Humanity Working
Humanity Working is a podcast focused on how new technology such as AI is changing the experience of work, and how humans can thrive in this new world.
Each episode we explore what is changing, how it is affecting the way work gets done, and the impact it has on the people doing work - with a particular focus on those who have a creative aspect to their work.
The podcast is hosted by Paul Slater - Principal AI Technologist at Adobe Systems, often alongside Matt Neal - Innovation Leader at BeOne Medicines. We frequently feature authors, business leaders and top tier academics.
Join us as we navigate the ever-changing landscape of work.
Humanity Working
making remote work work
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The team discusses the strategic decisions and practical steps organizations need to take to turn their company into a high-functioning remote or hybrid work environment. The podcast references an ebook published by BillionMinds on remote work, which you can download at www.billionminds.com/report.
Humanity Working is a podcast focused on helping individuals, teams and organizations be ready for the future of work by maximizing their human potential.
For more information, and access to our weekly newsletter, visit us at humanityworking.net.
So uh I like looking at myself. I enjoy it. I just turn on Zoom meetings all the time and watch myself for hours on it. So we're back, man. It's been it's been a while. Uh how's it been going, you guys?
SPEAKER_02Oh man, we've been doing a lot. But uh with regard with regard to the pod, obviously we've been focusing a lot on guest episodes, and I hope people have really uh really enjoyed those. But that means Ryan, Ryan and Matt and Paul have not been together for a long time, and and uh there's a lot to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's appropriate we get get together before the holidays, uh the the winter holidays, and uh you know there there is a ton that's been going on. I'm interested to hear about your new ebook though and the findings of your neat new ebook, uh which uh let's throw out the title here, uh, is called How to Make Remote Work Work, a guide for HR Leaders. Um let's get into it a little bit. Tell me about tell me about the ebook.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're super excited about it. It's kind of a long time coming. You know, um Matt, as you know, we we've done years of research into um of basically the most effective behaviors of of remote workers. And obviously that's what we built our our platform from. Um but more and more uh people are asking us to expose some of that research, and we never really formally uh published it. We've just used it to inform the decisions we've made in terms of the curriculum and the product and things like that. Um but like I said, more and more we're getting asked for some of the particulars, some of the insights that we learn from it. And so this is um the first, probably of many, um that we're gonna do that reveals some of those findings. And what we're doing in this particular case is we're really trying to focus mostly on things that might influence policy. One thing we're seeing a lot of is some rash policy making. Um and we talked about this a little bit earlier, Matt, is the um there's a lot of unknowns in terms of what people should, can, and should be doing vis-a-vis remote and hybrid work scenarios. And we're hopeful that just some of these insights will help them make more informed decisions, period. Right. I mean, um so any any HR leaders or or any any company leaders who are struggling with um this kind of state of paralysis that we're seeing with a lot of people where they don't really know what to do, but they know they need to do something. Um hopefully these insights will will help them make uh good decisions for their employees. Oh, and I should mention the uh the report is at um it's on our website, so it's um uh www.billiaminds.com slash report.
