Ep42: Pyjamas to Productivity: Will Remote Work Beat The Office?

Is remote work the future? Or is the office back?! We battle it out over the next two weeks to find the ultimate winner.

In the first of a 2-part series, we discuss remote work. Did the pandemic change work life for the better? Is WFT better for productivity? And what impact does working remotely really have on our mental health and well-being?

To answer these questions and more, we’re joined by two incredible guests. Let’s meet Team Remote!

Ross Simmonds

Ross is CEO at Foundation, a content marketing agency that combines data and creativity to develop and serve ambitious B2B brands. Foundation operates 100% remotely. He is also the host of ‘Create like the Greats’, our sibling show on the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Bethany Samson

Beth is People Director at Investors in People, a community interest company calling for organisational change that puts people first – for the benefit of every person. We had the pleasure of meeting Beth at the Watercooler conference where she was one of the speakers and panel facilitators. She has since been named a Finalist for People Leader of the Year.

Join the conversation as we discuss:

• How remote work is the preferred choice
• If remote-first makes companies more competitive
• Remote work and work-life balance
• Improved flexibility for parents and caregivers
• Impact of remote work on employee engagement and wellbeing
• The future of work

Remember this is part 1 of a 2-part series. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2!

Resources

All the links mentioned in the show.

Connect with Ross:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosssimmonds/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecoolestcool/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool
• Websites: https://foundationinc.co/ and https://thecoolestcool.com/
• Create Like the Greats Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/create-like-the-greats/id1653650073

Connect with Beth:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanysamsonhumanresources/
• Website: https://www.investorsinpeople.com/

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Ross Simmonds 0:00
But for me, even once in the office, I struggled with many elements of in person work that didn’t allow me to actually create my best work.

Leanne Elliott 0:14
Hello, and welcome to the truth lies and workplace culture podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, which is the audio destination for business professionals. This week, Jade My name is Leanne. I’m a Business psychologist.

Al Elliott 0:29
My name is Al and I’m a business owner. And we are here

Leanne Elliott 0:32
to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures

Al Elliott 0:36
talkie workplace cultures. I think one of the biggest, like argument that seems to be raging on at the moment in terms of workplace culture is do we want everyone to go back to the office? Does everyone want to work remotely?

Leanne Elliott 0:47
Yeah, it’s almost like wait a minute, guys, before we get onto the culture, where’s the workplace style?

Al Elliott 0:54
Trade is 50% of workplace culture, isn’t it the workplace? So that’s a really good point. So what we decided to do was, we’re going to have a two part miniseries that today. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking and fighting for the arguments for remote working, and which we are very bullish on because we’ve been remote working for a long time. We’ll talk about them second. And then next week, we’re going to be arguing from the opposite sense and an end of it and saying, is the office actually dead? Or should we all be going back to the office?

Leanne Elliott 1:21
Yeah. Is the office making a comeback? I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it was until went to clock Well, Design Week, last week, spirit, some really interesting experts, and even now mine. Maybe, but then maybe not. Because you know, remote work is just better, isn’t it?

Al Elliott 1:37
Well, we think it is. And the reason we think it is is because we’ve been doing remote work now for about 10 years. We started off we left the UK about 10 years ago. And so we’ve been literally working remotely, not from home, but working from anywhere from I don’t know, Thailand, me and MA.

Leanne Elliott 1:55
All over Europe, all over Europe, Lithuania and New Zealand.

Al Elliott 1:58
So we literally have been working remotely. So we obviously are used to it, we’re happy with it. It makes us happy. But there are people who’ve been only been doing it for two or three years. And as we’ll find out next week, we’ll find people who are vehemently against it, talking people being vehemently against it. Amazon, I think it was this week I saw the news that they have recalling mandatory recalling workers back to the office. And I think there was some kind of a riot or demonstration outside the headquarters, basically saying we don’t want to do it. So we can see that point.

Leanne Elliott 2:27
We can see that point we’ve been champing remote work as a lifestyle for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time. So I think the thing is one thing that I would say to frame this episode, if you are team office, and don’t worry, we will be representing Team office next week. But have you our team office, and really hate remote work during the pandemic, my only thing would be you weren’t really working remotely, you’re working remotely during global pandemic. You know, we found it really shit working remotely during during the pandemic and rubbish and we’d already been doing it for ages. So yeah, Open Minds please. But at the same time this episode is all about how remote working is the future is here to stay the winner of the competition

Al Elliott 3:09
and love it. So we’re fully and introduce the guests their second little word as they say in America, a word from our sponsors.

Leanne Elliott 3:17
Our first guest representing Team remote is Ross Simmons. Ross is CEO at Foundation, a content marketing agency that combines data and creativity to develop and serve ambitious b2b brands. He also operates 100% remotely. He’s also the host of create like the greats are sipping show on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Let’s meet Ross. Yeah, so

Ross Simmonds 3:41
my name is Ross Simmons. I’m the host of create like the greats, which is a podcast where we go into the inner workings of how some of the greatest creators of all time have done or do what they do. In addition to that on a regular basis. I’m the CEO and founder of foundation marketing, which is a content marketing firm that works with some of the biggest names in SAS. So we work with a wide range of different companies in the world of SAS on their content marketing strategies. I’m a father of three. I’m a big fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. I love a great coffee. And I’m super excited to be on truth lies and workplace culture. I’m so excited to be here. So thank you for having me on.

Al Elliott 4:16
Our second guest is Bethany Sampson. Beth is people, Director Investors in People. That’s a Community Interest Company, which is calling for organizational change to put people first Now, if you’re from the UK, there’s a very good chance you’ll have heard of p of Investors in People you’ll probably even know what the logo looks like. But for the benefit of the U S, this is a big company. It’s a big deal in the UK, all campaigning to put people first we had the pleasure of meeting back at the watercooler conference where she was one of the speakers and the panel facilitator facilitators easy for me just say, and also our last guest. If you’re listening back Do you remember that very strange conversation we had with a fella who just turned up and we won’t go into it, but it was all very odd. Betel? No Let’s go meet back and hear more about Investors in People

Beth Samson 5:02
investors in papers probably most recognized by our Laurel, you might have seen it on letters from DVLA from the bank. And what we do is we accredit businesses for their people and well being an apprentice practice, which means if they’re doing great work, we can recognize that for them with different levels up to platinum, but mainly what we’re focused on doing our our purpose and reason for existing is to make work better, to make work more enjoyable, better for wellbeing, and also to give better opportunities to young people entering the workplace.

Leanne Elliott 5:29
And by the way, invested in people is also fully remote.

Al Elliott 5:33
Interesting. So the pro remote team is strong. It’s about to go down as a cool kid. So yeah,

Leanne Elliott 5:40
do the little do the sound what sound but but but

Al Elliott 5:45
so if you’re listening last week, you will know that there wasn’t enough time to do the news roundup good news. Angle. Okay, Leah, what do you got?

Leanne Elliott 5:57
I’ve got a word of the week. greenwashing.

Al Elliott 6:03
I think I’ve heard this before. Oh, Tony. I think I heard it in the context when reclocking Well, I heard if people talk about it, and if I’ve got it right, something to do with you say that you’re eco friendly. But actually you’re just doing the bare minimum or something.

