Celebrating 100 Episodes: What We've Learned About Remote Work
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Celebrating 100 Episodes: What We’ve Learned About Remote Work

In this special milestone episode of the Long-Distance Worklife Podcast, hosts Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry reflect on their journey through 100 episodes. They share the most impactful lessons and insights they've gained about remote work, leadership, and thriving in hybrid teams. From communication strategies to maintaining work-life balance, this episode is a treasure trove of practical advice and thoughtful reflections. Join us as we celebrate this achievement and look forward to many more episodes to come.

Key Points

  • Reflections on reaching 100 episodes
  • Top lessons learned about remote work and leadership
  • Effective communication strategies in remote teams
  • Maintaining work-life balance in a remote environment
  • The evolution of remote work over the course of the podcast
  • Listener feedback and how it has shaped the podcast

View Full Transcript

00;00;07;27 - 00;00;09;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance worklife.

00;00;09;23 - 00;00;18;17
Marisa Eikenberry
We help you lead, work and thrive in remote hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Turmel.

00;00;18;19 - 00;00;22;00
Wayne Turmel
I want hello, lady. How are you?

00;00;22;02 - 00;00;23;27
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

00;00;24;00 - 00;00;39;11
Wayne Turmel
I am swell. Hello, listeners. I am feeling my mortality today as we realize how long we've been. I've been doing this, and you and I have been doing this right. It's been a while.

00;00;39;18 - 00;00;58;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So actually, recently, we not only hit our two year anniversary of the show, which I think was somewhere around March 28th. But in addition to that, we have also crossed our 100th episode and we weren't paying attention to it. So we actually missed what the exact 100th episode is. But we decided we're going to talk about that.

00;00;58;19 - 00;01;09;24
Wayne Turmel
18 when you crank out one of these a week and there are 52 weeks in a year times two years, it's sometime in the last couple of weeks.

00;01;10;00 - 00;01;28;07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, somewhere around in there, something like that. And I know we had some weeks where we didn't release an episode at all. And so at first something's off, but that being said, today we're going to talk about the lessons that we've learned through 100 episodes. And in my case, I've only been on 50 of them.

00;01;28;09 - 00;01;43;18
Wayne Turmel
So but you have listened to and edited and been in on the conversations, even on those. And you've been listening to those as a learner, as our audience hears it.

00;01;43;21 - 00;02;03;19
Marisa Eikenberry
That is true. So thinking about our very first episode, which I'm fairly certain was what is remote work or when did remote work start, you know, what were some of the initial expectations that you had when we started the show?

00;02;03;21 - 00;02;37;22
Wayne Turmel
I mean, there's the cynical, pragmatic, take your pick of words, approach, which was we wanted to get the word out about the work that we did absolutely do. Right. And the work that we do as long distance leader and and the classes, our leadership series. And so there was a mercenary component to this. I think it's important that we also, look at our role as offering some perspective.

00;02;37;25 - 00;02;39;07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;02;39;10 - 00;02;58;15
Wayne Turmel
And one of the things that I did not expect to have happen, and we've gotten some pushback for this, is I did not expect that the most zealous remote work advocates would get cranky with us on occasion.

00;02;58;18 - 00;03;16;15
Marisa Eikenberry
And they do. yeah. I hadn't thought about that until you said that, but there have definitely been some times where we have pushed back against the zealot way of thinking, and we're seem oddly or thought to be the zealots, and we're not.

00;03;16;17 - 00;03;34;00
Wayne Turmel
And that's the thing, is that at the end of the day, our concern for this show and my concern that has driven my entire career in this business, which is literally this week, 28 years, by the way.

00;03;34;02 - 00;03;35;00
Marisa Eikenberry
Wow.

00;03;35;02 - 00;03;38;22
Wayne Turmel
May 6th, 1996 was my first job in the training industry.

00;03;38;27 - 00;03;45;13
Marisa Eikenberry
To say it, I will not comment on the fact I'm only 32.

00;03;45;15 - 00;04;13;12
Wayne Turmel
A two Berta. but, my concern and what has driven me has always been helping people get through work, and the way that we work is changing. And has changed and will continue to change. And there is always the tension between what needs to be done for the employer, for the business, which is a perfectly legitimate concern.

00;04;13;14 - 00;04;39;18
Wayne Turmel
Business doesn't make money, doesn't keep its stores open, people don't have jobs. Our employees owe their employers right the fruits of their labor, and they get a paycheck in exchange. And and so the circumstances of remote work have changed. And the way that we interact has changed. And I think our job is to help people navigate that and make good choices.

00;04;39;21 - 00;04;41;19
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Absolutely.

00;04;41;22 - 00;04;53;20
Wayne Turmel
this notion that all jobs can be done remotely, while more true than we ever thought it could be. Yeah, is also not universally true.

00;04;53;22 - 00;04;55;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And we've talked about that a lot on this show.

00;04;55;29 - 00;05;02;09
Wayne Turmel
You can work from home all day long if you can find somebody to pay you to do it right.

00;05;02;12 - 00;05;05;21
Marisa Eikenberry
And there are some jobs that they just they can't be remote.

00;05;05;24 - 00;05;42;06
Wayne Turmel
The job, the the purpose of our show is to help people work where and when it makes sense. And we get lumped in frequently with the zealots. And the truth of the matter is, not all work can be done remotely. Not all work should be done remotely, and not everybody is cut out for it. And if you are going to work remotely, if you are unhappy with being in the office all the time in your experiments, experimenting or exploring the idea of remote work, here's how to do it.

00;05;42;06 - 00;05;58;05
Wayne Turmel
And here's how we can help. And we hope that this gets you through it and keeps the weasels at bay. So you know, we are not zealots, nor are we always on the side of the people who say, go into the office.

00;05;58;07 - 00;05;59;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;05;59;17 - 00;06;08;17
Wayne Turmel
You know, it's about navigating the realities and hopefully that's what we're bringing. But we've done some stuff. I mean, 100 episodes, good heavens.

00;06;08;17 - 00;06;22;03
Marisa Eikenberry
There's yeah, we've talked about a lot of stuff and so on that line. So like, what has been the most surprising lesson or maybe like an unexpected discovery while we've been doing this podcast?

00;06;22;05 - 00;06;58;09
Wayne Turmel
I think the unexpected discovery was really how so many timeless concepts are relevant in the context of remote work. And I'm thinking specifically about the Johari Window episode that we did with a lot of people fell into. And, I mean, I dealt with the Johari window when the process first came out in the 80s, and people were looking at it and, you know, it was new to my career, and I did all that, and I taught it, and I talked about it and I thought, oh, it's old news.

00;06;58;09 - 00;07;23;09
Wayne Turmel
Everybody knows it. But the purpose, just for those of you who want to go back and listen to it or don't remember, the Johari window says that we look at the world through this window that has four kind of panes to it. Right? There's what we see and we know we see it, and that's what it is. There's what we see and there's stuff there that we don't know.

00;07;23;15 - 00;07;39;24
Wayne Turmel
There's what people see of us that we're aware of. Right. And stuff that people may not be aware of and everything. And of course that's true regardless. And that was a bad explanation. But you can go back and listen to.

00;07;39;24 - 00;07;41;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah we'll have a link in the show notes.

00;07;41;13 - 00;07;56;10
Wayne Turmel
But the point is that there there's always what you see. And there's something unseen behind it when you work remotely or when you lead people remotely, it is literally unseen.

00;07;56;12 - 00;07;58;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;07;58;15 - 00;08;20;15
Wayne Turmel
So not only are the there the normal things. Right? Is she telling me the truth when she says she's on time for that project? But I can't look her in the eye. I can't look over her shoulder and see what she's doing. I can't hear the conversations she's having with her coworkers.

00;08;20;17 - 00;08;22;21
Marisa Eikenberry
Can't see her visibly sweating as she tells.

00;08;22;24 - 00;08;38;22
Wayne Turmel
Can't see her visibly sweating or, you know, rolling her eyes or whatever it is. and so that notion of so much what we do in the remote work space is white space.

00;08;38;25 - 00;08;39;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;08;39;15 - 00;08;42;02
Wayne Turmel
We don't know what's going on there.

00;08;42;04 - 00;08;43;29
Marisa Eikenberry
We are entering into the void.

00;08;44;02 - 00;09;08;02
Wayne Turmel
We need to actively seek it, and we need to have trust that our communication is clear and that people are understanding. And if there is a problem that they are willing to give us that feedback that we're getting, the feedback we need to do the job, whether they're the individual contributor or the, the manager leader, boss. Right.

00;09;08;04 - 00;09;33;05
Wayne Turmel
And so while I knew that to be true, it. Always amazes me how what is true has always been true and continues to be true and will ever be true. And we get lost sometimes in the minutia of the work and the stress of working in new ways and new environments.

00;09;33;08 - 00;09;50;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Well, and I remember when we even talked about doing that episode, you were like, I know I'm thinking about this and, you know, but I don't know. And I was like, what the heck is that? And it was that moment of, oh, right, there are all these other people that are entering the workforce have no idea what this is.

00;09;50;10 - 00;10;00;27
Marisa Eikenberry
And now it's one of our top episodes. And the clip of us explaining it on our YouTube, I think is one of the top clips we've ever done. So people are clearly interested.

00;10;00;29 - 00;10;25;28
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, it's funny, I remember we did an episode with my friend Trina Halfling and we were talking about what did we get wrong? Right? Because she and I have both been in this space a very long time. We were both, you know, 15 years before Covid, talking about remote work and helping people to make that adjustment. And what did we get wrong?

00;10;25;28 - 00;10;50;14
Wayne Turmel
And I think, you know, some of the things we got wrong were expected, right? We didn't have the technology we did. So the growth of things like teams and slack and and those kinds of collaboration tools, we couldn't have predicted that. I think the biggest thing that we was the jobs that could be done.

00;10;50;16 - 00;10;51;07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;10;51;10 - 00;10;52;16
Wayne Turmel
Remotely.

00;10;52;18 - 00;11;03;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. We had no idea how prevalent it was until 2020 happened. And it was like, oh, we thought this could never be done remotely, but it actually can.

00;11;03;13 - 00;11;38;14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And, you know, we had a conversation with Alan Whitman, who is the head of an accounting firm, and talk about old hidebound businesses that ran by tradition. Let's talk about CPA firms. And even prior to Covid, he was in the process of and you can listen to this exercise. We'll have links in the show notes, he was in the process of revolutionizing things by saying, you know, you sit at a computer and crunch numbers all day.

00;11;38;16 - 00;11;44;09
Wayne Turmel
The benefits of being in the same crowded room to do that aren't what we thought they were.

00;11;44;11 - 00;11;45;28
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;11;46;01 - 00;11;56;13
Wayne Turmel
And by thinking about remote work differently, you know, yes, you are giving up some things. The office party really sucks, when everybody.

00;11;56;17 - 00;11;57;21
Marisa Eikenberry
Says it's not good.

00;11;57;23 - 00;12;32;17
Wayne Turmel
The pizza isn't that good. And, you know, happy hour is kind of sad and clinically dangerous. But there are advantages, right? Yes. You don't have that everyday communication. There are ways to mitigate that so that you can have real time collaboration and cooperation if you need it. But you can expand the geographic reach. I mean, when companies say we hire the best available people, well, what you mean is you hire the best available people within a 20 mile radius of your office.

00;12;32;19 - 00;12;35;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;12;35;19 - 00;13;05;16
Wayne Turmel
When you open yourself up to working remotely, your talent pool expands, your customer pool expands your right. So people that are re thing king. The old ways of thinking and making it work, are interesting to me, and I think Allen's episode was a really good example of that. Yeah, I've also the other thing that does depress me about it.

00;13;05;16 - 00;13;07;10
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00;13;07;12 - 00;13;31;11
Wayne Turmel
Well, I was going to say, you know, and that's when you're looking at the future, it's like, look at the all the good stuff and the positive and, and this is where the remote work folks sometimes get a bit rose colored glasses about the whole thing. Certain things continue to depress me. in many ways it's made the issue of sick days worse.

00;13;31;13 - 00;13;32;14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And we've talked.

00;13;32;15 - 00;13;55;25
Wayne Turmel
Americans were always terrible about taking their sick days. Most Americans don't nearly take all the time off that is available to them anyway, and they tend not to take their sick days, because they're saving it up so they can use them for vacation days, which they may then don't take,

00;13;55;28 - 00;14;20;00
Wayne Turmel
But when you're at home, a lot of us are like, well, yeah, I'm sick, but I'm already home. So I'll get on that call or I'll answer those emails or I'll do these things which add can add if you're not careful and mindful to the stress and the burnout and other things that are a legitimate concern about remote work.

00;14;20;03 - 00;14;23;10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Absolutely.

00;14;23;12 - 00;14;34;05
Wayne Turmel
What about you, lady? I mean, you it's funny, you are only you are only actively engaged here and half of the shows.

00;14;34;07 - 00;14;35;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;14;35;10 - 00;14;51;11
Wayne Turmel
But you edit and listen to and and have sat in on these conversations. And by the way, while I have had a lot of these conversations over the last 28 years, a lot of this is new to you. What have you or what surprised you?

00;14;51;13 - 00;15;16;06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. so this is one of the things that has surprised me, and it's less about what you and I have talked about as far as, like, learning something, but never knowing what's going to resonate from the listener's perspective. So we had an episode, and I'll link to it about their return to office backfire and scare tactics that were being used to get people back into the office.

00;15;16;06 - 00;15;27;06
Marisa Eikenberry
And one of them was this crazy avatar, and her name was Anna, and she looked decrepit and, we made a nice layered joke and it was great.

00;15;27;09 - 00;16;04;22
Wayne Turmel
But content and context. A company in the UK, who had which had a vested interest in getting people back to the office, created this avatar and this. Yeah, they sold office furniture. And it was this whole avatar about, what happens when you work from home remotely. And Anna was this vaguely Jabba the Hutt ish type who was working in bed with, like, food wrappers and all kinds of things, and she had this sickly pallor because, of course, that's what happens when you work from home, right?

00;16;04;25 - 00;16;06;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;16;06;13 - 00;16;11;20
Wayne Turmel
but people did. People's reaction to that was pretty vociferous.

00;16;11;20 - 00;16;38;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Was the most wild thing. So not only did that episode kind of had a, I mean, for us, many viral moments on YouTube, and for us, many viral is like it got 7000 views and that was incredible for us, but it just kept getting more views and we weren't expecting that to happen. Like, why did that one take off as opposed to some of the other ones?

00;16;38;13 - 00;16;58;23
Marisa Eikenberry
But some of the comments were interesting too, because we did have some people that were thanking us for talking about that subject and talking about, you know, why it was wrong. And we had others that were like, you know, okay, you guys are fat. Go back to the office. there were some I deleted, you know, or you guys are lazy because you won't go back to the office.

00;16;58;23 - 00;17;07;03
Marisa Eikenberry
And it was like, I'm a hybrid employee, first off. And to, like, we're still doing our job. We're just doing. Yeah. From I think.

00;17;07;03 - 00;17;32;16
Wayne Turmel
That's I think one of the things and by the way, if you haven't figured out by now, we do in fact, listen to you listeners. So, you know, comments, questions, vicious personal attacks. We look at them all and we incorporate them into the show. Some of the most fun episodes we've had are like pet peeves or answering specific questions or, you know, why do you hate virtual meetings, right?

00;17;32;16 - 00;17;33;13
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. Whatever it is.

00;17;33;17 - 00;17;34;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, yeah.

00;17;34;29 - 00;18;08;17
Wayne Turmel
But I think that. The tension around remote work, is something that if we've done anything really well. Over the last two years, 100 episodes, I think it's being pretty candid about benefits and minuses and what works in order to make it successful. And what do you need to watch out for that may make it less so. And maybe that's not such a good idea.

00;18;08;19 - 00;18;16;00
Wayne Turmel
I think that that's something that we've done pretty well, and I hope that the listeners, agree with us on that.

00;18;16;02 - 00;18;38;17
Marisa Eikenberry
I think some of the other thing that's been really fun, too, is some of the topics that we've talked about where you and I approach the same topic a little differently. A because I've not been doing this nearly as long as you have. I just had my 10th anniversary at the company just last week. And, you know, and I have not worked from home most of that time.

00;18;38;19 - 00;18;56;21
Marisa Eikenberry
All the time I used to be in the office full time. And so there have been some things that as a digital native, I'm going to approach that subject differently than you are. And it doesn't mean that one of us is wrong. It's just a different way of looking at it and a way of us taking both perspectives and learning from each other.

00;18;56;23 - 00;19;24;22
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think that the demographic differences are really important. we are at a unique time where we're going from people who had to learn to use a computer to people who practically have implants. You know, that idea of the digital native is a big change in how people approach their work and what it means to be productive.

00;19;24;24 - 00;20;14;15
Wayne Turmel
I think that the demographic changes moving from, you know, the baby boomers through whatever artificial divisions we put in there. Yeah, X, y, Z, millennials, echo boomers, Zoomers, you know, Zoomers. y rabbits, whatever the heck you want to call the different groups of people. Those differences are real, and they have both. Positive benefits that they bring to the workplace and ideas, you know, I remember talking to somebody about meetings and somebody said, you know, these darn kid assets in a sentence that starts with these darn kids.

00;20;14;15 - 00;20;34;05
Wayne Turmel
I usually know I'm going to really enjoy this conversation. Yeah. but it started with these darn kids. You know, they have no attention span and they aren't willing to sit through a meeting knowing that the meetings are going to be awful. But they got to do them. And I said, says who?

00;20;34;07 - 00;20;44;02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Why would I sit in a meeting? That's awful and does nothing for me when I could be doing a project that I've also been assigned to do? Yeah.

00;20;44;04 - 00;20;50;10
Wayne Turmel
so maybe what we need to do is make the meetings less awful.

00;20;50;13 - 00;20;52;05
Marisa Eikenberry
A strange concept.

00;20;52;08 - 00;21;03;14
Wayne Turmel
You know, it's like, yes, I have calluses on my butt from sitting for long periods of time, inactive. But that's not a badge of honor, you know?

00;21;03;17 - 00;21;05;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;21;05;15 - 00;21;22;09
Wayne Turmel
so I think that our, Even though you are an extremely old soul, I think that the demographic differences make a lot of have a lot of meaning and add a lot to the conversation.

00;21;22;13 - 00;21;43;04
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I think so, too. And, well, and even, like, a funny behind the scenes for some of you that are listening, like we did have a conversation once and I will have to look and find out what the episode was because I do not remember stuff I had. But you know, we were talking about the differences between the generations and how they work from home.

00;21;43;06 - 00;22;07;29
Marisa Eikenberry
And you had asked me about, well, how do your friends feel about it? How do and I don't have friends that work from home like none of my immediate friends work from home. They've all got jobs that they go into the office for because they have to, or in medicine or whatever. And I remember having a moment of, I can't just tell them like, I don't have I'm trying to make up something on the spot.

00;22;07;29 - 00;22;10;14
Marisa Eikenberry
So, you know, that was that was super fun.

00;22;10;16 - 00;22;19;09
Wayne Turmel
but something you didn't have to make up. I loved the episode that we did where we used you as the guinea pig for the, gaming avatar.

00;22;19;10 - 00;22;40;21
Marisa Eikenberry
I had so much fun, that it was like I got to have my hobbies and my interests and everything all wrapped up into one, and it was a it was a beautiful thing we still use. So work in that organization today. and we still have fun with it. So there's that. So so I'll link to that to.

00;22;40;24 - 00;23;05;15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So I know we could go on about this forever. And self-congratulatory anniversary episodes are usually painless. what do you think, listeners, what have you learned from the show? What do you enjoy about it? What do you hate about it? tell us, what do you want to hear more of? This is a really good time to take stock and assess.

00;23;05;17 - 00;23;12;12
Wayne Turmel
Are we bringing you what you want to hear? So let us know. And that is not lip service. We need to know that stuff.

