Speaker 1: So you've probably had a lot of experience working from
Speaker 1: home over the last twelve months, and if you're like
Speaker 1: most people, your boss has probably asked you to come
Speaker 1: back to the office at least for one or two
Speaker 1: days a week. But what you maybe didn't realize is
Speaker 1: that the one or two days a week you spend
Speaker 1: at the office means you have far less flexibility than
Speaker 1: if your organization was a true remote first company. So
Speaker 1: how is being a remote friendly company different from being
Speaker 1: remote first and why does it even matter? My name
Speaker 1: is doctor Romantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
Speaker 1: founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how
Speaker 1: I work, a show about how to help you do
Speaker 1: your best work. On today is my favorite Tip episode.
Speaker 1: We go back to an interview from the past and
Speaker 1: I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. So
Speaker 1: in today's show, I go back to my chat with
Speaker 1: job Van Dervoort, who is the founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: remote dot Com. Job was previously the vice president of
Speaker 1: product at git Lab, so he knows a thing or
Speaker 1: two about remote work.
Speaker 2: I think there's two very strong forces that will make
Speaker 2: sure that remote working will only continue to grow. The
Speaker 2: first one being is the need for talent. It's it's
Speaker 2: simply there's simply not enough talent in the neighborhood around
Speaker 2: the office to ignore remote work, right. You know that. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're an employer you want to hire the best person,
Speaker 2: you can just find them by saying, well, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter where you live or where you want to live,
Speaker 2: we will hire you. And so that's the first one.
Speaker 2: It's like the hard need for talent and the need
Speaker 2: to just look outside of the direct vicinity of anybody
Speaker 2: particular offers. And the other one is because of the
Speaker 2: pandemic and many of us were forced to work from home,
Speaker 2: the secret is out that you can actually do most
Speaker 2: jobs from home or do them remotely. And so independent
Speaker 2: of what an employer might decide to do post pandemic,
Speaker 2: they might say, well, everybody has to go to the office.
Speaker 2: Each individual knows that remote working is a thing that
Speaker 2: is possible and it is a thing that you can do.
Speaker 2: So even if your current employee forces you to go
Speaker 2: back to the office, you know that, well, if you
Speaker 2: like this, or if you see the potential of hey,
Speaker 2: if I work remotely, I can move somewhere else, or
Speaker 2: I can travel well working, then you are going to
Speaker 2: think to yourself, well, maybe I'll look for a different job,
Speaker 2: and there will be plenty of jobs, because again, the
Speaker 2: need for talent will make it so that employers will
Speaker 2: try to do what is what people actually want, and
Speaker 2: many people want to work remotely.
Speaker 1: It's interesting what I'm seeing happening in Australia is that
Speaker 1: a lot of organizations are encouraging their staff to come
Speaker 1: back to the office, which is actually the opposite of
Speaker 1: what we've done at Inventing. In my consultancy, we have
Speaker 1: gotten rid of our Melbourne and Sydney lasers and we
Speaker 1: are now officially a remote first company. But you know,
Speaker 1: is there a difference between being a remote first versus
Speaker 1: just a remote friendly company where people can work from
Speaker 1: home but they're kind of encouraged to come into the
Speaker 1: office at least a couple of days a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. I think it starts by the fact that
Speaker 2: in one of these two scenarios, if you're remote friendly
Speaker 2: and you still encourage people to go to the office,
Speaker 2: you take away the freedom of living anywhere, right. I
Speaker 2: think that's I think there's a large component. I always
Speaker 2: think that remote work fundamentally and remote First, companies give
Speaker 2: you more freedom. And so if you are going to
Speaker 2: restricted freedom by saying well, you have to be in
Speaker 2: a particular location, that immediately implies that you also have
Speaker 2: to work in particular hours. Because most people work during
Speaker 2: the day, like I do, between nine and five, nine
Speaker 2: and seven or so, so you immediately restrict that and
Speaker 2: immediately limit that. And then if you also require them
Speaker 2: to actually come into the office, it means that they
Speaker 2: can't actually move anywhere. So I don't think it's remote
Speaker 2: friendly if you like that. I think it's about encouraging
Speaker 2: or requiring people to be closed to the office. That
Speaker 2: that is the real problem here. And then if you
Speaker 2: don't allow people to actually far away and fully work remotely,
Speaker 2: you're not remote friendly. You just want a business that
Speaker 2: sometimes people can work from home. And lastly, of course
Speaker 2: what happens is that your company culture will not be asynchronous,
Speaker 2: it will not fully embrace remote work because people are
Speaker 2: going to rely on their moments to being together in
Speaker 2: the office. It's a natural tendency that we have because
Speaker 2: communicating in person is much easier than communicating through a computer,
Speaker 2: and so it requires much less work for you to
Speaker 2: just talk to me rather than writing something. It requires
Speaker 2: much less work to just walk over into the office
Speaker 2: rather than setting up a meeting when I'm remotely. And
Speaker 2: so if part of the company or all of the
Speaker 2: company regularly meets in the office, they are going to
Speaker 2: lean into the time that they're in office and using
Speaker 2: that to communicate and using that for meetings. And it
Speaker 2: will essentially means that if you work remotely, work isolated.
Speaker 2: It's a bad idea to work like that. Okay, I
Speaker 2: think you don't have to accept like everybody works remotely
Speaker 2: all the time and it happened to be offices where
Speaker 2: you can sit and work some of the time, or
Speaker 2: you have to say, well, we are just not a
Speaker 2: remote company.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you are into
Speaker 1: what this show is about, you might want to follow
Speaker 1: me on the social networks. So you can find me
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn if you search for Amantha Imba. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Amantha, and you can find
Speaker 1: me on Instagram, which I'm starting to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more active on at Amantha. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The audio mix for today's show was done by mardin
Speaker 1: imba who makes everything sound awesome. Thanks so much and
Speaker 1: I'll see you next time.