monthly or quarterly. If you have employees who would have to travel, perhaps a yearly holiday party would be better. Either way, having face to face time can be vital in managing your employees and keeping them focused. It reminds everyone that they’re more than just an email address or face on a screen.

It’s also a time to bond as individuals. People who work together in an office celebrate birthdays, have casual Friday, and may get together outside of work from time to time. Doing something like that regularly with your remote employees will help foster that sense of being a team, and that will help motivate them.

These are just a few of the ways that you can manage your remote employees and help keep them focused on work. Do you have any additional tips, or have you found one of these tips to be particularly helpful? We’d love to hear from you.

Photo Credit: visitbasis via Compfight cc

How to Get The Most Out Of Your Remote Workers

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Remote working is on the rise. Virgin Media Business has predicted that 60% of employees will frequently work from home by 2022. Currently, 24% of employees in the US report working from home at least part of the time, while in the UK 13.9% of the workforce is made up of home workers. Businesses are recognising the importance of flexible work arrangements in helping employees achieve a better work-life balance, in potentially improving workplace productivity by 71%, as well as the ability to source staff from a wider talent pool and bring in the skills needed.

If your business has already caught on to the trend, or is at least thinking about getting some staff working from home, how can you make sure your remote workers are motivated and performing at their best?

Ditch Micromanaging

The number one mistake for managers is to try and watch what remote workers are doing all of the time. You should be able to trust your employees and they should respond to that trust. While it’s certainly important to continue face-to-face communication like you would in an office environment, you don’t need to be calling employees up every five minutes. Google Hangouts and Skype calls, or paid software such as Yammer, JoinMe and GoToMeeting, are great for calls when you do need them. Don’t be tempted to micromanage because it will most likely backfire.

Introduce Milestones

One of the biggest pitfalls is inviting employees to work remotely but not setting milestones for what work they should have achieved by a specific date in the future. Even the most productive employees who are getting on with their projects can stumble without set deadlines, and that could have a knock-on effect on other team members who have dependencies. You can simply create an online Google calendar with work milestones, colour coded by department or employee, or even make use of a project management software such as Teamwork or Pivotal Tracker to make this even clearer.

Don’t Skimp On Training

Just because employees aren’t location-based doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t get regular training. Keeping employees up to date and on the ball will make them feel valued and result in increased success for your business. There are plenty of opportunities for training online, from reading research papers, blog articles or watching tutorial videos like those available on Udemy. A good way to integrate this is to ask employees to regularly read a relevant blog during the last twenty minutes of their work day, or to send a video link to a new tutorial each week. Companies can also invest in grander online and even bespoke training courses for employees across the business.

Provide Remote Working Software

I’ve already mentioned providing software for the purposes of communication and project management, but to really get the most out of your remote workers it’s worth rolling out software for every aspect of the work day. Dropbox and Google Drive can be used to store and share work files, apps like Hubstaff can be used log work hours and take screenshots of work being done, and online software such as OneTouchTeam can keep track of staff absences and manage annual leave. Don’t be tempted to over complicate the software available to your remote workers but do make sure to have a well-organised system in place.

Getting the most out of your remote workers doesn’t need to be rocket science. Keep them in the loop, give them the tools they need to organise them and make sure they’re clear on what work needs to be achieved by when.

Photo Credit: Big Stock Images

Telecommuting? Danger, Will Robinson!

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Technology has rapidly developed In the last twenty years.In the early days of the computer, people spent their work days battling dinosaur hardware while bitterly wishing the technology would catch up with the scientific wonders seen in the 1965 television series, Lost in Space.

By the time I eagerly watched Friends star, Matt LeBlanc, star in the 1998 movie remake of Lost in Space, software developers like PlaceWare and Starlight Networks released software that allowed organizations to host online conferences with live chat. The digital age was in its infancy.

Years passed. Technology continued to develop. As the technology developed, companies incorporated the free email services, free and paid conferences software, and free chat software to streamline their communication channels.

As the communication software was incorporated, companies began to offer employees the ability to work from home (telecommuting) as an additional perk.

Today, according to USC’s infographic How the Digital Age Shaped Communication Management, about 24% of American workers have been given the luxury of working at least some of their hours from home every week.

The Perks of Telecommuting

The ability to telecommute has many perks. The biggest, as far as I see, is the ability to remove the daily commute from your life. 