SPEAKER_00Cool, and we'll put a link in the show notes too. That'd be great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. We should also mention it's free. Uh so uh so obviously just uh go there, grab it, read it, tell us what you think. Um and as Ryan said, I mean, we've we've taken a while to publish this stuff. We're actually um in the process, uh gosh, I think I'm probably three months in of a several month project right now of writing a full uh full book on this topic. Um but we realized pretty rapidly that we that we didn't want to wait months and months more to get some of this information out to people. So this gives us an opportunity to be able to kind of, as Ryan says, kind of look at some of the the major findings that we have, and then also the the not just the primary research we've done, but the secondary research as well, um, so that uh that folks can get more kind of clear end-to-end picture of what it means to have a highly functioning, highly effective, remote first organization.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's interesting, right? So so you're putting together while you're while you're doing the business of running billion mines, also becoming a you know, creating this type of content is no easy task. I'm sure it's a lot of work pulling that together and and it's amazing. I also appreciate the the the the focus, if you will, on on appealing to a message to an HR organization to say, look, we're look, we're talking about the people, but here's what we're finding out, and people is your job. So you should know this, have these tools. It's really, really smart, I think, to to make that available. Um so maybe let's go into what what what are some of the high-level key findings we can we can talk about uh for folks that haven't read the read the ebook yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, so lots in that, but uh, but I think it kind of really breaks down to four four key areas. So at a very high level, um it's I would say is that the how of work has changed dramatically. I think that's something that people instinctively know, uh, but it is um difficult to see the specifics of it because even though it's a dramatic change, that dramatic change itself consists of a bunch of small changes combined. So we kind of go into the detail of what those things are. Um the second thing is is that a lot of organizations are struggling to deal with the reality of this new situation. And there's often a lot of conflict inside organizations about it. So we explore that, um, we look at what the kind of source of that conflict is and then how to potentially go to uh go and resolve it. Then um it's we we try to go into the specifics of the models. Now, everybody's trying to solve this problem, right? And they're trying to solve it in their own particular way, and at the heart of it is a really simple question of who gets to work remotely and who does not get to work remotely. And for some organizations, the who gets to work remotely is everybody, and for other organizations, the who gets to work remotely is a relatively small number. But even though that's the simple question that you're answering, there are actually a relatively small number of viable um patterns, if you like, that support remote employees in some way, shape, or form. And so we go over what those patterns are and then how they can how they can be deployed. Because the pattern that you choose uh kind of also leads to uh certain other decisions that you might make. And that leads us to the the fourth area, um, which is what are you actually going to do in order to make remote work work. And and the high-level headline of that is that um it is not just simply a question of saying, hey, group X, go work remotely. It's actually if you're really going to make remote work work really well, if you're really gonna turn it into a source of strategic advantage, unsurprisingly, you need a complete remote work strategy to make sure that your company is actually thriving in that environment. Because if you've gone from a company that is not working remotely to a company that is working remotely, you are a different company. Right. So how does that uh how does that new company work and what is the strategy for it? And so those are really the the four areas um that we touch on in the ebook. And we'll go through a little bit more detail uh uh in each of those areas, I think, today.
SPEAKER_00Wow, yeah. So you touched on something there, like uh I've noticed a lot of uh announcements or or articles, whatever, of people saying now we're hiring ahead of remote. Like companies that are we're gonna hire a head of remote, it's that important. And to not acknowledge that basically every company probably just turned into this, whether they like it or not. There's plenty in there, probably for a podcast on each section, I would say. Uh, but let's let's go through high level on each one of those uh for purposes of sort of introducing the the ebook here and giving people a uh a decent high level. But I I think there's a pod in each one of those, each one of those sections for sure. So what do you think about uh let's let's start with where you what you start, let's start with number one, uh how things have changed.
SPEAKER_01Uh this is one of my favorite sections because um it it sounds on the surface that it would be very prosaic. I said like, duh, things have changed, you know. But actually, when you really, really think about it and you really inspect it, it it's what we're trying to do is get to almost like a level of acceptance about it. And we also want to be um it we need to be very empathetic about the fact that wow, now that you mention it, quite a bit has changed. And so we're wondering why the day has gotten to be so chaotic. And so just calling some of these things out, even though like on their own, might be pretty simple concepts. When you aggregate them up, it's like, wow, okay, I could see how those in aggregation would be very challenging for employees and employers. But you know, basically we just talk about the things that have led to the the workday um going from being very predictable um to being very chaotic. Um we introduce um how over time work and and the rest of our lives have effectively merged and the impact that that has. Um and then you just look at all the different modalities of work that are involved and how how how much the day is chunked up into smaller, um, different unique work modalities from thinking to doing to managing to organizing, and just managing all of those things is in itself uh a skill set. Uh the other thing we explore is the rise of solo work. Um and what we mean by that is when you're in an office setting and you're around uh other other employees, um, there's just a natural thing that happens uh in terms of collaboration. You find a conference room, you find an area to to collaborate. And then when you move outside the office, not suggesting that collaboration goes down, but solo work does go up. Um and and so that in