Remote Work Rants: Making Sense of Remote Onboarding
Ask Wayne Anything, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Remote Work Rants: Making Sense of Remote Onboarding

Join Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel as they navigate the lively world of remote onboarding. In this episode they reveal some clever strategies for creating a welcoming remote culture and ensuring new team members feel connected from the start. They dive into practical tips like engaging webcam chats, clear task delegation, and the importance of a user-friendly employee handbook, all spiced up with their trademark humor and expertise.

Key Takeaways

1. Remote onboarding is a critical business problem, as remote workers are statistically more likely to leave if they don't feel a sense of belonging.
2. Onboarding should include webcam conversations with team members to build rapport and connections.
3. Remote employees should be given meaningful tasks and responsibilities from the start to demonstrate their value and contribute to the team.
4. Online employee handbooks and resources should be searchable and logically organized to help new employees navigate company-specific terminology and processes.

View Full Transcript

00;00;08;02 - 00;00;18;29
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance Work Life, where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi.

00;00;19;01 - 00;00;23;25
Wayne Turmel
Hi. That's me. And also a remote worker, as it turns out.

00;00;23;28 - 00;00;37;27
Marisa Eikenberry
That is also true. It's what part of what makes you an expert? So today we are talking about more pet peeves. And first of all, thank you for to so many of you who have been sending us these, we've had so much fun doing them over the last several months.

00;00;38;00 - 00;00;42;09
Wayne Turmel
And I love listening to people whine. That makes me so happy.

00;00;42;12 - 00;00;49;03
Marisa Eikenberry
And the funny part is some of our listeners have said they enjoy hearing you rant about things. So it's a perfect match, right?

00;00;49;05 - 00;00;54;04
Wayne Turmel
It's a good it's a good thing, right? Tell me what you want me to rant about, Brady.

00;00;54;07 - 00;01;13;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, today we're going to rant about onboarding and specifically about remote onboarding. So I heard from Katrina on Facebook about onboarding as a fully remote worker into an existing, fully remote team is rough. She did it before COVID, before it was fashionable, and it took 4 to 6 weeks before she felt like she didn't just take up space.

00;01;13;18 - 00;01;37;27
Marisa Eikenberry
She's also had two peers and one supervisor who were all onboarded during COVID. They had a tough time with it and all have since left. And three direct reports, onboarded as a mostly remote experience. But they had complicated processes for getting access to technology and things of that nature. So far, all three direct reports are still here. But as a team, we have to and do work very, very hard to build cohesion and rapport.

00;01;38;00 - 00;01;51;21
Marisa Eikenberry
We actually had somebody else, Rachel, also on Facebook, who had said that onboarding new team members was very tricky for them and it was hard to form new and genuine connections. So there are people that are having issues onboarding remotely so.

00;01;51;23 - 00;02;24;26
Wayne Turmel
Well, they are. And I am going to be that guy again and remind people that this is not just, gee, it's really hard and gosh, I'd like to have gotten it. There is a business cost here if people do not deal within the first five days. A sense of belonging they are statistically more likely to leave. And remote workers, as we have talked about many times on this show, have no barriers to leaving.

00;02;24;28 - 00;02;29;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah, they can start the next day in a completely different job. They just have.

00;02;29;20 - 00;02;30;09
Wayne Turmel
Literally.

00;02;30;09 - 00;02;31;20
Marisa Eikenberry
The only thing that.

00;02;31;22 - 00;03;00;29
Wayne Turmel
Literally the only thing they need to do is get a new password. Yeah. So this is a business problem. It's not just a gosh, wouldn't it be nice to feel more connected to my people problem? It's a legit business problem. And I think the experience I mean, if it takes 40 days to become onboarded and be onboarded, I'm going to guess they mean doing the productive work for which you were hired.

00;03;01;02 - 00;03;04;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Feeling like they belong there. They're not here.

00;03;04;19 - 00;03;10;26
Wayne Turmel
And probably two parts, right? Feeling like they belong and actually doing the work that you were hired to do.

00;03;11;04 - 00;03;11;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;03;11;28 - 00;03;31;28
Wayne Turmel
Right. That you're not just doing busy work, that you're not just I mean, one of the things that makes me crazy about traditional onboarding and this is true of in-person as well, is why do we spend the first three days that we are hired filling out paperwork?

00;03;32;03 - 00;03;32;29
Marisa Eikenberry
That's fair.

00;03;33;01 - 00;03;45;04
Wayne Turmel
Right. I have to fill out the paperwork so that by the end of the week, hopefully I have my computer and my logging access and all of that stuff. Why isn't that waiting for me? Day one.

00;03;45;07 - 00;03;48;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Or even potentially filled out before then, if you're able.

00;03;48;13 - 00;04;25;26
Wayne Turmel
Well, this is what I'm saying is, you know, I know that I start work Monday. How about I get you the paperwork before then? Yeah. And I know that there are issues. If I'm filling out paperwork, I'm technically working and I should be paid, and there's stuff, but come on. Yeah. The fact that we spend so much of the onboarding process and when we're in the office and we're dealing with people and we're sitting in the cube farm and we're kind of kibitzing with people and meeting people and putting faces to names, it's not entirely wasted time.

00;04;25;28 - 00;04;30;00
Wayne Turmel
Right. But then how do you do that?