00;23;12;18 - 00;23;32;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah I was going to say I legitimately look at every comment that we get on all of our social media platforms. And as long as you're not a jerk, I don't delete the comment. So and usually respond. But that being said, Wayne, thank you so much for 100 episodes and here's to 100 more literally.

00;23;32;18 - 00;23;39;07
Wayne Turmel
Would not have been possible without you lady. So, you do all the heavy, heavy lifting on the back end.

00;23;39;07 - 00;23;42;10
Marisa Eikenberry
So when someone told you to do it.

00;23;42;12 - 00;24;06;19
Wayne Turmel
Plus you're the one that told me to do it. thank you to Marissa. Thank you to Kevin and the team at the Kevin Eikenberry Group who keep us afloat and paid. And thank you to you listeners. you know, we want to do what you need from us. That's what we do here. So, thank you for listening.

00;24;06;22 - 00;24;08;19
Wayne Turmel
Marissa, bring us home.

00;24;08;21 - 00;24;28;09
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, as I said, thank you so much for listening and for show notes, transcripts and other resources from this show or any other of our episodes, visit long distance work life.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show so you don'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;24;28;12 - 00;24;44;23
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes. Let us know you listen to this episode, what you liked, what you hated. We'll listen to both and even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We really want to hear from you, and we really want to talk about the topics.

00;24;44;25 - 00;25;06;04
Marisa Eikenberry
You want to talk about. And before we sign off, I want to tell you about our long distance leadership series at Kevin nike.com/ld. Liz. Whether you're a seasoned leader or stepping into remotely leadership role for the first time, this series offers practical tools and expert advice to help you succeed. It's great for individuals or for your whole leadership team.

00;25;06;11 - 00;25;24;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Again, that's Kevin eichenberg.com/l d. Let's start strengthening your remote leadership skills today. Thank you so much for joining us for over 100 episodes. Whether this is your first one or you've been with us for a long time. And this way I'd like to say don't let the voices get you down.

00;25;24;15 - 00;25;29;05




Timestamps

0:00 Introduction
1:00 Celebrating 100 Episodes
2:30 Top Lessons on Remote Work
5:00 Effective Communication Strategies
8:00 Work-Life Balance Tips
12:00 Evolution of Remote Work
15:30 Listener Feedback and Impact
18:00 Looking Forward to Future Episodes

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Long-Distance Leadership Series

If you want to dive deeper into the strategies and tools for effectively managing remote teams, check out the Long-Distance Leadership Series by The Kevin Eikenberry Group. This comprehensive series offers valuable insights and practical advice on leading remote and hybrid teams with confidence and success. From mastering virtual communication to fostering team engagement, the Long-Distance Leadership Series has everything you need to become a more effective remote leader. Start transforming your remote leadership skills today!

 Learn More
Read More
Supporting Mental Health in Remote Teams
Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Supporting Mental Health in Remote Teams

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel dive deep into the relationship between mental health and remote work. They explore the roles organizations play in supporting the mental well-being of remote employees and discuss various strategies and initiatives that can help. From the benefits of remote work for individuals with social anxiety to the challenges of isolation and blurred work-life boundaries, this episode provides practical advice for both leaders and team members. Tune in to discover how to foster a healthier remote work environment.

Key Points

  • The role of organizations in supporting the mental health of remote employees.
  • Examples of effective policies and initiatives, including health insurance and mental health apps.
  • The importance of regular check-ins and open communication in remote teams.
  • The dual nature of isolation in remote work: its benefits and drawbacks.
  • Managing stressors unique to remote work environments.
  • How remote work can serve as a safe haven for individuals with social anxiety.
  • The significance of self-awareness and checking in with oneself and others.

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    00;00;08;06 - 00;00;18;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to the long distance work life. We help you live, 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.

    00;00;19;02 - 00;00;21;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Hello, Marisa. How are you today?

    00;00;21;28 - 00;00;23;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I'm great. How are you?

    00;00;23;10 - 00;00;31;28
    Wayne Turmel
    I am, I am well today. Actually, I've thought about it and I've taken inventory. Yes, I am up and taking nourishment. And life is good.

    00;00;32;01 - 00;00;56;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, thank God for that. And speaking of taking inventories of ourselves, we are actually going to talk about how mental health and remote work kind of go together. so one of the things like kind of wanted to start with and, Wayne, I know you did some research for this episode before we even got here, but, what roles do organizations play in supporting mental health of remote employees?

    00;00;56;12 - 00;00;58;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Is that their job?

    00;00;58;19 - 00;01;22;04
    Wayne Turmel
    see, that is the great question, right? Is what do employers owe their employees? What do their employees owe their employers? And in a strictly capitalist labor is services in exchange for money world. Technically, employers don't owe their employees much.

    00;01;22;06 - 00;01;27;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? Which I'm sure will thrilled the people that are listening to. Well, right now.

    00;01;27;13 - 00;01;54;03
    Wayne Turmel
    There is a much larger conversation to be had about what do we owe each other? Right? Is there a social contract? But to be purely technical, if we're just looking at the letter of the law, your employer doesn't owe you squat. Now, is it in the employer's best interest? Right. You have employees who can function at a high level and do good work and be productive.

    00;01;54;03 - 00;02;17;19
    Wayne Turmel
    And the answer is yes. And so somewhere, like so much in this world, there is a balance where they say you know, we really need to support our employees, partly because we're not complete ogres, but also because it helps people get the work done. And that's what we're paying them for. That's so that an imbalance is always there.

    00;02;17;19 - 00;02;38;23
    Wayne Turmel
    And some organizations take it very seriously. They offer lots of, benefits, support, mental health resources, which statistically is easy and inexpensive for them to do because most people do not take advantage of them.

    00;02;38;25 - 00;02;46;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. So have you seen some examples or of policies or initiatives that companies have done that have made this effective?

    00;02;46;10 - 00;02;55;12
    Wayne Turmel
    Sure. Well, here in America, it usually takes the form of, health insurance. That includes mental health.

    00;02;55;18 - 00;02;58;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Support, which is huge by itself.

    00;02;58;07 - 00;03;28;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Which is not to be sneezed. That, the big thing is that there are services out there which companies partner with and they say, hey, you know, as part of your employment package, you have access to X amount of counseling through this particular service, or you can get this particular package of resources and very often and those tend to be much larger companies.

    00;03;28;20 - 00;03;57;18
    Wayne Turmel
    but they're there and it's important I mean I don't need to say this because if you listen to us for 30s, you understand that we are not mental health professionals and understand, dear listener, that we are speaking as lay people and people who care about you. and we are not doctors, so, you know, that needs to be said.

    00;03;57;20 - 00;04;04;07
    Wayne Turmel
    everything we say needs to be examined and run through that filter.

    00;04;04;10 - 00;04;27;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, and you were talking about different programs and things that, some companies do. One of the other things that I've seen some companies mention, or people mentioning that their companies are doing, would even be things like having a year long access to the calm app or the headspace app as like this kind of meditation can chill out for a second kind of thing.

    00;04;27;08 - 00;04;36;10
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. And again, that gets done on an individual company and an individual team kind of basis.

    00;04;36;13 - 00;04;37;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;04;38;00 - 00;05;16;08
    Wayne Turmel
    you know, and there are things managers are doing. But one of the things that I think we need to to bear in mind is that there are benefits, there are mental health benefits to remote work, and there are some challenges. And leaders are often really uncomfortable because they aren't experts, either they aren't psychiatrists or psychologists, and they very often are dealing with their own feelings, thoughts, ideas.

    00;05;16;11 - 00;05;48;14
    Wayne Turmel
    And so it is very difficult for them unless there is a really good communication process and unless we check in with each other on a regular basis, and pick up on what's happening, it's really easy for things, especially in a remote environment, for things to go unnoticed. I mean, if I'm in the office and Alice breaks down sobbing over her keyboard.

    00;05;48;16 - 00;05;49;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;05;49;12 - 00;05;54;05
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. It's pretty easy for me to go, oh, there's a problem here.

    00;05;54;07 - 00;05;55;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    All right. Alice, are you okay?

    00;05;55;28 - 00;06;17;14
    Wayne Turmel
    And we're not being flippant about this. I mean, we see this every day in the workplace. Everybody is dealing with their own stuff. if Alice can hold it together for the 20 minutes of a zoom call, I have no idea if she's slumped over her keyboard when the camera's off.

    00;06;17;17 - 00;06;32;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Or to that point, too, because, you know, some people will do zoom meetings with cameras off to begin with. And if you haven't seen Joe in three weeks because he never turned his camera on, like you may have no idea that he's going through something.

    00;06;32;06 - 00;06;44;00
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. So I, I think it's important that we look at, you know, what are some of the positive aspect. How does this positively affect mental health and how does it not.

    00;06;44;02 - 00;07;07;00
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. So I know we've talked about some of these things before. So things like isolation or having blurred boundaries between, you know, when you're working and when you're home. but one of the other things is like, you know, obviously we have a bunch of stressors. So what are some stressors for remote workers that you've noticed and how can they be effectively managed?

    00;07;07;02 - 00;07;42;21
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, one of the big stressors for remote workers is that they are very often torn. I mean, we saw this during Covid. This became blatantly aware, during Covid where people were dealing with death and illness and, you know, those types of things that were going on in the background of, oh, and by the, you know, I need to get my kids schooled and I need to look after my parents, and I need and I don't feel that good myself.

    00;07;42;25 - 00;08;18;04
    Wayne Turmel
    And oh, by the way, I need to keep my job. And so I need to put on a good face or they'll make me go back into the office right? Right. And and so that split loyalty for some people, it's very easy. They can compartmentalize very well. Again, not everybody can of course. Right. And to say, oh, we gave you the same chance we give everybody else may well be true and it may save your conscience.

    00;08;18;06 - 00;08;40;22
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm not entirely sure it's the best way to look at it. for managers and leaders out there. I know that I myself and I've told a similar story to this before. I used to kind of judge everybody's actions and effectiveness and motives by what was going on with me.

    00;08;40;25 - 00;08;42;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Don't we all?

    00;08;42;03 - 00;08;42;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Well.

    00;08;42;25 - 00;08;44;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    At least to start, until we know.

    00;08;44;20 - 00;09;09;25
    Wayne Turmel
    That that self-awareness is really, really important, right? I remember very early in my career, I was talking to my boss's wife, who happened to be part of the business, and she was very judgmental. Somebody was having what was clearly a mental health episode, although we didn't call it that at the time. Right. and she goes, well, I wish I had time for that.

    00;09;09;28 - 00;09;19;13
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, I was busy raising a child and running a business, and bye bye bye bye bye. And I just didn't have time to whine and feel sorry for myself, was how she phrased it.

    00;09;19;16 - 00;09;22;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Wow, she sounds delightful.

    00;09;22;08 - 00;09;34;29
    Wayne Turmel
    And you know what she is? She is a lovely person, but she white knuckled her way through most of the crises in her life. And if she can do it, why can't everybody else?

    00;09;35;01 - 00;09;36;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And but I just not like that.

    00;09;36;25 - 00;10;03;08
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, I came across an analogy and it was during the Northridge earthquake. Okay. We lived in Southern California in in Northridge, in the center of the quake zone. And the ground, if you can picture taking a carpet and kind of flipping one end of it and it rolls, that's what the ground did. And as a result, the house, there were three houses next to each other.

    00;10;03;08 - 00;10;09;03
    Wayne Turmel
    We were in the middle. The house on one side was almost completely destroyed.

    00;10;09;06 - 00;10;10;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Wow.

    00;10;10;10 - 00;10;20;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Our house suffered damage but was functional and we could live in it and all that good stuff. And the house next to us got almost nothing.

    00;10;20;26 - 00;10;21;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Wow.

    00;10;21;29 - 00;10;33;22
    Wayne Turmel
    All three houses were the same builder. They were built at the same time. They had the same floor or plan and got hit by the same earthquake.

    00;10;33;25 - 00;10;35;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    With three different outcomes.

    00;10;35;20 - 00;10;41;00
    Wayne Turmel
    And yet had completely different results.

    00;10;41;02 - 00;10;41;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;10;42;01 - 00;11;13;25
    Wayne Turmel
    Three different outcomes. And that analogy has stuck with me when we're talking about this. And so, you know, you take something like isolation. for one person, isolation might be the best thing I can get my work done. My work requires focus. And being able to work and maybe listening to my body a little bit. So sometimes a day work better than others, and I don't get bothered by people like that.

    00;11;14;00 - 00;11;42;19
    Wayne Turmel
    So isolation, or at least being more alone makes sense. And that works for me. For other people, it exacerbates what other problems they have. Again, during Covid and not making light of anything. The number of teens harming themselves during Covid during the the school shutdown here in Clark County, double.

    00;11;42;21 - 00;11;45;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I'm not surprised.

    00;11;45;26 - 00;12;08;01
    Wayne Turmel
    Well and so isolation is really tough. And as a leader how do you manage that with your team. Right. Is somebody quiet because they're quiet. Are they quiet because there's something else going on. And so check ins and I don't mean you have to put them on a couch and ask deep, you know.

    00;12;08;02 - 00;12;08;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;12;08;21 - 00;12;16;12
    Wayne Turmel
    Probing questions about your psyche. but legitimately checking it.

    00;12;16;14 - 00;12;20;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely. And that's why one on one so. Right.

    00;12;21;01 - 00;12;23;16
    Wayne Turmel
    It's it's really, really critical.

    00;12;23;18 - 00;12;38;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Changing direction directions a little bit and going into some of the benefits, that remote work can have with mental health. So can you discuss how remote work might actually act as like a safe haven for individuals with social anxiety?

    00;12;38;10 - 00;13;12;09
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. Exactly. Right. It's, you know, the number of people who. Experience social anxiety is higher than we've ever thought, because people have always just kind of white knuckled their way through it. What remote work has allowed people to do is not have to deal with some of those stressors, that we have to work with. You know, commutes are horribly stressful.

    00;13;12;09 - 00;13;54;21
    Wayne Turmel
    By the time you get to the office, you're already freaked out. we are experiencing an era where, people are afraid to speak up for whatever reasons. social tensions on things like politics and what's going on in the world and all that stuff is making the workplace a very stressful environment. And for those who are, well, bullying, for lack of a better word, which sounds very grad school but goes on in the workplace all the time, is actually on absolutely.

    00;13;54;24 - 00;14;32;04
    Wayne Turmel
    What we've experienced is that remote work removes some of that. And I'll give you an example. we're hearing that and this is all anecdotal, but it's pretty widely documented that people who traditionally don't speak up. Right, whether because they are socially anxious, whether because there's a power imbalance, whatever that is, are more comfortable speaking up because I don't have to sit in a conference room with Bob staring daggers at me if I disagree with his idea.

    00;14;32;11 - 00;14;37;20
    Wayne Turmel
    And oh, by the way, Bob is going to follow me all the way back to my desk, haranguing me for it.

    00;14;37;22 - 00;14;59;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? Yeah. Well, and to give you another perspective too, because like, I mean, I, I have a fair amount of social anxiety. I am an anxious person by nature. This will shock no one who actually knows me. but for me, I'm not necessarily like, obviously I've worked on our team for ten years. I trust the team members.

    00;14;59;23 - 00;15;21;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I trust our coworkers. I know that it's not a, you know, waves, not staring daggers at me across the room. Like, don't you dare say anything. Like, that's not happening. But for me, I'm somebody that I want to work so hard not to interrupt a conversation. So if we're all at a conference table and everybody's talking, or even during a team meeting on the web, everybody's talking all at once.

    00;15;21;19 - 00;15;38;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I have something to say. But there's no breath for me to do it. And if there's no breath, I'll never say it. But now I can open up a chat window and I can post it in there, and somebody might be able to see it and then go, oh, hey, she just said this and it can get added to the conversation.

    00;15;38;17 - 00;15;44;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And then maybe that gives me an opportunity to go off mute and say something else.

    00;15;44;12 - 00;16;27;04
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. Which brings us to the power of you're absolutely right. The chat feature in meetings is frequently, underutilized and underappreciated. It allows those who maybe aren't as comfortable speaking up or can't find a good time. Like me says, making air quotes to to contribute allows them to do that. There is also the asynchronous component of things like teams and chat and slack, where you don't have to have that brilliant idea right there in the middle of the conversation.

    00;16;27;06 - 00;17;02;16
    Wayne Turmel
    You have time to think about it. You can actually use AI to. There are so many tools now that you can say, hey, I want you using Grammarly, for example. Yeah. you know, I want this to sound friendly or I want this to sound professional or whatever. You can write what you're doing and it will adjust the tone for you till it sounds like you think it should sound so that you are not lashing out anymore.

    00;17;02;19 - 00;17;38;01
    Wayne Turmel
    Right? This is this is actually an ability to communicate more effectively, not display your anxiety. not add to anyone else's. Because very often, and those of us who tend to make jokes, those of us who tend to be, a little more assertive than others frequently add to other people's burdens without meaning to write. you didn't have to agree that quickly.

    00;17;38;04 - 00;17;39;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I mean.

    00;17;39;24 - 00;17;41;09
    Wayne Turmel
    And it's true.

    00;17;41;12 - 00;17;43;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;17;43;22 - 00;18;03;09
    Wayne Turmel
    So, you know, and we could go on for a long time about this, but I think that the key here is that as individuals, we need to kind of take inventory periodically. How am I doing.

    00;18;03;12 - 00;18;04;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Right.

    00;18;04;20 - 00;18;08;00
    Wayne Turmel
    Why am I doing that way? Why am I doing that.

    00;18;08;02 - 00;18;11;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, right. Is it something on my end or. It's something.

    00;18;11;11 - 00;18;46;28
    Wayne Turmel
    Trivial? Is it something identifiable that I can deal with or that I need help dealing with? Is it a more general sense of anxiety or fear or whatever it is? It starts there, right? As leaders, are we checking in even if we don't have high priced psychological resources and mental health benefits and all of that stuff? We can check in and say, how are you doing?

    00;18;47;00 - 00;18;49;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, it's as simple as that.

    00;18;49;18 - 00;19;12;20
    Wayne Turmel
    It's really important and that we listen to the answer without judgment. I, I, I have worked from home for most of my career, pretty much full time, almost 20 years, and I have had times when I'm doing great and times when I'm not doing so great.

    00;19;12;23 - 00;19;16;00
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, me too. And I've done half that time.

    00;19;16;02 - 00;19;43;21
    Wayne Turmel
    And it takes courage. And that's a word that gets thrown around a lot. But it takes courage to raise your hand and say, hey, this is not working for me. I mean, very recently I said to Kevin, I need to stop doing this. Yeah. Certain things because this is not working. Right. There are projects that I was working on.

    00;19;43;29 - 00;20;03;19
    Wayne Turmel
    I can't do that right now. I am not, and I'm a grown man who has done this a lot. And it's, you know, but I was completely overwhelmed and I wasn't I wasn't moral in terms of what's on my plate. It wasn't worse than anybody else has. You have a busier agenda than I do most days.

    00;20;03;21 - 00;20;20;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But to be honest, the thing, you know what? Everybody's perspective is going to be a little different, like what your busy is and what my business might look different, what I can handle versus what you can handle might look different. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that one of us is better or not than the other person.

    00;20;20;28 - 00;20;54;21
    Wayne Turmel
    And that's the thing is the removal of judgment. We have to stop judging ourselves and be observant of what's happening and why it's happening, and be as honest with ourselves as we can. When others reach out to us, we need to be honest to them. You don't need to share everything right? But understand that they're coming from a place of they want to help and it may be that remote work is not great for you.

    00;20;54;23 - 00;21;11;13
    Wayne Turmel
    It may be that being in the office every day and fighting the commute and dealing with the crowds and all that stuff, maybe you need to back off a little bit and think about, maybe a more flexible work schedule.

    00;21;11;16 - 00;21;14;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    yeah, maybe a hybrid is the thing that works the best for you.

    00;21;14;11 - 00;21;37;06
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, nothing is one size fits all. But if we leave you with nothing else in this session, I think we need to recognize that how we work is a part of our life. It is not all of our life. If it is, you need to reexamine some things.