itself is a new skill. And you have to consider well, how much solo work was I doing previously versus versus now on this new remote workday? Um is that sword getting really sharp now on the remote workday while my team skills are are getting less sharp? So those are things to consider. Um the workday traditionally being much more structured to now being much more ambiguous. Um and then also doing um work synchronously versus asynchronously. So there's more asynchronous work when you're in a remote setting. Uh and so really just kind of leaning into that um it's not a subtle change. Um, it's not one single change for one, but it's these and these individual changes aren't subtle in their own right. They have very unique characteristics and skill sets associated with them. Uh and then lastly, what I would say about this is um we we want to change the relationship that we've had with time. And I'm trying to think of the right way to say that, if that's even the right way to say it. And I'll say it this way um time used to be a good proxy for impact. And when you think about the years and years, decades where the nine to five was the norm, um, because that nine to five occurred in a very structured way, it was very predictable. And you could predict a certain amount of impact from an employee working from nine to five in this particular space in this structured environment. But now our relationship with time has to change. Or um or our our proxy has to change, if you like. We can't just assume that working nine to five equates to this amount of impact in a business. Um, so time doesn't really serve as a good proxy for impact anymore. So we have to have new ways of measuring impact, new ways of measuring how much kinetic energy is being put into actual work product versus the management and organization of um the actual workday. So those are just a few um tidbits. As you said, there's a lot more in that, but um, but again, our goal with that is just to really just you know elucidate that it's not one thing, it's a lot of things, and they're uh in aggregate, they're fairly impactful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there's a ton, obviously, that we look to um to unpack um in the detail of this. And I think that you know, the where you kind of left off there, Ryan, is is such a fascinating topic in its own right. I mean, there's been a lot of of debate, I suppose, that's been going around this community uh recently about things like five-day work week versus four-day work week. Um, you know, what is the right number of days that we should have uh that you should have employees working inside an organization? And it's interesting because some super smart people have been have been discussing this and pointing out, for example, that the five-day work week is a human invention that that uh originated and you know came from sort of the world of manufacturing and and uh and negotiation, if you like, between employers and employees and the formation of the unions and all this kind of stuff, right? And it's absolutely true that the five-day work week, there's nothing sacrosanct about the five-day work week, it is a result of a you know uh of uh of humans making uh decisions centered around everything other than the science as to what should what should be the right number of people, uh number of days that people should work, or indeed the right number of hours that people should work, or nothing like that. Yeah. But what that also means, of course, is that if we replace the five-day work week with, say, the four-day work week, right, then unless we are also being like super scientific about that, then we're just replacing one arbitrary concept with another arbitrary concept, one that feels one that feels better. Right now, in reality, kind of as as Ryan was discussing there, the the whole concept of like the number of days you work and things like that, is much less of a relevant cons uh construct if work and the rest of your life are emerging.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_02What's the right number of hours for me to be in quotes working when I'm flipping from work to non-work uh environments, right? And is it is it relevant to measure that in uh in a traditional way? And so um, those are some of the things that without even realizing it, companies are uh starting to have to wrestle with. And of course, as individuals who want to make an impact inside our organizations and do well and you know advance our careers, those are also things that we have to wrestle with. So a lot of this stuff seems simple and prosaic, as Ryan says, but the more you look into it, the more complicated it gets. And so I think that was one of the more interesting findings as we were doing the research for the book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The other thing that strikes me when you talk about solo work is there's like a nuance to that too, like is how much solo work is also deep work. And getting it able to actually do that. And to your point about like there was no real research going into the five-day work week. It's just what we landed on after hard-won victories of people being like, Yeah, we're gonna close down on Saturday and Sunday. Like, we're gonna start doing that. I'm sure it wasn't the first order of business for many business owners when that was when that first came about and was hard won by people who made it happen. And now we're like, Yeah, let's just switch to four arbitrarily. We're basing it off a bad model to begin with, probably. Um probably, yeah. So, yeah, that's really interesting. And the the I wonder also when you start figuring out this calculus, because it strikes me that you said that uh it's not a good predictor or it's not a good probability anymore to say if we do 40 hours of work, this happens at the end. You can't necessarily put your arms around that as easily. And I wonder when that starts to turn into a compensation conversation. You know, like like does it make sense to say I should it's it's that old proverb or not even a proverb, but the that idea of like the the guy comes to fix the ship and looks at the ship and he hits it with a wrench in the right spot and he sends the guy the invoice for fifty thousand dollars. He's like, I need itemized. He's like, Yeah, a hundred bucks for the wrench and forty-nine thousand nine hundred for the time I learned to hit it in the right place, right? So like maybe we start realizing that that too is an aspect here is like I can be really productive for you. You don't have to call me part-time, full time. You call me, you bought me here for my skill. My skill is best applied in two hours a week. It still costs you the same, right? Or, you know, that kind of idea. So value for time, it starts to play with that value for time equation a little. You have to put more thought into it than we used to have to. And maybe that's also a resistance point to just be like, oh, now I got to really think about it creates more importance in measuring impact and not time.
