The Risks, Rewards and Future of Remote Work with Laurel Farrer

Inside This Episode

• The Global Implications of Remote Work
• The Evolving Workplace
• Managing the Pendulum of Change Management
• Risk Factors for Remote Work Discrimination
• Maintaining Engagement and Performance with Remote Work
• Who Works Longer Hours? Remote or Onsite?
• A Simple Strategy to Avoid Remote Burnout
• The Truth About Working From Home
• The Implicit Bias Impacting Remote Workers
• Changing The Way We Measure Performance
• Letting Results Speak For Themselves
• The Future of Remote Work

John Ryan
You're listening to key conversations for leaders. This is episode number 32. Welcome everybody. In today's episode, we'll be discussing the risks, rewards and future of remote work with Laurel far, we'll be talking about the risk factors for remote work discrimination, letting results speak for themselves, the future, remote work and much, much more.

John Ryan 0:23
One of the most powerful tools in the planet is the ability to share our ideas through a conversation. It's these ideas that can bring us together to collaborate into achieve our potential. That's what this show is about better conversations for better leaders,

John Ryan 0:39
Hey everybody, and welcome to key conversations for leaders. I'm your host, John Ryan, and today we have a very special guest Laurel Farrer. Laurel is the founder of distribute consulting and the remote work Association. She is also the one who leverages virtual workforces to solve corporate and socio economic concerns. A global thought leader on the topic of remote work, Laurel collaborates with world's leading businesses and governments to eliminate virtual worker discrimination, prevent policy retraction, increase remote job accessibility, train distributed leaders and design economic initiatives. On top of that, she's also a Forbes contributor. Welcome to the show. Laurel.

Laurel Farrer 1:16
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here

John Ryan 1:18
And thank you. You know, I wanted to start by asking, you know, you're such an advocate of remote work in general, what makes you so passionate about remote work?

Laurel Farrer 1:30
You know, well, individually, I've been working from home for 14 years and operating fully distributed companies during that time. And so, obviously, like any advocate, you have personal experience, right. But it wasn't that I really started being vocal about it, and really pushing it as a public conversation, until I started seeing the socio economic benefits, that it wasn't just an individual convenience, right, that we could wear sweatpants and we get to sleep in a little bit longer. Like it's so much more than that this really has the ability to change so many concerns that we have as a global community. And that's why I think it deserves more attention and more thought and intention than people give it.

John Ryan 2:12
So it started out that you were working from remote and really began to see the socio economic factors and impact that it's having on society. Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what that is that the average person wouldn't necessarily consider versus the whole sweat pant? Freedom thing?

Laurel Farrer 2:28
Of course, yeah. So on the individual level, we just think about it at scale, right? When we as as, as people in our in our lives, we have more flexibility in our schedules, and in the ability that we have to design our workflows and to have more trust and empathy in our workplaces, then all of a sudden, that really changes our life, we're able to have stronger mental mental health, we are able to have more time for exercise and for relationships, we are able to kind of get in control of our own lives and more healthy, holistic way.

Laurel Farrer 3:05
And so that just continues to scale as each individual has access to those benefits, then we see that it impacts the entire household. And when you have multiple households that are accessing these benefits, then you see you know, childhood obesity decreasing and you see just stronger fat like latchkey kids get a go away, because parents are home more, there's there's hustled benefits like that. And then it goes beyond that when there's multiple households, then full communities that have economic resiliency, and they have, you know, stronger parks and recreation programs and, and then it just gets bigger from that. And then we have like stronger economic development, stronger diversity and inclusion. And it just keeps compounding and compounding to the point where 14 of the 17 United Nations, United Nations sustainability initiatives can all be resolved either directly or indirectly with virtual jobs. 14 of the problems that we're trying to save as an international community can be resolved with this. So yeah, it just we think that it's so small that we, you know, can wear those sweatpants. But when we enable more flexibility, and autonomy and control in our, in our daily lives, it just can snowball into really large effects.

John Ryan 4:27
So this is really just beyond the the freedom and flexibility of working in your home and all those types of things. But really changing the way business is done throughout the world and what's possible and also the the outcomes for children that sound like they're actually positively impacted as well, is the overall stereotype of what it means to work remotely. Is that changing in the world?

