🧠 Prove you’re a leader while remote

Good Morning,

Now that we’re past the first week of the new year, work life is getting back to normal. Everyone’s back from vacation, we can move past the “how were your holidays?” conversations, and if companies were making any big changes for 2024, they’ve probably been announced by now.

Plus: budgets have opened up and more companies are hiring.

Recruiting leader Bonnie Dilber, whose newsletter we’ve previously recommended, shared a post on LinkedIn last week about the spike in job openings to start the year. There were 200,000 net new jobs posted on LinkedIn in the first week of 2024, but the percentage of remote jobs has actually decreased to 4% overall (from ~10% in mid-2023).

In her post, she outlines recommendations for remote job seekers:

1. Take a very personalized approach for every job application

2. Tell everyone you know that you’re looking for a remote job

3. Follow companies you want to work for on social platforms, and connect directly with their leaders and recruiters

4. Consider the criteria you’d be willing to flex on - title, industry, compensation, etc. - given the current shortage of remote jobs

As much as I, and many others, expect remote jobs to grow over time, we’re still in a remote valley given the number of recently-enacted RTO policies, and there are sacrifices that may need to be made in order to find remote jobs.

But… we’ll continue to bring you as many as we possibly can!

Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

Molina Healthcare: 329 remote jobs
Vannevar Labs: 14 remote jobs
Harvey: 10 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

🌏 Atlassian CEO shares remote victories and challenges
Atlassian is one of the largest remote-first employers in the world, which means the sheer amount of experience they have can provide key insights for other remote employers.

Their victories are obvious: better talent and better retention rates.

But their struggles highlight what other employers will grapple with for the foreseeable future: young employees consistently want to spend some time in the office, and teams working across the world from each other have diminished happiness at work.

Atlassian leaders continue to ask themselves how they can best accommodate younger employees who want to be around peers and learn from more experienced employees; the CEO admits they haven’t figured that out just yet.

But to address globally-distributed teams, they’ve adopted a hiring policy that ensures team members will be in time zones that overlap during working hours. (CNBC)

👎 UPS formally ends WFH
With only a few exceptions, UPS has effectively ended its remote work policy. According to an announcement Thursday, all non-operations employees are expected to be working in their assigned offices five days a week. (Atlanta Business Chronicle)

📊 Survey shows managers have more support for remote work
Employee background check company Checkr recently surveyed 1,500 managers and 1,500 individual contributors to understand their remote work preferences. Their leading headline is that 68% of managers want remote and hybrid work to continue, while 48% of individual contributors feel the same way.

Digging deeper, the commentary explains that these numbers reflect the “percentage of survey respondents who want remote work to continue because it increases productivity and engagement.” So without seeing the survey questions, I’d take 48% with a grain of salt - I have a feeling that many more individuals want remote work to continue for reasons other than productivity.

The important takeaway here is that managers likely have more support for long-term remote work than the media would have you think. (Checkr)

✈️ Business travel is BACK
A report from the Global Business Travel Association says business travel spending is expected to surpass its pre-pandemic record in 2024, which is earlier than experts predicted.

A report from American Express Global Business Travel and Harvard Business Review says this spending is largely due to internal travel, allowing colleagues to meet with each other in-person.

With the rise of remote and hybrid work, planning in-person time with colleagues has become crucial; most companies who held internal trips in 2023 expect to hold the same amount of trips or more in 2024. It’s a trend that will only continue to grow; anyone who’s worked remotely for an extended time can see the value in these meetups. (BBC)

🤝 Show leadership skills while remote
One of the biggest concerns employees have about remote work is a perceived lack of advancement opportunities compared to in-person colleagues. While this is heavily dependent on company culture, Forbes has compiled a list of 7 ways to show leadership ability while remote.

1. Master your messaging: be thoughtful and intentional in all forms of communication

2. Maximize meetings: command attention, and drive the agenda

3. Humanize the digital divide: acknowledge your colleagues’ achievements often and inject authenticity into all conversations

4. Champion growth and strengthen the team: lead the way when setting up virtual team-building activities, while promoting continuous learning

5. Optimize face-to-face opportunities: when you have the opportunity to be in-person, prioritize group events

6. Be a thought leader: this is such a stupid term, but the point remains — be present on any relevant social platforms, and collaborate with your colleagues to produce meaningful, shareable content

7. Lead by example: show discipline in your work that others would be able to look up to you for

If you keep these in mind while working from home, chances are you’ll set yourself up for a promotion in management sooner than otherwise expected. (Forbes)

Stuff We Like

• PCWorld’s Best WFH Tech Products

  Didn’t get that new docking station or webcam for Christmas? PCWorld recently published another list of their favorite tech products sure to improve your home office.

• Exec Sum Newsletter
  This is one of the only daily newsletters I subscribe to. It gives me a condensed list of the major global market stories every day, with added focus on activity in the financial sector.

• Book Recommendation: Leading From Anywhere
  Especially valuable for remote managers, this book is consistently ranked as one of the best resources for building strong distributed teams. Author Daniel Pink says “Leading from Anywhere is the best book on remote work I’ve ever read—incisive, original, and eminently practical. Read it—and take notes!”

*Denotes a sponsored or affiliate link. Any paid sponsorships, products, or services are thoroughly vetted by us before we make recommendations to readers.