WLP309 What’s Going On: The Increasing Costs of WFH, Hybrid First Aid, Co-Working Stipends, Protests against Digital Nomads
In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss recent figures about the adoption of remote work, the increasing costs of working from home as energy prices rise, first aid in a hybrid workplace, what co-working stipends say about a company and recent protests against digital nomads.
There have always been many different ways of being “remote”, and this episode covers almost all of them? Have we left anything behind?
The conversation starts with the article with the headline
Share of U.S. employees teleworking because of the pandemic in 2022 monthly.
The research, which includes a survey of 60,000 households in the USA, shows that the number of people choosing to work remotely because of corona seems to be levelling off. The devil is in the detail, because the survey doesn’t cover those people that have other reasons for adopting remote work, but one thing the study points to is that there doesn’t seem to be a massive revolution against going back to the office. The article also reminds us of how sector-specific this conversation is.
Working from Home
Maya has been thinking about how the recent energy crisis might affect those people working from home. Will the increase in costs of electricity etc be covered by the employer? What about employers’ costs? Will the increase in costs of running their buildings result in asking people to work from home? What about co-working spaces? They must all be feeling it too - will some of them disappear, or will some become less attractive workspaces during the winter, as it’s often very costly to heat up the large shared spaces.
Hybrid Workspaces
Pilar came across this article, which led her to consider for the first time the issue of Where does Workplace First Aid belong in a Hybrid World? The article was posted in the St John's Ambulance’s website and leads to another thing to bear in mind when co-ordinating schedules for going into the office. Will always having a First Aider around be the decision-making factor of who can be where when?
And while thinking about first aid responsibility, how about when people are working from home, or from co-working spaces. In the UK, we have this set of guidelines, but again, it’s not always clear-cut and it might vary from country to country - worth checking regardless at what end of the engagement-spectrum you’re in.
Coworking
Grow Remote has released a list of distributed companies offering co-working stipends to their people. This goes beyond offering to pay for your workspace, it shows that the companies know what remote work involves, and that “remote work is not working from home”. It’s also great to see that coworking spaces still play an important part in the remote ecosystem. Shout out to Convert, Doist, Remote and MeetEdgar, who are part of the list.
This of course means that as someone looking for remote work, these companies become more attractive, as they are also offering to cover your workspace costs regardless of what country you’re based in. This reminded Pilar of a post she saw on LinkedIn where someone based in Spain was warning Spanish companies who are ditching remote work that their people can now access the international labour market.
Digital Nomadism
As remote workers and even digital nomads start to become more visible, locals in some places are afraid that this will contribute to the raise in living costs. This is the case in Mexico City, where people have included remote workers and digital nomads in the protest against soaring rents.
"A research from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) found that during the pandemic, roughly one-third of people of Mexico City had to relocate. The majority pointed to high rent as a contributing factor."
Pilar mentions these two books which talk about how the adoption of remote work can lead to further inequality: Post Corona by Scott Galloway and We Need to Talk about Money by Otegha Uwagba.
To wrap up the conversation about digital nomads, and indeed, what’s going on in remote work, Maya shares her recent visit to the Bansko Nomad Festival - an example of an event which made digital nomads feel very welcome.
35.05 MINS
We move onto some tech news.
Slack has recently changed its terms and conditions for free accounts and now messages are deleted after 90 days. This can be an issue for those using past conversations to help give an insight into culture for new hires. But this is only for the free accounts, and hey, Slack already have a pretty good product we can have for free! Find out more in Slack’s article about the first price change and subscription updates.
Did you know there is a consortium that approves what emojis are released universally?
“The jellyfish was among 31 listed by the non-profit Unicode Consortium and - if approved - will be added to the selection of pictures and symbols used in text and online messages. Suggested uses include to indicate someone being "stung" by a comment, to allude to someone being spineless or as shorthand to convey jealousy (when someone is "a little jelly"). Others on the list include a donkey, hyacinth, maracas, a hair pick and the Sikh Khanda symbol. Pregnant men and women were among last year's selections, while the guide dog was added in 2019.”
It’s time to agree in your team agreement what each emoji means - they are subject to all kinds of interpretation!
(For more on emojis, check out episode 294 on Wellbeing and Emojis)
Thanks to a recent post on Linkedin from Chris Coladonato, Pilar’s been thinking of using the term “environment” to refer to the online spaces we use to interact with our team.
43.20MINS NETWORK AND COMMUNITY NEWS
Thanks to Jen Riggins for sending Pilar a voice note to highlight the tech behind the new ABBA Voyage show, and how well it’s going down. Is this technology something that will be adopted by remote teams in the future?
We have some listener feedback from past guest Ana Neves on episode 304 Transitioning to a Hybrid Workplace: “I loved how he so clearly states what everyone knows but fails to acknowledge: right now nobody really has the answer to surf the transition to a generalised hybrid context of work. We are all experimenting, testing, learning and iterating. And that's OK.”
And thanks to Catherine Nicholson for sharing and starting a conversation on what people do to break the sitting habit (eg Pomodoro technique) with reference to episode 306 Developing a Team Habit of Sitting Less. Thanks too to Chris Coladonato, and Pilar’s mother who said it was very practical together with the My Pocket Psych.
Nika Talbot also had something to share on LinkedIn about the episode, you can find her post here.
Finally, if you are interested in being a beta listener for our new audio-first course on asynchronous communication, let us know here: virtualnotdistant.com/youropinion
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