SPEAKER_01That goes back to the that that that point that we make in the ebook. It's just like um volume of time doesn't really mean anything anymore in terms of of measuring impact. But yeah, you know, how much of your work that's being done is associated to a particular target that you've agreed to, that's impact.
SPEAKER_00I like that.
SPEAKER_02But let's not yeah, but let's not forget that while that is extremely important, right, and is almost certainly the direction that we're going, it's really hard for not just employers, but it's really hard for employees in many cases, right? So back when you're rewarded for effort, right, you kind of know that if you put in the hours, then you're you're gonna be you're gonna do okay in your company. But in this new world where ostensibly you're being rewarded for impact versus effort, it can be extraordinarily stressful for the employee, particularly in situations where the impact is not that visible, right? And so for years now, actually, there's been quite a lot of research on this stuff. When you switch to this kind of like effort to impact model, one of the one of the um changes that happens is that roles where your impact is really obvious. So a good example would be say sales, whereby like my impact is translates into the amount of sales that I've landed, right? Those roles, if you're a good salesperson, you will see you know good results in terms of the uh of the you know amount of stuff that you've sold. There's a clear line between the work that you're doing and the impact that you're generating, and you know the impact that you're generating, and because you know it, you feel a lot better about it. Versus other roles that are themselves much more ambiguous in nature and the impact is less clear, those roles can become much more stressful in nature. If you're being rewarded for impact, but you can't see what the impact is, and you're and you're unsure if your manager can see what the impact is, that becomes really hard. And so that requires a new set of skills inside the organization in order to be able to have the employee understand the impact they're generating, have the manager understand the impact that they're generating, um, and clearly and concisely define that impact so that both parties feel comfortable that that impact is being generated and the employee is being rewarded appropriately. So even something like that sounds like simple on the surface, but has layer upon layer of complexity underneath it that translates to companies doing business in a different way.
SPEAKER_00The Way Too Busy podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds. Working out of the office brings employees all kinds of freedoms, but it can be really difficult to do well and stay engaged every day. If you want to help your employees become remote work masters while generating better business results for your organization, visit billionminds.com today or contact us at info at billionminds.com. Billionminds, helping everyone do great work from anywhere. We probably should have been thinking about this before the pandemic, but the pandemic forced us to think about it. Uh and uh and and it seems like the the outcome can only improve as long as we're thinking about it for the everybody involved, employers and employees, really, to uh in that in that sort of like expose it to the light. Let's look at it, let's really examine it. So so you spoke how organizations are struggling and and they're the conflicts. So tell me more about the conflicts there.