Leanne Elliott 6:19
Pretty much yeah, I too heard about it. Clark Mahi as a big topic of the of the Design Week all about environment sustainability. So greenwashing is when an organization spends more time and money on marketing itself as environmentally friendly, rather than actually on minimizing its environmental impact. This sits in the same family as wellness washing that we talked about few weeks ago. So yeah, organizations tend to make very broad sustainability claims without any evidence. They overstate their positive impacts on the environment. They advertise products eco friendly, but often the raw material source won’t be basically they’re making a big song and dance about how they’re saving the planet. And they probably don’t even recycle their water bottles, which they shouldn’t have anyway, because single use plastic is no good here.

Al Elliott 7:08
No, we won’t have that. So basically, fur coat, no knickers. What else you got?

Leanne Elliott 7:17
Well, when I started reading up on, what was it? What’s it called? greenwashing for wellness washing? green washing when I started reading up on that Nike, Nike, Nike Nikkei Okay, that’s the right way. Okay, the sports brands the men’s shoes, McKay came up very highly in my feed. So apparently earlier this month, I hadn’t heard about this until I started to dive into into greenwashing. But class action.org reported a proposed class action against Nike that alleges the products in the brand sustainable clothing collection are not as eco friendly as advertised. So yeah, apparently is a 47 page greenwashing lawsuit of charges being brought that Nike has allegedly attempted to capitalize on consumers preferences for green products and falsely claiming how they’re actually putting these these products together in the materials they’re using. Not cool Nike, not cool. So apparently, that lawsuit was filed on the 10th of May. And we’ll we’ll see how that that goes for them. Now the first sports brand to be poured into people and gorgeous scandal recently, and not the type of press you want. Because research is showing us as we’ve talked about before, 60% of Gen Zed would say they’d avoid applying for jobs with employers that have even a perceived negative impact on the environment. So not a great time. Not a green time for Nikes employer brand. Nice,

Al Elliott 8:44
nicely wrapped up. And what about the last piece there? You got Leann? By the way? Are you going to read the 47 page report on this podcast or we’re going to let people just go and find it.

Leanne Elliott 8:52
I’ll leave that link. The third bit of research that caught my eye this week was about asynchronous creativity. So I now it is widely thought that working synchronously so working together is better for creativity and ideation. And it’s one of the main reasons business leaders cite all the time when calling people back into the office we need it for our culture, for our creativity, for collaboration for ideation, etc, etc. But does working together actually make us more creative? Well, according to new research, it might not be true. So we’re running ragged Nathan and associates that is amazing. A Runa Ranganathan. Love it? Yeah, it’s

Al Elliott 9:38
a really good name writing that down.

Leanne Elliott 9:40
So a Runa Ranga. Nathan is Associate Professor of Management and organizations at the Haas Haas School of Business he WTF how do we pronounce at German halls Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and they found while there are benefits for ideation synchronous work is also seen stifling a lot of people’s creativity. So it studied men and women folk musicians. And it showed that recording musical parts asynchronously, so apart not together, led to greater creative freedom, and therefore greater creativity, particularly for women musicians, while there was no variance amongst amongst men, which, which is part of the point of the research, really. So the findings were consistent with the point that in safe communication climates, yes, working together can have a positive impact on creativity. But research has not taken into account the experience of lower status members of the group, including women, and marginalized people. So I think that the headline is if I want to be a skeptical click Beatty about it, I’d like you to be creativity works better in the office if you’re a straight middle class white male.

Al Elliott 10:55
Well, there you go. That’s the end of the news roundup, we are going to go into our 10 reasons why remote work is the future and everything else can get the Ben. Obviously, just remember that we’re arguing for remote work this week. And we’re arguing for office work next week. So we will be playing that part. So we’ve got 10 reasons why should we I say we, because Leanne’s written this, the 10 reasons down, but we’ve got 10 reasons here. We’ll go through a recap alternative at the end. But let’s start off with reasonable one remote work is preferred.

Leanne Elliott 11:26
Yes, so remote work has been around for some time since the 1980s. In fact, but of course, the pandemic completely accelerated that trend and reshaped our professional world. The data shows that we frickin love working remotely. So both these 2022 state of the remote work report revealed that 61% of people consider it a positive experience to work remotely. And it’s encouraging to know that no one said remote work was negative, or has been a negative experience for them. So it’s all good ol there is no bad. And on top of that 56% said their preference is to be fully remote. 30% said remote first and only 3% office based 1.2 remote work, please. Let’s hear from our guests Ross, um, his experience with people preferring remote work,

Ross Simmonds 12:18
I’ll take you back into time to my first experience with the Internet. And it would have been while I was in university, I kind of was walking through the library, I looked at everyone’s computers. And I saw that they were all on Facebook all at the same time. And I said, this makes no sense why in school and in class, I’m learning about billboards with all of the attention that people actually have is being distributed to social media. So at that time, I immediately went in aggressive at startups and technology and social media and content. And I started receiving his.com. And that was my first website that I ran and it created. But in parallel to this, after creating content after running my own, again, even at that time, a small little remote freelance company with myself and a partner, I got to a point where I realized that remote was, in my opinion, the key to actually having the ability to kind of maintain my own level of sanity, I got shortly after running my own company, brought it into a larger agency. And I worked in this agency in house and I actually had to show up every single day. And the commute was quite long for me, where I had to drive for about 60 minutes each day to get to this office. And for me, as somebody who cares deeply about their time, I did the math on how many hours I was spending every year to actually just commute my physical body from home to the office. And when I did that math, I started to realize this is a lot of wasted time. And I could have bought a place that was a little bit closer, I could have done those things. But for me, even once in the office, I struggled with many elements of in person work that didn’t allow me to actually create my best work to allow me to reach the pinnacle of excellence in my work. So shortly thereafter, I left that company and I started Foundation, which has been fully remote since 2014. And we have no intentions of ever changing that. We’ve been fully remote since day one. And the key to that is really just being intentional with recognizing that remote work is different. And with remote work, communication excellence is a necessity, rather than a nice to have. When you were in the office, it’s easy to go and have lunch with your colleagues and peers, or even just say something across the office that the entire company hears within a matter of seconds. But with a remote first company, you have to set a bar and a level of expectation around what great communication looks like. And then as the leader of the company, you need to match it and meet it every single day.

Leanne Elliott 14:47
Bass has also observed that remote work was a preferred option of teams invested in people and since the pandemic has continued with a fully remote model,

Beth Samson 14:56
yeah, so it’s it’s changed significantly for us as an organization, we did have a model where we had delivery partners across the UK, we’ve brought all of those in house. So for the first time, we are one entity across the UK for investors and people. We have also started working from home exclusively. And that was triggered by the pandemic, although we always had flexible working before. And we made a judgment that people were happier, more productive, and really loved having that flexibility of being at home. So that’s another change. And then for me personally, over the last couple of years, I’ve been promoted to people director, which has been fantastic to take more strategic role has the opportunity to speak on things like this, the remote work

Al Elliott 15:37
is preferred by employees. So number two, is remote work makes an employer attractive or unattractive. Now, we’ve talked about the fight for talent before we there’s we’ve done an entire podcast on a couple of podcasts around this. And if you speak to anyone who’s recruiting the moment, they will probably tell you that the fight for talent is definitely a problem right now. So one of the biggest things that helps with a fight fatalities employer brand now where you can where you can’t offer a whole lot more in terms of money, you can offer it in terms of other benefits. The state of remote work 2022, there’s by a company, I think it’s called our labs, not owl owl found that interest in in office work dropped by 24%. So despite returning to an office work sick, almost 60% respondents preferred working from home full time. Interestingly, if an employee is that you can no longer work remotely any more than about two thirds of respondents would begin looking for a job that better supports these priorities. And another 33% would just quit outright. So basically, we’re talking about 100% of people who wouldn’t be affected if you just withdrew any kind of work flexibility. So whilst we’ve seen the organizations like Amazon, Twitter, UK, civil service, Starbucks and all that kind of thing, they have been telling people they have to come back to the office, it’s no wonder that the employer brands have been damaged in those companies. Fair enough. Amazon didn’t have a brilliant employer brand start off with, but in some cases has led to litigation. So why are businesses doing this? Is it because they’re it’s kind of fear? Is it the loss of control? Is this the classic at shoulder pad, power move Gordon Gekko style, we asked Ross,