00;04;30;02 - 00;04;30;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;04;30;12 - 00;04;52;16
Wayne Turmel
So how do you replicate that experience when you aren't in the office? Right. And I think that is it's an important question. I think it depends on where you are relative to the office. Right. If you can go in for a couple of days, your first couple of days, I think that is an optimum experience.

00;04;52;20 - 00;04;53;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00;04;53;29 - 00;04;56;20
Wayne Turmel
If you are in Guam.

00;04;56;22 - 00;04;57;25
Marisa Eikenberry
You're not going be able to do that.

00;04;57;28 - 00;05;20;23
Wayne Turmel
You're not going to be able to do that in a way that makes sense. So how do you do it? Now, we have and if you have heard us talk about this, forgive me, dear listener, but this is a best practice that we do that I think is really, really critical. When somebody joins our organization, their first assignment, this is an assignment.

00;05;20;24 - 00;05;43;27
Wayne Turmel
This is stuff they are expected to do. Day 1 to 3 is to set up a half hour webcam conversation with every member of the team, whether they're going to work with that person all the time or not. Right. They may very rarely work with Lisa in payables or Angie behind the scenes, but a half hour webcam conversation.

00;05;43;29 - 00;05;46;20
Wayne Turmel
And it starts with what's your job? What do you do here?

00;05;46;20 - 00;05;47;10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;05;47;13 - 00;05;55;01
Wayne Turmel
Right. But it turns into where you go to school and do you have kids and what's on that shelf behind you and you know.

00;05;55;01 - 00;06;08;03
Marisa Eikenberry
It to not be mostly work. I mean, yeah, you're going to talk a little bit about that, but it's really meant to be. I'm trying to get to know you as a person. I'm trying to find commonalities so that way we can build rapport.

00;06;08;05 - 00;06;27;15
Wayne Turmel
And these conversations should happen spontaneously if you are in the office with people. Now, to be fair, they honestly don't, right? A lot of us are introverts or we don't want to bother somebody and we're not going to schedule time with somebody at the next desk to say, Give me a half hour and let me pick your brain.

00;06;27;15 - 00;06;55;28
Wayne Turmel
Right? Right. But that's a best practice because it doesn't matter where those people are. You're not just hanging out in the lunchroom with people in the office. Right. So that is a very and it needs to happen right away, like the first couple of days. Right. First of all, what else are you doing anyway? Yeah. You haven't really been trained to do anything yet, but make that useful time.

00;06;56;00 - 00;07;24;22
Wayne Turmel
The other thing that people report with onboarding remotely is there's a lot of time. The minute I meet with my manager, your manager does their best to have one on ones and give them lots of time and stuff, but they're not always available. They are doing other things and helping other employees and whatever. And so the amount of wasted time.

00;07;24;24 - 00;07;25;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;39;12
Wayne Turmel
Those first few days is really frustrating to people. They want to do work. They don't want to. Well, I had a call with my boss at one and I've got training at three and what do I do in the meantime?

00;07;39;14 - 00;07;59;19
Marisa Eikenberry
So on that same lines, I know that recently we had an episode where we talk a lot about asynchronous video and we talk about that in the context of meetings. But you know, to your point about this whole scheduling time and all that. Would you recommend asynchronous video on board in at least for part of the process?

00;07;59;21 - 00;08;20;15
Wayne Turmel
I think where it makes sense, I think that's absolutely true. And, you know, we a lot of organizations have training, right. E-learning and stuff. It doesn't have to be that formal. So it's great when you can do that, right? When you have all the schmancy e-learning and.

00;08;20;17 - 00;08;22;29
Marisa Eikenberry
And your I.T. department has time to build it for you.

00;08;23;02 - 00;08;45;20
Wayne Turmel
And the department has time to build that for you and all that stuff. I think that short asynchronous messages, you know, just to start the day. Hey, Marisa, today I want you doing this right. And it's not an email. It's just, Hey, how you doing? Hope you had a great night. Listen, today we're going to work on this.

00;08;45;27 - 00;08;59;06
Wayne Turmel
I want you to contact Alice this morning, and I want you to talk to so-and-so this afternoon and talk to them about this function or get them to show you how they do X.

00;08;59;10 - 00;09;00;28
Marisa Eikenberry
That all make sense.

00;09;01;00 - 00;09;12;25
Wayne Turmel
It's informal, it's casual, it's useful. Right? It's. You're still getting some degree of face and voice time with the person. And it's personalized.

00;09;12;27 - 00;09;15;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Yeah. It's way better than just a slack message.

00;09;15;20 - 00;09;52;22
Wayne Turmel
And I think if we think about the way we've traditionally onboarded, it doesn't really work anyway. I mean, think about the way we used to start jobs, especially at big companies. It's your first day and so you go to bootcamp and you and eight other new hires fly to wherever the headquarters is and you're in class all day and then you go out for dinner at night and you do that lather, rinse, repeat, and it's at least four days and sometimes two weeks, and the amount that you remember is zero.

00;09;52;25 - 00;09;59;06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I was I will admit I've never had that experience. And now I'm very thankful that I have not.