    00;21;37;08 - 00;21;37;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;21;38;01 - 00;22;10;17
    Wayne Turmel
    how and why and what we do as work is part of our life, and you can't just portion it off from everything else. Absolutely. And good leaders understand that. Good organizations consider that when they're looking at the the health and, state of their employees. And as individuals, we need to think about that as well. And so there are things like apps that can help us be more mindful.

    00;22;10;24 - 00;22;42;15
    Wayne Turmel
    There are things like meditation. There are things like, getting off your chair and going to that office function even when you don't want to. If that's going to help get you out of whatever you're in. so I hope that was helpful for folks. The big thing that I want people to remember is, whatever it is, it's not just you.

    00;22;42;18 - 00;23;04;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Amen to that. Wayne. Thank you so much for this episode. this was really great conversation. I really hope that it's helpful to our listeners and listeners. Thank you so much for listening to the Long Distance work life. Our show notes, transcripts, and other resources. Make sure to visit Long Distance Work life.com if you haven't yet, subscribe to the show so you don't miss any future episodes.

    00;23;04;28 - 00;23;19;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    While you're there, be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you like about our show. 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 even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you!

    00;23;20;02 - 00;23;46;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And before we sign off, I want to tell you about our long distance Leadership series at Kevineikenberry.com/ldls. Whether you're a seasoned leader or stepping into a remote leadership role for the first time, this series offers practical tools and expert advice to help you succeed. It's great for individuals or your whole leadership team. Again, that's Kevineikenberry.com/ldls. Let's start strengthening your remote leadership skills today.

    00;23;46;04 - 00;23;54;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Thank you so much for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say don't let the weasels get you down.

    00;23;54;06 - 00;23;58;20



    00;23;58;22 - 00;23;59;13




    Timestamps

    0:00 Introduction
    1:00 The Role of Organizations in Mental Health
    3:40 Examples of Effective Mental Health Policies
    6:30 Benefits and Challenges of Isolation
    8:00 Managing Stressors in Remote Work
    11:15 Remote Work as a Safe Haven for Social Anxiety
    14:30 Importance of Self-Awareness and Check-Ins
    17:45 Practical Tips for Leaders
    20:30 Closing Thoughts

    Related Episodes

    Additional Resources

    Long-Distance Leadership Series

    If you want to dive deeper into the strategies and tools for effectively managing remote teams, check out the Long-Distance Leadership Series by The Kevin Eikenberry Group. This comprehensive series offers valuable insights and practical advice on leading remote and hybrid teams with confidence and success. From mastering virtual communication to fostering team engagement, the Long-Distance Leadership Series has everything you need to become a more effective remote leader. Start transforming your remote leadership skills today!

     Learn More
    Read More
    Revolutionizing Remote Onboarding with AI: Insights and Innovations
    Ask Wayne Anything, Hybrid Work, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

    Revolutionizing Remote Onboarding with AI: Insights and Innovations

    Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel dive into the exciting intersection of AI and employee onboarding. They explore how AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT can streamline the onboarding process, enhance personalization, and provide 24/7 support for new hires. Tune in to hear real-life examples, expert insights, and a touch of humor as Marisa and Wayne discuss the future of AI in remote and hybrid work environments. Discover how AI can revolutionize the onboarding experience, making new employees feel valued and accelerating their assimilation into the company culture.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Leverage AI for Time Efficiency: Integrate AI tools like Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT to handle repetitive onboarding tasks, saving time for both new hires and onboarding managers.
    2. Personalize the Onboarding Experience: Tag and categorize onboarding materials to help AI deliver personalized content that matches the specific skills and needs of new hires.
    3. Implement 24/7 Chatbot Support: Set up chatbots to provide continuous support, ensuring new hires can get answers to their questions even when human supervisors are unavailable.
    4. Utilize Data-Driven Insights: Regularly review data collected by AI tools to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance the onboarding process.
    5. Balance AI with Human Interaction: Use AI to manage routine tasks, freeing up managers to focus on building personal relationships with new hires, which is crucial for engagement and assimilation.
    6. Integrate AI with Internal Systems: Work with your IT team to connect AI tools with your company’s internal network and resources, ensuring they have access to the relevant data and documents needed for effective onboarding.
    7. Solicit Feedback from New Hires: Regularly gather feedback from new employees about their onboarding experience and use this information to continuously refine and improve the process.

    View Full Transcript

    00;00;08;02 - 00;00;20;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to Long Distance Worklife, where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, fellow remote worker. And joining me is remote work expert and my co-host, Wayne Turmel. Hi, Wayne.

    00;00;20;11 - 00;00;24;05
    Wayne Turmel
    Hi. I'm here until I am replaced by our robot overlords.

    00;00;24;08 - 00;00;45;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Every time. but, listeners, so some of you who have been listening to this show for a while, you heard us talk about zoom and some of the AI stuff that's being added to all kinds of different platforms and not just zoom itself. And so we wanted to take a little bit of that and talk about AI and onboarding and how those two could kind of come together.

    00;00;45;22 - 00;00;54;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And in true AI fashion. we decided to get a little meta and ask, I believe it was copilot right wing.

    00;00;55;00 - 00;01;26;29
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. So here's the deal. we have been playing with various things, you know, what is it that we're worried about? Right. And one of the hardest things for remote and hybrid teams is onboarding employees. Right? And I have sat through enough HR, software, webinars, taking the bullets so you don't have to. Dear listener. And one of the things that they say all the time is, well, it can help with onboarding.

    00;01;27;05 - 00;01;29;11
    Wayne Turmel
    And me being me went, okay.

    00;01;29;11 - 00;01;32;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    How right. Tell me.

    00;01;32;18 - 00;01;50;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Seems a reasonable question. and so, as Marisa says, we we decided let's see what AI has to say about this, and then we will respond. And so, as it turns out, I was using copilot.

    00;01;50;25 - 00;01;51;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;01;51;25 - 00;02;00;07
    Wayne Turmel
    a lot of people who don't work with this day in and day out assume that ChatGPT is the.

    00;02;00;10 - 00;02;01;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Guy who built.

    00;02;01;28 - 00;02;17;10
    Wayne Turmel
    It. It's the one that they know. It's the Kleenex, right? It's their whatever. You're on the generic Xerox of the, AI world. And in fact, I had dinner the other night with somebody who uses three services.

    00;02;17;12 - 00;02;17;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, wow.

    00;02;18;02 - 00;02;48;01
    Wayne Turmel
    That GPT, she uses Google Bard, and she uses Microsoft Copilot, and they all have their charms. So this is not a recommendation. I will tell you that I use copilot for the simple reason that my free ChatGPT account ran out, and I just didn't feel like paying for it. Whereas because I am a Microsoft office 365 user, I get copilot for free.

    00;02;48;04 - 00;03;14;03
    Wayne Turmel
    Done. Sold. Sign me up. The other thing that copilot does, which I like, and this is as close to a recommendation as you're going to get folks. Is that what I like is that copilot gives you the source from which they drew the information. So if it's an article, some of it, for example, you look and go, oh, that's paid content, right?

    00;03;14;04 - 00;03;31;05
    Wayne Turmel
    So I need to pay that. Take that with a grain of salt. I like having the the source content available. so we did. The question was. And I asked very politely because I'm very, of course, machines.

    00;03;31;08 - 00;03;34;15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I mean, I said thank you to our echo all the time.

    00;03;34;18 - 00;03;54;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Alexa and I, I am extremely, extremely kind. but the question was, what are five ways I can assist in onboarding new employees? This is a very real problem that people are having, right? And so they came up with five ways.

    00;03;54;17 - 00;04;06;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. And so like I was going to say I'm looking at the first one right now. And one of the first ones it talks about is time efficiency. and how, you know, onboarding takes a while. Like we've all been there.

    00;04;06;09 - 00;04;31;09
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, it does take a while. And there are even the obvious, even the less obvious things. Like, I know my boss told me this yesterday in the three hour orientation brain dump that I was given, but I can't remember. Where do I find X right? Right. AI is great for hey copilot! Where the heck do I find that?

    00;04;31;12 - 00;04;45;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. Well, and and I know that some people are also doing, like, employee handbooks or something. Also make documentation. So that way you're not asking Susie every five minutes where something is because she might kill you if you ask too many questions.

    00;04;45;28 - 00;05;18;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Now, I actually one of the things that we need to preface this with, because I ran into somebody who was a little confused and not everybody who listens to this clearly is an expert in such things. Some of us who speak on it are barely experts on such things. but it was clear if your company has a paid account and the AI is tied to your internal network and your internal content.

    00;05;18;18 - 00;05;19;18
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;05;19;20 - 00;05;21;07
    Wayne Turmel
    It will find anything.

    00;05;21;10 - 00;05;22;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00;05;22;10 - 00;05;45;19
    Wayne Turmel
    And if I am a new employee and I don't even know the name of something, and I don't know exactly where it is on the drive, and it's hidden over here. And by the way, you don't have to be a new employee. I frequently, because we have 13 people. I've been here ten years. KPMG, Google Drive is insanely dense with content.

    00;05;45;23 - 00;05;47;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. It's massive.

    00;05;47;14 - 00;05;55;21
    Wayne Turmel
    It's massive. And not everybody uses the same thought process as to where that file is.

    00;05;55;22 - 00;05;57;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;05;57;27 - 00;06;12;00
    Wayne Turmel
    and so if I'm looking for what is the password to get on to our corporate zoom account to lead a webinar, we've got several accounts. Right. Where the heck is the password for that?

    00;06;12;02 - 00;06;17;15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Because you might look for it in a place that wasn't where I put it.

    00;06;17;18 - 00;06;48;10
    Wayne Turmel
    I did not know that that information is on the tech team folder. Yeah. Not what I would have thought it'd be under instructor materials, because the instructor might need to know where how to get on. so that kind of thing is great. And when you're a new employee, when you're struggling to learn stuff, you don't always know the question to ask, and you're afraid to ask the question because, you know, somebody just told you this yesterday, right?

    00;06;48;13 - 00;06;51;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Like I said, you don't ask too many questions or Susie will kill you.

    00;06;51;25 - 00;06;59;09
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, exactly. so that's actually a really, really powerful tool just right there.

    00;06;59;12 - 00;06;59;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;07;00;02 - 00;07;10;19
    Wayne Turmel
    The ability to do that. Now, again, you know, if you if you are not if you're AI is not connected to the network, you're going to get somebody else's.

    00;07;10;22 - 00;07;11;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;07;11;10 - 00;07;29;04
    Wayne Turmel
    And you're going to get all kinds of useless information. Right. But that's so yes, your your organization. In order to optimize, I must have it reading your network or you're not going to get the value of this.

    00;07;29;07 - 00;07;44;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, and real quick, we've talked about this too in our previous episode where you were talking about, you know, my boss just said this in a meeting the other day. If you have, like I set up for like zoom or something like that, it can give you action items or, you know, here's the main points of this meeting.

    00;07;44;06 - 00;07;51;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And so you might be able to consult that. and, you know, instead of asking your boss again.

    00;07;51;07 - 00;08;02;03
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, absolutely. And especially in Microsoft Teams, you can punch in the date of the meeting and assuming your IT department has set it up, actually find that stuff.

    00;08;02;06 - 00;08;02;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, that's.

    00;08;02;25 - 00;08;15;08
    Wayne Turmel
    What what I have started doing is on sales calls is I will say to the customer, do you mind if I run this in the background? Because it's going to take way better notes than I can.

    00;08;15;11 - 00;08;22;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh yeah. Yeah. And then you get to focus on the conversation. You don't have to focus on making sure that you've typed everything exactly right.

    00;08;22;17 - 00;08;48;24
    Wayne Turmel
    And by the way, it does a really, really good job. Yeah. everything I've done, teams, zoom. you know, any I that's attached to WebEx at any I that's attached to that has been trained really well to take good notes. And you will remember who gets what action item and who raised this issue and like that.

    00;08;49;01 - 00;08;50;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;08;50;05 - 00;08;58;00
    Wayne Turmel
    so for time efficiency first thing. Yeah. Copilot told me time efficiency. the answer is yes.

    00;08;58;02 - 00;08;58;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay.

    00;08;59;00 - 00;09;00;20
    Wayne Turmel
    Okay. You dig that?

    00;09;00;23 - 00;09;18;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So what about, the next one it had was personalization. So it said you can utilize AI and machine learning. Onboarding programs can be tailored to match the specific skill set and needs of a new hire and personalized training and materials and resources. I'm failing to see your AI helps with this, but maybe you can.

    00;09;18;29 - 00;09;27;19
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, that like everything else. I mean, you and I were talking earlier. You know, the answer you get depends on the question that you ask.

    00;09;27;21 - 00;09;29;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, of course.

    00;09;29;12 - 00;10;20;03
    Wayne Turmel
    So if as you are creating orientation materials, if you are creating an employee handbook and you label things as or you tag them as useful for beginners, useful for onboarding, useful for orientation, for somebody who's looking for that will find what they're looking for versus somebody else who's just looking for general information. personalization. What I can do this is both the beauty and the terrifying thing, okay, is the more you use it and the more it knows you, the more it will find what you are looking for or what is useful to you at the beginning.

    00;10;20;03 - 00;10;38;21
    Wayne Turmel
    It's going to be in general, new hires want to know this, right? It's going to be more specific. The machine will learn. Oh, this is Wayne. He's in accounting. He works with these particular clients. And so the searches will get infinitely more granular.

    00;10;38;27 - 00;10;40;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, that makes sense.

    00;10;40;12 - 00;11;12;18
    Wayne Turmel
    So when they say personalization, it's not. You know, I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. It's not like that. Right? We're not we're not going there. And if you are under 40 or not a nerd, it's a movie reference. Just stick with us. Well, so what is this personal personalization? That's what it's talking about. The more it interfaces with you and learns who you are, the more it will exclude extraneous information and give you the stuff that is really relevant.

    00;11;12;25 - 00;11;22;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, well, it sounds like two from the, basically someone has to set up the stuff ahead of time for the AI to even see it correctly.

    00;11;22;28 - 00;11;38;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Everything is in the setup and where that becomes really important is actually the third thing that, yeah, it came up with, which is 24/7 support, which is all about chat bots.

    00;11;38;18 - 00;11;39;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;11;39;23 - 00;11;57;06
    Wayne Turmel
    And you know, your boss is not always going to be available to you when you need them. you know, the person you're asking may be in Singapore and when you're starting your day, they're going to bed. I mean, there's realistic we need information when we need it.

    00;11;57;08 - 00;12;20;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? And we know how powerful chat bots can be anyway. I know that we have one on the desk site right now. so just personality testing.com. And for those of you who have heard us talk about this before, like our support team is two people and we have to sleep sometime. so the chat bots been really helpful because we've put stuff into it to say, here's how we say this.

    00;12;20;09 - 00;12;29;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Here's all these videos, here's all these transcripts. So it's learning off of us, and it can answer a lot of these questions that we're asleep and can't answer it right now.

    00;12;29;16 - 00;13;00;04
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, and I just came back from a conference of HR and learning technology and oh my gosh, like, even since last year's ATD conference, which is the last time I walked in Expo floor and saw this stuff, they are so much more sophisticated and personalized and you can set the level of formality. You know, do you want it's super friendly and chatty or do you want, you know, give me the facts and give me what I'm looking for.

    00;13;00;06 - 00;13;22;27
    Wayne Turmel
    And incredibly sophisticated and deep searches and the ability to figure out what you meant to say, which is not, you know, if you go into Google right now, if you go into Google and you say, I want to know this, and I can't think of an example. Yeah, but I want to know this. It will give you exactly what you ask for.

    00;13;23;00 - 00;13;26;06
    Wayne Turmel
    But that may not be what you really want to know.

    00;13;26;09 - 00;13;30;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. You're going to call it X. We're actually called something else.

    00;13;30;22 - 00;13;46;02
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. If I call it, where is the customer service file for x, y, z customer. And your organization calls it a, service response file.

    00;13;46;03 - 00;13;49;22
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;13;49;24 - 00;13;51;09
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, a Google get a.

    00;13;51;13 - 00;13;52;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Couple.

    00;13;52;06 - 00;14;30;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Engine is it's going to struggle a little bit to come up with what you need. Whereas what I'll give you a, a non work example because I just stumbled across this and you know some of the people who listen to this know that I write novels in my spare time. And so I was because I've got a book coming out, I was trying to figure out some marketing materials and they and I said, you give me five comparable titles to the Johnny Lycan Werewolf Pi series.

    00;14;30;19 - 00;14;31;23
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;14;31;25 - 00;14;53;19
    Wayne Turmel
    And the results were really odd, and they were really kind of uneven. And some were historical fiction and some were this somewhere that So I took a second shot at it. And I said give me comparable titles to the urban fantasy Detective Noir or Johnny Lycan Werewolf Pi series.

    00;14;53;26 - 00;14;54;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;14;54;20 - 00;15;07;19
    Wayne Turmel
    I got exactly the seven. comp titles which were most popular. Most recent. Exactly the list I needed.

    00;15;07;22 - 00;15;14;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I mean, we've known for a long. So that's specific. You get it? It helps a lot.

    00;15;14;28 - 00;15;22;02
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, but A.I. is getting a lot better at. Oh, I see what you were trying to say.

    00;15;22;04 - 00;15;22;14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;15;22;21 - 00;15;25;07
    Wayne Turmel
    So it's getting better at that.

    00;15;25;09 - 00;15;26;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And it's like, oh, human.

    00;15;26;20 - 00;15;41;01
    Wayne Turmel
    It's not that. Well, it's funny because a lot of us look at chat bots as, oh, great, I have to deal with a chat bot because they can't be bothered hiring a human who can actually interact with me.

    00;15;41;03 - 00;15;41;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And that's not necessary.

    00;15;41;28 - 00;16;00;06
    Wayne Turmel
    And there is some of that. Yeah. To be fair, to be fair, there is some of that going on. but it it is more than that. You know, having a human to answer your questions is great until you've actually dealt with a human.

    00;16;00;08 - 00;16;02;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00;16;02;07 - 00;16;25;18
    Wayne Turmel
    There is no guarantee you're going to get what you're looking for. and then, of course, the fourth thing was data driven insights, which is right. It will find the if the data is out there, it will find it. And crunch it and give it to you, probably in ways that you don't expect. But that feedback, the accuracy and the speed of that feedback.

    00;16;25;21 - 00;16;54;16
    Wayne Turmel
    And then you can go back and say, tell me more about this is going to be just impressive and huge. which brings us to the last thing that copilot said, which is it's about engagement. AI can create a modern and engaging onboarding experience, making new employees feel valued and accelerating their assimilation into the company culture. And I say,

    00;16;54;19 - 00;17;05;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I was going to say this one sounds like we're right. Waving a flag like we're with you of, you know, four. But this one might.

    00;17;05;24 - 00;17;17;07
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. It's like, does this help engagement? And I'm still not entirely sure that people's default should be to the machines.

    00;17;17;10 - 00;17;19;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;17;19;12 - 00;17;43;20
    Wayne Turmel
    now, some of this may be just cranky old white guy who's saying, well, I'll use it when I need it, and the rest of the time, you know, let me interact with humans. But there is, especially in the onboarding process, which let's not forget, this is what we're talking about here, right? The onboarding process is where the relationships get built.

    00;17;43;20 - 00;18;17;18
    Wayne Turmel
    It's where people decide the level of engagement that they're going to have with their employer and their coworkers and their team. And while there may be people who say, I would rather deal with copilot than Bob because Bob is mean to me in meetings, realistically, I think we need to not default, especially in the very early days, weeks, months of, of a, new hire or bringing people on or orientation.

    00;18;17;23 - 00;18;22;23
    Wayne Turmel
    I think we still need to get them to connect with the people.

    00;18;22;25 - 00;18;24;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely.

    00;18;24;14 - 00;18;52;27
    Wayne Turmel
    And and so we need to be really, really leery of that. That's kind of where I'm so. So that was it. We asked, hey, give us five ways I can assist in onboarding. And with all the caveats that we have mentioned. And they are not to be underestimated. Right. There's five ways they can help. Four of the five I don't disagree with.