Ross Simmonds 17:19
I think the biggest challenge that a lot of these larger organizations face is that they have legacy cultural dynamics that are very difficult to let go. So for foundation, it’s easy for us to be pro remote work to preach about the benefits of remote work, because we have the infrastructure from day one that was intended to create a culture that was remote First, if you’re an organization that has been around for decades, and you have invested millions, sometimes even billions of dollars in infrastructure and buildings and spaces, you have catering teams, for your company, you have a yoga instructor on contract for your company. Sometimes these levels of complexity, force the hand of leadership to say, Yeah, we need people back in the office, we need to make a more hybrid environment, because we have sunk so much cost into our actual infrastructure, that it would be very difficult for us to move and shift. And sometimes it’s really a case of they don’t know what they don’t know. And I think in many cases, people resort to where their comfort is. And remote work is still relatively new. And it’s comfortable to say everyone must show up at the office, everyone must work in their cubicle. Because that’s the way that work has been done for decades. That’s the way that work has been done for many, many years. And it’s easier to navigate that type of environment. When you look at the current landscape from an economic standpoint, as well, there’s an additional level of pressure being applied to leaders and managers and directors who are forced to think critically around how can we maximize the ROI of the people that we have. And whether it’s right or not, a lot of people believe that they can’t get ROI out of their team unless they can see them. And if they can’t see them, if they can’t watch them. If they can’t have that one to one interaction, then they feel uncomfortable. They feel a little bit like they don’t have their cloak on and that people can see everything. Right. And that is again, a challenge a bias that is very difficult to shake and overcome. And I believe as much as I’m a fan of remote work that a lot of large organizations, large companies will be office first office centric, may be hybrid. Until I take my last breath on this planet. Like I think it’s going to be the norm still and continue to be the norm for a very long time.

Al Elliott 19:46
Now, Ross went on to explain that this provides this massive opportunity for small businesses who are pursuing talent because he imagined like huge companies, IBM the likes of Amazon. They’re like juggernauts are like big like huge bacon. traineeships, it takes a long time to turn things around to turn around. Whereas companies or 2550, or even 150, employees can just decide all right, as of Monday, we’re going to be trying working remotely. If you if you’re interested, like, for example, the four day workweek, then a lot of the people who did the four day workweek, which is an episode we did about four or five weeks ago, they were talking about, they trialed it. And they were perfectly happy to turn it around. And everyone else knew that they could cancel at any point in time if it didn’t work. So the point is that if you’re a small company, you can implement this pretty quickly. Now, the crux of finding and keeping great customers, we all know this cost business 101 is finding out what the customers want and giving it to them. So it stands to reason that the crux of getting great talent is finding what they want and giving them that and what they want, it seems to be the flexibility to work wherever and whenever they like,

Ross Simmonds 20:51
is a huge upside, there’s a huge upside. And the huge upside is like that model and the challenges and the legacy infrastructure is putting the organization’s wants and biases first, versus the employees wants and biases FERS employees, oftentimes, some that are high quality employees will want flexibility and autonomy. And if those individuals loved working through the pandemic, because they were able to perform at a high level, but they were also able to ensure that they attended every recital that their child had, those are people who those traditional legacy companies might not ever attract again, they might not be able to recruit them, no matter how many hundreds of 1000s, or even millions of dollars they offer. If these individuals value their time, and value, the ideas and the principles that come with remote work. That’s where the smaller companies actually have a chance to find some differentiation. At foundation, this has been a part of our strategy. When we came to the market, we weren’t working with the top SaaS companies in the world. But we knew we wanted to attract some bright months. So we offered fully remote autonomy, etc. And we’ve been able to attract some great talent because of that. And I think that is the upside, you increase your actual pool of talent to be exponentially better when you can offer an experience that is remote, versus one that is wholly closed door and only working in the office. It really

Leanne Elliott 22:16
is a huge opportunity. And I think what I’ve found somewhat surprising from some of the organizations that I’m looking at on LinkedIn, particularly within you know, like people are usually connected and they’ve got little their little, little business cliques going on. I’ve been really surprised that they’ve been like, oh, what you’re going back to the office three days? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna do that too. Yeah, yeah. Turkey, almost in like, oh, well, if they’re doing their multiple, just do that, because that’s solving the problem, right. Whereas usually small businesses are like The Hunger Games, survival of fittest like you’re doing that loser, oh, my God, this. So I find it surprising almost the the consensus, we’ve come to around, going back to the office around a set number of days, in the office mandated days. And I just I find it really surprising that small businesses aren’t being a little bit more forward thinking, especially those businesses who are who are crying themselves to sleep at night, because they’ve got so many roles, open their business, and they find it really hard to attract new talent, and they’re seeing talent shortage in the market. Well, not only is that going to attract make you more attractive in your local market. But if you’re a remote company, you can hire people from anywhere in the country, anywhere on the continent anywhere in the world. I don’t, I don’t get it.

Al Elliott 23:35
I can kind of see from a small business point of view. When I say small, I mean up to sort of 500 employees, we’re not talking about micro business, then there is a risk because we’ve had a tough run of it the last three or four years, almost any small business you talk to you they go, Yeah, we had two years off because of the magnetic, you know, things that shit went down. So I can see that they’re being a bit more conservative than they might have been five years ago. So I can see that. But the reasons to allow flexibility for work just seems to be so numerous. That I don’t know why someone saying no, we’re not going to do this. Talking of which, let’s just go on to number three, which is now this is a good one. remote work supports a healthy work life balance. It’s interesting. And I’m going to come back to a report in second that the AMS found what it’s interesting work life balance. I think we’re always going to have a load of a minority of people who go there is no work life balance. I just, I just work. That’s what makes me happy. And I know two people who are going to be are going to be like, Oh, no, no, I’d never want to work. I want to do two or three hours a day and if I don’t know much money’s money, then fair enough. Then we got the people in the middle and they’re gonna swing like in the elections, you’re gonna see this swing ometer they’re gonna swing and they’re gonna be like, Yeah, okay, I work life balance. I want to work more, I want to work less, et cetera, et cetera. But it boils down to the future of remote work report, which is in 2022, which is published by Zapier. Interesting I found out recently Zapier rhymes with happier. So it’s not Zapier like I was calling him. So interesting. I say that happier because people chose to work remotely because it makes them happy. So they believe that remote work allows them to achieve a work life balance, which is crucial to their overall well being. Now, that means that sort of almost nine out of 10 employees believe the ability to work remotely, would contribute to the happiness and a better work life balance, respectively. And 85% of employees feel a remote or hybrid job makes them happier. But does it? Lea, I want to do this work does working remotely make you happy?

Leanne Elliott 25:40
Yes. Right. Yeah, it does. It does. But then, like we said, we’re all hands at this. We’ve been doing it for a long time. But working on mine has definitely given us more flexibility, more experiences that that we are, I guess more experienced had within a shorter period of time. It some works really well. I like it, I like it.

