I’m gonna use a strong word, it’s very selfish of tech to think that remote work is only happening in their companies. It’s happening everywhere.
Today we have Laurel Ferrer, CEO of Distribute Consulting and founder of the Remote Work Association!
In this episode, we talked about how remote work can help the development of rural areas by enabling entrepreneurship, strengthening local technology culture, and re-training the local workforce to utilize their skills for remote work opportunities.
We also talked about how to measure the impact of transitioning a company to remote-first or fully distributed, how to measure productivity costs, and why remote work is not just limited to the tech industry.
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Topics also covered on the podcast episode:
- How Laurel persuaded the executives of her previous company to experiment with remote work
- Why Laurel thinks compliance is the number one thing companies should figure out before going remote
- How Laurel measures the cost of transitioning to remote work (as well as the metrics for measuring whether this transition has been successful)
- Why remote work can strengthen local technology culture
- How remote work can enable both re-skilling and up-skilling
- How the right training can enable older members of the workforce to get modern remote opportunities
- How can leaders help new remote workers develop their self-discipline (without micromanaging!)
Mentioned resources:
- Distribute Consulting
- Remote Work Association
- The Joe Rogan Experience podcast with Naval Ravikant
- Josh Pigford
- Baremetrics
- Could remote work be economic development’s new secret weapon?
- Rural Online Initiative
- Liam Martin of Time Doctor: How to Be a Remote Executive
- Laurel’s Twitter
- Laurel’s LinkedIn
Full transcript:
Jovian: Welcome to another episode of “Outside The Valley,” a podcast by Arc, the remote hiring platform that helps you hire remote software engineers and teams easily. Here, we interview remote startup leaders, remote work advocates, and remote workers of distributed teams who thrive outside of Silicon Valley. I’m your host, Jovian Gautama.
Our guest today is a, or I’ll say is the, remote work consultant and strategist. She’s the CEO of Distribute Consulting and the founder of the Remote Work Association. Her writing about remote work impacts of virtual jobs, management, and human resources are also routinely featured on Forbes. If you want to know anything about the future of work not only on the individual level but also on the organization level and social level, she’s definitely the expert. So, very pleased to be joined by Laurel Farrer. Laurel, welcome.
Laurel: Thank you so much for having me.
Jovian: Yeah. So, just today I was re-listening to a podcast, like Joe Rogan Podcast is very cliche. And with the Naval Ravikant the founder of AngelList. And there’s one point where they’re talking about the argument that there’ll be new job in the future like 10 years ago you can’t imagine the jobs that we have right now. Ten years ago if you’re talking about podcasts there will be a podcaster, there will be a podcast host and podcast producer. Or if there’ll be a remote work consultant people will think like, “Are you crazy?” So, I just find it, like, an interesting thing because it keeps evolving. Remote work consultancy is really something that I feel like is really unique. Just to kick things off, can you share a bit more about yourself and how did you came into, like, making remote work your thing, like, contribute more to the whole ecosystem so to speak?
Laurel: Yeah. Well, I have been a remote worker myself for about 13 years now and I took my own team remote as an operations manager at that time and that’s when I really saw the benefits for the organization. Like you mentioned then, so I was seeing high product activity, higher talent acquisition, higher retention, lower costs, you know, all of these benefits. And I thought, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” But I naively assumed that, you know, it was a very organic thing, everybody was seeing the same benefits as I was and so companies started asking me questions and so I would help them in the offseason of my job and it all just evolved very organically until I worked as the CEO of a fully distributed company of about 500 and when I was there, it was an extremely toxic environment at the executive level.
And that’s when I saw that there was a right way to do remote work and a wrong way.
And that was also the time that IBM and Yahoo were retracting their policies. And I’m an organizational development nerd and so I said, “We really have to figure out exactly what the X factors are here that will put you on the right path or the wrong path so that we as organizational leaders can make this intentional changes in your workforce. And so that’s how Distribute Consulting started, just identifying that remote work is very easy to fall into but just because it’s happening doesn’t mean that you’re doing it well. And so that’s why Distribute exists is to make remote work and virtual jobs and digital infrastructures better, not just build them but to help our businesses leverage this as a strategy.
Jovian: It’s funny you mentioned, like, on your previous…I’ll say previous client. The toxic environment is from the executive so how would you change that? Because I feel like if the toxic environment is, you know, on the employee level so to speak. It’s like a top to bottom approach, right? The executive, “Hey, do this.” If the toxic environment is on the executive level, right, which means you need to change the mind of the executive. Just curious, like, how did you… I feel like it’s a broad question but what are the two or three most important things that you did to change this mindset?
Laurel: Yeah, well remote work is unique in this space, right? Any company can have a bad culture and a toxic culture but it comes to light a little bit more because there’s this great debate of what actually fuels productivity the most. Is it good leadership or is it flexibility? And thankfully, Gallup did a great, great study on this that says: Well, it’s actually both. When you offer great leadership and flexibility that’s when you see the optimal results. You’re going to see results from both individually but when you combine them that’s when you’re going to see the maximum optimization of your workforce.