Laurel Farrer 4:54
Well, you know, it's positive and negative. The growth of any topic is meant to be Pretty organic. And we have not seen organic growth of the work from home conversation this this year, the development and activity around the topic of remote work and workplace flexibility developed by about 10 years in the span of two weeks in 2020. And so what that hypergrowth means is that most people as they have adopted workplace flexibility in their lives or in their organizations have not had access to the resources that they needed in order to do it the right way. And there is a right way, and there is a wrong way.

Laurel Farrer 5:37
And most people just don't know what they don't know. And so they think, well, I've changed my location. I'm a remote worker, or we're now a virtual organization. And it's a much more complex conversation than that. So the danger zone that we're in right now is, if we continue to be ignorant of the comprehensive change management process that we need to go through both as individuals, households and organizations, then we are actually going to put ourselves at risk for making these problems worse problems like economic development, diversity and inclusion in discrimination, we can very, very easily make them worse, if we don't take the time to say, how are we going to do this the right way. So there's a lot of catching up to, for us as remote work advocates to do.

John Ryan 6:28
So the organic growth in naturally shifting to the remote virtual workplace would have been much more supported and well integrated and have structures and policies and procedures in place to, to, I guess, protect against some of the downsides of having a gym at all into a two week period. So now people are in this environment, do you think that that pendulum is going to switch back and people say we tried it didn't work? Or are people still going to maybe say, okay, it didn't work, and here's why. But maybe we can do something about it based on some of the concepts you're sharing?

Laurel Farrer 7:03
Yeah, so we're gonna see it all over the map, right, we're going to see a lot of people that say, this was ridiculous, this is not working everybody back to the office, which and we have case studies of that from pre COVID. Companies like IBM and Yahoo, that didn't go through that change management process effectively. That's what they did, they retracted their policies, and everybody went back to the office. But that resulted in very, very high employee attrition. So we don't want every company to be going through that, because it would devastate our economy. So we do want to see some type of balance. Now, this doesn't mean that every single company needs to go remote, immediately. That's not realistic, either.

Laurel Farrer 7:43
So the new normal looks like it's going to be very hybrid, that people can go into the office, they, they can continue to work from home, you know, there, maybe it's based on time or role or whatever there is a definite hybridisation in the future. But that is, unfortunately, the highest risk model for discrimination to occur without proper change management. So again, it circles back to we've got to get the information out there about how to do this the right way to prevent those larger risks from coming to fruition.

John Ryan 8:18
You just mentioned, you know, that's a higher risk profile for discrimination to occur, what are some of the factors that make that a higher risk situation?

Laurel Farrer 8:27
So typically, what happens in previous case studies and research on lawsuits related to remote work is that the organization continues to operate as a physical structure as a physical operation, right. So business stays as usual in that in that realm, and then there are some people that are off site. And what that creates is a very imbalanced employee experience. And sometimes that's just Oh, it's a, it's a pain to be watching a meeting while it's happening, because I'm the webcam that's plastered on the wall, you know, up in the corner, right? So like, sometimes that's very, very minimal, like, I can't quite hear what those people are saying. But that can also very quickly and easily compound into larger problems like it's out of sight, out of mind.

Laurel Farrer 9:15
And so there's career stagnancy, or there are they're being passed up for promotions, or there's an equal bonuses being provided because results and productivity aren't being tracked equally. So the goal is not to have a physical operation with some partial virtual workforce. The goal is for the entire organization to be operating as location irrelevant, that and which means that you're all axing, seeing the same tools, the same information, the same resources in the cloud or in virtual tools. And you can access those from anywhere that you are. So whether you are at home, whether you're at a client Office whether you are right in HQ, you can be equally as productive and efficient in your role.

John Ryan 10:08
So location irrelevant is really the gold standard, which gives you the flexibility to be at headquarters be at home, be at a remote office, it doesn't really matter the same resources, opportunities, and tools would be there for you. From a managers perspective, what are some of the things that managers and leaders need to do to maintain an engaged workforce that it's becoming more and more decentralized?

