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Tackle remote works biggest obstacle

What is remote works biggest obstacle? Viable internet connection? Video conferencing hardware? Collaboration software? Recruiting? No, it is trust in employees and team members!

Normally we blame managers that they are not allowing remote work because their lack of trust. But please try to turn your perspective around. I did, as I became a project manager some years ago and as becoming head of project management with a small team of project managers later on.

You can read more in my older post at: Trust is the key for successful remote work

It is really not easy letting your team members go out of sight if your are used to work in the same office. Even if you know their competencies and all the advantages of the home office and all the disadvantages of the office work. Read about the Pros and Cons here: The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons

People are used to collaborate in the personal way. We are just not trained to work and trust over the distance. And this is not a miracle, because we all grew up in a world without real time video conferencing around the world for free. But even in the future kids will be raised by personal interaction – for good reasons. So we all have to learn trusting our remote collegues and team members first.

How to build trust with remote workers

This is a collection of methods and ideas to gain that trust and overcome this major obstacle of remote working:

  • do a lot of communication, i.e. short daily video conferencing
  • do video conferencing instead of phone or written communication as often as possible
  • set up regular work demonstrations, a great possibility to show your appreciation
  • even interesting is, that this enhances trust in the team, because most of the technical people rank their peers on their work results
  • if communication and demonstrations are frequently, it feels less like monitoring
  • try to avoid changes of the team members in a project and even over similar projects, because the team members are getting used to each other
  • plan enough time at the projects start for newly mixed teams that they have the possibility to get to know each other
  • do regular team retreats if you are fully remote, because having fun together is building easily good connections
  • do off work activities even if you are co-located, to connect better to each other
  • provide pictures of your home office or home stories in your employees magazin or collaboration tool
  • talk about family and hobbies – it is always surprising what off work talents you have in your team

Conclusion

All our business ventures, companies and other undertakings could be so much more successful if we can strengthen the partnerships to our remote collegues which is possible with the above mentioned methods.

What is your experience? Missing trust is not the biggest obstacle? What else helps you in your daily work? Please let us know in the comment section!

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Prepare for the Remote Work Tsunami

The digital nomads, who are portraying themselves in the internet these days, are only the spearhead of the movement. Most of them are internet marketers, travel blogger, self-taught digital nomad trainers, WordPress experts or organizers of coworking retreats.

But this is only the beginning, they are only the first row of the protest march. The already raising big mass behind are the silent ones, who do full- or part-time telecommuting or are part of the worldwide freelancing force, which feeds big companies. See details in Diana Mulcahys book ‘The Gig Economy‘.

Why is remote work an incoming tsunami?

Latest since 2011 we all know the characteristics of a tsunami. Small waves out in the ocean are indicating the problem, but you cannot imagine the impact, they will have at the coast. Only next to the coastline, where the water is shallow, the waves will pile up and get their disastrous force.

The remote work movement is in the phase of the small waves out in the sea. The big wave will hit companies and workers in the near future. The obstacle with that is, that humans are not made for fast changes. Mankind is highly adaptable, but only over generations and not in just some years.

What makes it even more complicated, is the raising automation of jobs. What started in the manufacturing industry decades ago, will continue there and will spread farther into assistence, administrative and even academic jobs.

Reasons for the shift to remote work

For companies:

  • get happier employees and increase productivity
  • get higher skilled employees, than the ones living nearby your offices or you can convince to move to your location
  • save money for offices and wages, because your employeers don’t have the expensive metropolitan cost of living

For employees:

  • create a healthy work environment with less stress (at home or on the road)
  • choose your employer worldwide for the best conditions, instead of comparing only the few in reach of your commuting
  • save money while living in a rural area or abroad, compared to an expensive city

See the complete list here: The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons

The overall reason for the remote work tsunami is the skill-shortage at the places of the companies and the technical opportunity to work from everywhere.

The reason for the overcrowded cities all over the world is the former necessity to gather people to work together in large buildings. That is obvious for manufacturing processes, where a decreasing number of people work and is not further true for all office jobs.

The result

The economical advantage will be at the companies which adapt to this new work style quickly. The rural areas and small towns will thrive and the big cities will loose residents (although this is still unbelievable with their extraordinary housing prices today). The well educated techworkers from Asia, especially from India, and from Africa can participate quickly from the international business.