And so that’s exactly what we do is we say, “Look, let’s implement these virtual workflows and protocols, write policies that will help people stay safe, all that kind of stuff but then also let’s get training for your management that will help them understand how to engage in this virtual space.”
So, if I boil it down to three things to answer your question, the first thing that I always do is make sure that the company is compliant. So, we write a remote work policy to make sure that those employees don’t feel scared about losing their flexibility.
That’s very, very common right now because most remote work arrangements are happening on an individual level. Like, “Yes you can work from home because, you know, your husband is deployed,” or something like that. So, it’s an individual thing. So, we make sure that there is a standard policy to make sure that it’s nondiscriminatory, it’s there, it’s successful, and it’s safe. That way, we can feel more safe in their role so we make the workforce compliant in that way. Then, we also provide training for the management and for the workforce. Everybody needs to understand how collaboration in a virtual environment is different. It’s not a big difference but it is a very significant difference and you don’t know what you don’t know.
And so if you do fall into this then it’s like, “Oh yeah, why would I need to have more transparent communication? Like, is that a thing?” And we say yeah, it’s actually a really big thing. So, we get them policies, we get them training, and then also just really calculating the return of this change.
A lot of people are not understanding how impactful this is to their productivity and so because of that they’re not valuing remote work and flexibility policies as much as they should and they think that it’s insignificant so, therefore, that’s why we see policy retractions, right?
Like, “Oh, it’s not a big deal. Bring everybody back into the office.” Because they haven’t actively calculated how much this is benefiting their organization, how much real estate savings, how much productivity costs are being saved, all of that. And so when we actually show them a number and say, “Look, this is how much it’s boosting your bottom line,” suddenly it’s something worth preserving and leveraging a lot more.
Jovian: What you said just now are super interesting. I like that you start with compliance first because, you know, when we’re talking about remote work people are always talking about productivity, high retention, but are you compliant? Like, this is the unsexy part of it.
Laurel: Exactly. That’s where I specialize is the unsexy side.
Jovian: So, when I was doing the research for this interview you wrote in an article, I think in Forbes, “Is remote illegal?” And I was like, “Oh yeah, is it illegal?” I haven’t even clicked into it. Like, this is something that people, kind of, forget and, you know, there are thought leaders everywhere but I cannot find, like, compliance thought leaders. Especially when it comes to, like, you have distributed all around the world then it gets even more tricky.
Laurel: It’s a massive problem.
Jovian: Right. Do you feel like this is still a massive problem? I know that we have, like, some startups or services that, you know, kind of, like, helping on that but do you still feel like this is still a super huge problem?
Laurel: Absolutely. Yeah, the number one problem that those startups are dealing with is just HR compliance and making sure that employment laws are being met in every single region in which you have employees and making sure that taxation is covered. So, that’s a very complex logistical problem but that’s only one of the compliance issues that we’re seeing. What most remote workers don’t understand is that how much work goes into creating a safe compliant environment in an office. There are days and days and millions of dollars that go into information security, workplace design, ergonomics like OSHA standards.
Like, there are so many things that go into play that the workers and, you know, direct workforce, boots on the ground they never know about. They just come into the workplace, sit down, and start working. And so when you ignore all of that investment in safety, in security, in compliance and you just start working off-site, it’s all illegal. You’re breaking about 15 to 20 different laws just by going off-site if you don’t update it correctly.
So yeah, it’s really critical that we, number one, update our policies and our infrastructures like I said in order to recognize and fill in the gap of that compliance but then also to inform our remote workers. Like, if we just consider health and safety standards for just a second, this was a big problem back in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s people were getting carpal tunnel syndrome because of the ergonomics of an office were not enforced.
Then we did all of this research and figured out exactly what makes a sustainable, safe environment.
And so there are, I mean, hundreds of items on a checklist that a health and safety compliance officer has to come into a workplace and check off and say, “Yes, there are no tripping hazards. The temperature is set at these degrees. There is this amount of lightning, there is this amount of space between the keyboard and the screen.”
Like, all these tiny little things that you don’t think about that actually keep you safe. And because you don’t know about that, again, you don’t know what you don’t know and so when you go off-site you don’t know that you should be enforcing all of those things in order to keep you safe in the long-term. So, we’re seeing like a step back, 50, 60 years in history in terms of workforce safety and health. And that’s just one.
Jovian: Right. I’ve seen a case where basically I think Josh Pigford from Baremetrics, like, they’re a fully remote team, right? And so basically I think [inaudible 00:11:54] obscured tax law in one of the states that his team members are in. They have to pay, like, a couple of thousand dollars just out of the blue. So, that kind of sucks, again, if you’re an executive, right?