Laurel Farrer 10:36
I think the very first thing they need to do is they really need to set the terms of performance expectations, and what is expected of all of us in this new virtual context. Typically, remote work policy is a great way to start with that we've got a free checklist on our website at distribute consulting comm anybody can access it and download it. But that really takes a company and a team through the different types of conversations that need to be had in order to articulate what is this going to look like in our organization? You know, who's going to pay for what and what hours Am I expected to be online? And what our communication expectations like response times? And what is our culture going to look like in in the distributed context, like there's so many questions that need to be answered, in order to articulate this is what we expect of you. Because we don't have that environmental cue of walking into an office and just seeing Oh, everybody sits at their desk, they're very heads down, they're very quiet, everybody leaves at five o'clock, like, you know, this person might need help, they look really frustrated, we don't have any of that.

Laurel Farrer 11:46
And so we need to articulate it in our organizations, and define exactly how we are supposed to be working in this new virtual context. Now, it's, it's a tricky conversation to have, because part of the part of the information that is missing from the hyper growth of the industry is legislation. So there are no laws that are that exist for work from anywhere or work from home, there are none. And so there's nothing to say this is what you should be doing. Or this is what you legally are required to provide to your employees, or employees. If you experience a, b and c, you have the legal right to speak up and get compensated for it or whatever. Nothing like that exists yet. And so we're in a very precarious situation that we are at high risk for a lot of industries and a lot of companies to do whatever they want. And we hope that they choose the ethical thing to do and for the sake of building culture and build and retaining their workforces, but a lot are not going to, and that's going to be a dangerous, dangerous future for a lot of people.

John Ryan 13:05
That is really surprising. I didn't know there was any area of life that wasn't governed.

Laurel Farrer 13:12
Welcome to the wild, wild west, my friend.

John Ryan 13:17
It's the new digital frontier. I think we could say perhaps, exactly, but but it's so interesting that you point out the the social cues that are there, right, what time do we go to work? How long is lunch? What time do we wrap it up? You know, if you're starting a new company, or add a new company and you're an employee, you don't know when to turn off your computer and be done from that perspective, which can also not only lead to like overdoing or underdoing in some cases, but also burnout. If you haven't have any suggestions, because, you know, there's a lot of concern about the social connection for kids, for example, people ask the general learning social Well, the same concerns exist in the remote world, is there a risk for a higher risk for burnout? Is it the same? And also, where does that social component come in?

Laurel Farrer 14:09
Yeah, that's a very, very good question. Most managers are very concerned and very afraid that nobody will be working if they can't see them. The irony of that fear is that on average, remote workers work two to four hours a day more than they did in the office. So it's it is very, very significant increase in productivity. And that creates its own set of problems that the manager say, Well, great, keep it going work harder. And so they continued to push this unspoken pressure on the employees that you have to be working all the time in order to keep up this productivity or increase this level of productivity, or to just prove that you actually are working and so it becomes a very, very dangerous territory, burnout is by far the largest problem for remote workers. And because of a lot of reasons, that one is this unspoken pressure for managers to prove that they're working.

Laurel Farrer 15:12
Another is just the fact that they are working more both in quantity and in quality, they're working deeper, they're working harder, they're working longer, and they're just wearing out. But then even in addition to that, psychologically, we used to have a very large buffer zone between work and life, you know, it was an hour, an hour and a half, two hours between waking up and getting to work. And we had all of these psychological rituals that would help our brains slowly ramp up into work mode, like getting dressed and stopping for breakfast and getting it you know, driving in the car, and going up the elevator, like all of those things helped tell our brain one small step at a time, time to get ready to work. And then we had the same decompression cycle at the end of the day to say, Okay, now it's time to get ready to go home. And there was a very clear line between work and life. And sometimes he thought about work at home, and vice versa.

Laurel Farrer 16:13
But overall, it was, it was a pretty strong line. Now, we are toggling like crazy thousands of times an hour, we're going from work to life, to work to life, to work to life, you know, we're on a meeting, and our kid comes in and asks for lunch, and then the dog barks. And we're still delivering this report all of the same time. And it's mentally exhausting for us. So yeah, in the amount of work that we're doing in the psychological Olympics that we're in all day, it is, it's, it's very, very high risk for remote workers alone, then when you add to that the social burnout that's adding just that all of us are going through because of the pandemic and the economy and, you know, environmental sustainability, social injustice, like all of these things are weighing on our minds and hearts constantly. burnout isn't just a risk, it's an inevitability for all of us.