Al Elliott 26:04
I do. I think a lot of the stuff that we do tend to be sort of more creative than just sort of, you know, administrative. And I find that if I’m if I’m being beefing, if you wake up and you’re a bit of a bad mood, then you might go and reconcile your accounts or like you did this morning and went and changed our thumbnail on on our logo, by the way, what you think of our new thumbnail listener. But there are other days where I wake up and I’m like seven o’clock in the morning thing. And I’m like, I want to go and create something today. Now if every day we had to go to the office, and every day then we that commute. I feel for me that commute kind of like slightly mutes my, my excitedness for the day.

Leanne Elliott 26:47
Yes, there is something really indulgent about working remotely, particularly if you’re working somewhere abroad. Like I said, we’ve worked in Thailand, we’ve worked in Cambodia, I’ve worked with many, many places. There is something that is so wonderful about even if you and I worked really quite high stressful jobs during the majority of those years where we were really nomadic and the joy of them to close your laptop, step outside onto a beach and have some more hand your pina colada. That’s an extreme example. But even then, just knowing you know, okay, well, I’ve closed my laptop I’m in, in Venice for the next two weeks. So cool. Once I finish work, and I’m on holiday, they really just provide you that that, I guess that ability to switch off. But yeah, I guess the tricky thing is, is that working on what it does blur the lines, it does blur the lines between work and home. And one of the downsides of remote work can be that ability to disconnect. So if you’re not working remotely from Venice, or Koh Samui, then it can be a bit more tricky. But we have seen this as an issue reported issue by employees decrease over the last two years, so we’re getting better at it. As we’ve said, we’ve done this for over 10 years. And it does take some practice. And I think it seemed to fit together for us when we came to the conclusion that remote work is less about work life balance, and perhaps a little bit more about work life integration. Nice. But of course, we are speaking from a huge place of privilege being self employed, and having very progressive employees before this, we were able to work remotely from anywhere. And while there are many organizations that are embracing remote work, much fewer are embracing work from anywhere, except for Ross Ross does. And while he admits it’s a challenge. He also believes that work life integration is a useful perspective to take.

Ross Simmonds 28:44
It’s difficult. But just because something is difficult, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. And I think for us, we believe that this whole concept of work life balance is a bit of a myth, and that what we should actually strive for is work life integration, where your work and your life can be integrated in a way that gives you optimal happiness and joy and fulfillment every single day. So when we think about that, and we believe that that’s the way that things should be, we encourage our teammates and our colleagues to work wherever as mentioned on the site, they want to lay their map down, that could be in Cambodia, that could be in Argentina, that could be in Mexico that could be in Bali, it could be anywhere in the world. The only thing that we as an organization need to do to ensure that that is possible is one in ensure and create an environment where asynchronous communication is key, where transparent communication happens, and where we have the security procedures and policies in place to ensure that our team is always operating in a way that doesn’t give any potential risk to our partners in our clients. So we have policies and procedures around how to manage a remote working environment and experience. We use solutions and tools to ensure that we’re able to manage the data into constant really be reviewing the devices that our team has to ensure that they don’t have viruses and things of that nature as well, that no harm can be done. So these are the types of things that you have to think about. And yes, it is hard, but in our perspective, and our belief is that if you can create an environment where people can thrive no matter where they are, then you can attract some of the best talent in the world.

Al Elliott 30:20
I like the way he thinks. I do. I didn’t interview Ross, I kind of wish I had, he seems pretty cool. Yes, ace. Yeah, that’s like one of those guys is just like effortlessly. Cool.

Leanne Elliott 30:30
Oh, without a doubt, yeah. Yay.

Al Elliott 30:33
So reason number four, why remote work is amazing, is it allows work to work for the individual. Like Ross just said, if you create an environment where people can thrive no matter where they are, then you can attract some of the best talent in the world. The fact is that, as we seem to most of us, who made by mainly those people who answer surveys seem to say that we like the flexibility of where we work, we like choice. So when we’re working from home, for example, but 75% of us will work from a home office about 40% from the bedroom 24%. From outdoors 21% in the wardrobe. Yeah,

Leanne Elliott 31:13
I didn’t understand that either. I

Al Elliott 31:15
now, if you record, if you do a zoom call or something in the wardrobe, dumping your stamp and your sound, and you sound amazing. I think that was

Leanne Elliott 31:24
a problem offices aren’t typically built now or set up for how people want to work in their own individual ways. And it just seemed that this individual preference is really a big thing. So again, if you look at the statistics, or kind of look in that sound dissent, 5% of people want to work remote first, or a maybe in the office some of the time, then we’ve got 20% of people who want to work remotely all the time. And the remaining, which is only about 10 15% Max want to work from the office. So even within an organization, we’re going to likely have people very different preferences that we need to think about in terms of individuals, I wonder if that’s why the three days out of five seems to be the magic number when it comes to candy office remote split, because they look at this and go, Oh, that will keep everyone happy. But reflecting those statistics, it might be a fair compromise. Or it could actually just be the worst of both worlds. I asked Ross about

Ross Simmonds 32:20
I’m a big believer in that there’s like, there’s a lot of shades of grey. And every human is kind of like an onion. And this is a Shrek reference. But every onion, every human has different layers, and every layer is going to be different from one person to the next. And that reality will result in fully in office culture works extremely well, for certain type of person. Fully remote culture works extremely well for certain type of person. And hybrid also works extremely well, for a certain type of person. I think there is a environment and a case to be made for all of the different types of work environments. But I think you have to understand first and foremost, yourself. And you have to understand what you want in life. When it comes to a hybrid environment. Some people don’t like the fact that an organization will say you have to come in, and they say have to come in two days a week, that alone, that requirement is giving them a limited amount of autonomy for two days a week. And that is enough for them to say this isn’t for me. On the flip side, some people would say, Yeah, I do need that break at least two days a week where I can connect with my, my peers, my colleagues in person, we can grab pizza at lunch, we can do all of those in person, things have cupcakes afterwards, bah, bah, bah, like, those are things that some people really do want in their life. And I think the moment that a leader who runs a remote company, even like myself, has a blanket statement, that remote is the only way to go is when you are taking away from your own credibility to recognize that every one is different in everybody’s life, everybody’s lived experiences are going to be different. Some people don’t live in a home that is set up to work remotely. And that means those people would love to work in an office or would love to work in a hybrid environment. That’s okay. It’s okay for everyone to be different. So I would never say that hybrid doesn’t work for anyone. It does. But it all starts with understanding the individual their circumstances, their preferences, their ambitions, their own perspective on work and what they want in their life and in their career.

Leanne Elliott 34:31
So yeah, maybe is the worst of all worlds actually. So rather than focusing on the whole remote work first requires focusing on the individual. It is not rocket science. You ask people what they want, and you try to give it to them. Right?