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh, this is uh funny. Ryan was talking about how the that part was uh uh probably some of the most interest to him. This part is definitely of some of the most interest to me. Um what uh as we've been researching uh for this ebook, we've spent a lot of time talking to employees within organizations, but we've also spent a lot of time talking to different levels inside the same organization. So not just the employees, but the managers, the uh HR leaders. The C suite. And um what I would say is that inside many organizations, there are two things to consider. So the first thing to consider is um the overall um attitude towards remote work or hybrid work type environments. So how positive or negative is it? There's a term that's been uh being spread around uh kind of in the uh in circles around this for the last uh few weeks called remote forced versus remote first. So in other words, remote forced is as an organization, you've kind of been forced into the idea of supporting remote employees, but you're you're not willing or happy about it. And then remote first is yeah, we are now a remote company, we're gonna turn ourselves into the best remote company that we can that we can possibly be. So there's this kind of overall sentiment inside organizations that obviously translates to enthusiasm or otherwise uh at the level of the individual employee. And then secondly, there is the the delta, um, or if you like, the conflict within these organizations about it. Um, and so that's something that we see quite a lot of. So you might see, for example, at the C-suite level one particular approach to it, or even differences within the suite, the C-suite about it, then a different set of opinions with the HR leaders, a different set of opinions again with individual managers. And all of this conflict um can make it extremely difficult for uh for the employee who's not sure how to act, they're not sure whether the company actually is committed to them, and this conflict is is is playing out sometimes in the shadows, and that actually doesn't help.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Ironically, that's one of the more challenging aspects in some cases of some remote first organizations is the flow of information inside those organizations. And this is a great example of that, right? Where you don't really know potentially how your manager feels, and you don't really know how your manager's manager feels, and it's difficult to have a good conversation about this. But what you feel uh as an employee is this uh lack of cohesion in terms of what needs to happen there. And so when we're working with organizations, increasingly what we're looking to do at an organizational level is to kind of understand what the sentiment, you know, what the desired sentiment is, and then how much uh conflict is there as different parts of the organization are going to are coming to terms with it. It is not surprising, for example, if you deal with an individual manager, right, maybe they've managed a remote work team and it just didn't work out for them, right? And as a result of it not working out for them, they're now in quotes anti-remote work. Well, maybe the manager didn't have the skills to be able to manage a remote team really well. Maybe the employees didn't have the skills to be able to work remotely effectively. That doesn't mean remote work is is bad per se. It means that that implementation of it didn't work well for that manager. And then that translates to this kind of discordance, as it were, within uh within the organization. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're there there's just so much to unpack under this topic the more you start talking about it. Uh that's that's crazy. I I didn't give much uh thought to the before to the the idea of the cascading of the opinion of the leadership of the organization uh in a transparent way also has so much to do with with how it's felt viscerally within the organization or or or rolled out.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, that's that's really well and Matt, I know that we we we talk a lot about you know the what Elon Musk says very publicly, and he's not the only one, and there's some other leaders that have been very vocal. Um and you know, the one thing I'll say for it, that even though that we um effectively you know disagree with that these these rash blanket policies in general, whichever way people swing, um, I would say that um at least it starts the conversation. It serves as a as a at least there's awareness. At least you know where the the leadership team stands, at least you know where the company culture is headed. Um and it allows employees to really to vote, but they vote with their feet, right? And so at least if you know categorically that this company is not a good fit for you, then you can make a decision. Right? So uh uh, even though, like I said, you could disagree one way or the other with an organization's policies, but at least having some and having an opinion, having a perspective and communicating that, um, it's better than paralysis because it uh allows employees to make decisions.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's interesting. We talk a lot about um default states of billion minds. Um and so from the perspective of an individual employee, your default state when you're in office is visible, and your default state when out of office is invisible. And from the perspective of um ties, right? Uh so sort of like um connections between employees and employees and managers. By default, if you're in an office together and you're sitting in the same space as your colleagues at the same time as your colleagues, by default, the connections that you have with those colleagues tends to be a little closer. And if you are working in different time zones from your colleagues and different uh and different locations to your colleagues and to your managers, by default those ties are a little looser. And of course, related to the strength of the ties is also the extent of the communication. And so that's what we mean when we say that there can be kind of like a delta in terms of how information flows through an organization. And um, and it may well be that if nothing else changes, if you don't make a con uh concerted effort to change it, then the way in which information flows through an organization may be less efficient in a situation where people are not physically in the same space at the same time than it would be otherwise. Now, none of this means that you shouldn't do it. It just means that those things that you have to focus on are different. And so the big picture thing around all of this is that is not to say in office good, out of office bad, or or the flip of that, right? It's not to say those things. What it is to say is in office and out of office are different. And because they're different, that means that we need to focus more on some things and we need to look focus less on other things. And the frame of reference that we should use for our new organization that is remote first or hybrid in nature is a different frame of reference than the frame of reference that we would have had for our existing organization. And this is just an example of that.