Old-style companies (‘what we are doing cannot be done remotely’) and the people who won’t or cannot adapt to the new work style will be on the downside. The last group is paired with the group of people who lost their job to automation and won’t or could not be trained into new professions.

How to prepare?

For companies:

  • implement a remote culture, switch the company language to English
  • send the staff home for some single days
  • adjust rules and agreements
  • send them home more days or 100%
  • employ new fully remote employees from anywhere
  • read: how to shift your company to remote

For employees:

  • check or enhance your technical skills for providing your profession in the remote way
  • arrage a home office
  • participate in remote trails at your company
  • ask your boss for some single days working from home
  • move to a remote position or start your own business (the later was never as easy and cheap as today)

Prepare for the remote work wave and you will not be washed away, but on the winning side of the movement.

If you are employer or employee, facing the above and need some advice, just contact me.

What do you think? Is the shift not as dramatic as I suggest – or even worse? Let us know in the comment section below!

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Families are Loving Remote Work

Everyone benefits from remote work. But to share your remote work life with your partner or your family is even better.

Every experienced parent will tell you, that you should enjoy the time with your kids. But who is spending enough time with the kids? What is enough time? The overlap of your life and the life of the rest of your family is simply to small in the on-site office world. And that is not only right for parents – every couple loves to have more time together.

By far most remote workers with families are working out of their home offices or a nearby co-working space. But there are also some, who are travelling the world. We will look at both in this post.

Working from Home – Benefits

The No. 1 benefit is clearly the saved commute time which you get to spend with your partner, your kids or even your hobbies. It is really priceless to join breakfast and dinner with your entire family and be able to bring your kids to bed.

The flexibility is the second big benefit. You can return to work while the kids are sleeping in the evening. You can pick them up at school or attend a school event in a work break. You are flexible to organize the childcare – i.e. you split the time, the kids are at home, between both parents.

Michael Erasmus writes in his post ‘I found my ideal lifestyle by working remotely‘ how he is using the additional time and flexibilty for his hobby surfing. He lives in Cape Town and is checking the waves in the morning and during the day. If they are good and he has no meeting, he goes surfing and returns to the desk after a while.

All the other benefits of remote work are also present. Be it taking care for a pet (Why Many Remote Workers are Happy Dog or Cat Owners) or choose a productive work environment (The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons).

My personal favorite is the added time I have with my two 10 and 8 year old girls. Our daily routine is, that I’m taking them to their school bus stop and bring them to bed very often. Remember routines – they are essential for remote workers to be productive.

Working from Home – Risks

But there is always a downside. This is i.e. the risk of mixing up work and family time. I’m highly recommending clear boundaries in terms of space and time.

Define a corner for work, i.e. your home office and another for private internet surfing / gaming, i.e. living room or kitchen. To use even different devices is a good idea for not falling into the pit of looking at business emails in private time.

You should not be distracted by your kids in the home office. Think about the possibility to work in a café or co-working space for some hours. Normally the closed-door-policy works pretty well at home – just remember to lock the door while being interviewed by BBC…

Do not mix time for work and family. So make your schedule clear to the entire family. There is nothing worse than kids, who are expecting dad or mum at home means 100% play time and are disappointed all the time.

Please don’t think you can work and look after the kids at the same time. Use their time in kindergarden, school or bed for work. And if you need the time the kids are at home awake, hire a babysitter for some hours.

Tips from the Buffer team: ‘Working From Home with Kids: 21 Tips From Our Remote Team‘.

All in all your familiy life will thrive if one or both parents are able to work from home. Even all mums have the possibility to return to work part-time after giving birth whenever they want.

Digital nomads

Is the life as digital nomad conflicting with relationships or having a family? Despite most digital nomads are single travellers, there is a rising number of travelling couples and even families with kids. Well known examples are ‘Digital Nomad Family‘ and ‘Bucket List Family‘.

Travelling as a couple is really great, because it avoids the otherwise lurking loniness. Travelling with small kids is also nice, however special in some cases. I.e. you are looking for yourself constantly about the nearest available pediatrist.

You have to make a decision until your kids are turning into kindergarden or school age. Many parents decide to settle down then and allow the kids the routine of school, friends and building relationships, which is important for their development. Only a few decide that the travelling gives them more than that and start to ‘home’ school the small ones on the road.

