👩🏼‍💻 Everyone wants virtual meetings

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Good Morning,

Sending this to you from somewhere in Texas in the path of the solar eclipse, where I’m working remotely for the day courtesy of Starlink.

What an incredible time we live in where people can travel long distances - for astronomical events, college basketball games, or anything else - and still get their work done without interruption.

Hope it’s not too cloudy for those of you trying to witness the midday blackout!

A message from our friends at Condor*

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Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

BetterUp: 10 remote jobs
Tricentis: 26 remote jobs
Lime: 29 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

👵🏻 How to ask for remote work as a caregiver
With any remote request, it’s most important to have supporting data to help your manager easily justify the decision to themselves and any other leaders. Here are a few recommendations specifically for caregivers who want to have that conversation:

• Create a plan ahead of time that takes into account any scheduling needs, like taking a parent to a doctor at a certain time every week.

• Set up a meeting to discuss this with your manager, instead of catching them off guard.

• Don’t be afraid to share your personal life with your employer; often this will help them better understand the need to accommodate your request.

• Remember to frame the conversation in a way that ensures you expect this to be just as good - if not better - for the company.

If the employer doesn’t allow you to work from home even after asking for it, consider exploring any other benefits they provide that could help in your situation, like elder care services or time off to accompany family members to doctor appointments.

And if all else fails, the Remote Source job board is here if you need it. (Care.com)

🌎 The huge cost of unwanted interruptions
When I first launched Remote Source in 2017, Global Workplace Analytics was one of the only research groups devoted to covering remote work.

And they’re still going strong. Last week, along with TechSmith Corporation and Caryatid Workplace Consultancy, they released a wide-ranging report on what they’ve recently found in the world of remote work.

Some of the more unique findings from their research:

• In-office workers are over 3X more likely than fully-remote workers to experience 25+ unwanted interruptions per day.

  • And additional research shows that it takes only 6 unwanted interruptions per day to cost a person 20% of their daily productivity. I can’t imagine most leaders want that for their employees.

• Virtual meetings are always preferred over in-person meetings, among all generations, though the difference varies by the travel required for in-person options.

  • In the first row below, for meetings that require less than 2 hours of ground travel, 6% don’t want to attend, 50% want to attend virtually, and 44% want to attend in-person.

  • The virtual preference is greater when there’s more effort required to travel.

• 44% of managers routinely work from an office, versus 27% of all other employees - including both senior leaders with more experience, and junior employees with less experience. Not too surprising, given the high number of managers who want to see their employees in-person.

• 75% of companies have not established standards for remote meetings, trained their managers on how to oversee distributed teams, or put best practices in place for managing remote workers.

I’m happy to see that most people, across all work location arrangements and all generations, prefer virtual meetings. But I’m a little nervous that so many managers haven’t had proper training for distributed teams. For anyone who’s experienced ineffective bosses in remote settings, this probably makes you especially concerned. (Global Workplace Analytics)

📊 US Census Bureau is increasing remote days
There’s something beautiful about the government division most responsible for population data deciding that it’s best to adopt a remote work policy.

The details are far from sorted out, but they’re giving up 50% of their headquarters space to bring the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics under the same roof. In doing so, the Census Bureau is switching to a “hoteling” office arrangement that will require employees to reserve desks on days they are in-office. Employees will need explicit approval to work remotely, based on minimum occupancy requirements for Federal buildings. (Federal News Network)

📞 Entry level remote jobs: customer service
Even though the latest jobs report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed higher-than-expected levels of employment, remote jobs have become more difficult to find, especially in entry-level roles.

Customer service jobs at virtual call centers could provide that necessary experience for a person to showcase their reliability, both as a customer service representative and as a trustworthy remote worker. In a best-case scenario, a role like this could provide the ability to work from anywhere while giving a junior-level employee the experience needed to bolster their resume. (TheStreet)

🤝 How leaders can fight loneliness on remote teams
There are generally three types of distance that remote employees can experience: physical, operational, and affinity.

While physical and operational are influenced less by managers, affinity - which refers to the quality of connections that employees feel to one another - can be directly affected by management.

Author Rachel Montañez suggests four tips for managers to proactively combat loneliness on their teams:

1. Reflect on where your team stands right now

   • Empathetically consider and address any risk employees may feel about connecting with others, so that ultimately work can be a place of community for them

2. Make recognition meaningful

   • Remote workers are more likely to feel their work isn’t recognized as much as it would be if they were in person (and they’re probably right)

3. Provide support for career advancement

   • Over half of employees would like to talk about their career with their manager more often

4. Model communicating as a whole person

   • Infuse opportunities for friendship into conversations, and talk about mental health

Montañez dives into much more detail in her article, but these are a great starting point to ensure remote employees feel engaged with their coworkers. (Harvard Business Review)

Stuff We Like

🎙️ The Ezra Klein Podcast: How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?
Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School at UPenn, has experimented with tons of AI chatbots and teaches a class where he discusses incorporating AI into the workplace. It’s a great listen and showcases how any of us can dip our toes into the water and use these tools to make our lives better. (The Ezra Klein Show)

🏝️ Newsletter: Nomad for Less*
If you work remotely and you’re ready to take advantage by traveling on a budget, this newsletter will be right up your alley. (Nomad for Less)

💼 Job Board: Working Nomads
Some disclaimers: it’s not as good as ours, they definitely paid for LinkedIn followers (lol), and as with all job boards we strongly encourage you not to pay extra just to access job listings that are available in many other places for free.

BUT… it never hurts to see more job boards with employers we haven’t captured, and their free version still gives you access to almost 3,000 remote job openings. (Working Nomads)

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