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Okay. Well, uh deep dive in into the uh next pod and hopefully uh in the ebook as well uh for folks who want to dig into that. There's a lot there. The Way Too Busy podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds. Are you one of over a billion people who works out of the office at least one day every week? If so, you probably want the freedom that working from anywhere affords, but you also want the same opportunities your in-office colleagues get. It turns out that to do really great work out of the office that your colleagues and leaders will truly value, you need a specific set of skills. Billion Minds can help you develop those in just ten minutes a day using our revolutionary platform that combines experiential learning with behavioral science. Way too busy listeners can get started right now for free in just three minutes. Just visit www.billionminds.com slash way too busy to start your journey. Billion Minds. Helping everyone do great work from anywhere. Let's go to the next section there. You talked about the models. Um what are you what are the key patterns that you're seeing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, primarily we're seeing uh four models pop up. Um the first is a time-based model. And what we mean by that is that employees by policy, let's say, um, and by agreement between employer and employee are expected to spend a certain amount of time in the office. Uh so it could be Mondays and Fridays are optional, but Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, thou shalt be in the office. And again, it comes back to this point of expectation. By setting that expectation, then people have at least a structure. So replacing what was no structure with some level of structure. Um, but again, there's Mondays and Fridays being optional, if you like, um, gives them at least the opportunity to work in a flexible environment if they choose to. Um, you know, and just with all these models, there's benefits to them and there's also pitfalls. And so on the positive side, it it effectively forces in-person collaboration. Um never will we discount the value of in-person collaboration. We think it's important. Um, but of course, you can have in-person collaboration when you're not in an office, too. Um, I have in-person collaboration all the time at Starbucks or at a shared office space and so forth. So um another one would be employee relationships. You know, it's uh it's definitely easier to form lasting, valuable um intra-employee relationships when you see people physically uh at the same time every day, if you like. Um so those are some of the benefits there. Um but on the on the pitfall side, it doesn't really consider the needs of the individual. Um and then it ignores the neurodiversity of it too. Um you mentioned deep work earlier, uh, Matt. And so what if you do your best deep work on Tuesdays at three o'clock? Well, do you want to be sitting in a cubicle doing that? You know, or do you do your best deep work when you're sitting on a park bench, right? And so um again, it just presupposes that everybody is the same and so it ignores the neurodiversity. Um and the next one is role-based. And in role-based, it really specifies which roles can and should work inside an office and which one should work remotely. So our marketing managers are all in the office, and our marketing assistants are all remote, or our copywriters are remote because they can write anywhere, but the producers need to be in the office because that's where the equipment is. Um it's really based on um those individual roles and the needs of the roles. And so, again, there's pros and cons on the positive side. Again, increased engagement for some. So those that are in the office could have increased engagement with their colleagues. Um, and it does consider at least some level of role diversity. We talked earlier, I can't remember which one of you mentioned it, but you know, some of a lot of what we've done is derived from manufacturing. Well, of course, we know that manufacturing, even now in the new normal, uh, you have to be where the machinery is. And in most cases, you're not bringing the machinery home with you. So um and so at least we know that some roles need to have access to certain things. And if those things are in the office, well, okay, then that makes sense versus forcing people to come there even though none of the ingredients of them doing their best work actually reside in the office. Um and so on the on the on the pitfall side or on the con side, it can create an appearance of second-class roles. Uh it can create the appearance of, oh, well, these people are special. And it could go both ways. They're special because they need to be in the office, or they're special because they get to be out of the office. And and that could cause some resentment between those roles, between employees. And again, it ignores neurodiversity. So, what if you were told that your job is a remote job, yet you do your best work in an office? You know, and what if the opposite is true? So, again, it ignores where people do their best work. It's not it's not individualized enough. All right, the third one is performance-based. Uh so think about this more as it allows for specific employees to work remotely, as if that's a perk. So it's a merit-based perk to work remotely. Well, I mean, I guess merit-based perks are good in terms of incentivizing employees. And so it's always great to have some of those. I guess that's the only pro I can really put on that one. Um, so having some levers to pull internally to motivate employees, but I mean, I