    00;18;52;29 - 00;19;06;21
    Wayne Turmel
    I think they need to be done thoughtfully. They need to be done intentionally. All of that good stuff. The engagement piece, I don't know, but what else is I going to say?

    00;19;06;24 - 00;19;08;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Exactly. Well, and we.

    00;19;08;25 - 00;19;17;29
    Wayne Turmel
    Asked the I. Yeah. It's like if you come to me and say, you know, what do you do with this? I'm going to say, well, let me help you here.

    00;19;17;29 - 00;19;18;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;19;18;12 - 00;19;34;17
    Wayne Turmel
    And who doesn't want Wayne helping them for corn sake? Well, oh, how how. Okay, here's here's something I doesn't do. It's. I don't get snarky. It doesn't do sarcasm worth a darn.

    00;19;34;20 - 00;20;00;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I was like, I can't get snarky. It depends on how you run the Gpt3. But but listeners, if you've worked with any sort of onboarding things with AI or if you've seen it in your company or stuff, please let us know, because we would love to hear from you on that. And Wayne, thank you so much for this conversation, and thank you for putting this into copilot, because my default is ChatGPT.

    00;20;00;09 - 00;20;21;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    so but this was a really great conversation. I'm really excited to continue talking more about AI and how it can help with remote work. And listeners, thank you so much for listening to Long-Distance Work Life. For show notes, transcripts, and other resources. Make sure to visit Long Distance Work life.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes while you're there.

    00;20;21;19 - 00;20;36;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Be sure to like and review! This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes, and let us know that you listen to this episode, or suggest another episode or another topic for Wayne and I to tackle in another episode.

    00;20;36;25 - 00;20;47;03
    Wayne Turmel
    And for the record, we like nonviolent, respectful, counter opinions. Don't be afraid to, tell us where you think we're wrong.

    00;20;47;06 - 00;21;10;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Because we would love to do an episode about that. And in some cases, we may try to change your mind. We'll see. But if you want to know more about how to work with and manage remote teams, please check out the Long Distance Leadership Series, which you can learn more about at Kevin eikenberry.com/l d l s thank you for joining us.

    00;21;10;06 - 00;21;17;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the seasons get you down. Hey.

    00;21;17;28 - 00;21;18;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    You.


    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    00:45 AI in Onboarding Overview
    01:26 Challenges in Remote Onboarding
    03:14 Advantages of Microsoft Copilot
    04:31 AI for Time Efficiency
    09:00 Personalization with AI
    11:12 24/7 Support Through Chatbots
    13:22 Data-Driven Insights
    16:00 Enhancing Engagement with AI
    19:08 Final Thoughts and Listener Feedback

    Related Episodes

    Additional Resources

    Long-Distance Leadership Series

    If you want to dive deeper into the strategies and tools for effectively managing remote teams, check out the Long-Distance Leadership Series by The Kevin Eikenberry Group. This comprehensive series offers valuable insights and practical advice on leading remote and hybrid teams with confidence and success. From mastering virtual communication to fostering team engagement, the Long-Distance Leadership Series has everything you need to become a more effective remote leader. Start transforming your remote leadership skills today!

     Learn More
    Read More
    Navigating Return-to-Office Strategies in the U.S. and Europe
    Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

    Navigating Return-to-Office Strategies in the U.S. and Europe

    Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel explore the intriguing differences in return-to-office strategies between the U.S. and Europe. Dive into a detailed discussion on why European workers are heading back to their offices at a higher rate compared to their American counterparts. Wayne shares insights from his extensive research and personal anecdotes, shedding light on cultural, geographical, and infrastructural factors that influence these varying approaches. Whether you're a remote worker, a manager in a hybrid environment, or just curious about the future of work, this episode offers valuable perspectives on adapting to post-pandemic work life on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Embrace Flexibility: Companies should consider the diverse needs and contexts of their global workforce when designing work policies.
    2. Understand Cultural Differences: Recognizing and respecting cultural differences in work habits can enhance productivity and worker satisfaction.
    3. Plan for Long-Term Strategies: Rather than reactive measures, thoughtful, strategic planning for hybrid and remote work can lead to more sustainable business practices.

    View Full Transcript

    00;00;08;00 - 00;00;18;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to Long Distance Work, where we help you meet, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marissa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Trammell. Hi, Wayne.

    00;00;19;01 - 00;00;20;26
    Wayne Turmel
    Hello, Marissa. How are you?

    00;00;20;28 - 00;00;22;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I'm great. How are you?

    00;00;22;08 - 00;00;27;19
    Wayne Turmel
    I am very well, and I'm actually kind of geeked about the show this week.

    00;00;27;21 - 00;00;55;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    As you should be. So listeners, we are actually we're talking about Return to Office, which is not the first time that we've ever talked about this before. However, the spin that we're doing today is that we're talking about the differences between how the US handled it and how Europe has handled it or is handling it now. So, Wayne, I want to start off with, by what are the main differences that you've already observed between the U.S. and European countries and how they're handling return to office?

    00;00;55;04 - 00;01;08;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, it's interesting because you can kind of get stuck in. And Americans in particular are really bad about this, where, you know, if it doesn't center around the Statue of Liberty, it didn't happen right here, right.

    00;01;08;17 - 00;01;10;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Eastern time zone or bust. Right?

    00;01;10;15 - 00;01;34;02
    Wayne Turmel
    Right, exactly. And so I've been writing for management issues out of the U.K. for a billion years. It feels like. And I was doing some work for them and some research. And I was fascinated to find that return to office is much more prevalent in Europe and in a lot of other countries. Matter of fact, the US is severely different.

    00;01;34;05 - 00;01;55;29
    Wayne Turmel
    Okay, in the, number of people, just as a rough number, 70% of people in the UK have gone back to predominantly return to office or not in the UK, but in Europe. Okay, going back to 70% return to office basically full time in the US it's more like 50%.

    00;01;56;01 - 00;01;56;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;01;57;03 - 00;02;08;18
    Wayne Turmel
    and we're talking about those obviously who can work remotely, of course. Right. I mean, there was this whole thing everybody went home during Covid. Well, no, it was about a third of the population.

    00;02;08;23 - 00;02;10;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. It feels like a lot more people.

    00;02;10;18 - 00;02;14;14
    Wayne Turmel
    It feels like a lot more than that because we hang with who we hang with.

    00;02;14;17 - 00;02;14;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00;02;15;17 - 00;02;33;10
    Wayne Turmel
    but 70 to 50 is a pretty significant difference. And so I being me, you know, I remember at five, my grandmother actually stopped babysitting me for a while because I wouldn't stop asking why.

    00;02;33;12 - 00;02;35;02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I could act like I'm surprised.

    00;02;35;05 - 00;02;40;00
    Wayne Turmel
    And I still to this day.

    00;02;40;02 - 00;02;45;05
    Wayne Turmel
    And for those of you listening in audio only, it is a very short face. Oh.

    00;02;45;08 - 00;02;46;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely.

    00;02;47;00 - 00;02;52;21
    Wayne Turmel
    So anyway, I started geeking out and going down the rabbit hole and I figured this was a worthy discussion.

    00;02;52;23 - 00;03;09;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely. So, okay, we've already discussed 70 to 50. Like that's a really big deal. So why is it that Europe seems to be having way more return to office people than we have? I mean, is it just people fighting back and be like, no, I want to work from home? Or is there something else?

    00;03;09;28 - 00;03;38;00
    Wayne Turmel
    No, I think there are. I'm going to say three because I'm doing this off the top of my head, okay? B and there are sub reasons to those three reasons, but there are three things that strike me as most obvious. Number one is that most people in European cities live much closer to where they work. Europeans in general do not commute long distances to go to work.

    00;03;38;04 - 00;03;45;04
    Wayne Turmel
    And by the way, when we talk about the European numbers, there's a giant asterix there that says everywhere but London, right.

    00;03;45;04 - 00;03;47;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    You and I have talked about this offline.

    00;03;47;06 - 00;04;15;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. Well, we'll we'll talk about why London is the outlier in a moment. But the fact is that most people in Europe do not have the hellish commutes that Americans have. and they are much more willing to use public transportation and all kinds of things. So as a result, the commute isn't as onerous as it is for North Americans.

    00;04;15;26 - 00;04;16;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That makes sense.

    00;04;16;18 - 00;04;36;21
    Wayne Turmel
    So, you know, the number one reason Americans give for why do I want flexible with because the traffic is killing me, and getting to work makes me miserable. And grumpy and grumpy before I get there. And by the way, when I was home with Covid, I was saving $5,000 a year. And that's a real number for a lot of people.

    00;04;36;26 - 00;04;55;24
    Wayne Turmel
    So the commute is a big part of that. So the commute comes out of the equation. The second thing, and this is very controversial, and I just talked about this at a conference this week and got some I got some hallelujahs and a lot of uncomfortable squirming in seats.

    00;04;56;01 - 00;04;59;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, I can't wait for the podcast comments on this one. Then.

    00;04;59;20 - 00;05;32;12
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, it basically comes down to Americans view hybrid work in particular, and the right to work from home as a perk. Okay, it's a perk. It's something they want. And the reason is Americans in particular do not get a lot of perks in terms of work. That is, if you think about the average European worker, their health care is paid for, their education is essentially paid for or extremely cheap.

    00;05;33;07 - 00;05;38;01
    Wayne Turmel
    there are laws about how many hours you can work and not work much longer.

    00;05;38;01 - 00;05;39;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Vacation time, you.

    00;05;39;06 - 00;05;52;13
    Wayne Turmel
    Know, more vacation time. All of those things are if you get them through an American company, you get them through negotiation and then bargaining and threatening to quit and all kinds of stuff. Right?

    00;05;52;13 - 00;05;54;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, they aren't inherently there.

    00;05;54;07 - 00;06;18;21
    Wayne Turmel
    So there is. Whereas companies are willing to say, yeah, you know what? We're not going to give you health care or, do any of that other cool stuff. But if you want to work in your jammies a couple of days a week, we're good with that, right? And so that's part of it. Right? and that goes to the fact that the work life balance in Europe is generally better.

    00;06;18;21 - 00;06;40;00
    Wayne Turmel
    People are better at I go to work and I work, and when I leave work, I leave work, and I don't think about it so that they tend to enjoy the time they're there. They take that eight hours and they work, and they get their social contact with their friends, and they work hard and they do their jobs and then it's done.

    00;06;40;02 - 00;06;41;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And then they go home and do it all.

    00;06;41;17 - 00;06;53;22
    Wayne Turmel
    Over, and then they go, so, you know, the ability to do that is already there. They don't put the same value on it that American workers have put on it.

    00;06;53;25 - 00;06;58;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. We're it's almost like our, our identity and our careers sometimes become our identity in many ways.

    00;06;58;18 - 00;07;27;19
    Wayne Turmel
    Well it does and you know, we can get deeper into that. But the third reason I'm trying to stick to three, because I said I would, I remembered the third reason as we were just talking, which is the infrastructure for working from home doesn't exist in a lot of places. And I noticed this at the beginning of Covid, where it was really problematic getting people in Asia, for example, to work from home.

    00;07;27;22 - 00;07;52;19
    Wayne Turmel
    And then I realized why, if you live in Tokyo, you're living in an apartment the size of my garage with no distinct room to work in. Right? You're trying to cut million dollar sales deals on the end of your bed, and that doesn't really work. And it's the same thing. Housing in Europe, especially in the cities, tends to be smaller apartments.

    00;07;52;19 - 00;08;04;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Even the houses are smaller than we're traditionally used to here in America. And so the idea of having a home office is just physically not possible.

    00;08;04;25 - 00;08;05;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, no, that makes for a.

    00;08;05;27 - 00;08;06;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Lot of people.

    00;08;06;18 - 00;08;07;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I thought about that.

    00;08;07;25 - 00;08;32;08
    Wayne Turmel
    I hadn't either. This is why we go down rabbit holes. Because we learn stuff right? so if you think about just those three things, right, the, the structure of the commute going to work, isn't that bad. Well, okay. You know, it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It ceases to become a bargaining chip when you're talking to your boss.

    00;08;32;10 - 00;08;53;10
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, if you don't have a lot of perks, it this has become. And by the way, flexible work is the number one thing people are asking for when they apply for jobs. Yeah. So this is far more important here. There is a value on flexible work that just hasn't caught on in much of the rest of the world.

    00;08;53;14 - 00;09;19;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, and then the third thing is, even if I am working from home, can I be as productive? Can I do the same job? And the answer is maybe not. It's not quite as convenient and simple as it is in North America. So those are kind of the obvious things. And there are some really interesting long term impacts on this which we can get to in a moment.

    00;09;19;18 - 00;09;22;25
    Wayne Turmel
    I did mention that the outlier is London.

    00;09;22;27 - 00;09;41;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Well, and I did want to go into something robust before you get into London. So and unfortunately I don't have the data with me right this second. But wasn't there something I want to say? Switzerland, maybe Sweden, that it was like work from home was like a protected thing. Like it was like you had a right to work from home.

    00;09;41;26 - 00;09;44;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    How is that different than some of the other stuff that we're seeing?

    00;09;44;25 - 00;10;12;22
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, what's happening is that as a result of Covid, there was a big rush to codify things like how many hours can your boss expect you to work when you're not in the office? Do the same labor laws that protect you in the workplace. Protect you when you work from home? there was all kinds of that stuff that was kind of rushing to judgment on a lot of that.

    00;10;12;22 - 00;10;39;17
    Wayne Turmel
    And this the countries that you would expect to do that, right. The companies, the countries that put a large value on work as part of the social experiment. Right. Switzerland. Okay, Sweden, the Nordic countries, you would expect that that's where the first of this would come. I think a lot of that has kind of come to nothing, because so relatively few people are taking advantage of it now.

    00;10;39;19 - 00;10;39;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Or.

    00;10;39;25 - 00;10;55;27
    Wayne Turmel
    When they do, when they do, they're kind of going along with the stealth work thing, which is going to work for a short period of time. Eventually, people will start running afoul of labor laws and and things, and, you know, somebody will always ruin it for everybody else.

    00;10;55;29 - 00;10;59;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? Like that happens all the time.

    00;10;59;21 - 00;11;17;20
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, it's important to remember that every law was put in place, and it made sense to the person who wrote it because they were trying to solve a specific problem. Right, right. so it's interesting to see where it's going to shake out.

    00;11;17;22 - 00;11;22;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. And so going back to your thing about London, so how was London different?

    00;11;22;16 - 00;11;36;23
    Wayne Turmel
    London is really expensive and really big. And as a result the commutes are basically London as a work environment is much more like New York or Chicago.

    00;11;36;26 - 00;11;37;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay.

    00;11;37;22 - 00;11;39;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Than it is Amsterdam or Paris.

    00;11;39;26 - 00;11;41;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay, that makes sense.

    00;11;42;05 - 00;11;57;10
    Wayne Turmel
    the problems that you've got with stupid expensive housing and, you know, and you can't even drive your city, your car into the City of London without paying an entry fee every day. It's the only city that has a coverage charge.

    00;11;57;12 - 00;11;57;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh my gosh.

    00;11;58;17 - 00;12;18;06
    Wayne Turmel
    you know, which again, was instituted to solve a specific problem. But there are unintended consequences to this. But basically, London doesn't fit into the European model. the third reason, which also makes sense in London, is that there are so many international companies headquartered there.

    00;12;18;07 - 00;12;18;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;12;18;21 - 00;12;19;05
    Wayne Turmel
    That.

    00;12;19;08 - 00;12;20;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    They're already doing.

    00;12;20;10 - 00;12;34;04
    Wayne Turmel
    More working. Yeah, well, they're doing flexible work in times of hours and and whatever. And if I have to be in the office at 9:00, I don't want to still be there for the 9:00 at night. Call with the team in Singapore.

    00;12;34;07 - 00;12;37;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely. And I don't blame them for that right now.

    00;12;37;16 - 00;12;45;26
    Wayne Turmel
    The impact of all this is really interesting. One of the things is that European cities are already built.

    00;12;46;03 - 00;12;46;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00;12;47;01 - 00;13;22;07
    Wayne Turmel
    They've been there a long time. The footprint of the city is what it is, and as a result, there is less, building going on all the time in these places. And the, the if you look at the square footage of business properties available again, it is something like it's a vacancy rate of somewhere between 7 and 10% versus some American cities, and London, where it's getting close to 50.

    00;13;22;09 - 00;13;43;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Like even if there are people in a building, they there may not be people on all floors because businesses have kind of shrunk. And some of that is remote work and people not coming in. Frankly, some of it is automation, and we need less people than we needed ten years ago to do the same job.

    00;13;43;17 - 00;13;44;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That makes sense too.

    00;13;44;11 - 00;14;02;25
    Wayne Turmel
    So all of these factors I found absolutely fascinating. and if you are the CEO of a company, if you're thinking about how do we come up with a policy that makes sense? If we are an international company, how do we come up with a policy that makes sense?

    00;14;02;28 - 00;14;03;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;14;03;24 - 00;14;15;16
    Wayne Turmel
    This is all stuff we have to take into consideration. And one of the things I wanted to do was just bring those facts out there and throw them on the table and go, I don't know what you all are going to do with this, but there you are.

    00;14;15;19 - 00;14;31;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? So with all of this, like looking forward, what trends do you predict will emerge in the workplace because of this? Like, do you think that we're going to continue to see more return to office in Europe? Do you think that we're going to stay about the same in the US?

    00;14;31;25 - 00;14;53;07
    Wayne Turmel
    I think we will gradually see a rise in remote work, at least part time. We're going to see a rise in hybrid work, in, in all corners of the world. I think we're going to see that, but it's going to be more gradual. It wasn't like the sudden boom in remote. Right? Right.

    00;14;53;10 - 00;14;54;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;14;54;08 - 00;15;22;15
    Wayne Turmel
    I think we're going to see that. I think we're still seeing attention in North America. And I said this and got more hallelujahs than not the other day when I said, you know, in America, because of this idea of using it as a perk instead of looking at it from the standpoint of the business sense, saying what's best for the business, it's kind of it's not so much a strategy as it is a hostage negotiation.

    00;15;22;18 - 00;15;47;25
    Wayne Turmel
    Okay. Where the where the company says, how much can we make them come into the office before they quit or won't come work for us? And the workers are going, how much can I avoid going into the office and still draw a paycheck? And they've kind of settled on whatever formula two days, three days a week that they've settled on, which is not really sustainable.

    00;15;47;25 - 00;15;50;25
    Wayne Turmel
    And more importantly, it's not strategic.

    00;15;50;27 - 00;15;53;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? Yeah. There's no rhyme for it.

    00;15;53;15 - 00;16;20;00
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, there's a rhyme and a reason. It's just, you know, it's it's vulgar on poetry, which means nothing to anybody who hasn't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But it is poetry, and it is the worst poetry in the universe. So that's really where we are. I think we've hit this compromise and we're kind of dealing with it, and long term it's not going to progress and improve.

    00;16;20;12 - 00;16;44;11
    Wayne Turmel
    until we get strategic about what's going to happen is and somebody actually said this, I can't remember who said it, but it was a quote and it hit all the business papers said this whole return to office remote work, hybrid work thing would just go away. What we need is 20% unemployment, okay? Because then people will be so darn glad to have a job, they'll just shut up and show up.

    00;16;44;13 - 00;16;48;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I feel like I've also heard that quote before or something like it.

    00;16;49;03 - 00;17;10;09
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. So yeah, that's that's where we are. And and I thought this was a worthy discussion. Right. It's like you will there be kind of a growing acceptance of hybrid work when people realize they aren't going to have to spend all day in their 500 square foot flat? Probably.

    00;17;10;11 - 00;17;10;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;17;10;26 - 00;17;28;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. will Americans get the hang of it and figure it out? Maybe. but their conversations worth having, and you can't make those decisions without context. Absolutely. So that's what we hope. That's what we hope we did today was give you some context.