Laurel: And if you don’t know about it. You don’t know what you don’t know so it’s so critical to work with a remote work control [crosstalk 00:12:16].
Jovian: Interesting.
Laurel: Not as a personal plug but as somebody that is on the other side of this that does know what you don’t know so that you can make this transition and say, “Oh, wow. I was about to break all of these laws that I wouldn’t know about until a lawsuit was gonna be filed against me.” Like, I need to make sure that I am preventing those risks instead of trying to clean up the mess.
Jovian: Yeah, that is pretty interesting. You also mentioned about calculating or measuring the impact of going remote, like, transitioning from co-locate to distributed. How do you define the metrics or do you have the same metrics for every companies you work with? Is it like revenue or how do you decide that?
Laurel: Yeah, there’s a lot of criteria that we do measure across the board. We do customize it for each of our clients depending on exactly which metrics they’re looking to pull and which ones they want to promote. But in general, just about every single company is going to see impact in a variety of places. One is real estate obviously. Another is the net ratio of the employees. And there’s a lot of different ripple effects there, right?
Like, locality costs and just income to expenses ratio for the individual they don’t have to spend as much on going to work and, therefore, maybe you don’t need to pay them as much. So, that’s an issue.
We also see productivity costs are actually the number one place where most companies see the greatest savings because people are just more productive, they’re giving more output, and so your systems are just automatically more efficient.
Jovian: How do you measure productivity costs?
Laurel: That’s a good question. So, this is where it gets very complicated and then, in fact, I loop in experts like Global Workplace Analytics, her name is Kate Lister, she is my go-to for that.
Jovian: I see.
Laurel: But yes, we do measure results and this is where the organizational development piece comes into play. Just about every operations manager is tracking the production costs of your product or service.
Jovian: I see.
Laurel: Like, how many hours it takes, how many people, all of that lifecycle of what it takes to produce one product or one service. And then the more that you make that efficient the cheaper the cost per product is. And so if you can make that more efficient then it goes down and down and down and that’s where we see the productivity comes [crosstalk 00:14:58].
Jovian: Wow. I feel like we also…I feel like there’s a lot of, like, hand-holding. If you work with a company, right? Okay, we want to help you transition from co-located to distributed. And basically you also need to figure out, like, your clients need to figure out do they even know, like, the cost to make their product? Especially when it’s software. The thing with software is just it’s all out there. It’s a time. There is no, like, raw materials. I think it’s so interesting because, like, I always have this theory that if your company wants to go remote it’s good because it pushes you to get your shit together.
Like, basically the documentation, the culture, like, figuring out the policy, something like that. So, that’s, kind of, like if you’re…you know what a startup’s like, if you’re a software startup you’re all over the place. You’re really forced to, “Get your shit together, man.” Like, it’s there. And I think consultants like you, kind of, help push that way because if you think about it, at the end of the day you will know the real cost of shipping a particular piece of a software.
Laurel: Yeah, exactly. And that’s a lot of what we do especially with like you said, the startups and small businesses. In fact, we collaborate with VCs on exactly that, making sure…
Jovian: Interesting.
Laurel: …that the infrastructure of the businesses that they’re building are sound, that there are not long-term risks associated with building a fully distributed team.
So, we make sure that they have those communication channels in place, the digital resources, that there’s that cultural trust being built right from the very beginning
[…] because, I mean, you’ve worked in startup, I’ve worked in startup, and 9 times out of 10 it’s not the product that fails, it’s the team. And if the team isn’t set up…
Jovian: Interesting.
Laurel: …with a good virtual workplace, then yes, of course, they’re going to fail. So, yeah, we really make sure that we build that virtual office, if you will, space for them so that they can give them the leadership training and then hand the ball to them on doing the rest.
Jovian: Yeah. Talking about, you know, regarding building startups or business and remote work, like I mentioned to you before the call, I’m really curious about the topic of, you know, the social and community aspect of distributed work, remote work, whatever you call it, virtual jobs. So, there’s this one other article you wrote which mentioned about remote work encourages entrepreneurship. I totally agree with it and I feel like this is something that’s I feel like rarely mentioned because people can take it for granted. But they really realize it because remote work enables it.
So, for example, my favorite example is actual Indie hackers, like, the ability for you to connect with our people around the world it just makes it easier for you to create stuff, to create something valuable. And you don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to make great connection and even to start a startup which is why this podcast is called “Out of The Valley” because we think that you can just build great things everywhere, right? Also, the fact that a lot of VCs now, Venture Capitalists, [inaudible 00:18:32] remote-first capital thing. That [inaudible 00:18:37] remote company which I found super interesting. Yeah, I just don’t feel like [inaudible 00:18:44] the entrepreneurship part. The one thing that I want to ask is about the remote work strength is the local technology culture. You also write about this. Can you elaborate a bit more about that?
Laurel: Yeah. So, are you talking in relationship to communities or businesses?