think the downsides of this are pretty apparent, right? Um, so the first is um what is the merit? You know, so it goes back to Paul's point about the sales metrics, right? So if you're just the killer sales person and you just, you know, you blew out your PODA and you you earn the right to work remotely, um, well, that speaks nothing to the fact that you do it well or not, or that it's good for you, or that your the your neurodiversity comes into question in terms of what you like to do more. So that could be a perk to some people and certainly not a perk to others. And so, and is it measuring the right things? Is just because you've achieved this particular metric at work, is that is that the right merit to work remotely? And then this again can create the appearance of second-class people. So before I talked about second-class roles, now it creates second-class people. Oh, so that means everybody who's in the office looks like they're bad at their job, you know, because they didn't earn the right to work remotely. And of course, we know when people are given the uh the option to work remotely, 87% of people will take that. And so it it kind of means that if you see people in and around the office, it could mean that, oh, well, they're only in the office because they haven't earned the right to work remotely. Um, and then again, this could ignore the neurodiversity. So I go back to that point. What if every the reason why you were able to achieve this perk? You were able to be so good at your job is because you worked in the office. And then we just told you to work outside the office as a benefit. And so now you're doing your job worse, right? So again, it ignores neurodiversity in terms of what someone wants to do. And then lastly, um, choice-based. Just straight up, what do you want to do? You want to work in person, you want to work remote, you want to do both. And so just giving them the option. So it this the positives I think are are are pretty clear. Total employee freedom, it can really empower neurodiversity. Because now for this is the first one we're saying, all right, you figure out what works for you, and then you just let us know. Uh, and so if you find that you discover about yourself when and where and how you do your best work, then you have the flexibility to explore that. But again, going back to that stat I just mentioned, um, but 87% of people will choose remote. And then the question is, yeah, is that right for them? Have they developed the skills to do that well? And so that's the challenge there. When you give people choice, on the margin, they're gonna choose flexibility. That's that's actually just pure human nature. Uh so on the margin, if they all choose that, but you've done nothing to enable them to help them to do it well, well, then you might unwittingly be putting people in a situation where they're not doing their best work in a choice-based model.
SPEAKER_00Or make the most informed decision and choice because they what they know about themselves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's nothing, there's nothing that precedes that in terms of first let's assess whether this is something that's good for you, right? So whether this is something that's going to work well for you, whether this is something you want to do. It's just like, hey, pick pick pick one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and what's intriguing about the last two, the performance-based one and the choice-based one, is they're kind of like interconnected in a way. Right. So, for example, when organizations have done this based on performance, there's actually a couple of different ways in which we see organizations, one much more than the much more than the other. So one is whereby the performance-based model is centered around the high performers get to do whatever they want. Um, and then the other is almost like a flip of that, whereas like you want the high performers in the office because you want this core of a high performance team all kind of like working in the office, and then everybody else you let work wherever they want to. So you do see a couple of different variants of that. But the point is that the performance-based model is really based on, for most cases, historical performance, often in an in-office setting. So it actually says nothing about what the performance of the uh of that employee will be in a remote work setting, which is very different. And we've seen a bunch of different scenarios um over the course of the last couple of years where you've had people who historically were high performers, now they're shifted out of that uh environment, they're in an entirely different environment, and they're not necessarily performing as well as as well as they were. It's like taking a, you know, you're pulling the fish out of water and putting the fish onto land and say, okay, go be a great fish. Well, no, not necessarily. So there's that, um, there's that aspect to it as well. And then as Ryan mentions on the on the choice side, choice can work absolutely work really, really well, but is it an informed choice, right? Does the employee have the skills and the understanding to know whether this will work really well for them or not? Does the manager have the skills and understanding to know whether this will work well or not? And is able to have a good conversation with the employee about what is needed to do this well. Now we will say that it's absolutely possible to take employees, it's what Billy Minds actually does, but it's absolutely possible to take employees who don't have the skills to do this well and embed the skills they need in order to do it well. Yeah. But most managers and most employees are not even thinking about it in that way at this point. Right. And so that's what needs to happen in order for this to happen, uh, to result in a really optimized um environment that includes remote.
SPEAKER_00I kept thinking when you're talking about the sales model, the uh you know first prize is you get to work from home. You get to work remotely. Second prize is in the steak knives, right?
SPEAKER_01So that'd be a good uh Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Uh I think people a meme, I guess, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh man. So there's so much here, guys. Um, I think the the ebook wraps up uh part four with all right, so all this is great. What do you do about it? So so what did you find there? What do you do about this?
