The pandemic changed the work world forever. In March of 2020, small and large businesses alike had only hours to pack up and begin navigating the new normal of remote or hybrid work. And a little over two years later, many of us are still trying to figure it all out. In this episode, Brandon Laws talks with Ali Greene, remote work expert, speaker, and advocate, about the challenges of going remote and best practices for keeping teams connected outside of the office.

GUEST AT A GLANCE

Ali Greene is a remote work expert, advocate, speaker, and the former Director of People Operations for DuckDuckGo. Ali is using her startup and remote team leadership experience to co-author Remote Works, set to release in February 2023. 

A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST

🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR

🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws

📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”

DEFINING TERMS

Terms like “remote work” or “hybrid work” can mean different things to different people — and according to Ali Greene, that’s where the problem lies. The term itself “becomes such a big focus that people forget to take a step away and actually ask themselves ‘How are we defining this? What does it mean for our organization? And what does it mean for our teams?’” 

When people start talking about hybrid and remote work, Ali likes to begin by questioning assumptions. “One of the things I like to ask people is how they are ensuring that their employees have access to information in order to get their jobs done.” This gets people to consider the idea that talking about remote and hybrid work isn’t just about location. Rather, it’s about how a company uses technology to provide knowledge “because knowledge equals the power to let people be more effective and efficient in their jobs.”

PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Knowing What it Really Means

“It’s a language issue until everyone has the same definition of remote work, the same definition of hybrid work. It takes a lot of effort for companies to really explain what it means. However, I think that effort is worth it at all points of a hiring process, onboarding process, and retention process, to make sure that people have clear expectations of what it means to be part of your organization.”

The Freedom in Remote Work

“I’m so amazed by how much remote work can open doors. I meet people from different countries all of the time — people that no longer have to choose between immigrating to a new country or having a terrible selection in their job market — and how inspiring it can be for that. Or towns that now have really cool, interesting people moving to them because they can work anywhere.”

Thrown into Chaos

“A lot of companies didn’t necessarily understand the level of impact that remote work can have on the world. And they were thrust into it because of the pandemic. I heard stories from my friends where they had less than 24 hours to get all of their belongings from their company and get home. Forget about having a strong, remote work culture in place. They were working on desktops and didn’t even have laptops to work from. They were in no way prepared for this.” 

Different Perspectives on Remote Work

“There are a bunch of companies that thought [remote work] was really cool, and they want to keep getting better at it. Some companies are in the middle, and now they’re seeing things like employee demands for more flexibility […]. And there were some organizations, to no fault of their own, that I think really just had to do the bare minimum to get through the past couple of years and never really intentionally thought, ‘Do we want to embrace this level of change in our organization?’” 

Taking Steps Toward Remote

“Even though I’m writing a book on the subject, I don’t think you can just necessarily buy a book that tells you exactly all the answers, and then you implement it. It’s not that easy, but I will say what I love about how we’re writing our book is that it’s structured as a stream of reflection questions and activities that managers and leaders can ask themselves to make sure that you’re using these best practices.”

Remote Management

“In a remote workforce, everybody needs to be good at project management — that’s a new skill set that will have to be learned by anyone who wants to continue to succeed and grow professionally. […] And you’re going to start having people that aren’t just coming from operations and HR but that are coming from all throughout the organization, and like a spider web, they’ll be weaving themselves together to make sure the support is there remotely. And so if you break up a manager who used to have to do all four of those things into four different people, it creates more connection in a remote organization, and it allows each person to build their skillset one thing at a time.”

Communication: A Remote Work Essential

“People think about communication as people talking to people, but it’s 2022. We have a lot of technology — sometimes I think we have too much technology in the world — but we should embrace it. We need to learn how to have systems to communicate to people and have people communicate to systems. What that means is instead of assuming you need to gather all the right people in real-time to send a message, what if you sent a message to a tool or a system so that people can look at that information later and in creative ways that appeal to different learning styles?”

LEARN MORE

If you want to continue the conversation with Ali Greene, follow her on LinkedIn. Or, to be the first to know when Ali’s next book is released, you can sign up for her newsletter at remoteworksbook.com.