John Ryan 17:09
So just kind of getting a pattern emerging there. And thank you for going into the multi dimensionality of the of this issue, especially the psychological one, right? So there used to be a barrier, there used to be a boundary between work and home life. Now that's kind of gone away at the same time. Now, in that case, there's there's no barrier. But now the answer is that we may be answers for both in the same is that we need to actually have routines and rituals and actual barriers to block out the social injustice and the economic and all the the 24 hour news cycle. And all those things that are wearing and draining us down, is the answer, creating rituals and routines that kind of set up a demarcation of what mindset we need to be in.

Laurel Farrer 17:54
Absolutely. Our brains need boundaries, they need lines, and, and for our sanity and our sustainability, we need boundaries, we need lines. But what most people are getting frustrated with or the reason that they're not implementing these boundaries is that they ask the question, you know, what boundaries do I need? And they get an answer from somebody that is very extreme. And they say, Oh, the reason the way that you get boundaries is blank, like you set up a dedicated workstation. And they say, well, that's not an option for me. Therefore, I guess I can't have boundaries. And so it's, we really have to take a big step back in the conversation and just slow down and simplify and realize that not everything in our life is a polar extreme. And say, what how do you want to draw boundaries in your life? What does that look like for you, and because that is at the root of remote work is that you are a self manager, you are autonomous, nobody is walking behind you telling you how to do things.

Laurel Farrer 18:58
That's the point. So if you want more autonomy and more empowerment in your life, take it and say how do I want to draw boundaries in my life, and based on my learning styles based on my working styles, based on my personality, based on my household dynamics? What are those boundaries going to look like? For some people, it's going to be very physical, it's going to be Yes, when I'm in this room, or in this corner of my room, that's when I'm working. And then when I'm outside of it, I'm not working for other people, it's going to be based on time during these hours. For other people, it's going to be based on devices, other people, it's going to be something completely different. That's where you have the opportunity to be creative and innovative and independent and decide what is best for you and then to enforce it.

John Ryan 19:50
So it's really an individualistic prescription about what they need and depending on where they are and in the types of disruptions and blending them. Might be occurring. You've been doing remote work for quite a while? Do you still need a boundary a trigger, like a location? Or otherwise to kind of shift your mindset? Or is it gotten so automatic for you? You can do it at the flip of a hat.

Laurel Farrer 20:15
Absolutely not. I struggle with burnout every single day. And that's why I think people that are like, Oh, no, I don't deal with any burnout or, or maybe they are fine with burnout. But they say that they don't have any problems with working from home, like isolation or mismanagement or underemployment or something like that career, stagnancy. Like there's a lot of risks. So if somebody is saying that this is all sunshine, and rainbows and the remote work is just the best, and everybody should never have to go back to an office again, they are full of crap. So that is speaking as one advocate to another like there, there is no perfect solution. And working from home certainly is not that. So we all have to be very, very careful and intentional about optimizing it for ourselves and being very aware of what is working for me, what is not working for me, what are my personal risks? What are the risks of my organization? What do I need in my, in my in my career, and constantly evaluating for improvement.

Laurel Farrer 21:17
But yeah, burnout for me personally, is, is a constant struggle, and I'm always trying to improve it, I do have a few things that I do have like working in a dedicated space, trying to be outside in the beginning and end of my work day, to kind of get away from a scream. You know, there's there's different things that I implement throughout my day that helped me with burnout. But I'm always looking for new strategies, because it also changes with our phase of life. It's not like we say, oh, I've cracked the nut on burnout. And then that's the strategy that works for the forever, like, no, our lives are going to change. So of course, how we manage our lives is going to change. So depending on if you have kids, or where you're living, or you know, what income you're making, or the culture of the company that you're working with, all of those are x factors that you might have to adjust to, in different ways.

John Ryan 22:15
So it's really like you mentioned before about personal responsibility, knowing yourself and knowing that's a constant process, consistent process of checking in with yourself on a daily basis, how am I feeling? How are things going? Because a couple things you mentioned are I could see short term, like I said, I don't have a problem with burnout, I feel great, I feel energized, excited. But that's like immediately aware and awareness of what we're going through. The other things you mentioned being passed up for opportunities, pay raises or promotions, and and those type of differentials, those are more hidden, those are longer term impacts. That really, where does that? How do you manage that? Is that the remote workers responsibility to consider that? Is that the business owner leader? Or do they have to be aware of that? Is that a conscious responsibility on them?