00;09;59;08 - 00;10;31;06
Wayne Turmel
If you are if you join an organization as a new salesperson, especially straight out of school or new in your career, odds are that you have had to go to bootcamp. And the fact of the matter is, the human brain doesn't absorb information that way. Yes, you socialize, right? First of all, you you create a cohort with your fellow learners and those relationships can very often last throughout your time at the company.

00;10;31;11 - 00;10;33;02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And those are very important.

00;10;33;04 - 00;10;39;27
Wayne Turmel
There are no atheists in foxholes. And, you know, you bond in times of extreme stress.

00;10;39;27 - 00;10;41;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;10;41;10 - 00;11;03;28
Wayne Turmel
But in terms of two weeks of constant training, training, training, here's your handbook. Turn to page eight. You actually retain very little and at least in the old days, you used to get a binder and you could go back and refer to the document in the binder and find, How do I do that? Again, we don't get binders anymore.

00;11;03;28 - 00;11;04;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, So we.

00;11;04;27 - 00;11;06;22
Wayne Turmel
Have that one.

00;11;06;27 - 00;11;20;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So I know that, like you said, we don't we don't do the binder thing anymore, but I know that there are some companies that they've created online employee handbooks or user guides or whatever you want to call it.

00;11;20;26 - 00;11;23;20
Wayne Turmel
And they are usually impossible to navigate.

00;11;23;23 - 00;11;24;19
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00;11;24;21 - 00;11;32;14
Wayne Turmel
The information, this is where I, he says, referring to an early conversation that we had. This is where II becomes helpful.

00;11;32;19 - 00;11;33;05
Marisa Eikenberry
That makes sense.

00;11;33;05 - 00;12;06;29
Wayne Turmel
Because at least in a binder, I can lift my finger and start flipping pages to find what I need online. If I don't know exactly what that thing is called, I am scrolling forever. Whereas if the A, I can say, Hey, show me how to do X boom, there it is and you're good. So if you're going to have online onboarding, if you're going to have employee handbooks electronically, they need to be searchable and they need to make some sort of logical sense.

00;12;07;01 - 00;12;14;17
Marisa Eikenberry
And that makes sense. I know that there are some companies they use notion for this. Some of them create a wiki or things like that. So I mean, even.

00;12;14;17 - 00;12;36;23
Wayne Turmel
One can be incredibly, incredibly helpful. But the other thing is it's just this two weeks of whatever and there's this lovely thing that I've talked about for years, but I don't think we've ever talked about on the show, which is the Maryland okay, which is the term. It's a big rabbit hole, literally, because it's stolen from the book Watership Down.

00;12;36;26 - 00;12;44;05
Wayne Turmel
But basically the horror element is how much you can take into your brain before it's full.

00;12;44;07 - 00;12;44;20
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;12;44;26 - 00;13;12;19
Wayne Turmel
And you can't. And you know, if you've ever been to a training class, this is usually about 11:00 on day one. You have absorbed all the stuff you can absorb. And it's not that you don't want to be a good soldier and you don't want to learn it. You just don't get a chance to use it and process it and move it from short term memory to long term memory to make room for more stuff, let alone a week or two weeks of this nonsense.

00;13;12;19 - 00;13;17;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you'll remember the first things you learned in the last things you learned and you won't remember a lot of the in between.

00;13;18;00 - 00;13;38;11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. And so one of the things that we are learning about onboarding is, yes, some things are best done in the office. Well, if you're going to be in a hybrid environment, be prepared to space in the office. You know, even if you're mostly going to be working from home, suck it up, take a day, two days, do what you need to do.

00;13;38;14 - 00;14;05;21
Wayne Turmel
But a lot of it can be learned in chunks and it can be learned in chunks from different sources. Traditionally at onboarding, Marisa's been here forever. I'm going to bolt the new person to Marisa, and she's going to follow her around like a little duckling and imprint on her. And that's how she's going to learn. And she's going to learn all of Marisa's good habits, and she's going to pick up all of Marisa's bad habits.

00;14;05;24 - 00;14;08;11
Wayne Turmel
And Marisa is not going to get a darn thing done.

00;14;08;13 - 00;14;09;03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;14;09;05 - 00;14;16;06
Wayne Turmel
While this is going on, but helpful for knowing where the bathroom is and who's responsible for the coffee and, you know.

00;14;16;07 - 00;14;18;01
Marisa Eikenberry
And having a buddy in the office like that.

00;14;18;01 - 00;14;47;06
Wayne Turmel
So having somebody that you're assigned to online virtual team collaboration and onboarding should be the same. But you can pick different people for different functions so that you're not. Marisa isn't the only human in the world that person knows right? Right. Alison's our resident expert, expert on Excel, and Bob has been here a really long time. And you know what?

00;14;47;13 - 00;15;03;24
Wayne Turmel
I want you to take an hour with Bob and just get the history of the company. Look up what you know, What did he know? What does he know about the culture? That seems like a strange thing to assign. It's the kind of thing that we think happens organically in person.

00;15;03;24 - 00;15;04;26
Marisa Eikenberry
And it does not.

00;15;04;29 - 00;15;13;26
Wayne Turmel
But it does not. And if you wait for it to happen organically, you know it's not going to happen as quickly or perhaps as well.

00;15;14;01 - 00;15;39;09
Marisa Eikenberry
So going along the same lines of, you know, there's a point where there's too much information for us to grasp. And, you know, maybe employee handbooks aren't the right thing or user guides or I know for us and I'm sure this is true for many companies, you know, we have acronyms, acronyms and initial isms. And we have these words that nobody uses except for us, like, how do you how do you onboard somebody into that?