Jovian: more like the community I think. Community, yes.
Laurel: Okay. Yeah, so community this is a really big conversation that’s happening. A lot of the government projects that I work on are related to this. How can communities and, you know, cities, counties, governments, people, residents, how can they benefit from having remote workers in their area? And it’s a really, really fascinating conversation because just like we are dispersing workers, we’re also dispersing business and business opportunities like you talked about.
But what’s happening above that is that we’re also dispersing industry and we’re also dispersing opportunity.
So, this means yes, you don’t have to commute to your office in, you know, downtown Chicago or Hong Kong or whatever but that also means that you don’t have to leave your tiny little town who is dependent on your tax revenue. It also means that you can bring your industry, whatever it is, healthcare or manufacturing or entertainment or design, you can bring that also to your tiny little town that never would have been able to recruit, you know, large healthcare company into their city.
You can bring your company and bring the impact of that company right into your town.
So, we’re seeing amazing massive results with this that we are really distributing wealth and opportunity all throughout the urban world to buy it and really alleviating the hyper-urbanization problems that are happening in metro areas but then also in so doing stimulating rural areas and equating opportunity in both.
Jovian: Yeah, I totally find this super interesting. So, I also found out… I looked at your LinkedIn. So, you were a strategist on the Utah’s Rural Online Initiative, right? Can you share a bit more, like, how did you exactly help the government on that role?
Laurel: Yeah. I was actually connected to this opportunity by a friend. I’m originally from Utah and so a friend said, “Oh, there’s something remote work-related happening in Utah, you must be involved.” And I said, “No, I’m not but let me reach out to them.” So, I connected with them and said, “Hey, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” And they said, “I’m so glad you called because we didn’t think this bill would pass and here we are, we don’t know what to do. We’re supposed to take remote jobs into rural Utah. What’s next?” And I said, “This is perfect.”
Jovian: That’s so government, you know? “I didn’t think this bill will pass.” Like, “Oh crap, what do we do?”
Laurel: Yeah, “We don’t know what we’re gonna do.” Yeah. I mean, to their credit they had great ideas, great vision, and then my team and I just came in and we said, “Okay, let’s design the curriculum and the entire infrastructure.” And so essentially we built this distributed company and distributed organization and program that teaches other people how to be distributed. So, our program takes a rural resident that has never heard about remote work before all the way through the phases of training and job coaching and job acquisition and gets them a remote job at the end.
And then that’s just the worker side. We also now have a business side in which we do the same thing with businesses. We take them from being, you know, very hesitant about remote work, teaching them what the benefits of virtual workers are, help them convert their operations in order to support virtual workers and then hire the virtual workers that we’ve just trained and so they get connected together at BM. We’re seeing enormous success with the program and it’s now scaling nationally throughout the United States.
Jovian: Were you limited by the industry? Like, I think a lot of people…
Laurel: No.
Jovian: Oh, that’s interesting. But I think a lot of people’s mind’s like, “Oh, remote work.” Like, what if we were in a farm for example or things that you don’t associate with, you can work with home. Yeah, can you share a bit more about that?
Laurel: Yeah. I mean, I get pretty defensive when a lot of the great remote work ideas are only limited to tech, right? Like, always gonna be a tech job.
Jovian: Exactly, yes.
Laurel: And I’m like, “No.” I’m personally frustrated about that because I don’t come from tech and so a lot of the remote work knowledge… I shared at the beginning that I thought, “Oh, I’m sure everybody knows what I’m doing,” because I didn’t know that nobody else knew this. So, when I got connected with the tech industry I was so mad. I was like, “You guys have such great information. You’ve gotta share this with the other industries.” And so that was really how my business started was, like, connecting the dots and saying, “Okay, Automatic. You talk to Buffer and Envision, you talk to Sigma. Like, let’s talk to each other about what we’re doing and not doing.” That was a lot of my research is identifying that.
So yes, it’s very…
I’m gonna use a strong word, it’s very selfish of tech to think that remote work is only happening in their companies. It’s happening everywhere.
We’re seeing amazing growth rates in healthcare, in financial services, in entertainment. I mean, it’s immense. But then specifically in reference to the rural conversation, yes, we have amazing amounts of people that are losing their livelihoods because their manufacturing jobs have shut down. Right? This is why we have an entire third of the United States that’s called the Rust Belt because it’s just deteriorating.
And we see, you know, 30% to 60% unemployment rates. I mean, that’s completely unacceptable. So, this can help and that’s exactly what we try to do with the Rural Online Initiative is help them convert their skills from technical jobs like manufacturing. We work with coal miners, we work with even, like, stay-at-home parents. We say, “Okay, what skills have you used in your roles in the past? And let’s adapt those and find freelancing roles or find full-time employment roles that capitalize on those skills.”