Laurel Farrer 23:06
Yeah, you just brought up like, the great caveat of remote work adoption, is that the managers and leadership and the employer is waiting for the employee to take out responsibility, because they're like, well, you're not under our roof anymore, you're on your own right? Like, if you have problems, we expect that you'll take care of them. And the employee is saying, Wait a second, I'm not just sitting at home on my couch, I'm working for you, I'm waiting for you to take care of me. And that's where we see the most Miss adoption, the most barriers to success is just this misunderstanding about whose responsibility is it to make remote work work.

Laurel Farrer 23:48
And the The truth is, it's both it has to be both the company can enforce policies and provide trainings and, you know, construct infrastructures all day long. And it's never going to do anything unless the employees help enforce. On the other hand, the employees can spend as much time as they possibly have in the day to enforce personal strategies and methods. And it's they're going to be, you know, fighting a fire with with the, you know, a drop of water if they are not getting the support that they need from their employer. So it has to be a collaborative effort from everybody involved about how do we make this work? What are expectations? There has to be constant communication in order to make it work.

John Ryan 24:41
So in the absence of government regulation, like you said earlier, it really is the company's responsibility. It's the leadership team, it's the employees is everyone involved, to initiate that conversation and set out clear expectations. And it sounds like review them almost as almost as consistently as you might review Your burnout, check in as well. But let's imagine for a moment that there is a performance issue from someone who's doing remote learning or not learning who's me that's kids remote working, and they're not performing. How is there a special considerations around feedback and performance management? And those types of discussions that have to be happened to have to be considered when giving feedback? Or is it the same as someone who's on site?

Laurel Farrer 25:30
Yeah, well, I mean, remote work is still just work. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel and a lot of ways, however, we do need to make sure that the ways in which we are measuring and collecting results is effective, and it's the right way. Because if we're just measuring somebody on based on how we have perceived them visually in the office, right, like they're very charismatic person, or they seemed like they were always very busy, or, you know, I always saw them talking to the right people, like they must have been doing a good job, then that has been extremely inaccurate reporting, and, frankly, has fueled a lot of discrimination for many, many, many years. So we need to make sure that we are truly measuring and tracking true productivity, which is very results based.

Laurel Farrer 26:20
And thankfully, those results are easier to measure in a virtual context than it is to when we can see them, right. So that's why results based work environments are much more conducive to virtual work than traditional operations. Because we're saying, Well, I don't need to watch you do your work to know that you did a good job, because I know that I gave you the assignment, you turned around within an hour and a half, and it was done. Obviously, you made good use of your time. And I see the results in front of me, they're very impressive. Congratulations, you're a hard worker, I didn't need to watch you do that to make to prove that. So that being said, like getting to the feedback point is we need to make sure that we are giving feedback on the right things, right, as opposed to like, I called you at three o'clock and you didn't answer therefore you must not be working. And it's like, I've been working since 3am I so that I could take a break at 3pm and go pick up my kids from school like Hang on one second, right. So we need to be we have need to have more visibility into productivity and measuring those results. Then after we give those that feedback, we need to be more transparent and open in our communication, we need to make sure that we are compensating what we don't have environmentally or contextually with nonverbal communication or more subtle in some cues, we don't have that.

Laurel Farrer 27:52
So we need to be very, very articulate in what we're saying in our feedback sessions. And being very empathetic. That is still the same, right? Like we needed to do that in the office. So the feedback session itself won't change much. The only thing that we need to think about specific to working from home, is that when we're giving people feedback, and is specific, specifically when they're in a home office, and not just a co working space, or not just on the road, but when they're working from home, home is where people are safe home is where people are able to be their true authentic genuine selves, it is the only safe place that they have in the world or, you know, for most people. So when we are critiquing somebody in that space, than they are hearing it personally and professionally.