Beth Samson 34:48
Yeah. So I will let you in on a secret. If you do what people want, they will be happier. So people wanted to stay working from home. We got feedback on that we collected data on it. And we’ve delivered what they wanted. And that’s had massive results for us in terms of engagement and motivation. But it’s really important for me as well to be pragmatic and be commercial. So I looked at metrics like productivity, and we’re better than we were. I looked at metrics from an HR perspective, in terms of absence, we’ve got much lower absence, even metrics, like any kind of formal HR processes dramatically reduced. And it’s not that we’ve all been working from home and we don’t see each other, we have quarterly team days where we will get together and the main focus is learning and connecting. And that’s been fantastic for building the culture, helping people feel connected back to the purpose and to each other. And the glow from that lasts pretty much for the whole quarter until we get together again,

Al Elliott 35:43
that lady talks some sense,

Speaker 2 35:45
you know, and then comes down to, if you’re in working in line with our own individual preferences is something we’ve been able to indulge in during the pandemic. So working remotely allows us to continue work in a way that suits individuals, going back to the office then puts us in this environment where we have to operate and work as a group in ways that aren’t at my preference. It’s where you think it’s it’s not I don’t say this because it might give a point to the office. But if the office start to actually think about how do we facilitate individuals in the way that they want to work, that maybe people wouldn’t be losing their shit about being asked to go back to the office,

Al Elliott 36:21
this, there’s a big difference between mandating someone to go back to the office and encourage them to go back to the office. And if you can make the office cooler than your than what, then home? Well, people are going to flock there. That’s why the cool bars always do well. And then they go out of fashion because another cool bar comes along. So lower absence, higher engagement, the point seems to be the sentiment is fairly universal. Number five, remote work provides flexibility. Now we that’s an obvious one. But this is specifically for parents, for caregivers, people with disabilities, it just gives flexibility to those people who really, really need it. But the first area of flexibility the remote work provides is money. And that’s because if you stay at home, rather than going to work, then you can potentially save up to $6,000 if you do at a hybrid role, and $12,000 is $1,000 a year, but working remotely full time. Now savings can be made on like commuting costs and clothes on eating, you don’t tend to go you don’t you’re not likely to go out to Starbucks and buy a coffee if you have to get the boss to go there and come back. So the recent cost of living crisis brought these financial well beings into financial wellbeing into the spotlight. Now, especially for those companies asking people to come back in the office, the financial impact is a hot topic.

Beth Samson 37:38
So making sure from a cost of living perspective that you have good salaries, fair pay, and the foundations in place in terms of pay pensions, any other benefits that you can offer. That’s the place to start rather than maybe apps or other benefits that potentially will scratch around the edges but not fix the core problem. We also talked about as we’ve spoken about the kind of manager aspect as well. So making sure that wherever people go for support or advice that those people they talk to are equipped with the right information to signpost appropriately.

Al Elliott 38:10
Now, the other part of this is that if you can work anywhere, then you can work anywhere. So a lot of people talk about moving out of London out of Manchester city centre into more rural places that are cheaper, that are nicer, that you can go and walk your dog in the evening that are potentially safer. I know San Francisco’s not got a great reputation at the moment, it seems that a lot of people are moving out of the city, again, only from like stuff I see on the news and stuff. It’s not like I’ve not been there. But the whole point I think is that 2.4% of all people around 5 million of also Americans, around 5 million people have said they’ve already moved due to remote working opportunities and another like quarter percent of people. It’s not quarter percent, that’s not quarter percent of a person another 25% of the people said they were moving four hours from their employer location with commutable distance is no longer a concern. And I think this makes sense because why would you sit in a great damp building with a rain hitting the windows, if what you really dream of is sitting on a beach somewhere. Now of course sitting on a beach, you can’t really work on a beach because you get some you know in your laptop. And if something remote work is also really good for people who find it difficult to get into work perhaps they’re disabled reps mobility is a bit more reduced, or a chronic illness or something. 44% of the respondents to the survey he identified as having a chronic disability or an illness. Totally agree. And as we know from last week’s episode, remote and flexible work, work options are also really effective for the neurodiverse. Now it’s not just disabled, it’s not just neurodiverse parents and caregivers. Now the owl lab from 2021 Remember owl o WL na al 63% of those people who worked from home during the pandemic had to take care of children or a dependent now, the majority of caregivers are women. And while worldwide women only make up 38% of the workforce. They they are the majority with 60% of them in remote work. According to the get labs remote work report, women also expressed that it’s easier to progress careers and meet deadlines when working remotely. Which think of that Lea,

Leanne Elliott 40:10
it will make sense to me. And again, I think, you know, it’s gonna be different for individuals when it came to women. I think when we were talking to Dr. Claire on our women’s health episode to the pandemic was either brilliant for women, or it was awful for him that there’s no real in between. But again, it gives you flexibility, it gives you options. It’s like Dr. Nancy was explaining last week about how, you know, if you’re artistic having those flexible working hours to either walk, you total flexibility to work from home, or flexible working hours is to when you go into the office, what time of day, what days, makes all the difference. So I think, again, you just giving people with disabilities, with different constraints with different priorities with different things to manage in their life, the flexibility and control that they need to be able to manage these more effectively.

Al Elliott 40:56
There’s a whole generation of people for whom this is basically what they want, is not whether you are a caregiver, disabled neurodiverse got children, it’s what they want. So millennials and Gen Zed are now demanding this. So number six, it is the future because the future the workforce, the demand,

Leanne Elliott 41:16
yes, I really don’t think we can overlook the expectations our younger generations have, when it comes to to working at preferences. I do believe remote work is here to stay. And another reason I believe in my work is headstay is because employees are more engaged. So discretionary effort or going extra mile. That is a core behavior that we see in engaged employees. And the data shows that people are often reinvesting the time they are saving commuting into their work. 40% of respondents who shifted to remote work due to COVID-19 said they’re working more since going remote and the same percentage said they were working the same as before, there was only about 20%. That said that they’re working less and 20% is about the people we believe we have who are actively disengaged within our workplaces anyway. So always make a difference. But of course, if we are working longer hours, and this is a downside of remote work, it could lead to individual challenges for employees, including stress, and in pull on cases burnout. You’ll remember for our mental health awareness episode, that latest research by mind showed that 50% of employees don’t feel supported by that organization. And that may be down to the rapid shift and remote work and how slower support has been implemented. Ross also shared one of his tools he uses to improve support for remote employees.

Ross Simmonds 42:40
Before I made any hire, the first thing I did was I sat in a hotel room, set up a camera and recorded myself recording a handful of videos to talk about our processes and procedures. And I did this intentionally because I wanted to gift the future me the ability to not have to hold a meeting and an interview during the onboarding process, where I had to coach the team on how to use these different tools. So instead, I created a handful of videos, where the team today would still get some of mine, but some of their foundation, I’d have recorded others to kind of contribute to our new processes and new tools. And they just educate the team on how to do things. And it saves time from having to book meetings, it saves time from training, because now people are able to just go through the material as a part of their onboarding and go back to it in the future if they would like to

Al Elliott 43:33
now for once I’m going to be saying what the unknown is normally says. And he’s saying that if you want to improve the support your organization gives to its employees, you need to share together Leon invest in managers, that was probably not quite as well time to do it again, though, like it was like that. The role of line managers is so important. We know in terms of well being in terms of mental health, in terms of performance, terms of productivity, everything comes back to the line manager. So it’s a fair question to ask how do you train line managers to be effective remotely? And how do you make sure they’re also supported if they’re working remotely? We asked Beth