I mean, that’s the premise of the gig economy in general, right? Is like freelancers specialize in a niche and so that really opens employment opportunities to people that have a niche. Like, if we say, “Yeah, you were on factory line all day every day for the past 20 years,” that’s hard to convert that to remote work. However, when we zoom into the bullet points of their job description and we say, “You’re fantastic at workflow management,” you led a team, you understand development processes and protocols, then all of a sudden that translates much more easily into the virtual world.
Jovian: Oh, this is fascinating. This is the first time I’ve heard about this. Can you give me an example, like, how does it convert? Like, you mentioned someone that worked in a factory line and then what job can she get? Like, what remote job can she get?
Laurel: Yeah. So, I mean, just think about just leadership skills, right? So, let’s imagine somebody was on a factory management line and so they led a team of people that, you know, somebody was at station A, somebody was at station B, somebody was at station C and they were, you know, selling backpacks or something like that, right? If we just take away that phrase of selling backpacks and we turn that into somebody at station A, somebody at station B, and somebody at station C is designing a website, it’s exactly the same process. Project management is project management.
Jovian: Oh, I see.
Laurel: It’s just the project and the service that’s different. And so we can say… And especially the role of the Rural Online Initiative is to help people open their mind to that because the employers are saying, “You worked in a factory? You have nothing to do with my business.” And we’re saying, “No, no, no. Zoom in. Look at that project management.”
And then all of a sudden when you do that and you see this person knows how to lead people, they know how to create a workflow, they know how to pass responsibility off from one person to another, they know how to conduct performance reviews, all of that, then all of a sudden what happens is when you offer that to an employer you say, “Look, now who’s your competition? You have somebody who’s been doing project management for what, two years? They’re fresh out of college, they’ve never worked in an office environment with other people, or you have this person from a rural county that has project management experience for the past 35 years. Now, what’s more valuable?”
So, it’s a translation, right? It’s like we were talking about in the beginning that a company needs to go through this process of shifting their mindset from physical to virtual. This is, kind of, just the core of the problem of the future of work in general that we’re just so limited in our mindsets and our perspectives that one thing has gone a certain way, but when we open our minds to that and help translate the entire business world from physical to virtual, it really helps bridge the gap and make the transition smoother.
Jovian: Wow. This is absolutely great. And also a coincidence I mentioned at the beginning I was listening to the Joe Rogan’s Podcast with Naval Ravikant and Naval made exactly same argument about retraining people. So, like, people can be retrained [inaudible 00:29:07] like why should we only stick the traditional education? You know, you got to school, you go to college, and so on.
Also funny you mentioned how people are selfish. I feel like tech people, kind of, like live in a bubble sometimes. It’s also funny because a lot of principles, like, I’m not sure if it’s a lot, some principles are taking from the traditional supply chain like “The Toyota Way” is really famous when it comes to project management, product management and so on, so it comes full circle.
Laurel: Yeah. In fact, I just had a long conversation with my Uber driver a few weeks ago. I was on a business trip and he was talking about how he had been unemployed for a year and a half and he had been doing very, very, very well and then his business just shut down because it was a trucking brokerage. And so he’s like, “Yeah, my industry is gone.” We kept talking and we kept talking and I said, “Well, what about artificial intelligence?” Like, I know that there’s a lot of AI tools and software processes that are being developed for shipments, right? For all of this transportation infrastructure of goods. Like, it’s not that your job went away, it’s just that the knowledge is shifting.”
And he said, “Oh yeah, well actually there was these three really large companies that came and studied my business for a year in order to build those products.” And I was like, “There’s your job, man. Today, absolutely right after this drive turn your sign off and go contact those companies,” because the knowledge still is needed. The role is shifting and how we’re using the knowledge is different but those workflows are just being adapted to new processes and so it is just so critical that we utilize all of the experience and intellectual property that was built over generations of industries and just use it in a new way as opposed to drawing this big line between…although that’s the old way of doing things and there’s this new way of doing things.
I love my technology friends so much, right? All these distributed companies, they are so great. But this is a lot of work that I have to do if, say, with these distributed companies that are saying, “Oh, you know, I wish that there was some way that we could, like, really encourage our workers to be better. And we’re noticing that we have a lot of career stagnancy rates, like, oh, what do we do?”
And I’m like, “Okay, look. I know that you guys are like completely anti-enterprise and, you know, the big brands are the big bad wolf, I get that. But guess what? They have hundreds of years of workforce development and they are actually required to have learning and development departments for this reason. Did you guys know that learning and development departments exist?”
And they were like, “No, but that would love all of our problems.” I’m like, “Yeah, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time, we just have to think of information in a new way.
So, yeah, whether it be with the workforce or the business we really need to start bridging the gap and stop thinking that remote work is a new type of work. It’s not, it’s just work, like, we’re just doing it in a new location.