00;15;39;09 - 00;15;59;29
Marisa Eikenberry
How do you help them find that? I know that we as a company, we we keep realizing we've had two people who onboarded two years ago now and, you know, they've been with us and everything's great. And every now and then they ask a question that for us we think, Well, duh, it's X, Y, Z. And then we have to remember they don't know this or they never asked.

00;15;59;29 - 00;16;02;18
Marisa Eikenberry
So it never came up again.

00;16;02;21 - 00;16;18;21
Wayne Turmel
I would be a beautiful thing right there on a meeting. And we're all talking about the LDL series and blah, blah, blah, and they can go on and go, what in the name of everything that's holy is the LDL series. Right. And they can get the answer without looking like idiots.

00;16;18;28 - 00;16;19;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, There.

00;16;20;00 - 00;16;49;03
Wayne Turmel
This is this is where now. So some of this is information gap. Right. But the other thing is, are there tasks that they can and should be doing that they can't do their entire job, but they can start to go through their lead list. They can start to compile a list of there are things that they can do so that as soon as possible they are doing some valuable work and adding value to the team.

00;16;49;04 - 00;17;07;25
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and it sounds like, too, there's there's a responsibility for the people who have been working there for a while to inform the new people about things. And there's a responsibility of the new person. Ask questions, too. Now, granted, I realize if they can't ask what they don't know, but there's also stuff they can't ask.

00;17;08;02 - 00;17;36;16
Wayne Turmel
But there is. It's funny when you talk about company culture and company handbooks and that kind of thing, there's explicit knowledge and there's tacit knowledge. Okay. Explicit knowledge is stuff that's on the page. If you want to know how to do X, go to this website, turn to this page. There is a process for this, right? If I'm working and I have a question, well, everybody knows Alice is the Excel wizard.

00;17;36;21 - 00;17;49;04
Wayne Turmel
Where does it say that we should say, If I have an Excel question, I have to go to Alice because I'm going to Marisa because she's the only person I know. And Marisa is completely useless when it comes to excel.

00;17;49;06 - 00;17;56;03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Well, which also means that I need to be really good about saying I'm not the Excel expert. Alice It.

00;17;56;05 - 00;18;21;19
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. So one of the things that's helpful is if you have people with specific knowledge or skill sets, get them involved early, particularly if they are remote from each other because I might be unwilling to reach out to Marisa with a question. But that's Marisa's job, right? Marisa knows that I am.

00;18;21;21 - 00;18;25;17
Marisa Eikenberry
I am the keeper of the email. You have to talk to me at some point, right?

00;18;25;20 - 00;18;47;22
Wayne Turmel
Two things are going to happen. One is that I feel less resistance to reaching out to Marisa because I know that. And the other thing is Marisa might be a little more proactive about checking in with me, about how I'm doing with that thing, because that's the piece of knowledge that Marisa is responsible for.

00;18;47;24 - 00;18;48;21
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;18;48;23 - 00;19;12;07
Wayne Turmel
Right. And this all sounds very complicated, but it really is critical to getting people on board. I mean, we talk about, well, people need to be comfortable and how well, how do they do that exposure to the people on their team getting to know them socially, developing trust very quickly, doing meaningful work and demonstrating that you can do meaningful work.

00;19;12;07 - 00;19;19;07
Wayne Turmel
Right. Maybe what this person needs is to be invited to a couple of meetings that they are completely unqualified to be in.

00;19;19;11 - 00;19;20;03
Marisa Eikenberry
That's fair.

00;19;20;06 - 00;19;45;09
Wayne Turmel
But they might have an idea, right? Hey, at my old company we did that and they'll hear the acronyms flying around and they'll hear how we work together. So parceling out their day and figuring out when they do actual work, when can other people be involved in this so that we are creating the social networks and the bonds and the relationships?

00;19;45;12 - 00;20;06;19
Wayne Turmel
And then what useless work can we eliminate? Right, Right. So they're not spending five days filling out forms before they even talk to another human being. That will go a long way to making the onboarding process more pleasant, more useful and more consistent with the way we're working.

00;20;06;26 - 00;20;26;04
Marisa Eikenberry
That totally makes sense. And unfortunately, we are out of time. I know that we could probably continue to talk about this for much longer than this, but I want to thank Katrina and Rachel for sending in your suggestion about talking about onboarding, because I think this was a really important conversation, and I'm sure this is not the only time that we're going to talk about onboarding in the future.

00;20;26;06 - 00;20;42;13
Marisa Eikenberry
And thank you so much for listening to the longest work life for Shownotes Transcripts and other resources make sure to visit long distance work like that. Tom If you haven't yet subscribe to the podcast, you won't miss any future episodes while you're there. Be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show.

00;20;42;15 - 00;20;57;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you if you'd like to learn more about remote teams. Order Wayne and Kevin Eisenberg's new book, The Long Distance Team.

00;20;57;29 - 00;21;04;09
Marisa Eikenberry
You can learn more about the book at Long Distance Team Book Tor.com. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get too down.