    00;17;28;29 - 00;17;48;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely. And I'll make sure to link to your management issues. article inside of our show notes. So for people who want to read even more about this, it will be there. And listeners, thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life or show notes, transcripts, and other resources. Make sure to visit Long Distance Work-Life dot com.

    00;17;48;09 - 00;18;06;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes, and let us know that you listen to this episode, or suggest another topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

    00;18;06;23 - 00;18;08;00
    Marisa Eikenberry
    We'd love to hear from you.

    00;18;08;02 - 00;18;34;14
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, and one of the things, if you're kind of asking these questions about what's it like leading remotely, how is leading a hybrid team different? We would urge you to take advantage of our open enrollment programs. The long Distance Leadership Series runs a couple of times a year. You can find out more on the Kevin eikenberry.com site. We would love to have you or talk to you about delivering that content inside your organization.

    00;18;34;16 - 00;18;36;01
    Wayne Turmel
    Or it's a bring us home.

    00;18;36;04 - 00;19;03;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Absolutely. And you can learn more about that at Kevin eikenberry.com/ldl s. Thank you so much for joining us, Wayne. Thank you for saving me for a second right there. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let police escort you down. Hey.

    00;19;03;20 - 00;19;04;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    You.


    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    01:34 Statistical Differences
    03:09 Culture and Structural Reasons
    06:18 Work-Life Balance and Infrastructure
    14:15 Future Trends in Work
    17:10 Conclusion

    Related Episodes

    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!

     Order
    Read More
    Digital Decorum: Navigating the Do's and Don'ts of Online Meetings
    Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

    Digital Decorum: Navigating the Do’s and Don’ts of Online Meetings

    Join us on the Long-Distance Worklife Podcast as we dive into the quirky and often unspoken rules of virtual meeting behaviors. This episode isn't about mute buttons or camera angles; it's about the nitty-gritty of what happens on camera - from fashion choices like donning hats to the presence of pets and snack etiquette. We explore whether sipping coffee or munching during a meeting is a faux pas or just fine. With a blend of humor and practical advice, we dissect these everyday scenarios to help you navigate the dos and don’ts of digital professionalism. Tune in for a lively discussion that promises to add a new perspective to your next online meeting!

    Key Takeaways

    1. Consider Your Headwear: Before joining a virtual meeting, think about the message your choice of hat or headwear sends. Is it aligned with the meeting's tone and formality?
    2. Pet Policy: Decide if having your pet in view during the meeting is appropriate. Consider the nature of the meeting and if your furry friend might be a distraction or a delightful icebreaker.
    3. Mindful Eating: If you need to eat during a meeting, assess the context. For formal or short meetings, it’s best to wait. In longer or casual settings, keep it unobtrusive and tidy.
    4. Discreet Drinking: Having a beverage? Stick to non-alcoholic options and keep it professional. A simple mug or a water bottle is usually fine, but avoid anything that might cause distraction.
    5. Background Check: Take a moment to evaluate your surroundings. Ensure your background is tidy and professional, reflecting the image you want to project in the meeting.
    6. Tech Check: Before the meeting starts, test your tech! Ensure your internet is stable and familiarize yourself with the meeting platform’s features to avoid any technical hiccups.
    7. Engage Actively: Plan to participate actively in the meeting. Think about points you want to raise or questions you might ask to show your engagement and interest.

    View Full Transcript

    00;00;08;09 - 00;00;18;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife, 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.

    00;00;18;20 - 00;00;20;17
    Wayne Turmel
    That would be me. Hi. How are you?

    00;00;20;23 - 00;00;22;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I'm great. How are you?

    00;00;22;10 - 00;00;33;07
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm great. It feels like a million years since we have recorded one of these. So this could be fun. Or it could be a car wreck. This is the joy of recording live, right?

    00;00;33;12 - 00;01;00;02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, for those that are now scared, if you're first time listeners, do not shut this off, but that being said, today we're actually going to talk about acceptable meeting behaviors. So we actually got this survey sent to us by our boss, Kevin. And so it's a 2023 YouGov survey that was done of just different, acceptable or unacceptable leading behaviors.

    00;01;00;02 - 00;01;04;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And they start off with just behaviors in general. And then we actually go into generational stuff.

    00;01;04;29 - 00;01;25;10
    Wayne Turmel
    But now just to clarify, for the mere mortals out there who can't read our minds, YouGov is essentially this is a survey, internal survey of U.S. federal workers in all the branches, all the divisions, all the stuff right.

    00;01;25;12 - 00;01;27;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Now, lots and lots of people.

    00;01;27;05 - 00;01;27;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Context.

    00;01;28;03 - 00;01;50;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, exactly. And one of the first things that they did talk about, which we've talked about before, you know, we mentioned remote work, is that while we would like to think that this is a majority of the population, the majority of the population is not remote working. But they talked about 32% of Americans participate in virtual meetings for work and 37% for like personal calls.

    00;01;50;07 - 00;02;05;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So so that's where we're going with this. But Wayne, were there any that kind of stuck out to you from this first, you know, acceptable, not acceptable, graphic. And for those of you that are watching, I'm going to have this up on the screen.

    00;02;05;18 - 00;02;23;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, I think if we look at the general numbers, we're not getting generational or granular on this, just in general. Certain things make sense, right? Having a TV on in the background, smoking, although that's interesting.

    00;02;23;26 - 00;02;25;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay. So why is it interesting to you?

    00;02;25;26 - 00;02;56;05
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, it says a whole lot more about where society is gone than where the meetings have gone. Because if we think about why smoking was banned in the workplace, second hand smoke being rude and blowing smoke in somebody's face, all of that good stuff. A lot of people take remote meetings in the privacy of their own home or a hotel room, wherever they happen to be.

    00;02;56;08 - 00;03;01;21
    Wayne Turmel
    And secondhand smoke is not an issue. You cannot catch secondhand smoke.

    00;03;01;23 - 00;03;03;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right through.

    00;03;03;16 - 00;03;05;03
    Wayne Turmel
    Zoom.

    00;03;05;06 - 00;03;07;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That is true.

    00;03;07;08 - 00;03;24;28
    Wayne Turmel
    So I think that says more about the fact that people just don't want anybody smoking at all. Whether or not it's rude on a meeting. Now, some of that is I come from the generation where I can remember people smoking in meetings.

    00;03;25;00 - 00;03;32;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, See that? I can't remember. I was old enough to still remember smoking in restaurants and there being a section for both.

    00;03;32;09 - 00;03;36;03
    Wayne Turmel
    And of course, I live in Las Vegas where you can still do that.

    00;03;36;10 - 00;03;52;15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    All right. Well, and then for our audio listeners, so for smoking, they said, you know, 75% of those surveyed said it's not acceptable in any meeting, while 12% said it's acceptable in informal meetings. And five said it's, 5% said it's acceptable in any meeting.

    00;03;52;17 - 00;04;27;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. One of the interesting things I found about this report is that there is an increasing, especially among people under older than dirt. There is an increasing gap between what it's okay to do in an informal meeting, you know teammates a teammate than in a formal meeting where you're doing a sales presentation or you have a customer on the line or whatever that works out to.

    00;04;27;27 - 00;04;31;03
    Wayne Turmel
    I think that is interesting.

    00;04;31;05 - 00;04;32;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    yeah, for sure.

    00;04;32;05 - 00;04;39;24
    Wayne Turmel
    And where you find that a lot is, is it okay to have a child or a pet in your lap?

    00;04;39;26 - 00;04;41;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;04;41;07 - 00;04;51;25
    Wayne Turmel
    And interestingly, more people find it acceptable to have a pet in your lap than a kid in your lap, which in a strange way makes sense.

    00;04;52;00 - 00;04;54;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    It really does.

    00;04;54;24 - 00;05;23;18
    Wayne Turmel
    But, you know, I can remember when remote work started to catch on. If you wanted to know whether or not somebody worked remotely on a regular basis or not, you'd be on a conference call and a dog would bark. And the people who worked remotely would say, say hi to Bailey for me. And the people who didn't work remotely were like, Is that a dog?

    00;05;23;21 - 00;05;38;00
    Wayne Turmel
    Like they'd never heard a dog before? Right. And so I think that gap between formal and informal, if I'm just talking to you, you know, I don't care.

    00;05;38;02 - 00;05;40;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right, Right, Exactly. Like Max Barks. And it's fine.

    00;05;40;28 - 00;05;46;26
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. Max barks Or he jumps in my lap and I hold him up and go say hi to Auntie Marisa. Right, right.

    00;05;46;28 - 00;05;52;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah. My husband drops in behind me, and I'm just like, my God, Go away.

    00;05;52;23 - 00;06;00;02
    Wayne Turmel
    And I'm going, Hi, Parker. Right. Say hi to Uncle Ray.

    00;06;00;04 - 00;06;11;20
    Wayne Turmel
    So I think some of those are really interesting where you start to see some gaps. Is. Is it okay to eat?

    00;06;11;22 - 00;06;12;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? Right.

    00;06;12;15 - 00;06;28;22
    Wayne Turmel
    Is it okay to drink? There is a percentage of humans and I'm looking for it. And I'm wondering who these evil people are. 3%. No, it's not 3%. It's. I'm looking for drinking and nonalcoholic drinks.

    00;06;28;25 - 00;06;37;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. So 17% say it's not acceptable in any medium. 53% say it's acceptable in any meeting. And 22 say only informal meetings.

    00;06;37;23 - 00;06;42;06
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. The Geneva Convention says people are allowed hydration. Right.

    00;06;42;08 - 00;07;04;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Like I remember looking at this would be like, I don't think I have ever been bothered by somebody taking a drink ever. I can understand not wanting to be on a meeting and it's not a happy hour and like, they're clearly drinking a beer. Like, that's a problem. I get that. But like, I have a soda with me all the time and I drink it in meetings all the time.

    00;07;04;19 - 00;07;08;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And I never thought about it being a problem until I saw that.

    00;07;08;06 - 00;07;11;07
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, until we hold the intervention.

    00;07;11;09 - 00;07;16;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, you know, it could be worse.

    00;07;16;08 - 00;07;27;07
    Wayne Turmel
    So, you know, if we look at it, it's not really surprising what people think is acceptable and unacceptable. I suppose.

    00;07;27;09 - 00;07;31;01
    Wayne Turmel
    It gets interesting around formal and informal meetings.

    00;07;31;07 - 00;07;32;09
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;07;32;11 - 00;08;06;19
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. And I have been on informal meetings. And again, everything is context, right? Right. I belong to a writer's group. We used to regularly have cocktails during our meetings. Yeah. If we're talking about it, work. I have had meetings with people overseas who, you know, are taking the meeting out of the kindness of their heart. But it's after dinner and they have a glass of wine or a beer with them as we're having it.

    00;08;06;19 - 00;08;08;12
    Wayne Turmel
    And it doesn't bother me.

    00;08;08;15 - 00;08;09;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;08;09;06 - 00;08;25;21
    Wayne Turmel
    First of all, they're the customer. What am I going to say? Okay. But also, it's an informal discussion. And I want I want a heightened level of informality because I think you communicate better that way.

    00;08;25;27 - 00;08;41;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah. I mean, I've been on some, you know, virtual happy hour stuff with sorority sorority meetings or webinars or whatever. And it's just like, yeah, like it's 9:00. If I have a cocktail, it's fine. If they have a cocktail, it's fine.

    00;08;41;14 - 00;08;52;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Now, one of the ones which is very personal to me because and people who regularly view this don't know this, but I wear hats a lot.

    00;08;52;25 - 00;08;54;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I thought about you when I saw the.

    00;08;54;25 - 00;09;22;26
    Wayne Turmel
    Different types of hats, but you'll notice that nobody on this podcast has ever seen me wearing a hat because I differentiate between work Wayne and Wayne in the rest of my life. However, the one time I do wear a hat on a work call is because I live on the West Coast. My day starts way earlier than everybody else's.

    00;09;23;03 - 00;09;52;20
    Wayne Turmel
    And if somebody's not necessarily a client, but if somebody on our team or somebody like that calls a meeting for 9:00 Eastern time, there is a pretty good chance I am not going to be showered and presentable. Right. And so I can throw on a shirt that's not a big deal, but all off and put on a baseball cap just so I don't look like Albert Einstein.

    00;09;52;22 - 00;10;09;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, I thought it was interesting, too, when I was seeing that, because, you know, we had a team member that she wore hats frequently and that was just part of her style. That was just how she was. And I was never bothered by it. When I would see out, it was usually a wow, like that. That's cool hat.

    00;10;09;25 - 00;10;18;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I hadn't seen or wear that one before or something like that. So I definitely found it interesting it being on this because it is an issue.

    00;10;19;06 - 00;10;26;06
    Wayne Turmel
    Most people who wear hats do it as a cheap attempt at branding and difference. Yeah, it's just myself included.

    00;10;26;13 - 00;10;27;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;10;27;23 - 00;10;32;06
    Wayne Turmel
    So that particular person that was part of her wacky.

    00;10;32;09 - 00;10;32;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, That was her.

    00;10;32;26 - 00;10;52;07
    Wayne Turmel
    Laid back style and it was great. One of the things that is important, if you're going to do that, though, and baseball caps are a problem for this, is they affect the lighting over your eyes and very often make it hard for people to see your eyes. And that can be a problem.

    00;10;52;09 - 00;10;55;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. And I can totally see that right.

    00;10;55;16 - 00;11;04;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Now where things get ugly as we look at that is generationally.

    00;11;04;18 - 00;11;05;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00;11;06;00 - 00;11;20;09
    Wayne Turmel
    What people find acceptable and what they don't. I used to think I was pretty cool. And and I do differentiate between formal and informal meetings.

    00;11;20;11 - 00;11;21;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;11;21;13 - 00;11;36;12
    Wayne Turmel
    And since extremely formal has never been my style. I'm fairly relaxed about some things, sometimes more than I should be. And I am a child of my generation.

    00;11;36;15 - 00;11;38;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Okay, So give us an example.

    00;11;38;25 - 00;11;55;01
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm 62 years old, right? I'm looking at where there's a huge difference in what's acceptable and what's unacceptable. You know, walking around the room during the meeting.

    00;11;55;03 - 00;11;56;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;11;56;19 - 00;12;19;18
    Wayne Turmel
    There is no reason not to do that. I'm when I'm in the conference room, I very often because my joints ache and stuff and I have the attention span of an Irish setter, so I have to burn off energy. So I'll stand and move to the back of the room. Right. Stand against the back wall or something while the meeting is going on.

    00;12;19;21 - 00;12;29;17
    Wayne Turmel
    I tend not to do that on virtual meetings, but I think that's largely a function of my camera setup.

    00;12;29;19 - 00;12;30;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;12;30;29 - 00;12;44;04
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm on camera most of the time. If it's a telephone call, I'll walk down. There are there are ruts in our carpet from where I pace and walk during a comp during a telephone call.

    00;12;44;10 - 00;12;46;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;12;46;06 - 00;12;59;00
    Wayne Turmel
    But generally speaking, I'm a little more particularly if it's a camera meeting, I'm a little more traditional. Like now. I'll sit there like a good boy and do it.

    00;12;59;02 - 00;13;15;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I do it too. And I have been on meetings or even streams that I watch where like, people have gotten up. And I think for me the issue is less that they've gotten up. It's that their mic is set up for that. And so now they're talking, I can't hear you.

    00;13;15;08 - 00;13;20;23
    Wayne Turmel
    You know what's worse? I just realized when I want to throttle the person.

    00;13;20;25 - 00;13;21;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay.

    00;13;21;28 - 00;13;23;29
    Wayne Turmel
    Not that I would.

    00;13;24;01 - 00;13;25;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Because you're virtual, so you're.

    00;13;25;04 - 00;14;01;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Actually laying hands on another human being is wrong. It's okay to want to just don't do it that way. But the big one for me and it's because I never do this, is I, I don't do face time or meetings, especially work meetings on my phone. When I'm having a conversation, a webcam conversation with they're on their phone and they're walking, and it's like being on the deck of the Titanic.

    00;14;01;17 - 00;14;25;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Like, it's super distracting. Well, not only that, but, like, okay, I'm. Somebody gets motion sick, really easy. And still, I literally cannot watch people do that. Like, I know it's a thing. And we've we've had people on our own team that have done that occasionally. And I'm just like, I literally have to hide your camera because otherwise I'm a puke all over the.

    00;14;25;20 - 00;14;26;14
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah.

    00;14;26;16 - 00;14;30;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I am surprised that that wasn't mentioned in this list.

    00;14;30;28 - 00;14;40;13
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. I mean, it was I don't know, you know, the problem with surveys is they people answer the question that you ask.

    00;14;40;15 - 00;14;41;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;14;41;20 - 00;14;59;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. Nobody says, by the way. Yeah. This drives me crazy, too. I think the biggest one and this is true of the workplace in general, which gets generational conflict is what you're wearing on your call.

    00;14;59;26 - 00;15;04;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah. So.

    00;15;04;13 - 00;15;17;25
    Wayne Turmel
    So is it okay to wear your pajamas, you know? Do you wear what you sleep in on a zoom meeting? And, you know, I sleep naked, so the answer is no.

    00;15;17;27 - 00;15;20;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Thank you.

    00;15;20;07 - 00;15;23;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Welcome to another edition of too much information.

    00;15;23;26 - 00;15;29;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Like, unplug my headphones about. Do not need to know.

    00;15;30;01 - 00;15;38;24
    Wayne Turmel
    But. But it drives me crazy. My daughter wears pajamas. 24 seven. She goes to the grocery store in a onesie.

    00;15;38;27 - 00;15;39;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    No.

    00;15;39;25 - 00;15;41;20
    Wayne Turmel
    It drives me insane.

    00;15;41;22 - 00;15;43;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, she's about a year younger than me.

    00;15;43;21 - 00;15;44;04
    Wayne Turmel
    Yes.

    00;15;44;11 - 00;15;55;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay. See, I was also the weird person, and I will confess, I'm weird that I wouldn't go to college classes in pajamas, and I felt like it was very respectful or disrespectful When. Why would somebody.

    00;15;55;17 - 00;16;01;22
    Wayne Turmel
    Go to college classes in pajamas? Why would you leave your dorm room?

    00;16;01;25 - 00;16;06;02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    We had 8 a.m. classes and I was like the only one in jeans.

    00;16;06;04 - 00;16;09;15
    Wayne Turmel
    I Yeah. But now you're an old soul.

    00;16;09;18 - 00;16;10;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That is true.

    00;16;10;08 - 00;16;20;01
    Wayne Turmel
    So, you know, I can appreciate that. That's. That's why I adore you. But it's not. But, Jim, is there, like, an obvious example?

    00;16;20;03 - 00;16;20;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Correct.

    00;16;20;27 - 00;16;21;09
    Wayne Turmel
    Right.

    00;16;21;16 - 00;16;23;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;16;23;12 - 00;16;48;28
    Wayne Turmel
    But what do you wear on a call? And again, context matters. Right. Right. If I'm working from home and because I'm always working from home and you have a question and we have to get on a zoom or whatever, call real quick. If I'm in my gym shorts, you know, if I'm not dressed 100% professionally, it doesn't matter because it's you and me.

    00;16;48;28 - 00;16;51;14
    Wayne Turmel
    It's going to be a five minute conversation and we're out.

    00;16;51;20 - 00;16;53;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yep.

    00;16;53;15 - 00;16;56;02
    Wayne Turmel
    If I'm in front of a customer, a.

    00;16;56;05 - 00;16;58;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Totally different ballgame.

    00;16;58;06 - 00;17;03;15
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, from the hips up, I need to be dressed like an adult.

    00;17;03;22 - 00;17;04;28
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;17;05;00 - 00;17;09;28
    Wayne Turmel
    I have worn a shirt, tie and cargo shorts. I have done that more than once.

    00;17;10;00 - 00;17;11;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That's okay.

    00;17;11;08 - 00;17;12;24
    Wayne Turmel
    The customer doesn't see it.