Beth Samson 44:10
is a tough one. And I will say I think the role of the manager has got harder and harder over the last few years. So a couple of things that we do, specifically Investors in People, we make sure that we invest in that group and have they have time to get together to share problems and lessons, we’re going to start doing that in person this year. For the first time since the pandemic, we also make sure that they have the training that they need, so that there aren’t any accidental managers. They’re invested in learning how to be a manager as much as they are their technical skills. And for better or for worse, they also have lots of contact time with me. So we’re actually small enough that I can have FaceTime or one to one time over teams or in person with every single manager at least once within two weeks. So I talked to them about what’s on their plate, debit coaching answer questions. signpost if they’ve got things that they need. And that’s worked really well to provide them with that safe space and support as well. during this difficult time, there’s free training available online, which kind of builds the foundation stepping stones of what it is to be a manager and and how that works. And then I guess it’s just being there to answer questions. So you can be if they can’t find the answer on your sort of intranet, or shared documents or policies, you can be like their management, Google, be there to support them, answer those questions, get the benefit of your experience and expertise. I think that’s that’s made a huge difference for our manager cohort. And then also, I think one thing that I’ve learned during my career is look out for people that others follow. So just identifying natural leaders to go into management positions, gives you a massive head start, rather than just looking for technical experts, who have much further to come in terms of that development. The

Leanne Elliott 45:53
eighth reason why remote working is better than office working is that it has enabled us to prioritize our wellbeing. So since some of our employees have been putting in more hours, and we can work, they’ve also started taking more care of their mental health. And report from Microsoft this time shows that 53% of those surveyed, particularly parents, and women that went up to 54% of the parents and 56% for Women are more likely to prioritize the health and well being now than they were previously when they were not working from home. And another 47% are more likely to prioritize family and personal life overwork. And

Al Elliott 46:33
what’s interesting about the pandemic is it’s taken a lot of things from us. But he’s also given us a little bit more perspective of what’s important. We’ve all kind of stopped, and we’re not all but a lot of us have stopped and reflected. And we decided not to be quite so hard on ourselves. Like, for example, work is something that no longer defines, or seems to define millennials and Gen Z, of course, there will be some who it does. But for the majority of them, it doesn’t define them. There’s a reason that tick tock is full of people, YouTube, that of that generation, those generation taking the piss out of me Gen X and Boomers, because we seem so stuck set in our ways. So Ross says to us, let’s just stop butting heads about this. And let’s be a little bit more easy on ourselves and others.

Ross Simmonds 47:16
But more than anything, I am easy on myself when it comes to not always getting everything right. As much as I’m my harshest critic, when it comes to the things that I developed and things that I create. I’m also not hard on myself to a point where I am overly stressed, because I don’t always have a 5050 balance, right? I think it’s easy to look at yourself and say you are a failure, you’re a mistake, you’re not doing well, you’re struggling here, you’re always doing this. That’s a toxic mentality that I think can cause a lot of harm. And I really do believe that you have to give yourself compliments just as much as you give yourself negative critique because it’s easy to critique yourself. I do that all the time. When it comes to my work i i find value in critiquing my work. But if you’re intentional, and you actually try your best, and you sit can look in the mirror and say, I try my best to give as much as I can to my kids to give as much as I can to my partner to give as much as I can to my work to the industry and to the communities that I want to be a part of. If you can say you do your best, then that’s great. That’s all you can ask for. And I just try my best. And that’s it. And if I am successful, great. But I’m trying my best. And I know that sometimes I’ll go months without talking to one of my friends, and I’ll be like, drop the ball there. But that’s a part of it. I try. I’m trying my best constantly. And it’s difficult, no doubt about it. But as long as I’m trying, then I’m able to sleep well at night.

Leanne Elliott 48:52
Reason number nine and this might be my most favorite of all the Favorites list of reasons is that remote work replaces lazy leadership with intentional leadership intention is definitely the Word of 2023. So far. So remote work, I believe has completely exposed and the undeveloped leaders and any lazy leaders. Research shows is increasingly that the competencies and behaviors of an effective leader are no different in remote or hybrid settings than they are in the office. So saying, as a leader, it is much more difficult to lead people remotely. Hmm. It might be actually that it’s more about you. It’s not them who hits you. A good leader is a good leader or rather, an intentional leader is a good leader. Here’s Ross.

Ross Simmonds 49:40
And the key to that is really just being intentional with recognizing the remote work is different. And with remote work. Communication excellence is a necessity rather than a nice to have. When you were in the office. It’s easy to go and have lunch with your colleagues and peers or even just say something across the office. Is that the entire company hears within a matter of seconds. But with a remote first company, you have to set a bar and a level of expectation around what great communication looks like. And then as the leader of the company, you need to match it and meet it every single day.

Leanne Elliott 50:15
Now, there are a few aspects of intention leadership, I’d like to highlight if I may, just to give you because, again, we’re not What did you say last week, we don’t just drop you in the shit. We’re not just gonna go chances are, you’re not a very good leader, we’re actually going to tell you about the things that you can do to be more effective. There are lots of leaders that will say things like, Oh, well, you know, people don’t actually work when they’re from harm. You can’t trust them to work from harm. Or, you know, they’re just skiving. They went for a hair appointment on Wednesday. Trust is Trust is everything. If you don’t trust your employees, frankly, why did you hire them in the first place? And what’s that say about the culture of your business where trust just isn’t there. And also, don’t forget, Trust works both ways. If you don’t trust your people, there’s a really good chance that they don’t trust you. Ross believes the best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them. And live this every day through one of Foundation’s core values. Foundation is his business that he runs with 100% remote team, that core value is you are flexible, accountable and free. I asked Ross what role trust played for him in building a successful remote company. Trust is

Ross Simmonds 51:25
the foundation in which a great remote culture has to exist and can exist in if you don’t trust the individuals on your team, then you shouldn’t have those individuals on your team. They’ve clearly broken your trust in some way. There’s this concept that we have foundation talked about very often called a trust battery. And it’s a concept that I’ve heard, Toby Luke a from Shopify talks about as well. And it’s kind of like The Sims. And as a video game geek, if anyone listening watches, video games, or plays video games, they’ll get this reference. But over the head of every single individual that you interact with, you have kind of a gauge, you have a gauge, which is your trust, battery and the level of trust that that person has with you. And as a company, and as an organization, every single individual that you employ, comes into your company, typically at a 5050 level, maybe slightly a little bit more, where they trust you a little bit more, because they had a great interview process. And you should try to optimize for that. But when they enter your doors, they’re at 50. And what happens over time, is if you as an employer, or as you, as a manager, continue to do the things that you say you’re going to do provide the support that individuals need, you’re going to see that trust battery increase. And on the flip side, if you’re an employee, and you do what you say you’re going to do and you meet your deadlines, then you’re being great at communication, your trust battery with them is also going to increase. Now the flip side to that is also true. If trust is eradicated through a significant amount of bad interactions, poor behaviors, Miss deliverables, Miss timelines, etc, then the trust battery drains. And what you should strive to constantly do in a remote environment is optimized for the most trust possible. And if people are going down a path where they’re constantly taking dings to their trust battery, or they’re digging your own trust battery, then you have to ask yourself if this is a good person, for your culture, for your team and for your company. And the answer is likely no. You want people who you can trust because through trust becomes autonomy. And when you have autonomy, you as an adult who has this job, and as this role has the ability to in my opinion, to do your best work, because you don’t always feel like somebody’s over your shoulder trying to see what you’re doing.

Al Elliott 53:34
The second of the three things that make you an intentional leader is communication. So connection and collaboration in remote settings also requires a huge amount of intention. So again, going back to this Microsoft Word Trend Report, it found that 70% of decision makers regard maintaining social connections within teams is one of their biggest challenges. Unfortunately, employees suffer the consequences of these hurdles. See, about half of them feel that their relationship with coworkers outside their team has weakened. And that leaves like 43% feeling disconnected from the company that we know this doesn’t need to be this way because Gen Z and millennials live their life online. They’re comfortable having strong relationships via a device. But older generations are not used to this and not comfortable. They crave connection.