Timestamps

00:00 Intro to Remote Onboarding
01:13 Challenges & Turnover in Onboarding
02:24 Addressing Remote Onboarding
03:11 Traditional vs. Remote Onboarding
04:25 Replicating In-Person Onboarding
05:20 Webcam Conversations Best Practices
06:08 Building Remote Rapport
06:56 Tackling Time Wastage in Onboarding
07:39 Overcoming Onboarding Delays
07:59 Asynchronous Video for Onboarding
08:45 Short Messages for Daily Tasks
09:12 Traditional Methods & Retention
10:31 Building Relationships in Onboarding
11:06 Searchable Online Handbooks
13:38 Hybrid Onboarding Strategies
14:05 Diverse Roles in Onboarding
15:39 Navigating Company Jargon
16:18 Encouraging Questions from New Hires
16:49 Engaging New Hires in Valuable Tasks
17:36 Sharing Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
18:21 Involving Skilled Team Members
19:12 Building Trust and Exposure
19:45 Creating Social Networks
20:06 Streamlining the Onboarding Process
20:26 Closing 

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Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Remote leadership experts, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, help leaders navigate the new world of remote and hybrid teams to design the culture they desire for their teams and organizations in their new book!

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Voices of Diversity: Embracing Accents in the Workplace with Heather Hansen on Long-Distance Worklife with Wayne Turmel
Guests, Leadership, Working Remotely

Voices of Diversity: Embracing Accents in the Workplace with Heather Hansen

Heather Hansen, founder of the Global Speech Academy, discusses the issue of accent bias in the workplace and the importance of effective communication in a globalized world. She challenges the notion of "good" and "bad" English, emphasizing that successful communication is about getting the message across, regardless of accent. Heather highlights the need for leaders to understand and address accent bias, as well as the cultural differences that impact communication. She also emphasizes the importance of listening and valuing diverse perspectives. Overall, Heather advocates for a shift in mindset and a more inclusive approach to communication.

Key Takeaways

1. Accent bias exists in the workplace and can hinder effective communication.
2. Communication is not a skills problem but involves cultural intelligence and active listening.
3. Non-native English speakers face challenges in a global economy dominated by English speakers.
4. Organizations need to create a culture of acceptance and understanding for diverse communication styles.
5. Accent bias is not limited to non-native speakers and can affect individuals with regional accents within the same country.

View Full Transcript

00;00;07;27 - 00;00;40;04
Wayne Turmel
Hello everyone, and welcome once again to the Long Distance Work WorkLife, the podcast where we try to make sense of remote and hybrid work in people not being in the same place at the same time and helping people thrive through all of that. My name is Wayne Turmel. My usual co-host, Marisa is not here today. It's an interview show and I'm very, very happy and fortunate to be talking to Heather Hansen.

00;00;40;06 - 00;00;53;15
Wayne Turmel
And we're going to be talking about accents and working across languages and all kinds of good stuff, and she knows of which she speaks because she is joining us from Singapore. Hi Heather.

00;00;53;17 - 00;00;56;18
Heather Hansen
I Wayne great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00;00;56;21 - 00;01;06;01
Wayne Turmel
Well, as always, thank you for being had. Tell me, what does the Global Speech Academy do?

00;01;06;03 - 00;01;27;01
Heather Hansen
We are a global communication training company working with Multination is primarily headquartered here in Singapore, in the region, but working internationally. So we focus on everything from presentation skills to cross-cultural communication to articulation, training and clear speech, anything that can help us be better communicators in global environments.

00;01;27;03 - 00;01;54;01
Wayne Turmel
Well, that sounds like worthy work and important stuff. Now you are a little bit of a disturber because I see that. I see that with great affection. As somebody who has been accused of disturbing more than my share of stuff. You're in a talk recently called How to Speak Bad English, perfectly in which calm.

00;01;54;03 - 00;02;23;06
Heather Hansen
Yeah, people don't like hearing that. They don't want to hear, Well, why would you want to speak bad English? The whole point of that talk is the fact that there is no such thing as good or bad English. There's only communication that works. So either you get your message across successfully or you don't. And I it just pains me that so many people come to me and say, Oh, my English is so bad, my pronunciation is so bad, and we're having a full on conversation in actually fully grammatical English.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;53;23
Heather Hansen
And I'm thinking, Who made you think that you don't speak well? What kind of perfectionism are you searching for and looking for? Because as far as I can tell, you speak just fine. But there's so much bias, so much negativity. We use power. We use language as a power for maintaining privilege in the world. And so as as native English speakers, it's very easy to maintain our privilege and power in the global economy by focusing on how bad people speak English.

00;02;53;23 - 00;03;35;21
Wayne Turmel
And well, this is all part of that. You know, you need to lighten your skin and not cover your mouth when you laugh and and make all of that cultural stuff that that goes with being and all of that imperialist that's going to go, Yeah, yeah. But one of the things that I know that you feel very passionate about is besides all of those other things, this notion of having to eliminate accents and the idea of accent bias, tell us what that looks like right in the workplace and then why does that make you so crazy?

00;03;35;24 - 00;04;00;29
Heather Hansen
Yeah. So we'll never eliminate accents so it's not so much that it's more of a bias against them, Right? Because first of all, we have to understand every single person in the world has an accent. I mean, I grew up in central California believing I didn't have an accent. It was everyone else with an accent. Right. And those of us who think that way have actually never experienced the bias that is there for people who sound different than the culturally accepted, prestigious norm.