Jovian: I think this also drives a point when it comes to remote hiring, especially when you’re a tech startup, right? So, like you mentioned, I think there’s a lot of skills. I feel like there’s tendency for, you know, tech startups they want to hire people who have experience in tech startups before. But I think when you go, like, you look through that there’s actually a lot of talent that can learn pretty quickly once you get thrown into an environment and if you have a great company culture to begin with, right?
So, for example, like you mentioned, those factory workers that have been working in the factory, like, 10, 15 years, he or she is probably a good project manager and if tech startups can somehow tap that talent, like, they kinda find a way to, “Hey, this person actually is a good project manager.” And at this point if you’re a remote startup then this just doesn’t matter anymore, right? You can be in Silicon Valley and your team members can be in Utah or Birmingham, Alabama, it doesn’t matter. So, I think because for software engineers I think it’s easier. If you’re good enough you can create something, you can self-learn stuff.
And the test is, kind of like… Startups are good at finding software engineers for testing but when it comes to marketing or sales I feel like it’s really hard for non-tech people. Like, I personally, like, here is my first tech startup job. Before I was like in a very traditional industry. I was selling steel to customers abroad. So, I was just, kind of, like, lucky that Codementor and Arc, the, kind of, like CEO, these guys kinda learn the thing in tech startup. So, yeah.
Laurel: And when they are willing to open their mind like that, that’s what really opens up the great opportunities.
Jovian: Exactly.
Laurel: Yeah, because too many business leaders of all industries and all company sizes are very limited and very entitled and they say, “Well, no. You work with me and this is what I have to offer and that’s the end of the story. So, if you don’t like it then you must be a bad match for us.” And it’s very easy to fall into that mentality. I mean, I certainly have as well. But when we open up our minds even further and we say, “Man, I have a high turnover rate in my business. This is a problem.”
And instead of thinking like, “Well, it’s a problem of the workers,” take a step back and say, “Yeah, actually it might really help to have workers with more experience and more dedication and loyalty maybe from the baby boomer generation.” But then even take it a step further and say, “Well, instead of just recruiting and tapping that talent pool, maybe we take a step back and say…have a conversation with that demographic and say, “What do you need? Why is this job not appealing to you? Because I need you so what can I do for you in order to make this job more appealing? Because you are bringing a lot of wealth and knowledge and experience into this role and I wanna make sure that it’s something that you’re excited about.”
And then, you know, that’s where you start getting more information of like, “Well, I’m not 50 years away from retirement, I’m 15 years away from retirement. I need to have a really good retirement package,” and sometimes it’s that simple. And they’re like, “Oh, then yeah. I can do that.”
So, it’s just a matter of talking and conversing and really opening up your mind and not just falling into that trap of like, “Our company is so cool it’s a privilege to work for us and that should be good enough for you.”
Jovian: I also just realized when it comes to a remote work, a company always talking that remote work is good because you are tapping into the talent all over the world which is correct in a way but I think when they say that their mind’s like tech talents all over the world. But when remote work got more and more popular you can see these I’ll say undeveloped talent that’s actually pretty good, right? And then they can learn to be in tech and then if your talent pool opens up even much, much larger.
Laurel: Yeah. Well, I mean, if we’re honest with ourselves, recruiting is just marketing. It’s marketing your company. And so if we think about it in the same terms as marketing your business, you would never, ever just open up your business and say, “We’re gonna sell to every single human being on the planet.” Like, that doesn’t make any sense. The first step that every marketing director and sales manager does is create a consumer profile like, “Who are we selling to? Because they are going to be more likely to buy our product and boost our business than some random person next to them and so that’s who we’re gonna target.”
And we get very, very specific about the skills and qualities and traits and locations that we want our consumers to have. Yet, we’re not applying that at all to our recruiting especially when we open up our recruiting to be virtual and we’re saying, “Yeah, anybody from anywhere can work for us.” And it’s like, “How is that gonna benefit your business? No. Zoom in, create a candidate profile, and say people living in this location maybe of this age demographic, people that have experience in a variety of industries, this is what’s going to be uniquely beneficial to our workflows and processes. That’s who we wanna target.”
So, it’s not a matter of, like, hiring from anywhere, it’s strategizing and leveraging the fact that you can hire from anywhere to create an even wider talent pool in which you can then narrow back in.
Everybody’s thinking really big right now but we’ve gotta zoom back in.
Jovian: Got it. Right. Also, I wanna talk a bit more about distribute teams remote work on the leadership level. I think you mentioned about on one of your articles it’s about the self-discipline. As a remote worker, you have to hone your self-discipline. I was thinking about if a company is transitioning from co-located to distribute which means I believe if this happens, I mean, they have a certain trust with their employees that you are self-disciplined. But I still feel it’s still a challenge, right?
Especially when it comes to new hires, like, older employees they kind of know as they’re going they have a report with the executives and they want to do their best job but for new hires especially having their first remote job they probably need some hand-holding, so to speak. So, how can a company help hone one’s self-discipline? Yeah, how can a company help a new remote hire? Or not necessarily new, a remote key member to be more productive but not in a micromanaging way.