    00;17;12;27 - 00;17;33;09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. I mean, I've occasionally done that where I've had yoga pants and, like, something really nice or there when it's really cold in my office. I have one of those like, Snuggie blanket things that, I mean, like I it's, it's Navy blue. I put on it. I look like Cookie Monster. Like it's a thing, but it's super warm.

    00;17;33;12 - 00;17;46;03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But you better believe if I'm sitting here and working with it on and you or Kevin or somebody else is like, Hey, we have a meeting real quick. It's Hey, can you give me a second? And I will remove that because I do have standards. Yeah.

    00;17;46;03 - 00;17;57;14
    Wayne Turmel
    And I think that goes to a larger conversation which is worth having someday about formality or informality in the workplace.

    00;17;57;16 - 00;17;58;14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;17;58;16 - 00;18;24;17
    Wayne Turmel
    I was working with 45 h.r. People at a client yesterday, and we were talking about what are the things that they're dealing with and dress code and a appropriate and inappropriate clothing in the workplace has bloomed as a problem.

    00;18;24;19 - 00;18;40;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I've seen it in sorority meetings sometimes, too. And i'm like this is supposed to be business wear, and you have a denim skirt on. Like, we would have set them home if it was when I was in, but it was like, Well, we can't say that now.

    00;18;40;10 - 00;18;51;04
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, it's interesting. I just go back to what somebody told me, just post-COVID when people were coming back and she goes, They've gone feral.

    00;18;51;06 - 00;18;52;14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;18;52;16 - 00;19;15;08
    Wayne Turmel
    Like there used to be because the workplace was I mean, it was largely homogenous. But even if it wasn't homogenous demographically, there were just codes and the way things were done and they were the way things have been done for 100 years. And you had work clothes and you had plain clothes. Right, Right. It's like going to school.

    00;19;15;12 - 00;19;43;02
    Wayne Turmel
    I had school clothes and plain clothes. They weren't the same. And when we worked from home, the it wasn't just that you're home. You can wear whatever the heck you want, but the social pressure about what you wore went down. So even now, men who wear suits to the office rarely wear a tie. Yeah, like they'll wear a jacket, button down shirt.

    00;19;43;02 - 00;19;43;21
    Wayne Turmel
    I mean, they'll look.

    00;19;43;27 - 00;19;44;18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    They still look nice.

    00;19;44;24 - 00;19;48;16
    Wayne Turmel
    But they're not wearing, you know, the double Windsor at their throat.

    00;19;48;19 - 00;19;50;10
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;19;50;13 - 00;20;14;23
    Wayne Turmel
    And I think that what that does and this gets back to the Spider-Man paradox, right? With great power comes great responsibility is just because you can dress a certain way or act a certain way or get away with doing something online that you can't or wouldn't do in the office doesn't mean you should.

    00;20;14;25 - 00;20;20;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. I mean, there's still a level of respect, both for yourself and for whomever you're on the call with.

    00;20;20;18 - 00;20;34;02
    Wayne Turmel
    And, you know, yes, you are a grown person. Yes. You can make your own choices. You know, it's the whole thing about do you get dressed in work, appropriate attire in the morning.

    00;20;34;05 - 00;20;34;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;20;34;22 - 00;20;55;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Even when nobody's going to see you. Right. There is evidence psychologically that it affects how you think and how you work in your level of professionalism. And there are plenty of people who say, shut up, old man, my onesie is fine and it doesn't affect the outcome of my spreadsheet.

    00;20;55;17 - 00;21;17;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Like, I know some people that they feel like even when they're working from home, I'm going to wear shoes because for them, like even just having, you know, whatever they're wearing, having shoes is the thing that helps them be productive. I am not one of those people. I will admit I'm barefoot right now and have a blanket on my lap, but I'm still appropriately dressed.

    00;21;17;27 - 00;21;23;10
    Wayne Turmel
    And so senior notes. Send your notes to Wilma Flintstone here.

    00;21;23;13 - 00;21;30;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. But like I would have been even without this podcast, because that's just I'm just a.

    00;21;30;03 - 00;21;56;05
    Wayne Turmel
    From the house down. It's the Wild West. You could do whatever you want from the bellybutton up. You better look like you're working. A couple of things. We are way past time and we have had an inordinate amount of fun, and I think there are some important things to think about this right? Where do the generational differences? Right.

    00;21;56;07 - 00;22;25;10
    Wayne Turmel
    If I'm going to coach somebody about their appearance or their demeanor. Am I doing it because it's a valid business reason? Am I doing it because I am an old man? Right? Right. That is a conversation worth having when it's you and I talking. The level of formality is much lower than when I'm talking to a client. And it should be right.

    00;22;25;13 - 00;22;35;01
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. If you are inappropriately informal in a important business meeting. Right. The VP is on the call.

    00;22;35;04 - 00;22;35;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;22;35;26 - 00;23;13;04
    Wayne Turmel
    Your AC DC T-shirt may not be the best choice, but again, it's incumbent on us. Yes, the rules are changing. Yes, they are more flexible than they ever were. And what is the minimum professional standard in your industry, on your team, in your organization? Absolutely. And those are the things we need to think about. Look at me wrapping all this up, trying real hard to sound like we've had a professional discussion instead of venting, which we've largely been discussed.

    00;23;13;07 - 00;23;32;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And that being said, if you would like to know how to be more professional in your meetings and remote work, you can check out our long distance leadership series at Kevin Ikenberry, dot com slash LDL s. Thank you for listening to the long work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit long distance work dot com.

    00;23;32;18 - 00;23;51;14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like in review. This helps us know what you love about our show. 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 even suggest topic for Wayne and I to tackle any future episodes we would love.

    00;23;51;18 - 00;24;01;28
    Wayne Turmel
    And tell us. Tell us your meeting. Yes. Are we right? Are we wrong? Am I a grungy, grumpy old man yelling at clouds, or do I have a point?

    00;24;02;01 - 00;24;06;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Am I just an old soul? Don't know how to act at 32 inches your shoes.

    00;24;06;13 - 00;24;07;28
    Wayne Turmel
    Darn it.

    00;24;08;00 - 00;24;16;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I might slip. Or sometimes when my feet are cool, thick you for joining us, everybody. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.


    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    01:30 Hat Etiquette
    04:20 Pets in the Picture
    07:15 Eating on Camera
    10:05 Drinking Beverages
    13:50 Background and Environment
    17:40 Technical Preparedness
    19:45 Generational Differences
    21:30 Meeting Participation
    24:50 Conclusion

    Related Episodes

    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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    Read More
    Ask Wayne Anything, Hybrid Work, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

    Who’s Really a Remote Work Expert?

    Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel explore the intricacies of remote work expertise. Wayne, a seasoned professional in the field, shares his candid views on the skepticism surrounding the term "expert," the evolution of remote work expertise, and offers practical advice for discerning true expertise in this domain. The episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the remote work landscape, seeking to understand the blend of skepticism and wisdom in identifying genuine expertise.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Understand the History of Remote Work: Recognize that remote work has a long-standing history and is not just a recent trend.
    2. Question Titles and Expertise: Be skeptical of self-proclaimed experts, especially those with pretentious titles.
    3. Evaluate Credibility: Check the background and track record of a professional claiming remote work expertise.
    4. Beware of Zealots: Be cautious of those who are overly zealous about remote work; true expertise is balanced and objective.
    5. Look for Practical Solutions: Seek out experts who focus on practical help and realistic approaches to remote work.
    6. Utilize Resources: Explore available courses and resources to deepen your understanding of remote work leadership and management.

    View Full Transcript

    00;00;07;26 - 00;00;19;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to the long distance work life, where we help you live, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marissa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Jamal. Hi.

    00;00;19;13 - 00;00;29;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Hello, Marissa. How are you? And hello, everybody listening? It sounds sometimes like I'm ignoring you and I'm not, so. Hello? I'm listening.

    00;00;29;27 - 00;00;50;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I'm doing great. And, you know, I'm just so excited about this topic today because I think it's gonna be really interesting for our listeners. May not be something they've really thought about before, but we're going to tackle it today. So every episode I introduce you as a remote work expert and believe it or not, we actually get snarky comments about this on our videos and our clips all the time.

    00;00;50;23 - 00;01;08;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    How can you be a remote work expert in something that's not been around that long? Now, for the record, and people who have listened us for a while already know that remote work has been around for a very long time. And if you are not aware of this, I would highly encourage you to listen to one of our first episodes titled When Did Remote Work Start, which I will have a link to in the show notes.

    00;01;08;06 - 00;01;13;05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But Wayne, let's start with the basics. How do you define a remote work expert?

    00;01;13;07 - 00;01;40;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, and total transparency. I cringe a little every time you introduce me as an expert. I am naturally a cynic and I'm kind of a that try to be a skeptic. And I sometimes go over the line to cynicism. The minute any time somebody introduces themselves as an expert, my radar goes off and the more pretentious the title, the more it goes off.

    00;01;41;00 - 00;02;09;21
    Wayne Turmel
    When I look at somebody's LinkedIn title and they claim to be a guru, alarm bells ring, things go crazy. I just go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That and living in a time just in society in general, when expertise is kind of frowned on and nobody is really an expert and, you know, yeah, that's a nice Ph.D. you've got I've got this guy on YouTube who says.

    00;02;09;23 - 00;02;10;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;02;10;19 - 00;02;23;24
    Wayne Turmel
    So there is a kind of general skepticism that I share to a degree. That being said, some people know more about other people.

    00;02;23;26 - 00;02;25;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. That's going to be true for everything.

    00;02;25;28 - 00;02;44;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. And if that is the case, then I suppose I am on the expert side of the spectrum. This is a topic that I started writing about in 2005 or six.

    00;02;44;20 - 00;02;47;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So that's when I tell you I was a freshman in high school.

    00;02;47;15 - 00;03;13;13
    Wayne Turmel
    And that's when I pulled the dagger out of my heart and tried to continue missing a beat. You know, I started investigating this thing called WebEx. And what did it mean back in 2005, 2006? And so you know, I have written, depending on how you counted, six books and multiple chapters and magazine articles and been doing the research and all of that stuff.

    00;03;13;13 - 00;03;36;21
    Wayne Turmel
    So if I have to defend my status as somebody who knows more about this, then the defense rests. Your Honor. Right. That being said, that being said, it's a constantly evolving field. And this is the other thing is, as I tell people, I do all I read the research and follow the stuff and listen to a lot of nonsense.

    00;03;36;25 - 00;04;03;06
    Wayne Turmel
    So you don't have to. And I run it through whatever filter I can to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff and present in as logical and and pertaining and kind of easily digested as possible, presented to people for them to then make their own decisions with. So, you know, that's as defensive as I get about the title.

    00;04;03;08 - 00;04;10;11
    Wayne Turmel
    That being said, it goes back to anybody. Anybody who calls himself a guru probably isn't.

    00;04;10;13 - 00;04;33;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So let's get into that a little bit. Like we've established. You've been doing this for a really long time. You have a bunch of expertise. You know what you're talking about, expert title or not. But how can how can your layperson, your normal person, determine whether somebody is a true remote work expert like yourself or they just started doing this in March of 2020?

    00;04;33;07 - 00;04;36;25
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, you know, just go on their LinkedIn profile.

    00;04;36;27 - 00;04;37;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That's true.

    00;04;37;16 - 00;05;04;20
    Wayne Turmel
    Seriously, I am serious. Is a heart attack go under LinkedIn profile and see what their track record. What if they were a manager at Arby's March of 2020 and then suddenly they were an expert in remote work? A little skepticism may be appropriate. So, you know, what is their experience? What is their background? What are we doing? It doesn't take much to check that.

    00;05;04;23 - 00;05;06;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah.

    00;05;06;14 - 00;05;09;28
    Wayne Turmel
    The other thing and this one is more controversial.

    00;05;10;00 - 00;05;10;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I love it.

    00;05;10;12 - 00;05;20;10
    Wayne Turmel
    And I have friends who are going to hate me. The more of a zealot they are, the less I take them at their word.

    00;05;20;12 - 00;05;21;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay, so why is that?

    00;05;21;18 - 00;05;47;12
    Wayne Turmel
    Here's the thing. And we often, Kevin and I often get lumped into it when they give lists of people who are thinkers about remote work. We're often on the list, and we are not the most zealous specializing. The future is remote work and death to the office and you know, all of that stuff. That's not where we are.

    00;05;47;12 - 00;06;16;08
    Wayne Turmel
    We think there are incredible advantages to remote work. We think that the trend is certainly moving that way. But the people who are zealots, the people who say that there is no use whatsoever, there is no need for people to ever get together physically. All of your social, biological, nourishing needs can be met through through Zoom. I tend to look at that skeptically.

    00;06;16;11 - 00;06;17;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That makes sense.

    00;06;17;04 - 00;06;40;22
    Wayne Turmel
    Our approach is these things are happening. They are certainly trends. We need to be aware of it. And like all technology and all work trends, where does it make sense for my company, for the things that I do, for the work I choose to do? Where does it make sense and where can I leverage it, and where are the pitfalls and things that you need to watch out for?

    00;06;40;22 - 00;07;02;28
    Wayne Turmel
    And that's where I like to spend my time. I have no interest in helping Silicon Valley companies get their next new thing launched right. I am a real skeptic about technology, and so I am not an early adopter. I am not first one over the fence, and I don't think most people should be.

    00;07;03;00 - 00;07;06;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. We've talked about this actually in our episode not that long ago.

    00;07;07;00 - 00;07;34;23
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. So I think that and any time you are an evangelist or a zealot for something, your objectivity goes out the window. Yeah, you've gone in with a good vision of the truth, and your job now is to defend that as radically as possible. And so you tend to weed out information that doesn't fit your paradigm. That's in fact.

    00;07;34;26 - 00;08;02;03
    Wayne Turmel
    And the fact that I use the word paradigm makes me cringe, but it's true. Yeah. And so I try to be objective. And at the Kevin Ikenberry group, our focus is not on changing the world in terms of upending business models. My job personally, is to help the individual person get through the workday with some shred of sanity and dignity.

    00;08;02;05 - 00;08;03;21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Right. We just want to.

    00;08;03;21 - 00;08;27;22
    Wayne Turmel
    And if and if remote work helps you achieve that and you're a better person, here's how we can help. And if you have to go into the office every day, here are some things that you might want to think about that might save your sanity and your dignity. So I understand, you know, the skepticism of people online who go remote work expert.

    00;08;27;25 - 00;08;37;22
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, anybody can call themselves that. Well, yeah, they can. And I challenge you as listeners to the dose of skepticism.

    00;08;37;25 - 00;08;56;24
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So, I mean, there's lots of people that are getting the titles, some of which are given to them and some of which are they're trying to make themselves, I guess, is the point we're trying to make. But so but specifically, going back to you, how has your role as a remote work expert evolved over time, especially in the last four years?

    00;08;56;24 - 00;08;58;22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I mean, a lot of stuff has changed.

    00;08;58;24 - 00;09;22;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, I mean, if I go back to when I first started thinking about this, right, was June 26, I was teaching traditional presentation skills and I remembered the moment somebody said to me, Wayne, this standing in front of the room stuff is great, but I only talk to real people like twice a year. I work remotely and there's this thing called WebEx, and that's what I'm using.

    00;09;22;24 - 00;09;55;10
    Wayne Turmel
    And I started investigating at the time there were 120 little plankton level web meetings and some WebEx was the Mack daddy of them all. But I became fascinated. I knew the trend was going to continue, and so I became fascinated in that. I started a company that taught people how to do webinars and how to present online, and I got asked more and more about the day to day work, not just the presentations, but how do you run a team and how do you do that?

    00;09;55;13 - 00;10;20;05
    Wayne Turmel
    Kevin and I had known each other for a long time. We created a remote leadership institute, so I had gone from almost strictly presentation and communication skills to teams and leading them in a remote environment. And then the last year and some people have noticed this, some people haven't. The Remote Leadership Institute brand after COVID kind of went away.

    00;10;20;06 - 00;10;42;29
    Wayne Turmel
    It still exists, but it's inside the greater Kevin Eikenberry group because the world has changed the the world of leadership, remote leadership. Most people now no longer look at it as a separate thing. It's part of the job. If you are above first line supervisor, odds are you're going to have at least one member of your team who doesn't work where you do.

    00;10;43;04 - 00;10;44;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, and you have to prepare for that.

    00;10;44;16 - 00;11;11;02
    Wayne Turmel
    And you have to be able to deal with that and include them in the team. And so the role of remote work in our getting our jobs done has morph and hope. And we like to believe that this is true. We have kind of kept up with that. And again, I have read more nonsense and taken part in more free samples of software and done all that stuff than any human being ought to.

    00;11;11;04 - 00;11;59;04
    Wayne Turmel
    You probably can tell from my white beard and white hair, but I am 42 years old. No, look what it has done to me. So, you know, my has changed. And I think most human beings, if they are wise, they are open to changing as the world changes. I think that if you look at what Kevin and I teach in long distance leader London's team, one year team mate, all of our blogs, all of our courses, it's that while things are changing and we need to be aware of and adjust to and be mindful of the changes that come to us, the core of leading people, of getting work done, of having a leadership mindset,

    00;11;59;06 - 00;12;12;10
    Wayne Turmel
    is really evergreen and it's the details and nuances that change. But those changes and nuances can drive you mad if you are unaware of them and can't deal with them.

    00;12;12;12 - 00;12;30;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right? So I guess, you know, for our leaders and our managers that are listening, you know, what are some common challenges that remote work experts actually help businesses employees overcome? I know you've talked about a little bit of them as we've gone, but like really specifically, like what? What do you help with? What do we think?

    00;12;30;09 - 00;13;03;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Like the big thing, I think is helping us understand how being remote changes us, how we interact with each other. There are a few things. One is that we were raised from birth as face to face, nose to nose, visual in contact, communicating beings. That is our natural default. When we are not doing that, we have to rely on our higher functions.

    00;13;03;20 - 00;13;30;12
    Wayne Turmel
    We have to rely on trust. We have to communicate quite effectively so that I don't have to stand at your desk and watch you do your job. Right. That's something that should be happening anyway. But with the rise of remote and hybrid work, the ability to micromanage the idea of command and control, which has been evaporating as we've evolved as a species, continues to do that.

    00;13;30;12 - 00;13;59;11
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, not everybody's comfortable with that. Command and control is a very lizard brain, very natural response, right to pressure and a task and and all of that stuff. Remote work, hybrid work is a natural extension of expanding that approach in our courses and in our Long Distance Leader series, The first module, and we do this as a standalone course as well.

    00;13;59;12 - 00;14;27;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Shameless plug is how leaders create and manage remote and hybrid teams. And really we introduce three models that are crucial to that mindset. The first is why does this feel so weird? And we have what we call the remote leadership, the three year model. There's a trust model. How do we build trust if something is happening? You know, can we apply this model and figure out what the problem is?

    00;14;27;18 - 00;15;04;10
    Wayne Turmel
    And then the third one is choosing the right technology for the right communication task, which is huge in remote and hybrid work. If you are sending an email rather, or a text, rather than having the conversations you need to have, that is the root cause of a lot of problems, right? And I think that's the work that we do most effectively is we get people to say, if you have a leadership mindset, if you want to have a leadership mindset and you should, what are the nuances?

    00;15;04;10 - 00;15;25;05
    Wayne Turmel
    What are the changes? What are the circumstances that require adjustments to that? And I think at the end of the day, that's not what makes us a zealot because not all work can or should be done remotely. Not all organizations function best that way. There are plenty who do if they do. This is how you need to approach it.

    00;15;25;11 - 00;15;50;14
    Wayne Turmel
    If you are going to be hybrid. These are the nuances that you need to take into consideration. And, you know, I think that's what we bring to the party. I think if there's an expertise to it, that's what it is. So I hope that answered your question and I hope it answered the question for the listeners, because I know we we seldom talk about what we actually do, what our work is.

    00;15;50;16 - 00;15;56;27
    Wayne Turmel
    We try to keep it more general and but specifically, sometimes you got to know that stuff.