00;04;00;29 - 00;04;22;13
Heather Hansen
So I hit the lottery, right? Being born into this variety of English that's globally recognized, seen as educated and eloquent. And I've based the whole business off of it, and I've been very successful due to the fact that I speak a type of English that people recognize and and believe is prestigious. And now it's not like that for everyone.

00;04;22;13 - 00;04;43;10
Heather Hansen
When when I went abroad, I first started learning about accent bias because I was living in German speaking society and Danish speaking. I'm fluent in both languages. My German is very rusty now, my Danish. I'm married to a Dane, so we speak it daily. And living in Denmark, for example, speaking fluent Danish, I'd be stopped in the middle of business meetings like, Oh, how are your accent?

00;04;43;10 - 00;05;05;21
Heather Hansen
So cute. Oh, more. Oh, I love you and your accent. It's like we're in a business meeting. Why aren't you listening to what I say and taking me seriously? You would never say that to me if we were speaking English right now. Right. But that shows the privilege that I have because I would say we can do this in English if you want, you know, and then like, Oh, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, because that would give me my power back, my respect back.

00;05;05;23 - 00;05;44;03
Heather Hansen
But what about the people who speak Mandarin or Tamil or Malay or Indonesian or languages that aren't global languages? They don't have that option. They're dealing with this every single day, day in and day out, trying to compete in a world that is dominated and run by English speakers. So that's what fuels all of my work. It's how can I help these people to better compete, to feel just as confident and to get the rest of the world to actually start listening to what they are saying and accepting them for who they are instead of constantly thinking about, Oh, that's funny the way they said that, Oh, their English is so bad and oh, why

00;05;44;03 - 00;05;53;04
Heather Hansen
don't they speak better? And oh, you've lived in America 40 years. Why do you still have an accent? All of these kinds of biases that come to the surface.

00;05;53;06 - 00;06;10;29
Wayne Turmel
And I know I'm not trying to steal your thunder, but one of the things that occurs to me is with the rise of asynchronous work, you know, you encounter a little bit less of that because as you know, in cyberspace, no. One, you don't type with an ex.

00;06;11;02 - 00;06;47;20
Heather Hansen
Yes and no. Right? Because the type of English is spoken globally. There are there isn't just one global English. And that's one of the problems. Singapore English has its own rules, its own grammatical structures, its own vocabulary. Indian English has many different varieties, English spoken in the Philippines, slightly different, and some are more British English, some are more American based, depending on who colonized them first and so even in the writing, when you when you write with someone from India, the terminology they use, maybe some of the different grammar markers that you find will be different.

00;06;47;22 - 00;07;13;14
Heather Hansen
And so if you think of it that way, there's is almost a written accent as well where we're thinking, Oh, why can they never put an F on the third person singular key works. Not he work like, Oh, their English is so annoying. It comes up both in writing and in and in speech. I mean, just look at the comments section of any social media site and the way people will will break down the writing of what someone said, usually because they have no real argument.

00;07;13;14 - 00;07;31;25
Heather Hansen
So they go to the language as the way to make themselves superior. So the grammar police I'm talking to you, it's that is not necessary because if you understood the message, then communication happens and that's where we have to start approaching all of our communication, especially in the working world.

00;07;31;28 - 00;07;45;13
Wayne Turmel
Well, and I love that you are not trying to educate the individual workers so much as the leaders and the organizations who.

00;07;45;16 - 00;08;11;07
Heather Hansen
It really does start from the top. It needs to the leaders need to fully understand this in order to make it quite clear that, listen, we're accepting of everyone. Now, the problem in organizations is that we talk about everything. And I from age to race to gender, to sexuality, Abel is an all of these things, but language is never discussed, and it's the foundation for all of them.

00;08;11;07 - 00;08;33;10
Heather Hansen
When you hear of someone on the phone, you're immediately categorizing. You're giving them the gender you believe they have, not how they identify you are deciding what race they probably are. You are deciding their education levels, probably where in the world they're from. You have decided all this information and created a vision of that person without even seeing them, without knowing them.

00;08;33;13 - 00;08;53;21
Heather Hansen
And and this is not discussed in the workplace. It's not included in the policy. It's not protected by law unless you can link accent, bias and discrimination to national origin. So that means, okay, if you're a foreign language speaker in America and someone is discriminating against you and saying, Oh, you can't speak English, go back where you're from.

00;08;53;23 - 00;09;17;08
Heather Hansen
Well, that's an easy link to national origin and you have a court case. But what about the the white American man from Alabama who is going up to work on Wall Street and is being made fun of because of his accent or isn't taken seriously? What kind of national origin clause can he fall back on? So this is not only a native non-native foreign speaker.

00;09;17;08 - 00;09;34;04
Heather Hansen
We experience this within the United States. And if I say, you know, the South, New York, New Jersey, Boston, California, Valley Girl, Florida, we have immediate ideas of what these accents sound like and what the characteristics for those groups of people are.

00;09;34;05 - 00;09;36;28
Wayne Turmel
Right. And the humans attached to them.

00;09;37;01 - 00;09;50;09
Heather Hansen
Yeah. And so this is this is an issue for everyone. It isn't only a native non-Native, although we see it happening even more when we're trying to deal with people from a different culture and background as well.