Laurel: Yeah, it’s really critical to understand that when you are off-site more self-management is required and so that’s the mistake that most people think is that, “Oh, I’m gonna start working off-site. Everything’s gonna be the same and it’s just gonna be more convenient for me.” And it’s like, “No, no, no. Look, there are so many management benefits that come from working in a co-located environment. Even if you have a bad manager there are a lot of management benefits. Somebody’s always watching you. You’re feeling motivated, right? There’s people that are next to you just to, kind of, feel the energy of the [crosstalk 00:41:06], ebb and flows.
Jovian: It’s the vibe, yeah.
Laurel: Yeah, and there’s, you know, somebody walks by holding a piece of paper and you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot to do this,” or people start going to the conference room and you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. There’s a meeting.” And there’s just a lot of subconscious and subliminal benefits that exist in your environment. And when you’re removed from that environment it’s your responsibility to manage those yourself. So, my measurements that I tell people are that you need to be in control of your own time, your own tasks, and your own energy.
And in so doing that means you have to do a lot more critical thinking and problem-solving. So, if you’re feeling isolated, and we’re seeing this everywhere, isolation is the big scare of remote work and I can’t help but laugh and be a little bit insensitive because they’re like, “I feel isolated. Alone with me.” It’s like, “Cool, how are you gonna solve that?”
That’s the life of the remote worker is all about is being able to think critically and solve problems independently because you don’t have people around you.
So, it’s like, “Okay, how are you gonna solve that problem? Are you gonna tell your boss and maybe you guys can build a communication channel? Are you feeling cut off from resources? Maybe you need access to a folder that you don’t have access to. Are you feeling socially isolated? Maybe you should join a yoga class or go play badminton or something, like, solve the problem, be willing to solve the problem. So, yeah, I think that that’s really, really critical that we are self-managers in the fact of not just being aware of ourselves but also willing to solve the problems ourselves as well. And in so doing, most of the trouble that we have as remote workers goes away because we build the solution.
Jovian: So, basically it’s, kind of, like, even though companies can help you to somewhat create something or a structure around the company culture or processes. But you feel like it still most of the time goes back to the individual level that you need to be able to solve your own problem. That’s the first step, right?
Laurel: Yeah. And I think it’s both. That’s the really important part is that it is both the employer and the worker. That’s a big problem that we run into is that each party is assuming that the other one is gonna be responsible. So, a worker saying, “Well, it’s my boss’ job to provide this for me and the boss is saying, “Hey, they wanted to work off-site. It’s their responsibility to provide this.”
So, the key in between both of those is to establish expectations and to prevent the misunderstanding or the unfulfillment of expectations. That’s why policies are retracted is because they’re saying, “Oh, they’re not doing what I expected them to,” but it’s like, “Well, did you ever tell them that you expected that?”
Jovian: I see.
Laurel: They go outside and they say like, “I’m gonna pick up my kid at 3:00. No big deal, I work remotely.” But then the boss is thinking, “No, I expect you to be available between the hours of 9:00 to 5:00,” but that was never articulated so therefore we have a problem. So, that’s again the risk of being redundant. That’s again why we really emphasize the importance of remote work policies is because it clarifies those expectations so much. It’s not just a legal document.
In fact, a lot of times I joke that I’m more of a therapist than a consultant because those are the conversations that I still facilitate between the manager and the worker is, “You expect them to be available between 9:00 to 5:00 but you expect flexibility around the hours between, you know, 3:00 and 4:00. How do we meet in the middle? What does that look like?” And because a remote work policy is not one-size-fits-all, it’s a unique set of standards and requirements for each business.
Jovian: So, it also feels like it emphasizes the importance of documentation, of just writing things down. So, how would you… Let’s say if there’s a remote startup that’s just, kind of, growing, like, they’re probably like 5 people, 10 people and everybody works in remote ways, kind of, okay. Right? And then they go to 30 people or 50 people and then everything’s, kind of, messed up. Documentation especially. So, other than hiring you, how would you advise them to at least… How could you advise them go about documenting stuff, is there some kind of rules or best practices?
Laurel: Yeah.
So, that’s why it’s so critical to get your infrastructure in place and your protocols in place while you’re small because it is easy for chaos to exist when you’re small.
When you have a time of five people it doesn’t matter if something’s written down and so you that think, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” And if somebody does go out on a limb and write something down it’s like, “Well, that was above and beyond. Show off. That’s unnecessary.” You’re right. It is absolutely unnecessary at that level. However, as you scale it becomes more and more and more unnecessary.
So, my biggest advice is to create those correct channels and infrastructures and resources while you’re small get in the habit of using them while it’s easy and then it’s easy to add people into that as needed. So, always build your… I mean, we’re always building our products to scale but we’re not building our infrastructures to scale, especially our virtual infrastructures. And so if we don’t do that, we’re going to have massive growing pains. So, yeah, that would be my number one piece of advice.