Leanne Elliott 54:24
We have an interesting dynamic here. When it comes to communication, then don’t worry, we’ve got people who are very comfortable with digital intimacy, and we’ve got others that aren’t very comfortable. And those are those are typically in higher leadership positions. So employees need to take steps to combat this. Otherwise it could start to really impact employee satisfaction and of course then business performance. Ross faced this challenge as you’re a smart business leader, and over time has reaped the benefits of asynchronous communication.

Ross Simmonds 54:53
Yeah, it was one of the biggest hurdles and one of the biggest obstacles that I had in the early days of even making the decision to go A lot of people would say, Ross, how are you going to run a creative company, a company that’s creating cool things, without actually jumping into a room and feeling each other’s energy and writing on a whiteboard. Like, that’s not possible. Being around since 2014, working with some of the top Sass companies in the world, we’ve been able to prove that that’s a myth. It’s not really you don’t need to physically be in the same room, the same environment to actually have creative ideas. There’s a reason why you can literally today, find your love of your life online and build a strong and deep connection and relationship without actually being in the same room to beat with each other. That is happening right now today. And it is probably happened to some of the listeners where they’ve met someone online, they connected with them, they shared a lot of messages. And they knew from that dialogue, that that was the person. And for some reason, in the creative industry, we think, yeah, you can fall in love with someone, but you can’t come up with a good idea remotely, it doesn’t make any sense. The way that you facilitate it is as an organization, you have to embrace the idea of collaborative tools, you have to embrace the idea of having collaborative dialogues, and being okay with a message coming back to you two or three minutes later. And sometimes that’s okay. It’s okay, because it also gives you space to think. So if I go to the team, and I present an idea, and I share my idea, my message in that moment, that was the context that I had that I communicated to them. But then I go for a walk, I might have a tea party with my daughter, I might go down to the local beach. And in that process, where my mind is no longer thinking about the problem, and my mind is in a more calm state of flow, a new idea might hit me, and then I can come back to my desktop, I can see that the team has collaborated, they’ve commented they might have through a few emojis and a GIF on something that I shared asynchronously. And then I can say, quick update. Here’s some additional context that I just came up with and realized that I wanted to share with you. Now, in some cases, if I’m in person, that can never happen, because everything is constricted to the 60 minute meeting block in which that content was delivered synchronously. But a synchronously gives you the opportunity to find more space, it gives you the opportunity to balance and do additional research and then come back to an update to collaborate with multiple minds. That is what makes a synchronous communication so special. So the third

Al Elliott 57:22
thing you need for intentional leadership is Leon’s favorite C word no, not that one. What is it, Leah?

Leanne Elliott 57:28
Culture. That’s my second favorite C word. But joking, is culture. We couldn’t talk about leadership intention without talking about culture, called you can feel intangible, but it doesn’t have to be culture can be measured, it can be shaped, it can be changed. And to do all that, you just need a predictive model of culture, like the RX seven model that we’ve talked about before that we use, or clients or obligate scopes, or seven foundations of culture, that leaders can provide that they can influence. And by doing this, it shows that you’re authentically care. And that goes a long way.

Al Elliott 58:06
Ross also agrees that culture requires intention.

Ross Simmonds 58:09
Well, our approach to culture is very intentional. We believe that culture can sometimes happen organically, if you’re in an office, then people are around each other, and you kind of just hang out and a culture kind of develops. When you’re fully remote, you have to communicate and talk about the cultural expectations. Often, you have to live by your values and talk about your core values often. And then you actually have to show up and communicate and demonstrate your values. Just the same. One of our core values, that foundation is elevate culture. And if you hear that, you might say what does that even mean? We essentially when we’re talking about elevating culture, we’re talking about internally, as well as externally. On the internal side, when we talk about elevating culture, we’re talking about helping ensure that other foundation knights, other people on your team are having an ideal work experience. Meaning instead of just sending them a thumbs up when you approve something, give them some context around what you’d like to vote their peace. Give them some context around why you thought that they should adjust to certain things. And if you really, really wanted to elevate culture, maybe record a loom or video asynchronously and share it with them talking through the things that you want to see. When we talk about those types of ideas frequently, and we reward those ideas and celebrate those behaviors. internally. We have a celebration, Slack channel, and we’re always celebrating things that people are doing that actually contribute and demonstrate our core values. It starts to reinforce the ideas that we want our team to embody. When we think about externally elevating culture, we believe in that our team should have the opportunity to work with and communicate and collaborate with people who they actually care about. So we have a volunteer day where every single day the office every single year the office shuts down and everyone is given an courage to take the day off, to elevate culture in the communities and in the spaces that they feel connected to. And that is our commitment to our team to say, look, again, autonomy. You pick the charity, you pick the nonprofit, you pick the organization that you want to support, go do your thing. But we want you to be empowered to go and do that. So when you start to embrace that, and recognize like, this is with a fully remote company around the world, they’re all going to have different things. They care about different spaces they want to be involved with. Giving them that option reinforces the idea that we want them to constantly be thinking about how they can elevate culture internally and externally. So intention is really the key, when you’re thinking about the onboarding experience for a new employee, talking to them about the rules of how you communicate on Slack, talking to them about best practices for calendar management, how to send an email, we’ve recorded and created a significant amount of documentation, where an ideal experience for our foundation eight would be, no matter what you run into. There’s a document, there’s a loop, there’s a video, there’s a course there’s a material, a checklist that you can go through that tells you how to do that thing. And by doing so, it makes it easy for our team to operate on multiple time zones. And again, ensure that we are constantly operating in sync around the same cultural values.

Leanne Elliott 1:01:22
Always remember, you have a culture, whether you know it or not see, if you’re not intentionally shaping that culture. Who knows what it’s doing for your business. I was

Beth Samson 1:01:33
at a welding conference, and someone gave a quote to me, and it stuck in my mind. And I think of it all the time. And they said that people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. So I think if you’ve got a naturally caring style, as in you, you care about the people that are working with you or for you, you’re interested in them as human beings. I think that is the natural makings of a great leader, everything else in terms of what to do in terms of conversations, and that kind of thing can be trained, but it’s difficult to build on a foundation where that care isn’t there in the first place. So

Leanne Elliott 1:02:07
moving on to our final point, our 10th reason why remote is so awesome. I asked Beth, if there was one thing that line managers or business owners could do tomorrow, something simple, that’s going to have an immediate impact on how effective they are at managing remote or hybrid team. What would it be

Beth Samson 1:02:26
one of the things that we’ve spoken about as unique and beneficial about investors and people is that we gather data about how your staff are feeling and thinking and how they experience work. And we’re independent. So you can have the peace of mind that if we go in, and we are looking at your practices and talking to your team, you’re getting a real picture of what’s actually happening. And that’s something that gives you peace of mind and potentially protects against the risk of something happening in a corner of the organization you’re not aware of that could then impact on your reputation, for example,

Leanne Elliott 1:02:57
yes, Beth? Yes, yes, yes, danger is everything. And it is no coincidence that we’ve been throwing data at you this entire episode, remote work has to be data and evidence led to work well, to be honest, office to office work does as well. But if you’re working remotely, it is almost impossible to lead effectively. If you do not gather data, using employee insights can give you the data you need. It is your new best friend, if you want to make remote or hybrid working work. Here’s Ross.

