WLP275: What’s Going On, From Hybrid to Virtual-first Work

This month’s ‘what’s going on?’ round-up was recorded on 1st June 2021.

Pilar recently went to a webinar organised by Q5, discussing hybrid work with some workplace experts - who concluded that there is no one way of doing hybrid, and many things to consider. One consideration sometimes overlooked is where the organisation was before COVID, as a crucial piece of context, and another is that this is just one transition in a continuous evolution of technology and society and business.

We also need to better understand the conditions under which remote work has been carried out during the pandemic and how diverse this experience has been, in practical/physical terms as well as emotional ones. Many people are more productive working from home, but plenty have found their creativity inhibited by the overall experience of living through a global pandemic. Pilar’s friends at Blue Zoo, a team of young animators, have found things challenging working in a distributed way, and the sheer constraints of lockdown can surely only restrict imagination and potential. 

So let’s keep the extra empathy and depth of conversation that some teams have cultivated during this time, whatever the future holds. One example of this is Pilar’s twitter space, held at midday UK time every Wednesday - do come and share, or just listen if you want.

One thing that recently came up here was the approach taken by cloud storage brand Dropbox:

11:45 Dropbox’s ‘Virtual First’ approach

This was highlighted in an article in Wired, Why Dropbox’s ‘Virtual First’ model could be the future of work, which links to a great resource made freely available by Dropbox themselves: Featured Collection Virtual First Toolkit. 

We love the ‘virtual first’ approach, to unlocking the work from a specific location and then building the culture and collaboration tools around that - including offices and face-to-face meeting spaces where they are wanted and needed. 

What we discovered in talking with other companies is that you end up having issues arising with inclusion, promotion, career growth, cliques and different norms forming within different teams,” says Laura Ryan, Dropbox’s director of international human resources.

It’s not about WFH, but about choice, and Dropbox will also cover costs of coworking or other close-to-home space that best suits the worker. They also have ‘Dropbox Studios’ available for people to work in collaboratively, but which are NOT intended for independent work - referring explicitly to presenteeism and the cultural challenges that hybrid working can create, when you end up with dualism and a two-tier workforce.

Really it’s the opposite of hybrid polices and their obsession with physical location - starting with remote as the default because the work is fully online and virtual, then you can chose the space wherever it best suits the specific activity. Although, as Pilar points out, there are assumptions implicit here still, such as the assumption that people don’t do their best independent work in a shared space - so the proof of the pudding will as ever be seen when it’s all put into practice.

They’ve also had a good stab at dealing with flexibility, by setting specific synchronous hours during which all meetings should take place - again it’s easy to spot potential flaws, for example Maya never sets meetings during the morning, which is Dropbox’ designated sync time, because that’s her personal preferred writing/creating in peace time. But the main thing is they’re acknowledging a need to distinguish protected deep work vs real-time collaboration time.

And another business on the other side of the world from us (in Europe) are pushing the remote-first boundaries and being very specific about terms and assumptions: Major New Zealand bank makes working from home model permanent - with some interesting twists including making their office spaces available for customers, and also in a part of the world largely unaffected by lockdown. Consciously using the term remote work instead of working from home, opens up choice and possibilities - and it’s great to see the conversation evolving.

29.45 From transnational businesses to technology

The Estonian e-residency scheme is expanding - Maya has been an e-resident for several years now and also writes for their blog. 

They have recently introduced a larger range of places you can sign up and collect your digital ID, making the scheme far more accessible globally, with 45 cities worldwide providing access points (including São Paulo, Bangkok, Singapore, and Johannesburg): So more and more people will be able to open EU-based location-independent businesses. The idea of transnational identity and business is unlocking exciting potential for us all to work in a less geographically-bound way.

  e-Residency new locations | e-Residency

Estonia also has a remote work visa, if you want to go and live there, and a great startup culture and tech development environment. 

Google is exploring the future of video conferencing, with Project Starline: May 18 / Research Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together.

Tackling presence, particularly in groups, online is the next frontier, and developments like Starline will be the solution to create a better and more natural illusory environments to overcome our senses, and bring people together believably. The rollout of 5G is obviously going to make a huge difference here, and we know what requires specialist hardware to work today will be an app on every smartphone soon...

Maybe even for multinationals like Google it has taken lockdown to make us think about the emotional component of collaboration, and what it means to really be present with each other.

43.40 Community conversations

Shout out to Kristen, who listened to the last “What’s Going On” show twice, and shared it with her team! We also loved her thoughts on the role of FOMO in driving people back to the office, and we should remember that there is always an emotional component, not just in the tech.

In response to our question of the month, about challenges of office-optionality, Nancy raised the important point about sharing knowledge and experience. We know this won’t happen spontaneously, as easily, in a remote team. So in planning a sustainable distributed way of working, we have to acknowledge these challenges and create places for these important conversations to take place - this is the time to do that, and to remember that this is all part of the work.

(Don’t forget about our ‘podcasting for connection’ service, a great way to access that internalised knowledge and experience and share it across your teams).

Remember, we love your feedback - please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with your thoughts and ideas, and do let us know if you try out any of the ideas that were discussed in this week’s episode.

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