Jovian: That’s a challenge, isn’t it? Like, when you’re five people you just want to, you know, work on the product or marketing or the sales side. Like, documentation is probably the last thing on your mind like, “Yeah, this can wait.” But you need to have good habits, right? I interviewed Liam Martin. You’ve talked to Liam before, right?
Laurel: Mm-hmm.
Jovian: So, he has this rule of thumb which I think is super useful. Three strikes, kind of, thing. So, the first time you do something don’t document it and the second time you do something start thinking about how would you document it. And the third time you do the same thing then you need to start documenting it. So, I think that’s a good rule if you’re like five or six people at least you really just need to start doing it. Especially if you plan to grow, right?
Laurel: Absolutely.
Jovian: Especially, if you do have a plan to scale to like 50, 60 people.
Laurel: And it gives your company and your business a sense of place because physical businesses are built with, you know, bricks and mortar and concrete and file folders, right? But virtual businesses are built with software and processes. And so if you just invite somebody into just a document, that’s not an employment experience and they’re gonna get lost and they’re going to say, you know, “What am I doing here? Is this a real job?” And whatever. But if you can show a sense of virtual presence with a platform and with protocols and, you know, directories and, like, create the sense of place and direction in your business, then that makes them feel like they’re a part of something.
And that really helps with the isolation. “I’m not just a person sitting in my living room working on a Google doc but I’m a member of this team and this company and this culture and there’s people around me even though I can’t see them. There’s people that are available in case I have questions and there’s resources. I know where all of the resources are that I can tap into if I need, you know, a tool for a certain project.” Like, it gives them that sense of belonging in place that we’re missing by not going to an office.
Jovian: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I like the way you frame it. Like, you basically just make it something… It’s like creating a building, a whole office.
Laurel: Exactly.
Jovian: You need to frame it that way so it becomes less boring I guess.
Laurel: Yeah, and especially in the tech world, right? We’re still married to the onboarding process like, “You have to have your onboarding right next to somebody,” and it’s like well, yes, that is helpful, but in the case that we need it to be virtual, how can you create that same sense of protection and that same sense of safety and security and mentorship and guidance and belonging with a virtual interaction? And again, like, it takes some creativity and some innovation but all of those processes can be transitioned, we can translate physical business into virtual business with intention and with assistance from people that have done it before.
Jovian: What are your favorite software or tools for a company to create this, kind of, virtual infrastructure, so to speak?
Laurel: Yeah. So, you have to remember I went remote when the only thing we had was email. We did not have Slack, we did not have Asana, you know, we had email. We didn’t have video calls, we didn’t have anything. And so for me personally it is not so much about the tool, it’s about how you’re using the tools.
Jovian: Totally.
Laurel: Because remote work is booming and we’re going to see more and more and more and more tools every single day so we can’t get married to a specific tool.
There are tools that come out that you’re like, “Thank goodness. What did I do before this? It’s so helpful.” But we can’t get married to the tool. We need to strategize how we use the tools.
So, back in the day at the risk of sounding like I’m 90 years old, back in the day email, yeah, it was a mess but there was a few little things that we did in email to make sure that it stayed clean and it wasn’t overwhelming and we didn’t have these long threads go back and forth.
And it’s the same thing with your teams. Like, okay, a tool’s a tool. A paintbrush is a tool. But depending on how you are trained to use the paintbrush it’s gonna produce different results. Same thing with your Slack, same thing with your video conferences and your meetings, same thing with GitLab and everything. Like, it just depends on how you are using this so communicate as a team, develop some good clean processes and you’re gonna see really good results.
And keep it simple, too. I mean, I think that there’s nothing that a communication channel and a good regular standup can’t solve. Like, it doesn’t matter if that’s on text and in-person meeting or if you are, you know, Slack and a daily video call or whatever, like, communication channel, regular check-in, that should be the core of everything I think.
Jovian: Awesome. Yeah, so Laurel I can continue talking to you for hours but I know that we’re running out of time. So, how can listeners find you online?
Laurel: Yeah. Social media is probably the easiest. I’m most active on LinkedIn and Twitter. I’m the only Laurel Farrer that I know of so it’s pretty easy to find me if you know how to spell my name. And you’re always welcome to go to my personal website which is laurelfarrer.com or professional website which is distributeconsulting.com.
Jovian: Awesome. And for listeners, if anyone is listening to this, like I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, don’t forget to check out Laurel’s writing mostly on Forbes and other places. Also, on her website you can find everything there. Yeah, Laurel, thank you so much for your time. I learned a lot of new things. And yes, thank you.
Laurel: Thank you, Jovian. It was so nice to meet you and to be here. It was a great conversation.
Jovian: Awesome.
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