According to Pepperdine University’s infographic The Daily Commute in Your Rearview Mirror, every year the average commuter spends $1,129 on gas. Do you know how many copies of Lost in Space I could buy for 1,129 dollars? 225. On Blu-Ray! In all seriousness, the ability to eliminate the daily commute would allow me to utilize those funds to repay my student loans or create a nest-egg for the future.

Telecommuting also saves a significant amount of time. The average commuter spends around 25 minutes each day traveling. My own commute is closer to an hour every day. That’s 4 hours a week, 16 hours a month, or 192 hours every year that I spend traveling to and from work.

The Dangers of Telecommuting

I spend what amounts to 8 days traveling to and from work. Despite that fact, every time I hypothetically consider telecommuting, I get an image of the robot from the television version of Lost In Space waving his arms around while saying, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger.”

Here’s some bad news. Telecommuting is not for everyone. Why? Not everyone has the personality or the work ethic to telecommute efficiently. Here are some types of people who should refrain from telecommuting:

Introverts who have limited out of work social interaction. In college, I could go days without speaking at all. These days I’m a tad more social, but I still spend large chunks of my three-day weekend not interacting with other people. Introverts may recharge during periods of silence, but they’re happiness is still dependent on social interaction. And employee productivity, according to Ohio University,  is closely linked to happiness. Introverts should either telecomute part-time, plan how they will receive their social interaction, or sign-up for a traditional on-site workday.

Individuals who have a hard time staying on task. Telecommuting requires a lot more self-control than the traditional 9-5. As a 9-5er, I experience one ten second to twenty minute urge to take the day off. Telecommuters, away from the watchful eyes of management, can experience the urge to flake on their work duties at every moment of the day to watch a rerun of Star Trek.

If you were one of those individuals who skipped class in school or decided not to do your homework, you might want to become a 9-5er. While at work, you can retain your job and work on developing good work habits. If you do decide to telecomute, it helps to establish a designated work area at home. While in that area, you work. While out of it, you play.

Technology has granted more individuals the luxury to telecommute. The ability to work from home, allows individuals to save money and time. Not have one has the habits and the personality to claim those perks. One day, we 9-5ers who can’t telecommute will have the skills, the self-control and the social life to incorporate telecommuting into our lives. Until then, we’ll just have to watch how other individuals telecommute. Like the technology explored in Lost in Space, one day we’ll catch up.

Image Credit: Pixabay.com 

Workshifting Will Get Better Working Together

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These days, I work from home. Mostly.

My “workspace” is upstairs in a special section of our master bedroom I call my corner office nook, complete with a window backyard and neighborhood view. My workspace is fluid as well, flowing into the living room, the backyard, even the bathroom sometimes.

What? You’ve never participated a conference call sitting on the toilet in the wee hours of the morning with your phone on mute? C’mon.

I used to have coworking space (leasing office space shared with other entrepreneurs, consultants, contractors, remote employees and startups). Plus, I did have my home office in the garage that doubled as a guest room, but then my mother-in-law moved in with us a few years ago. It’s okay, though. We’re close. Really. Really. Close.

Today if you ask my daughters where I go to work, they respond proudly:

“Daddy goes to work on an airplane!”

And this week, that would be true. I do, in fact, travel regularly. Not every week thankfully, but when I do, I use the same collaborative communication tools I use working from home for being a remote daddy and husband – the phone, FaceTime (video calls), texting and social media.

Yes, e-mail as well, that horribly inefficient communications tool; like playing air hockey blindfolded and you don’t even know when you’ve been scored on until the score is 100 unread messages to zero returns.

Screw the zero in-box. How about zero e-mail initiatives?

Sigh. Whatever. I know we’re still going to use e-mail for years to come, but my goodness, can’t we leave on the webcams and see the whites of each other’s eyes?

KWG UnicornAt least I have my magical unicorn on this trip, one of many delightful stuffed creatures my daughter’s have me take on my business trips. In fact, as soon as I get to my hotel and I fire up FaceTime, they cry out, “Show us [this trip’s creature]!”

And so it goes. I’ve worked in offices, commuted in arterial chokeholds, leased coworking space, worked from home in my pajamas, worked from parks (but not in pajamas), worked at the beach, practically anywhere (fully clothed, I promise), including Wi-Fi high in the sky at 36,000 feet. More of my peers, friends and colleagues – entrepreneurs, consultants, marketing and sales professionals, customer service professionals, programmers and engineers, artists and writers – are also working remotely these days.