    00;15;57;03 - 00;16;15;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah. We so classes, we have to pay the bills, right. I have my one last question before we end the show here. But what advice would you give to leaders of managers who would like to better understand how to leverage this kind of expertise of remote work professionals such as yourself and us? I think at Mike Berger.

    00;16;15;10 - 00;16;33;18
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of it's very good. There are a lot of very talented people. There are people we have on this show as guests who are wonderful people and they should make a living and you should hire them if that's what you want to do. I think it's like anything else, understand the first principles.

    00;16;33;24 - 00;17;09;09
    Wayne Turmel
    What does your organization, what is the work that needs to be done? And you are the best person to know that, right? But knowing that doesn't mean that you are 100% comfortable with what's next. Some people have no idea, and they're kind of paralyzed. Some people think they know, but some validation would be nice to make sure that we're on the right track and other people are out on that path and maybe it's not going the way they want it to.

    00;17;09;09 - 00;17;13;24
    Wayne Turmel
    And I think those are the circumstances where you bring in other people.

    00;17;13;28 - 00;17;31;02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, that totally makes sense. And Wayne, I know earlier you were talking about our Long Distance Leadership series. And for any of our listeners, listeners who are interested in that, you can go to Kevin Eikenberry dot com slash LDL s to find out more about those classes and what's coming up and.

    00;17;31;02 - 00;17;41;20
    Wayne Turmel
    Absolutely and those class football as you know an open enrollment series for individuals or we're happy to talk to you about bringing it in-house to your company.

    00;17;41;23 - 00;17;58;17
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And listeners. Thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit long distance work life dot com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, we sure like and review This helps us know what you love about our show.

    00;17;58;20 - 00;18;12;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Feel free to contact us via LinkedIn or email with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic for one night to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne like to say, don't always get too down.


    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    00:29 Debating the Term 'Expert'
    01:13 Wayne's Perspective on Expertise
    05:10 Remote Work Zealots and Objectivity
    06:17 Challenges and Solutions in Remote Work
    08:58 Wayne's Remote Work Journey
    12:30 Addressing Common Remote Work Challenges
    17:31 Concluding Thoughts

    Related Episodes

    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!

     Order
    Read More
    Navigating Office Returns: Harmony or Hostage Negotiation? Long-Distance Worklife Podcast
    Ask Wayne Anything, Hybrid Work, Leadership

    Navigating Office Returns: Harmony or Hostage Negotiation?

    Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel navigate the evolving 'Return to Office' landscape. They discuss the challenges and realities of shifting from remote to hybrid work, focusing on employer-employee negotiations and the impact on productivity and employee engagement. Wayne sheds light on the varied experiences of returning to the office, touching on the concept of 'malicious compliance' and forecasting the future of hybrid work environments.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Adapt to Varied Office Experiences: Be flexible and adaptable in response to the diverse return-to-office experiences. Adjust your work routine to suit the new environment.
    2. Negotiate Work Arrangements: Take an active role in negotiating your work arrangements. Discuss with your employer to find a balance between remote and in-office work that aligns with your productivity needs.
    3. Evaluate Productivity and Engagement: Regularly assess how the shift in work environment affects your productivity and engagement. If necessary, seek adjustments to maintain your effectiveness.
    4. Respond Thoughtfully to Remote Work Policies: If faced with restrictive remote work policies, consider how to respond constructively. Avoid malicious compliance by communicating your concerns and suggesting feasible solutions.
    5. Prepare for the Evolution of Hybrid Work: Stay informed about the shifting landscape of hybrid work. Plan and strategize for the changes this might bring to your role and career.

    View Full Transcript

    00;00;07;28 - 00;00;18;15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to the Long-Distance Work Life. We help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marissa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi.

    00;00;18;18 - 00;00;20;26
    Wayne Turmel
    Hello. That would be me. Hi.

    00;00;20;28 - 00;00;41;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So as we're recording this, it's actually early January. This is, you know, our first full week back to work. And something that we're hearing a lot of right now is about return to office. And it's popping back up on the scene and lots of different people are having lots of different conversations around this. And unfortunately, it's not going for the better.

    00;00;41;09 - 00;00;44;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So, Wayne, overall, how is return to office going right now?

    00;00;44;27 - 00;01;19;25
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm trying to think of the correct word and it's it's on a spectrum. It's not a dumpster fire. It's not quite a car wreck unless you consider a minor fender bender. A car wreck. It's somewhere on that spectrum. We're actually going to have an interview or two about this over the next few weeks. But I think that return to office is going okay and could and should be going a lot better, frankly.

    00;01;19;28 - 00;01;42;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. I was going to say, I think we can both be in agreement on that. I know one of the things that I keep seeing as I flip around on TikTok or I'm on Instagram or, you know, wherever it is like hangout, that companies are actually starting to increase the number of days per week in the office and up to and including having no remote work days at all, or it's four days a week, which makes some people go, okay, why bother?

    00;01;42;08 - 00;01;47;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And so do you think we're starting to see remote work going to the levels that it was pre 2020?

    00;01;47;09 - 00;02;03;22
    Wayne Turmel
    It's not quite at those levels. The latest numbers that I've seen is in the industries where remote work is possible, Right. It's about 33% remote work, whereas before the pandemic it was under 25.

    00;02;03;24 - 00;02;04;23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Okay.

    00;02;04;26 - 00;02;26;26
    Wayne Turmel
    So it has at least what we are seeing. And I am desperately trying to rein in my cynicism and also the desire to say, I told you so. What we are seeing is that the return to office was not a plan so much as a hostage negotiation.

    00;02;26;28 - 00;02;29;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. You had to be like there was no choice.

    00;02;29;05 - 00;02;54;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Right? They were like the employers were saying, we want you back in. And the employees were saying, you know, if you push too hard, I will quit. And so they kind of negotiated this uneven Stockholm Syndrome thing where it wasn't so much a plan as it was. We can get them in the office so much that they don't quit.

    00;02;54;24 - 00;02;56;19
    Wayne Turmel
    And that's kind of where it settled.

    00;02;56;21 - 00;02;57;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;02;57;09 - 00;03;19;11
    Wayne Turmel
    Which which made no side really happy. And time has gone on. And this is the cynical part of me. Not surprisingly, organizations have kind of clawed back the time in the office, you know, until you're down to, well, you can stay home Fridays if you want.

    00;03;19;14 - 00;03;20;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;03;20;14 - 00;03;21;16
    Wayne Turmel
    Which is not.

    00;03;21;19 - 00;03;22;15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Not a.

    00;03;22;17 - 00;03;31;15
    Wayne Turmel
    Truly effective hybrid work. It's you know, the the the negotiations are going better for one side.

    00;03;31;18 - 00;03;41;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So what do you think is causing this shift to more and more days? I mean, is it just managers being like, I want people in the office and we have a building we're paying for and that's just how it's going to be?

    00;03;41;14 - 00;04;04;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, I mean, some of it is. And this is senior leader. It's interesting. It's senior leaders more than it is individual leaders. If you look at the people who want more flexibility, people who are managers in the middle levels were ones to get the benefits of remote work and they saw it and liked it a bunch.

    00;04;04;28 - 00;04;05;11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;04;05;11 - 00;04;24;23
    Wayne Turmel
    And so your middle managers are not exactly leading the charge to come back. As a matter of fact, one of the problems is that the organization and the senior leadership have said, thou shall get your butt back here. And the middle managers are kind of tasked with making that happen, but they're not putting their full back into it.

    00;04;24;26 - 00;04;25;20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;04;25;23 - 00;04;48;00
    Wayne Turmel
    Because they haven't really bought into. Just fascinating to me. So, yeah, I mean, some of this is a desperate desire, partly through just sheer exhaustion and partly because of and the inbred belief that that's the way it is to get things back to as close to the before times as possible.

    00;04;48;05 - 00;05;03;14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    On this show, we've talked about productivity with remote work a lot, and there are some people that feel like they're way more productive at home and some people that feel like they're more productive in the office. And there's been lots of data and lots of studies that show lots of different things. And you can make the data say whatever you want, but.

    00;05;03;16 - 00;05;04;12
    Wayne Turmel
    And they do.

    00;05;04;14 - 00;05;21;26
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And they do. We and we've seen it we've talked about it on the show. But have you have you seen noticeable changes in productivity or employee engagement with this shift back to remote work? I mean, I would think employee engagement might kind of be on the down low if people are mad about it.

    00;05;21;29 - 00;05;52;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, it's interesting about that. And, you know, again, where do you get your numbers? Right? So the the best guess is you're looking at the Gartner's, the McKinsey's, the people who are kind of studying this. And you know, McKinsey stuff tends to support the people who are hiring them, which are the managers. But even still, what that is showing is that employee engagement hasn't really shifted.

    00;05;52;27 - 00;06;02;21
    Wayne Turmel
    And that's because the people who are ticked off about going back to the office are more ticked off. And so they're showing up as less satisfied and less engaged.

    00;06;02;22 - 00;06;04;07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;06;04;09 - 00;06;28;06
    Wayne Turmel
    Percentage of people, it's interesting when they talk about people going back to the office, it's always like, well, they're going to be more productive. What they are is happier because they are extroverts who like having other people around and they're comfortable in that environment. And there's a bunch of people and, you know, the remote work zealots will tell you that they're dinosaurs and will soon be gone.

    00;06;28;06 - 00;07;05;15
    Wayne Turmel
    And that ain't true. There are people who enjoy working in an office environment and they like work peers, and there is some value to that. Anybody who says there isn't is kind of whistling past the graveyard. There is some benefits to being together. It tends not to be on the productivity side. Right. Unless your work relies on brainstorming and quick problem solving and people coming together, if it's task completion tasks get done and people are left alone to get their tasks done.

    00;07;05;16 - 00;07;24;05
    Wayne Turmel
    I mean, that evidence was showing up pre-pandemic and it's becoming more and more clear that if you're going to be in an office environment, you still need quiet time protected from, Hey, it's Marissa's birthday, there's cake in the breakroom. We need a break from that.

    00;07;24;07 - 00;07;25;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00;07;25;15 - 00;07;34;26
    Wayne Turmel
    And that has people and this is a whole other show for a whole other day is, you know, if we are going to asses, what should they look like?

    00;07;34;28 - 00;07;36;19
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;07;36;21 - 00;07;41;16
    Wayne Turmel
    And the cube farm and it as near as we can tell.

    00;07;41;19 - 00;07;59;10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Well, something else that I've seen, too, is that with some of these companies that are shifting back to, you know, return to office and they might even be doing away with remote work entirely. I know that there was a viral story on Reddit and somebody else does a tech talk about it. And so it's making its rounds again.

    00;07;59;12 - 00;08;21;13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But basically their employer had said, you you cannot work from home at all, period. Not the end. And so they were like, okay, well, if I can't work from home, I'm removing teams from my phone and I'm not checking my email or whatever. And then their boss tried to get a hold of them after hours and it was like, Sorry, you told me I wasn't allowed to work from home.

    00;08;21;16 - 00;08;25;27
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So do you have any thoughts on that? Because I've seen some of this or.

    00;08;26;00 - 00;08;34;24
    Wayne Turmel
    This gets to something we talked about in the very early days of this podcast, which is this idea of malicious compliance.

    00;08;34;27 - 00;08;36;03
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;08;36;05 - 00;08;43;21
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. And any time you put a hard and fast rule in especially one that is viewed as punitive.

    00;08;43;24 - 00;08;45;05
    Marisa Eikenberry


    00;08;45;08 - 00;08;54;25
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. And let's keep in mind, we have people who were hired during the pandemic, so they were hired to be remote, and now they're being forced to come in.

    00;08;54;27 - 00;08;56;04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Or move.

    00;08;56;06 - 00;09;22;19
    Wayne Turmel
    Or actually, you know, change their location or whatever. But this idea of if the return to office is seen as a punitive measure, you weren't getting your work done. You were slacking off. You were going to target when you should have been on that conference call. Therefore, we're bringing you in here. You are going to get a negative reaction to that if court move is deemed as punitive.

    00;09;22;26 - 00;09;30;03
    Wayne Turmel
    The natural response short of actually quitting and, you know, the people that could easily quit and move on have.

    00;09;30;07 - 00;09;31;01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I was gonna say we.

    00;09;31;01 - 00;09;55;17
    Wayne Turmel
    Can target that initial wave of resignations has has passed and where you are now is people who are complying but darn unhappy about it and therefore will do the bare minimum in order to keep their jobs, which is not what you want. Right. Right. And that wasn't the intent. The idea of return to office is we're going to work together better and we're going to do all this stuff.

    00;09;55;21 - 00;10;09;14
    Wayne Turmel
    But if the rule is you need to come to the are paying you to be in the office, by definition, you are not paying me to answer calls at my kids soccer game. And so you get what you pay for.

    00;10;09;16 - 00;10;11;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Right.

    00;10;11;10 - 00;10;36;20
    Wayne Turmel
    Now, the other thing that's happening, and this is not a surprise to any rational human being, is that before the pandemic, we had a lot of what I used to call stealth remote. Officially, we were all in the office. But, you know, Lisa's kid is sick, so she's going to take that call from home. I'm working on a project.

    00;10;36;20 - 00;10;46;11
    Wayne Turmel
    I need to focus. So I'm not going in on Friday. I'm going to stay home and work. And it was never official and it was never blessed. But we know what happened.

    00;10;46;13 - 00;10;53;08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, we got like and now going to see a client or whatever, like, yeah. And, you know, even acceptable once we're still.

    00;10;53;09 - 00;11;10;27
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah. And now the term that is being and I hate it but nobody invited me to the meeting is what they call backdoor remote. okay. Which is the office has its rules, but if one wants to go work from home, I'm not going to rat on him.

    00;11;11;00 - 00;11;17;19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Gotcha. It seems like with middle managers, like they're the ones aren't for employees.

    00;11;17;21 - 00;11;36;29
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to the fact that middle managers with a straight face can't look at their employees and say, You have to come into the office because we don't trust you to get your work done when they know that's nonsense. And as a matter of fact, they want to be working from home more often.

    00;11;37;01 - 00;11;38;16
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah, they want. Right.

    00;11;38;23 - 00;12;05;05
    Wayne Turmel
    And they just can't with a straight face and a clear conscience, enforce these rules. And any time you get unwritten rules, you essentially have no rules. And it's chaos. And dogs and cats sleep there. And, you know, the end is nigh. And this is something that we predicted not. And it doesn't make me Nostradamus. It makes me a cynical studier of human nature.

    00;12;05;07 - 00;12;09;28
    Wayne Turmel
    There is an obvious overreaction to everything.

    00;12;10;00 - 00;12;10;12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00;12;10;18 - 00;12;41;24
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. The overreaction was we have to be in the office. No, I can work from home. I'm not going to office at all. And then there's you have to come into the office and, boy, this feels kind of familiar, and I like it. And it make get my boss off my back. So we're going to have you come back in until they you know, and management doesn't think we notice that that they're doing this and they're wrong.

    00;12;41;27 - 00;13;04;02
    Wayne Turmel
    So there's a and what we have said all along is that hot work is not simply a compromise. And that's what the next wave is. You have to look at we were not in the office for a long time and now we're back in and some things are better and some things are worse. You know, tasks aren't getting done.

    00;13;04;08 - 00;13;36;21
    Wayne Turmel
    It's a lot harder to get your focused work done. We have to only hire people who live within 40 minutes of the office, which reduces our talent pool. So as long as we look at return to office as this uneasy compromise and we're just trying to find what's the balance between keeping senior leadership happy and having people not start to quit, it's not going to progress to the next level, which is hybrid work is a different thing.

    00;13;36;21 - 00;14;04;12
    Wayne Turmel
    And it's not just where people are. It's not just where people work, but when they work. And you have to build in the freedom to have flexibility in your schedule and work when it's most appropriate. And maybe we don't constantly need meetings where people always have to be, Yeah, you can work from home and you can have flexibility over your schedule, but we have four meetings today and you'd better be on them.

    00;14;04;12 - 00;14;08;06
    Marisa Eikenberry
    All right. And we've talked about asynchronous work before and I'll.

    00;14;08;07 - 00;14;44;14
    Wayne Turmel
    Be well again. I know we've got interviews coming up to make that, you know, to have that discussion in more depth. So the answer to your question, how's your return to office going is it's going right. I think some organizations are happy with the balance and got all of them. Other organizations understand that we Stacy's, but nobody's really happy and it's probably not the ideal answer.

    00;14;44;14 - 00;15;12;04
    Wayne Turmel
    And so I'm hopeful that people who are listening to this podcast and and, you know, taking a look at the issue really continuously, continuously and seriously look at how to improve it rather than just going, okay, the bleeding is stopped. And, you know, we like this kind of and think beyond that because that's going to be the next wave.

    00;15;12;04 - 00;15;22;21
    Wayne Turmel
    And the companies that are successful are the ones who are going to go above and beyond compromise to really thoughtful, intentional hybrid work.

    00;15;22;24 - 00;15;34;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I know that we're getting close to wrapping up our time and wait. I know that we talked before this, that we wanted to talk about our Long Distance Leadership series. So would you like to take that away before I get into the outro?

    00;15;34;27 - 00;16;04;00
    Wayne Turmel
    A lot of people think that, you know, we've done remote or we're going back to the office, so we don't need it. But the fact of the matter is that leadership in the age of hybrid work and remote work is mostly the same as it is. Good leaders will find a way to lead, but there are nuances and we have a public enrollment six part workshop that looks at those nuances of remote work.

    00;16;04;02 - 00;16;37;00
    Wayne Turmel
    I think it's a great idea for individual leaders who want to take the bull by the horns and understand that better as organizations are thinking about how are we going to help prepare our leaders, maybe send somebody from your organization to that to take a look and see if it's appropriate for your team? And I think that it's important and solved built on the cons and the long distance leader, long distance teammate, long distance team that a lot of people on this pod who listen to this show are familiar with.

    00;16;37;04 - 00;16;54;25
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Thank you so much for sharing that. And listeners, thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources, Make sure to visit long distance work life Bcom. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show wherever you're listening so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like and review.

    00;16;55;01 - 00;17;15;29
    Marisa Eikenberry
    This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our shownotes. And let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. As Wayne likes to say, the weasels gets down to.


    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    01:19 Increasing Office Days: Impact on Remote Work
    01:47 Shifts in Remote Work Prevalence
    05:04 Productivity and Employee Engagement Trends
    08:56 Malicious Compliance and Remote Work Policies
    15:12 The Future of Hybrid Work

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    Remote Work Rants: To Fake or Not to Fake Your Zoom Background
    Ask Wayne Anything, Technology

    Remote Work Rants: To Fake or Not to Fake Your Zoom Background

    Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel delve into the nuanced world of remote work environments, particularly focusing on the use of fake Zoom backgrounds. They explore various perspectives on authenticity and professionalism in remote settings, discussing the impact of virtual backgrounds on connection and communication. They also share tips on choosing appropriate backgrounds and the technical aspects of using them effectively.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Evaluate the Impact of Virtual Backgrounds: Reflect on how your choice of Zoom background affects perceptions of authenticity and professionalism in your remote work environment.
    2. Master the Technical Aspects: Familiarize yourself with the technical setup for virtual backgrounds to ensure smooth and professional visuals in your meetings.
    3. Contextual Background Selection: Consider the context of your meetings and choose your Zoom background accordingly to maintain a balance between professionalism and personal expression.
    4. Embrace Authenticity and Connection: Use your background choices as a tool to express your personality and build connections with your team, while maintaining a professional standard.
    5. Stay Informed and Adaptive: Keep abreast of evolving norms and preferences regarding virtual backgrounds within your team and broader professional community.