Ross Simmonds 1:03:30
So I think it’s extremely useful. Because once you have the data to better understand how people feel and how people are perceiving different things. You can make adjustments and make shifts in your own behaviors in your own organization at large. You can also get a sense of like, what is the trust battery that the team actually has with us as an organization? Have we set ourselves up for success as it relates to our trust with the team? These are the things that you want to understand as a leader, because it’s going to give you a better glimpse into one Do you have the high performing team that you aspire to have? But also, are you creating a culture where a high performing team can actually thrive? If you’re always getting 10 out of 1010, out of 10, across the board, I think actually, that’s not a great sign for culture. That means that you’ve probably set yourself up where you have an environment that isn’t holding people maybe even accountable to certain things. But if you have a few instances where a few people within your company are saying, Yeah, I feel like a little bit too much is expected from us. And that’s something that you’re seeing, that’s okay, because that can be an insight that saying you are still pushing people to actually reach high stakes volumes of goals and priorities and metrics and things of that nature. So we use that data to do a gut check on how running. We do use that data to get a gut check on our team and how they’re feeling. I think that data is so important. So Ross

Al Elliott 1:04:55
then went on to share how he uses data audit and organization to help them be if active as a leader at foundation, this ladies and gentleman is intention in action.

Ross Simmonds 1:05:05
So if I spend time with the team, I have a color coded calendar where it showcases what things are culture driven, what things are sales driven, which things are marketing driven, which things are coaching, driven, which things are with the leadership team, which things are with my children, my partner, just one on one time, which things are just like Ross creative time, what things are community driven, where I’m giving back? All of those things go into my calendar, and I’m able to audit on a monthly basis, how much time and energy did I spend giving back to the community, if I noticed that that goes down below five hours a month, then I’m like, okay, that’s not really aligned with what I want to do. If I noticed that I am way over indexed On the work side, where community family friends all take a significant dip, then I look at the upcoming month, and I’m like, Alright, I’m going to book a week vacation, okay, I’m going to do something different this upcoming month. So those are the things that I do to help me sleep well at night. But I really do live in live by my calendar. And I think calendar management is one of the most important things that any leader can do. Because all we have in life is tough. And if you can manage your time, well, then you can manage your life well.

Al Elliott 1:06:17
Now data allows us to take calculated risk when it comes to experimenting and trying new things the workplace, we can use it to measure the impact and the ROI. But as Ross admits shaping the future of work is tricky. And you’re not always going to get it right. I asked Ross, what he predicts for the future of work and what some of the risks and challenges he thinks we’re going to see along the way,

Ross Simmonds 1:06:38
we’re going to continue down the path of seeing an increase in the amount of organizations that are embracing remote work. I think a lot of the companies that are reverting back to being in the office or hybrid have kind of put their stamp on the ground. And I’ve done that, I think there might be a few more to come that will say, All right, we’re putting in forcing everyone back into the office. But I think we’re going to see a continued rise in remote companies, especially with early stage companies, especially with SMBs and small companies and small businesses. Now one of the things that throws remote work, a little bit of a curveball, and this is a reality that is also starting to show up is that there’s this whole movement around have two remote jobs at the same time, and just double up in terms of the income. And this is something that is taking a lot of remote companies and saying, okay, there is a bit of a risk here, could I have an employee who is working another job at the same time, and they’re doubled up in terms of their output and their work, that’s a real risk, that is something that organizations need to also consider and think about as they start to embrace remote work. And the solution there is just really just have visibility as a team, with your managers, your directors, etc. To understand what a true capacity and capabilities look like for individuals and use that to understand how to allocate and distribute work assignments and projects

Leanne Elliott 1:08:03
and that is my number 10 And my most favorite because remote leaders know that data is their best friend and if we have data we can make impactful changes that actually make a difference in individual lives and on business performance we are evidence led and that is what I am here for

Al Elliott 1:08:21
gonna get you a t shirt saying I am evidence lead. So shall we quickly go through the one to 10 things we just went over that

Leanne Elliott 1:08:27
yes, number one is preferred our employees want it let’s try and give it to them.

Al Elliott 1:08:32
Number two remote work makes an employer attractive or a workplace attractive.

Leanne Elliott 1:08:37
Number three remote work often supports a Healthier Work life balance.

Al Elliott 1:08:43
Number four remote work allows work to work for the individual number

Leanne Elliott 1:08:47
five remote work provides flexibility for parents for caregivers, for people with disabilities for the neurodiverse for all of us who want the flexibility and choice of where we live and how we spend our money.

Al Elliott 1:08:59
Number six It is literally the future the future generations who are going to be to working with us over the next like 60 years want remote work

Leanne Elliott 1:09:08
number seven the data is showing that employees are more engaged they are showing more discretionary effort and going the extra mile

Al Elliott 1:09:16
number eight remote work prioritizes well being we know that we take care of ourselves if we can have the flexibility to do so.

Leanne Elliott 1:09:24
Number nine remote work means we have intentional leadership and that is everything

Al Elliott 1:09:32
and number 10 data is everything in other words we can do this remote work thing if we look at the data

Leanne Elliott 1:09:40
yeah so those are our 10 reasons as to why remote work is going to win this this battle I’m sure we need to record next week you know I think

Al Elliott 1:09:52
so if you haven’t already be sure to check out Ross’s podcast create like the greats, he’s rosters to give you a little flavor of what to expect.

Ross Simmonds 1:09:59
Yeah, I was strong We encourage folks to check it out create like the greats essentially, we dive deep into the history and the experiences that some of the greatest creators of all time have gone through, whether it’s actually studying a creation, like a company like masterclass and the things that they did to scale and grow and build this major company that is ultimately worth millions of dollars, all the way through to actual individual creators, where we actually interview those creators, we interviewed those who may have worked with these creators, and create stories and create episodes that take you behind the scenes into the way that these creators did or do what they do. Sometimes we talk to creators that are completely outside of my world, which is marketing, such as a conductor, who has deep experience conducting some of the greatest classical music orchestras in the world, and how they create an environment within that to really create high performers, or will interview some of the greatest musicians of all time, and the people who work with them to tell stories around how they create great things.

Leanne Elliott 1:10:58
But also leave Beth’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes. And the Investors in People website address here is best to explain the various services investors and people offers, we’re focusing

Beth Samson 1:11:08
just on the people aspects, it’s in three main clusters. So we look at leadership, a leaders trusted they set direction, what are the company values like, we look at supporting to make sure that people are being developed looked after that they have great jobs. And then lastly, improving so there’s a culture of continuous improvement, Sustainability, and a focus on making things better over time that some people look for it when they’re searching for jobs, as it’s the it’s kind of a trust mark of a great employer. And particularly we’ve found with our new apprentices framework that’s been really helpful for people entering the world of work through the apprenticeship route to differentiate between the good and the great schemes out there.

Al Elliott 1:11:46
Well, there you have it. That’s the first part of two don’t forget we Nick back next week, we’ll be arguing just as vehemently and passionately about why the office is gonna be a tough one because we haven’t worked in office for a long time.

Leanne Elliott 1:11:57
Yes, but luckily, we have some incredible guests that we met from clock amount of time, and I’ll be honest, two things surprised me about clock my Design Week. One, I was starting to really think Wait a minute, is the office back? Is this a thing? And two, my favorite conversation over the two days was about electricity and plug socket. So there you go.

Al Elliott 1:12:18
Your dad will be very proud being an electrical engineer.

Leanne Elliott 1:12:21
So we will see you next week for now. remote work one off with work now, but I have a feeling that could change next week.

Al Elliott 1:12:28
Find out bye for now.