Laurel Farrer 28:48
So we have to be very, very empathetic in the feedback that we give and be and make sure that our our feedback is very based on results and based on measurable criteria. That is, has all happened at work and that we're not saying anything that could be interpreted as you're a bad person, you're a negative, as an individual, it's not working, there's no personality things, because what they're hearing is, I'm a bad person in my safe space, there's nowhere safe for me to go to I can't escape work, and then that is going to fuel a mental health crisis. So yeah, we just in terms of the feedback session, need to keep it very, very data driven, very focused on work. And be cognizant that they are in a very much more vulnerable state than they usually are. They can't, you know, come into work and put a brave face on and then go home and cry like they are at home and we need to be more sensitive to that.

John Ryan 29:54
It's a really interesting, fascinating point because we don't have that boundary. We don't have the hour To have two hour work commute to get to her fro and change our opinion and get into that state and put on that persona. So you really, as a manager, you have to be more sensitive, have empathy, which we've always had to have, as well. And as the employee probably even more important to have those boundaries so that we can as best we can replicate that for the benefit our family too, so they can not have to suffer the work pains as well. You know, just just ask Cassidy, what is the favorite thing that you've experienced, like, your favorite thing about working remotely, what has been really most impactful for you.

Laurel Farrer 30:38
Um, you know, for me, it's been able to have more control in my career and to experience discrimination less in the workplace, and that my my results speak for themselves. In terms of office performance, I'm not great, I, I don't like to go and schmooze with all of the people at lunch every day. And, and I like to just have my head down and just work and get stuff done. And so office politics, office dynamics were tricky for me, I was more introverted, just more focused. And that led to a lot of competition. But I'm also somebody that likes to think before I speak. And so if somebody were to raise a fight, I couldn't really defend myself well. And then obviously, there was a high level of, of discrimination in terms of me being a young woman in the workplace and trying to compete with, with older men for the same roles and like office politics or something that were really discouraging, there was a lot of opportunities that I, I missed because of because of that.

Laurel Farrer 31:54
However, in remote work, your your results speak for themselves. And so when I shifted over to this, this type of business world is when I really came to fruition. And I can say, Yeah, my, my results speak for themselves. And people were able to see the value that I was bringing professionally, not just socially, and which I always felt like, that was my job anyway, like, I'm great socially, in my social environments. But this isn't a social environment. This is work environment. So there's always a bit of a conflict for me. But yeah, that's, for me personally, that's what I appreciate that I can feel much more successful in my career, and I feel like I can have a bit more control. Now. I don't want to paint a perfect picture, either. There is certainly plenty of sexism and racism and ages. And that still happens in remote work. We just have certain tools that can help combat it, but it's still not perfect.

John Ryan 32:53
That's fair. That's fair. Well, and thank you for sharing that as well. Where do you see the future of remote work going?

Laurel Farrer 33:00
You know, the irony, the irony of this is that the the term remote work will cease to be a term, that's the future of remote work, that it won't be remote work anymore. It's just going to be work. So, you know, people will be more flexible in their workplaces, like we talked about earlier, they'll have the empowerment to work from a location that suits them best for a certain task or for you know, a certain mindset. So there's just going to be a lot more flexibility in where we work. And overall, it's a shift into the mindset that work is somewhere. It's not somewhere that we go. It's something that we do. And so we can be just as successful and just as professional, as at home as we can in the office. And so our value is something that we provide not just because we're sitting in a certain seat.

John Ryan 33:58
Fantastic. Thanks so much for spending time with us. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you, your organization to find out more about what you do and have a conversation with you?

Laurel Farrer 34:07
Yeah, well, to connect with our team of remote work experts and consultants, the best place to find us is our website, which is distributed consulting, calm. But for me individually, social media is great, LinkedIn or Twitter. I'm the only Laurel far and so it's pretty easy to find me. But that's a great way to connect as well.

John Ryan 34:25
Wonderful. Thanks so much for being here.

Laurel Farrer 34:27
Thanks for having me.

John Ryan 34:28
And thank you all for listening. Until next time, develop yourself empower others and lead by example. Thanks for listening to key conversations for leaders with your host John Ryan. If you enjoy the show, please let us know. Give us a rating or write a review. For more tools to engage, inspire and empower yourself and others visit www.keyconvocom/free. If you haven't already, you can connect with me on twitter @keyconvo and on LinkedIn under John Ryan Leadership.