Speaking of my peers, friends and colleagues, TalentCulture #TChat Show guest, Simon Salt, author of Out of Office, shared with me the following data points on what he calls “workshifting,” another term for virtual, remote or telecommuting work:

  • Self-employed workers were nearly three times more likely than wage and salary workers to have done some work at home on days worked—56 percent compared with 20 percent.
  • Self-employed workers also were more likely to work on weekend days than were wage and salary workers—43 percent compared with 31 percent.

Not a shocker for those of us who do it, I know. Plus, the Global Workplace Analytics and the Telework Research Network estimate that 20 to 30 million Americans work from home at least one day a week and 3.1 million people (about 2.5 percent of the employee workforce) consider their home their primary workplace. SHRM research shows that nearly half (46 percent) of all companies have at least some contractors, freelancers, or remote workers who rarely, if ever, come into the office.

According to an HBR article by Tammy Johns and Lynda Gratton, many experts have also projected that within a few years, more than 1.3 billion people will work virtually. They actually lay out the virtual workforce progression very neatly:

  • Wave 1: Virtual Freelancers: through home computers and e-mail
  • Wave 2: Virtual Employees: through mobile technology and global expansion
  • Wave 3: Virtual Colleagues: new ways of providing community, collaboration and shared space

The reality is that, if you are a remote employee, or manage remote teams, workshifting is messy, and I’d argue we’re somewhere in the riptide of Wave 2. Mostly.

Even when companies source for the right virtual fit – reliability, good communication skills, sound collaborative skills, emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity – expectations and priorities can be unclear and incomplete from the start on both sides of the employment aisle. This can lead to confusion, frustration, unhappy contractors, employees and managers alike.

And that leads to Nowheresville, Daddy-O.

Thankfully there are many great frameworks to consider when hiring and managing a virtual workforce, including Tuckman’s Team Development Stages, Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Belbin’s Nine Team Roles and others, but I’ll give you my simple two-step approach that I’ve learned working through all the combinations:

  1. Start With Face-Time Framing, Then Repeat Regularly. While it may not always be realistic or necessary when working with contractors (depending upon role and scope), companies should always try to onboard new remote part-time and full-time hires in person, even if it’s only for a few days. It’s invaluable to all parties to sit down together in the same rooms and set clear, actionable priorities; discuss how exactly everyone’s going to fulfill those priorities as well as how they’re going to report on them and review them; meet and mingle with their co-workers, managers and peers (if possible); and review all the equipment and systems at their disposal like WiFi hotspots and laptops and mobile devices (fluid virtual engagement), internal social networks (real-time virtual engagement), and collaborative talent management systems (continuous formal engagement) that will be used to enable work and connection. The face-time framing should also have some frequency throughout the year – monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or at a minimum annually (although since tenure is shorter these days, you should consider more than once per year).
  2. What Have You Done For Me Lately? Oooo, oooo, oooo, yeah. The push for continuous feedback must be redoubled for your virtual workforce and those managing them. Regular check-ins must be scheduled and adhered to – no constant cancelling because managers are just to “slammed.” Everybody’s friggin’ slammed and making the time to touch base, review projects and progress is critical to driving discretionary effort and business outcomes. And whatever you do, avoid defaulting all communication to e-mail; so much is lost in translation and cultural sensitivity is usually at an all-time low in electronic memos. Pick up the phone or jump on a videoconference, preferably the latter. In fact, I even recommend keeping the webcams on, at least during agreed upon times, so co-workers and managers can stop by and disrupt you collaborate with you on whatever.

Yes, I crossed out “disrupt you,” but remember, it is messy. There’s something to be said about the collaborative nature of working together in the same office, but the dark side of that can include more disruption than productivity (you know, the gotta-minute goblins – “Hey, gotta minute?”).

Pinch me – I didn’t really need to finish this, today, at my desk. Instead, I’ll just take it home because I don’t have a life. Many of you have probably experienced the fact that your most productive times are before work, after work, and on the weekend. Not really the way most of us want to hum the work-life mantra.

But those of us working from home feel a pain of another kind in the lopsided pinch, having lots of uninterrupted productivity while feeling an invisible expectation that we need to be available anytime since we have the distinct pleasure of conference calling in our pajamas. And yet, our employers are paranoid that we’re not actually doing anything.

Yes, messy mostly, but workshifting will get better working together because we’ll all figure it out, improving engagement and productivity while all parties reap the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards of the way we’ll work and the why of it all.

Daddy’s flying home from work now, girls. Keep the corner office nook warm for me.

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