00;09;50;12 - 00;10;25;06
Wayne Turmel
Well, that obviously gets to the point of in an increasingly global world, right? This notion that, you know, you can't really you can't get the benefits of globalism without dealing with other humans from other places, and it goes with the territory. And you said something and I'm dying to get into what the heck you mean by this, because as somebody who has spent 30 years teaching communication skills, your big battle cry is communication is not a skills problem.

00;10;25;13 - 00;10;28;00
Wayne Turmel
And what?

00;10;28;03 - 00;10;47;24
Heather Hansen
Well, that statement comes from my frustration as a corporate trainer where every october i get phone calls from h.r. Saying we really want to commit to changing the communication culture in the company. Can you come and do a two day program on presentation skills? And it's like, that's not going to cut it. That's not going to change anything.

00;10;47;24 - 00;11;17;14
Heather Hansen
That's not going to move the needle even a little bit. And this is not simply a skills problem. It's much more than that. It has to do with the entire culture of the work environment. Are people conscious communicators? Do we have cultural intelligence, cross-cultural skills? Are we good listeners? Are we aware of our environment? And when we have the loud voices and we're dominating and when we aren't letting people in, when we're interrupting and do we have connection in the company?

00;11;17;14 - 00;11;42;09
Heather Hansen
So is there psychological safety? Are we building strong relationships? What do those social networks look like inside the company itself? And, you know, do people have a fear of failure? They're not speaking up because they're always ridiculed or they're put back down. So they press mute and they they don't want to contribute. And then the last piece of the puzzle is the confidence piece, and that's both skills, confidence and self confidence, self-worth.

00;11;42;11 - 00;12;10;25
Heather Hansen
So it's only that very little sliver of the skills, confidence if you truly don't know how to communicate, you truly have such a heavy accent. No one on earth can understand you. Then we do need to work on some skills, but that is a very small part of the puzzle. I could teach you everything I know about a great presentation being a good presenter, but if you're in a toxic environment with a boss who doesn't listen, you could give the best presentation in the world and it's not going to do anything for you.

00;12;10;27 - 00;12;26;23
Heather Hansen
So. So the skills is just one teeny little piece of the puzzle, and we like to focus all of our attention there and place all of the responsibility on the individual to say you're not a good enough communicator when really so much more is based on how those messages are being received.

00;12;26;26 - 00;12;54;23
Wayne Turmel
I'm going to take us off topic for a moment because I'm fascinated by this. Having taught presentation skills in your corner of the world, does the expectation of what makes a good presentation from the leadership standpoint, how much work is it to take somebody from a what's called South east Southeast Asian culture and have them present to the white guy from New York?

00;12;54;25 - 00;12;59;01
Wayne Turmel
You know how traumatic and dramatic is that?

00;12;59;04 - 00;13;35;24
Heather Hansen
This is the entire problem because and this is why I run a successful business in the whole hypocrisy of my career is that why should that individual from Southeast Asia have to change the way they communicate their style of communication, their their personality, even to fit the expectations of the white westerner sitting in New York? Will that white Westerner ever even consider ever in a million years changing the way they speak, adapting their style, being more adaptable in general to cultural difference when they come to Southeast Asia?

00;13;35;29 - 00;14;18;14
Heather Hansen
And this is exactly the problem in the world right now, is that this Western ideal, the way leadership ideas, communication, you name it, business strategy is very Western dominated and we don't value the different styles that are coming from the East. So my whole job is trying to help these people to fit in to this global expectation that is a very western, western world and completely move them away from who they are, how they normally communicate it, how they articulate sounds to fit that picture, because that is the goal and it still is, especially in these countries that are old colonies that have just grown up with this feeling of somehow being inferior.

00;14;18;17 - 00;14;42;20
Heather Hansen
And Singapore itself has a government campaign called Speak Good English, implying that Singapore English is not good and it is a native variety. They grow up, they grow up speaking it, they're fully educated in English, they work fully in English. The government is run in English. And I don't think people outside Singapore really understand that the English is their language, but it sounds very different and their cultures.

00;14;42;21 - 00;15;06;07
Wayne Turmel
And so I'm giving you 10 minutes in a room with the average white Anglo American, Canadian project manager or division manager, you have 5 minutes and we have duct tape him or her. Yeah. So you will not be interrupted.

00;15;06;10 - 00;15;10;07
Heather Hansen
Captive audience So the mouth is duct tape. That's the most important.

00;15;10;09 - 00;15;18;21
Wayne Turmel
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm giving you every advantage for the next 5 minutes. What do you tell this person?

00;15;18;23 - 00;15;48;01
Heather Hansen
Oh, it's about shifting our entire view of the world, of us not being in the dominant position. First of all, understanding that we do not own the English language. We speak one variety of it. We also have an accent that is different from everywhere else in the world. We have to completely change that mindset that we're walking into global conversations in the powerful position and look at people as our peers and listen for understanding.

00;15;48;04 - 00;16;15;22
Heather Hansen
So the focus has now shifted that when we go into a global environment, we are also speaking a foreign language. The way that English is used, the way that we communicate in global settings is not the same as how we communicate with each other. Over coffee at home, we must learn how to adapt, how to change our speech, to drop idioms, to try to remove as many phrasal verbs as possible, which is incredibly challenging.