What benefit is missing? What is the biggest impact of remote work to your family life? Please let us know at the comment section!

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Fight Skill Shortage with Remote Work

The predictions on the future of employment cannot be more divergent. Some say we face huge unemployment due to the emergence of the robots. Others say the growth of the companies is highly limited to the shortage of talented workforce.

The Problem

Companies around the world list the lack of specilized workforce as one of their top risks. The ‘vacancy duration’, the time to fill an open position, which is a good indicator for the availability of fitting workers, has increased dramatically. The fluctuation rate increases in a more and more stable environment. Unemployment rates are lower than 5% in a number of regions worldwide, what can be called ‘full employment’. The consequence is, that employers have to pay highly increased wages to attract skilled workers.

It is not a worldwide problem and it occures mostly not in a whole country. It appears regionally in the following parts of the world: Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Middle and North Europe. And even in some Asian, Arabian, African and Middle or South American regions.

The Reasons

There are some obvious reasons for that problem. The Baby Boomers (which are born in the 50s and 60s) are retiring rigth now, faster than young employees can follow. The average of work hours per week is declining continously. The automation replaces widely manufacturing and other low skilled jobs but rarely higher skilled jobs (till now).

The Generation Y, the Millennials, are seeking for completely different factors at work with more flexibility, less stress, less career ambition, but they are highly motivated (i.e. they presume to be allowed to have private time for phone calls or Facebook at work, but are willing to be available and checking emails after work). And the employers are very rarely attuned to that situation.

The Actions

What to do about that situation? You can employ less skilled workers and do plenty on-the-job training. Or you can educate workers by your own, i.e. right after school. But the best investment is to change your policies and culture to let your existing staff work remotely and to use the remote workforce.

As a regular reader of this blog you know all the benefits of remote work. It is not only the saved cost for offices and the ability to hire as fast as possible the best talented workers from around the world. Above all it is encouraging and motivating to your workers. That is because they will experience your trust, save time and money for commuting, have less stress and can combine work and family or hobbies in a better way. That results in happier, more productive, less sick and thriving employees.

To get a good summary, read also this blog post: ‘The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons‘.

The Conclusion

The best way to fight the No. 1 fear of the employers – the skill shortage – is to enable remote work. It is a win-win situation for both, the employers and the employees. It is definitively the future of work, so it is a huge advantage in the competition about the most talented workers.

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Status of the Remote Industry

The remote industry is thriving. That is a fact. But what is rising more? Supply or demand? Remote jobs or remote workers? Are there platforms? What is the most important new job? This post will answer that.

Actual Status

If you are curios what the remote industry is, have a look at my blog post ‘What is remote work, a digital nomad or even a remote-first company?‘. If you are still wondering why so many people are talking about remote work, just read this: ‘The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons‘.

I would summarize the status of the remote industry as follows:

  • there are lots of willing workers (this is also shown by many surveys, i.e. ‘State of the American Workplace Report 2017‘ by Gallup)
  • we have now all technological possibilities for collaboration (and the future will bring cheaper virtual reality devices on top)
  • there are best practices and knowledge bases
  • we have not enough job offers and career opportunities / too less long-time engagements,  mostly gigs (the quality and diversity of jobs should be the same as with on-site jobs)
Knowledge Bases

Lets have a closer look at the knowledge bases associated with remote work. They are a little scattered over the following fields with often overlapping topics:

 

Remote Work Consultants

What is this new job about? These consultants are advising people who want to work remotely, what kind of skills they need, which hard- and software they will need and how to find a job. But, they are also advising managers to enhance their traditional companies with remote work. That goes from letting people work from home some days, over changing companies culture, processes and tool all over to creating new teams or divisions which are completely remote.

Conclusion

Exactly with that, the remote work consultants are able to increase the number of remote positions, are spreading the word of remote work to more industries and are lobbying for remote work in our complete society including local and global politics. So that is the most important new job about remote work.

And because these consultants are gathering all the knowledge over remote work, they can establish the missing overall platforms for remote work, which will combine the important topics from the long list above.

The listed examples can never be complete. Did I miss an important service? Or am I wrong with my argumentation? Please let us know in the comments section.