SPEAKER_02Well, it really fits into four key areas, I would say. Um and the the the big picture piece, I'll just repeat again, is the fact that this is not um entirely simple. It's not just a question of saying, all right, away you go, everybody. There needs to be a strategy around this. And the strategy really consists of having skilling your employees and skilling your management appropriately to thrive in this environment. We'll go into that in a little bit more detail in a moment here. Having the right policies and processes inside your organization to support remote work. And it's wide-ranging, right? It's not just, you know, we're just talking about the four-day work week versus the five-day work week. What does that look like in a world where um there is no common set of hours that people work in? What does your vacation policy look like under these circumstances, right? Um, so all of these things, and we go into the most common policies that organizations need to look at. The third one is really centered around um infrastructure. So what you know, you've gone from an environment probably where you've got, you know, one or more offices and you've built up an infrastructure centered around supporting employees in an environment where many of them are in the same place at the same time, right? What is the corresponding infrastructure for employees that are not in the same place at the same time? That probably means different technology decisions. It makes me different decisions around buildings and real estate, it means different decisions about all kinds of stuff that is designed ultimately to support employees and get the best out of those employees when they're doing work. And then the fourth, you can think of it as really a set of intangibles, but it's really the culture, right? If you we've just been talking about the fact that in an environment where employees have changed fundamentally how they work, the how of work has changed dramatically, that will have an impact on what your company is and how that company is reflected in your culture, right? It's a different culture. Doesn't mean that your old culture was perfect and your new culture sucks. Probably your old old culture had some challenges, but you are entering into a new cultural environment. And it gives you a bunch of opportunity, but you've really got to think about those things through. Now, I mentioned, as I was kind of going through those, that this the skills piece of it is is vital. And of course, we're going to believe that, right? Because we as an we're as an organization are focused on giving employees the remote work skills that they need to thrive in an environment where they're working outside of a formal office setting. But I think one of the most surprising things for us as we were developing this ebook was just how important that is. It would be unusual, frankly, if the average employee just naturally had all the skills they needed to work in a completely different way than they did previously. It would be like pulling that fish out and seeing the fish merrily walk off, right? And be and be an absolutely adept uh land animal. Of course, that's not going to happen, right? And so these changes are too subtle in many in many ways to see, but collectively are massive are massively important. And if you if you are going to do really, really well as an organization, you need employees with the skills to do great work. And the skills are not just about the technical skills that they have, not the technical skills that they develop, which largely are transferable, but they're also about those how-of-work skills that are largely not transferable because that new environment is so dramatically different. And what the other thing, we've touched upon this in previous pods, but it's really important, which is that the skills thing translates to success in those other areas. So a key one, of course, is trust, right? If you are in an if you're in an environment that has moved from one where information flowed freely to one where information flows less freely, and you're in an environment potentially where there is some conflict between different parts of the organization as to what should be the remote work policy. And you're in a situation where the default state of the employees is no longer visible. It is now invisible. And so managers and the people that work for those managers, the employees working for those managers, have less of a close relationship than they had previously. Well, what's going to happen in that environment? It's very likely that trust is going to erode in that type of environment. Employees are going to feel uncertain, they're going to feel uh concerned about whether they're having the impact they expect, they're going to be uncertain about whether the uh whether the company values them. All of those kind of things are likely to happen inside the organization. And then from the employer side, there's going to be an erosion of trust. Are your employees doing, you know, when your employee is sitting at home and you can't see them, are they really doing work? Yeah. And so the way, how do you repair that trust? Well, you sure as heck don't repair that trust, as we've spoken previously, by surveilling them or spying on them in some way. The way in which you restore that trust is by giving your employees the skills that they need in order to do great work from anywhere and validating that they have those skills so that they feel confident to be able to execute on their skills and you feel confident that they are. And so that is a huge, if you think about that, right? That's that's showing that the development of skills inside your organization translates to a culture that actually makes an effective organization as a whole. And so much of this depends upon the development of effective skills.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it it seems like this is a this is kind of a must-read for anybody that has an impact in an organization, HR leads, HR organizations, uh, or anybody that needs to raise awareness in their organization. It's it's really packed with stuff. So I encourage people to go check it out uh at uh billionminds.com/slash report. We'll put a link up in the show notes uh again. But this has been really informative. Thanks, guys, for pulling this together and uh looking forward to the next one and the deep dives here. So lots more to come. Thanks, Matt. Thank you, Matt. Really appreciate it. The Way Too Busy Podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds. If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at BillionMinds.com. Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives. If you're enjoying the Way Too Busy Podcast, please consider leaving us a rating and review on iTunes so that others can find us as well. Thanks.