00;16;15;25 - 00;16;16;15
Heather Hansen
It's hard for me.

00;16;16;15 - 00;16;18;10
Wayne Turmel
To do over, not be.

00;16;18;13 - 00;16;37;16
Heather Hansen
A verb, plus a preposition that has a completely different meaning. So for example, I pass out verses, pass on verses, pass over one woman was an immigrant, and I believe this is in the UK. The story I heard called from the school. The school says your son is passed out on the playground, you need to come pick him up.

00;16;37;18 - 00;16;57;11
Heather Hansen
She didn't know what pass that was that she knew passed on and so she was distraught. She thought she was picking up her dead child at school. So this is how easily misunderstandings can happen. And we don't think of this as a native speaker born and raised in America, you know, we rule the world. We're so amazing and and to a degree, that's very true.

00;16;57;11 - 00;17;19;04
Heather Hansen
Globally, we have a huge reputation. We do have a lot of power in the world, but we can't abuse it. And we need to remember that there are people all over the world just as well-educated with us who have grown up speaking English, who sound different, but are just as educated, have just as many good ideas. And if we don't start closing our mouths and listening to them, we're losing so much potential.

00;17;19;04 - 00;17;38;14
Heather Hansen
We're losing our talent. We aren't taking advantage of the skills that are right in front of us. And because we have this chip on our shoulder that we think that now while you sound different, you must not be as good. And this comes from all the way back to the movies we watch as children, Disney movies, the bad guys all have accents and people are other.

00;17;38;14 - 00;17;43;14
Heather Hansen
We we try to create that distance and we make an enemy out of them.

00;17;43;16 - 00;18;07;06
Wayne Turmel
You know, this is so important and we can keep going forever. It occurs to me that Kevin and I have said for all of these many years that managers of whatever help, wherever they are, often forget that there is an inherent power difference. Yes. Even on your team between you and your direct reports, you can be as benevolent in kind of thinking.

00;18;07;06 - 00;18;39;23
Wayne Turmel
You're being open and understanding, and that exists anyway when you add the complications of working overseas accents. Not really listening to understand it only becomes that much more complicated and in a perfect world, the responsibility falls on us as leaders. So, Heather, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are going to you says pushing the right button.

00;18;39;25 - 00;19;00;26
Wayne Turmel
We are going to have links to heather and global speech academy and all that good stuff in the transcript of the show on long distance work life icon. Heather, I'm going to remove you from the room just long enough to finish wrapping up here, but thank you so much for being with us. It's been a fascinating conversation.

00;19;00;28 - 00;19;03;19
Heather Hansen
Yeah, thank you. Really fun to be here. Thanks so much.

00;19;03;24 - 00;19;46;04
Wayne Turmel
And if you didn't fact like this show and with this one, there wasn't much not to like. I found this fascinating. Please like subscribe to your podcast listeners. You're seeing this on YouTube. You know how this works. By now, I was delighted to come across this topic and if you have a topic that you would like us to talk about or interview somebody about, or you just have a pet peeve that you want Marisa and I to riff about while we're at it, contact us on LinkedIn, Wayne Turmel, Marisa Eikenberry or Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry dot com, or Marisa and Kevin Eikenberry dot com.

00;19;46;07 - 00;20;09;27
Wayne Turmel
And of course, if you are putting together a team please contact us and Kevin Eikenberry group or you can pick up in my new book The long distance Team Designing your team for Everyone success that is it. Thank you for joining us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasel ski get you down. We will see you next episode.


Timestamps

00:00 Meet Heather Hansen
01:06 Exploring Global Speech Academy's Communication Training
01:54 Rethinking "Bad" English and Accent Bias
03:35 Unveiling Accent Bias in the Workplace
04:22 Diverse Language Experiences: A Personal Journey
06:11 The Realities of Written Accents and Language Prejudices
07:31 Tackling Language Bias in Organizations
08:11 The Role of Accents in Categorization and Discrimination
09:17 Beyond Non-Native Speakers: Accent Bias Affects Everyone
10:25 Beyond Skills Training: Enacting Real Communication Change
10:47 The Overemphasis on Presentation Skills in Communication
11:17 The Pillars of Communication: Culture, Listening, Connection
11:42 Overcoming Communication Barriers: Confidence and Fear of Failure
12:10 Communication: More Than Just Skills
12:26 Questioning Western Communication and Leadership Norms
13:35 Embracing Diverse Communication Styles
15:06 Adapting Speech in Global Contexts
16:15 Navigating the Complexities of Phrasal Verbs
17:19 Confronting Western Bias Against Non-Native English Speakers
18:07 Leadership's Role in Bridging Communication Gaps
19:00 Closing Thoughts

Featured Guest

Heather Hansen

Name: Heather Hansen

Bio: Heather helps multinational companies enhance collaboration, innovation and inclusion
across their global teams through greater understanding and stronger, more efficient
communication policies. She focuses on fostering unmuted communication cultures where
every voice is heard, resulting in greater inclusion, innovation and efficiency across remote
and global teams.
Along with private leadership communication coaching, Heather facilitates group training
courses and consults on a number of topics related to global communication. Heather is also
an External Industry Expert for NUS Business School’s Executive Education programs
where she runs modules on communication, presentation, and storytelling skills.

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