    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction
    00:46 The Listener's Query: Fake Zoom Backgrounds
    01:38 Technical Issues with Virtual Backgrounds
    02:03 Authenticity vs. Professionalism in Remote Work
    03:10 When to Use and Avoid Virtual Backgrounds
    04:08 Cultural and Geographical Considerations
    06:18 Technical Tips for Effective Background Usage
    07:45 Personalizing Backgrounds for Connection
    10:27 Corporate Standards and Individual Expression
    13:24 Achieving Authenticity in Remote Interactions
    14:26 Professionalism and Context in Background Choice
    17:24 Concluding Thoughts and Episode Wrap-up

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    A Hands-On Look at Zoom's AI Features
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    A Hands-On Look at Zoom’s AI Features

    In this episode of the Long-Distance Worklife podcast, we delve into Wayne's firsthand experience with the newly introduced AI features in Zoom. After our initial discussion about the theoretical capabilities of these AI tools, Wayne now brings practical insights from his real-world usage. We explore how these features enhance virtual meetings, their impact on remote communication, and whether they live up to the hype. Join us as we dissect the advantages, limitations, and overall effectiveness of AI in transforming the remote work experience, providing valuable takeaways for remote and hybrid teams.

    Key Takeaways

    1. Experiment with AI captioning for better communication inclusivity.

    2. Utilize meeting summaries for efficient recall and note-taking.

    3. Stay aware of the ethical implications of AI tools like eye contact manipulation.

    4. Regularly update and explore new technological features for team efficiency.

    5. Understand the psychological impact of AI's "uncanny valley" in virtual meetings.

    6. Strategically integrate new technologies while considering practicality and team dynamics.

    View Full Transcript

    00:00:07:22 - 00:00:18:22
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife where we help you lead, work, and thrive on remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, fellow remote worker, and joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi, Wayne.

    00:00:19:00 - 00:00:23:20
    Wayne Turmel
    And it is indeed a lovely day. Hi, Marisa.

    00:00:23:21 - 00:00:32:23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So today we're going back into even more pet peeves. We still have a bunch that you guys have sent us. And please keep sending us these.

    00:00:33:01 - 00:00:37:07
    Wayne Turmel
    Can I tell you how much I enjoy hearing what makes people crazy?

    00:00:37:09 - 00:00:38:10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00:00:38:12 - 00:00:44:03
    Wayne Turmel
    It just gives me such joy because there's a part of it that goes. It's not just me.

    00:00:44:05 - 00:01:06:04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    100%. 100%. So we're going to talk about those today. And the first one that I want to start with we actually got from LinkedIn, from Maya Middlemiss, who said taking a video meeting in an unsuitable environment because look at me and my work from anywhere lifestyle. Meanwhile, terrible background noise or they're making you seasick while apparently on a trampoline.

    00:01:06:06 - 00:01:13:05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Respect the rest of the room. Pay attention to the AV hygiene and UX of the whole call. So Wayne, does this bother you when people are.

    00:01:13:07 - 00:01:15:19
    Wayne Turmel
    AV hygiene and UX oh my!

    00:01:15:19 - 00:01:17:02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00:01:17:04 - 00:01:47:19
    Wayne Turmel
    Basically what she's saying is try not to be annoying. This is a problem. This is a problem that actually goes back to the invention of the cell phone. Okay. And here's what I mean by that. Those of us who are old enough to remember when we could take conference calls on cell phones for the first time, which means we weren't tied to this big clunky desk phone and we could walk around or take a call in the car.

    00:01:48:01 - 00:01:54:13
    Wayne Turmel
    And more than one conference call had been interrupted by a flushing sound.

    00:01:54:16 - 00:01:56:02
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I would think that.

    00:01:56:03 - 00:02:05:05
    Wayne Turmel
    Various and sundry noises they told us perhaps the person on the line wasn't fully engaged with the call.

    00:02:05:07 - 00:02:06:10
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00:02:06:12 - 00:02:32:21
    Wayne Turmel
    So this is a problem that's been going on for a while. It certainly is an issue. And now the way Maya said that tells me that there are two parts to this. One is the actual functional thing of it's annoying. I have a class that I teach for a university, and more than once my co teacher has turned her video on and I am looking at her cats.

    00:02:32:21 - 00:02:55:02
    Wayne Turmel
    But literally at her cats. But because the cat is walking across the keyboard and she just turns the camera on and I'm like, this is not the view I'm looking for, right? And it can be a little distracting. So some of it is is is there a level of professionalism here? Of course. Right. And respect for your peers.

    00:02:55:07 - 00:03:23:16
    Wayne Turmel
    Some of it is also, hey, I slipped into the office. I'm wearing big boy clothes. I'm doing this. And you're you know, on the couch with your lap desk doing, you know, doing yoga while trying to take this call. It's just annoying. So there's a respect thing, to be sure. The AC hygiene thing is very real. Certainly, people have taken meetings while they're out of the office that, of course, happens.

    00:03:23:19 - 00:03:31:09
    Wayne Turmel
    Does that necessarily then have to be a face time? Nobody wants to watch you bounce up and down on a walk. Right.

    00:03:31:13 - 00:03:32:15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00:03:32:17 - 00:03:55:23
    Wayne Turmel
    And so there's just a and we don't do this enough as human beings, I might add, which is what is the impact of my behavior or my actions on the other person? Yes, I'm here. I'm responsive. I'm taking your call. I'm not in the office. But by golly, I will help you. Maybe that doesn't have to be a video call.

    00:03:56:01 - 00:04:17:12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I know. Like, for me personally, like, I get motion sick pretty easily. So when people are, like, walking their dog and they're on video call or I had one the other day, it wasn't too bad. But like, she was in the car, she was not driving. She was in the car and like on this. And it was like, you probably didn't have to have your video on at that point and probably shouldn't.

    00:04:17:12 - 00:04:18:12
    Wayne Turmel
    Not for nothing.

    00:04:18:13 - 00:04:29:21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, I mean, she was a passenger, but still like it was just for me. It was distracting. I couldn't pay attention to the other two people in the hall because she's constantly moving. Right. Right. And.

    00:04:29:23 - 00:04:41:12
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, as we've said so many times, I am all about seeing somebody's face when the call starts. But once the call actually begins, what value are you adding?

    00:04:41:14 - 00:04:43:00
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Yeah, it depends on what kind of.

    00:04:43:01 - 00:05:00:23
    Wayne Turmel
    Perhaps detracting from everybody else's experience. So it's just, you know, give some thought to what is going on. I also have this conversation a lot with people who are at home so they don't use headsets.

    00:05:01:03 - 00:05:03:05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Oh, my God, drives me crazy.

    00:05:03:07 - 00:05:26:22
    Wayne Turmel
    And there are beeps and bloops and there's noises even in an empty house. There's the dogs go crazy at the neighbors or, you know, somebody lets a leaf blower go insane or something is going on and you get an echo. It's you wear them partly so you can hear I mean, of course, you know, I want to be able to hear what's going on.

    00:05:27:01 - 00:05:45:18
    Wayne Turmel
    But also you do that so that you are being respectful of the other people on the call. And it is a fair accusation that people who are not in an office environment sometimes become oblivious.

    00:05:45:20 - 00:05:53:14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes, we've talked about this before, too. Or you used to be in an office, but then you went home for three years and so now you forget what it's like.

    00:05:53:16 - 00:06:02:03
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, in your reveling in your freedom and, you know, I won't even tell you what I have on my feet right now because it's irrelevant to this conversation.

    00:06:02:05 - 00:06:03:01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right.

    00:06:03:03 - 00:06:07:01
    Wayne Turmel
    Right. I will tell you, it's not something I would wear in the office.

    00:06:07:03 - 00:06:09:03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And that's okay.

    00:06:09:05 - 00:06:15:08
    Wayne Turmel
    But it's irrelevant to the conversation and it's not distracting, except now everybody's wondering what that is wearing.

    00:06:15:10 - 00:06:16:23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Obviously, it's funny slippers. It's fine.

    00:06:16:23 - 00:06:18:09
    Wayne Turmel
    No, it's not funny slippers.

    00:06:18:11 - 00:06:19:12
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Secret's safe with us.

    00:06:19:12 - 00:06:50:09
    Wayne Turmel
    Really ugly mariachi sandals. But it's. It's Las Vegas in May. And, you know, I got to run around, take the dog out and do stuff, and it's easy, but it doesn't impact what people are seeing and hearing. So really, it's when you are going to take one of these calls, you need to stop and think what how do my actions impact my teammate?

    00:06:50:15 - 00:07:06:03
    Wayne Turmel
    How do I add value to the meeting? How do I distract and be open to feedback, something that you think might not be a big deal might really bother somebody. I am not a big fan of cats, but.

    00:07:06:05 - 00:07:09:11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I'm not sure that many people are.

    00:07:09:13 - 00:07:20:17
    Wayne Turmel
    There are people who don't care. We've talked before about people's unnatural affection for their animals on video calls. The assumption that everybody finds it as adorable as they do.

    00:07:20:19 - 00:07:24:03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Without realizing it's distracted and really not professional in the moment.

    00:07:24:03 - 00:07:26:06
    Wayne Turmel
    And really not professional. Exactly.

    00:07:26:09 - 00:07:50:14
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So. Well, and with that, too, I would also like because, like, you know, we keep talking about video a lot also, but like, you know, there's a background noise thing, too. If you're somewhere that like there's a lot of, you know, you're in a car and the windows open. Well, first of all, if you can maybe put up the window, but like I know we've been on calls before where we've had to tell somebody to mute because we can hear the window and we can't hear anyone else.

    00:07:50:16 - 00:08:12:18
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, I'm a full disclosure. I do not keep my phone live. You know, I don't get rings and announcements. Yeah, but I do have it on Buzz. And there have been times when we've been on calls, there have been times when we've been recording this podcast where my phone goes off and I can ignore it. It's buzzing, it's in the background.

    00:08:12:22 - 00:08:23:22
    Wayne Turmel
    It doesn't bother me what might bother somebody else. Right? Right. Okay. Wayne needs to be better about that. It's just respect and like being a good person and stuff.

    00:08:24:03 - 00:08:27:23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Amazing, right? The simple things.

    00:08:28:01 - 00:08:36:19
    Wayne Turmel
    The fact that we have to talk to you people about this. Were you raised by wolves? What?

    00:08:36:21 - 00:09:00:05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Tell us in the comments. But moving on from this, I want to go to Mallory Glassner who said people who constantly watch and or talk about their teammates status colors. Now, I remember when I saw this comment on the post slide put and I was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What do people do this? What is this? Is this really a thing?

    00:09:00:07 - 00:09:22:07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    And she responded, Oh, yes, it's a thing. So much so that someone actually invented a dongle that makes you stay green. Now, we've actually kind of talked about this concept of always looking like you're online in a previous episode where, you know, I saw somebody put peanut butter on their mouse so that way their dog would look like the mouse.

    00:09:22:07 - 00:09:29:21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    So that would look like you're on line. Like, I don't understand this obsession with weather. Okay, well, fine.

    00:09:29:23 - 00:09:57:05
    Wayne Turmel
    There are two parts to this. Yes. I suspect this is me trying not to just freak out at human behavior. I always assume that even the worst behavior happens for a reason that is logical to the person doing it. Okay, so there are two parts to this. First of all, as the person who's being looked at, am I being responsible with my status updates and things like that?

    00:09:57:05 - 00:10:23:11
    Wayne Turmel
    And why does it matter? Well, it matters because people want to know that I hope it's less that you are working, but that you are available to answer questions or to be a resource or something like that. Is this person available? I have a question. Can I ask Marisa? And if I do ask Marisa, can I expect immediate answer or is it going to come later?

    00:10:23:11 - 00:10:42:14
    Wayne Turmel
    Because she's obviously busy. You and I are situated. I don't have a problem sending you a question. If you say you're not being disturbed or you're not getting your your messages. Cool. I've asked my question. It's off my plate. It's out of my way. And she is a responsible person and she will answer me when she can.

    00:10:42:16 - 00:11:03:01
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, and I can't speak for other platforms, but like, you know, sometimes even that that green icon is green icon or lack of it is deceiving. Right. Like, I think slack. If you haven't opened up Slack in 30 minutes, it will show you as offline. I might still be sitting at my computer. I just haven't opened up slack in 30 minutes because I've been on deep work with something.

    00:11:03:07 - 00:11:28:11
    Wayne Turmel
    All right. So here's the thing. Part of it is, as the the person who's been am I being mature and grown up and responsible, like if I'm not going to be at my desk, do I tell people I'm not going to be? Of course. Very often I say I'm out of the office for an hour, but I have my phone with me or I'm out of the office and I cannot be reached until such and such a time.

    00:11:28:13 - 00:11:40:14
    Wayne Turmel
    I'm being respectful of you, my teammates, so that you can do that and you're not waiting for something that's not going to happen. The flip side of her statement, though, is really interesting.

    00:11:40:18 - 00:11:41:05
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes.

    00:11:41:10 - 00:11:44:14
    Wayne Turmel
    Which is why do you care so much?

    00:11:44:16 - 00:12:01:13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, She actually gave us an example about at a previous organization. She used to hear people say all the time, so-and-so is always yellow and never working. Well, first of all, you don't know that there was another one. Well, so-and-so was green at 2 a.m. Well, if you know that so-and-so was green at 2 a.m. that means you were also looking at two.

    00:12:01:13 - 00:12:05:11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    I am like not going to work life balance.

    00:12:05:13 - 00:12:35:15
    Wayne Turmel
    Position here by yourself. Yes. Yeah, Absolute. And so what that says is there is a huge level of mistrust going on. Does that come from and we just talked about in the last episode, do I know what's going on or am I making assumptions? And if this is they continuing pattern, am I going to be a responsible adult and ask somebody about it?

    00:12:35:17 - 00:12:43:21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Well, in some cases it's none of your business. Like you're not a manager of that person and you know, like.

    00:12:43:22 - 00:12:55:04
    Wayne Turmel
    You're not your business. It is your business in so far as good teammates offer feedback to each other, fair. And if this is becoming a thing.

    00:12:55:06 - 00:12:55:15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Mm hmm.

    00:12:55:20 - 00:13:04:23
    Wayne Turmel
    I might say to you, you know, Marisa, you might want to log off. I do not always log off my computer. At the end of the day, I just don't.

    00:13:05:01 - 00:13:05:15
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah, which.

    00:13:05:15 - 00:13:09:22
    Wayne Turmel
    Means, yeah, it could look like I'm online at two in the morning. I'm sure it does.

    00:13:10:00 - 00:13:27:21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. I was going to say, I don't always, since my desktop is both for work and for personal stuff, like, you know, I sometimes leave Slack open but it's still in do not disturb mode. So. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Thankfully, I've never gotten a message that was like, Why are you up at 10 p.m.? And I'm like, Because I'm actually playing the sentence.

    00:13:27:23 - 00:13:36:16
    Wayne Turmel
    Exactly. You know, you know? So why are you so concerned about this? Other person's behavior becomes the question.

    00:13:36:18 - 00:13:37:07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right?

    00:13:37:07 - 00:13:52:16
    Wayne Turmel
    And if they are missing deadlines, if they are not responding, if they are not participating in meetings, if I am that person's manager, that becomes a performance management issue.

    00:13:52:18 - 00:13:53:07
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Of course.

    00:13:53:11 - 00:14:12:06
    Wayne Turmel
    They need to be coached as a team, have you had conversations about what is appropriate behavior and inappropriate behavior? When What does it mean when we see somebody is yellow? What does it mean when somebody is on? Do not disturb all day?

    00:14:12:11 - 00:14:19:08
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yeah. Do they have a status saying that like they're in deep work mode or did they just put it in Do not disturb and you have no context at all.

    00:14:19:10 - 00:14:40:03
    Wayne Turmel
    And did you put it on? Do not disturb and forget to turn it back on. I mean anything is possible, but that is the part of that that fascinates me is the people that are annoyed. Yes, that tells me more about the team dynamic than people forget to change their status.

    00:14:40:05 - 00:14:58:20
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Yes. Because it doesn't sound like I mean, I might be wrong. And obviously, you know, I we don't have Mallory on right now to confirm or deny this, but it sounds like it's a little bit more of like peer to peer, you know, Oh, my God, Like so-and-so is on at two in the morning than it is like a manager saying, Wow, like you were on at two in the morning.

    00:14:58:21 - 00:15:00:13
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Like, is everything okay?

    00:15:00:15 - 00:15:05:16
    Wayne Turmel
    Yeah, no, this is peer to peer. This is, this is gossipy, mean girl behavior.

    00:15:05:18 - 00:15:07:11
    Marisa Eikenberry
    100%.

    00:15:07:13 - 00:15:16:23
    Wayne Turmel
    This is this is is now getting petty and silly and whatever. And now I don't know you. I'm not meaning to call you a mean girl.

    00:15:17:01 - 00:15:24:03
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But she was reporting that this happened in a previous organization she used to work for. Not that she was the one asking.

    00:15:24:03 - 00:15:31:09
    Wayne Turmel
    Okay. Okay. That's that's good, because otherwise, Mallory, we would have to chat.

    00:15:31:11 - 00:15:46:04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, anyway, we don't have time for any more of these today, but thank you so much for going through these too. And thank you to Mallory and Maya for sending these to us. I enjoy going through these months, a month. I don't know about you, Wade, but like, I.

    00:15:46:09 - 00:16:05:14
    Wayne Turmel
    Love listening to people vent. It makes me so happy. So, yes, we want your pet peeves. Not just about meetings and webcams, but anything having to do with remote and hybrid work and just being better and saving our sanity and being less snarky with each other. I'm good with all of that.

    00:16:05:16 - 00:16:26:19
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Right. Well, and you know, and we've talked about this in previous episodes, that's like, you know, we work on a remote team. We've been working on a remote team for a long time. We teach people how to do this. And some of these pet peeves are also ones that we have too. So it's kind of fun to like see it from other perspectives and be like, Oh yes, this is not just this is not just an that's fine.

    00:16:26:21 - 00:16:37:22
    Wayne Turmel
    You know, I realized a long time ago that one of the things that make me feel best in the world is when I realize it's not just me.

    00:16:38:00 - 00:16:39:09
    Marisa Eikenberry
    100%.

    00:16:39:15 - 00:16:47:23
    Wayne Turmel
    I am not the only one who feels this way. I am not the only one who gets frustrated with this. That actually makes me feel better.

    00:16:48:01 - 00:16:52:21
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Well, isn't there like a whole thing about, like, you have a common enemy and, like, it creates this camaraderie?

    00:16:52:23 - 00:16:57:15
    Wayne Turmel
    Well, we'll just. We'll just team up with Maya against whoever leaves their light on yellow.

    00:16:57:15 - 00:17:07:18
    Marisa Eikenberry
    That's what that was. Mallory But yes, Maya will go after the people who are walking her dog. Weather video.

    00:17:07:20 - 00:17:10:06
    Wayne Turmel
    All right, that's it. We're out of here.

    00:17:10:08 - 00:17:29:04
    Marisa Eikenberry
    But listeners, thank you so much for listening to the longest work life for show notes, transcripts and other resources, Make sure to visit Long-Distance Work life dot com. If you haven't yet subscribe to the podcast, you almost any future episodes including pet peeve episodes just like this and while you're there be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show.

    00:17:29:06 - 00:17:46:23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Feel free to contact us by email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic for Wayne tonight to tack on a future episode, including these pet peeves. If you'd like to learn more about remote teams order Wayne and Kevin Barry's new book, The Long Distance Team, you can learn more about the book at LongDistanceTeamBook.com.

    00:17:47:02 - 00:17:49:23
    Marisa Eikenberry
    Thanks for joining us. As Wayne likes to say don't let the weasels get you down.

    Timestamps

    00:08 Introduction
    00:19 Zoom's New AI Features Discussion
    01:28 AI Captioning: Usefulness and Limitations
    03:49 Meeting Summary Feature and Its Utility
    05:17 Accuracy and Thoroughness of AI Summaries
    06:40 Future AI Features and Searchable Recordings
    07:37 Smart Clips in Meetings
    09:28 Ethical Considerations of AI Features
    10:08 The Uncanny Valley in AI
    11:38 Adopting AI Innovations: A Practical Approach
    13:41 Empowering Early Adopters in Teams
    14:30 Technology Adoption Among Teams
    16:11 Using AI for Meeting Efficiency
    17:01 Conclusion

    Related Episodes

    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!

     Order
    Read More
    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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