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An unexpected side effect of remote work: Denser communities

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:01:59 +0000

Will the rise of remote work mean we’re more spread out or more densely packed together? Obviously the latter, you could argue, pointing to the fact that logging in to work via the web allows colleagues to be spread from Abu Dhabi to Austin. But there is a case to be made that when the trend towards remote work is far enough along, the result will be denser communities of workers.

The Atlantic Cities explained this second point of view recently, noting data that points to a renewed and rising interest in downtown cores and trends towards more urban-style suburbs where residents live closer together and rely less on cars for transportation. Citing a post by Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, that appeared on the Huffington Post, the Atlantic piece argues that as telecommuting becomes more common these trends towards denser communities will accelerate.

With the rise of the contingent workforce, people will also live and work in ways we haven’t seen for a very long time. We have developed our cities based on the old economy, with residential, commercial, and industrial areas kept separate and ‘pure’ through single-use zoning. That made sense in an economy that divided our work lives from our private lives, and that spawned large-scale noxious industries that no one wanted nearby. The next economy, though, may look more like the way in which people lived and worked prior to the industrial revolution, in which home, office, and shop co-exist in some combination of physical and digital space. This may require rethinking our zoning laws to allow for a much finer-grain mix of uses and re-purposing buildings designed for single functions that will have no tenants or buyers if they remain that way.

The Atlantic points out, knowledge work requires creative, thoughtful professionals who in turn need stimulating, densely populated spaces where they can run into and bump ideas off others of their kind. Remote work won’t eliminate this need. It’ll just shift where these interactions happen from the water cooler at the office to the street outside your house.

This idea that the changing nature of work will alter how we envision and build our communities has come up on WebWorkerDaily before. Coworking advocates, for example, have noted that, as people stay closer to their houses during the workday, they demand more from their community (and also offer it more) spurring development around their homes and coworking spaces.

Jerome Chang, an architect and owner of BLANKSPACES coworking in Los Angeles, noted that Zappos, ahead of the curve as usual, is already trying to put these insights into practice, building a new corporate campus that the company hopes will encourage employees to mix their work and personal lives in the same downtown area.

Do you think the rise of remote work will spur us to rethink our communities?

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Self-knowledge: The secret ingredient for successful remote work

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:05:27 +0000

When Stanford scientists went to China to test the benefits of telecommuting recently, they measured the expected upticks in productivity remote work policies often provide. But they also found that many of the study participants, once the research was completed, “decided that they’d had enough, preferring the hours in commute in exchange for the human interaction of office life and a fixed beginning and end to each work day. The home office isn’t for everyone.”

Working from home has obvious benefits, but it has equally glaring and hard to fix drawbacks: the loneliness, the endless supply of interesting links and the tendency for work to seep into more and more of your personal life. So what’s to be done to make working from home, well work? Fast Company’s Kevin Purdy, a veteran remote worker himself, recently polled fellow web workers about their best tips.

The exercise turned up commonplace but utterly correct advice such as changing out of your pajamas and explicitly planning time for face-to-face human interaction, and is well worth a read in full to those new to the world of remote work or just looking for a well written post to buck them up and improve their work habits. But one bit of advice may be more of a jolt, even to those experienced at resisting the pull of one more cute cat link:

Realize when the problem is motivation, not space. Distractions, temptations, and kids can all legitimately get in the way of doing work at home. But sometimes you have to step back and look at other reasons why you’re avoiding the work that needs doing. Is it really because you don’t want to do it?

This is perhaps the hardest part of working from home. At an office, you are very likely to be found out and penalized if you spend all day checking Facebook or replaying Portal 2, so you at least make a stab at moving forward on even the most painful tasks. At home, it’s up to you to stay motivated, and the things toward the very bottom of the Awesome Challenging Fun list might never get done.

With the web awash in posts suggesting every imaginable variation on the to-do list and providing a seemingly endless parade of gadgets and pointers to be more productive, it’s refreshing to see someone acknowledge that the problem may actually be the content of your work rather than your system for accomplishing it. In that case, no number of colored flags or minute-by-minute scheduling will fully solve your issue. In fact, it’ll probably distract from the true solution, which is finding a way to begin to do more of what you enjoy and less of those truly soul-sapping tasks. Even if that means a career shift of some kind.

Do you ever obsess about tweaks to your productivity routine as a way to avoid acknowledging that the true, underlying problem of simply not liking your work?

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Is HR behind the curve on virtual work?

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:08:50 +0000

Among technologists, futurists and those working at cutting-edge companies, virtual teams and the realities of remote work may be fairly old news. But according to a recent article from the Canadian HR Reporter, the same doesn’t appear to be true for most mainstream HR departments, which the author Dave Crisp feels are badly behind the curve when it comes to understanding new ways of working and implementing the necessary policies and procedures.

Crisp notes that for many years most HR departments saw virtual work as the domain of a handful of road warriors who could be relied on to work with their managers to sort out their individual tools and needs. But HR failed to keep up with changing conceptions of virtual work as technology and shifting mindsets allowed the idea of location independence to spread through much larger swathes of organizations. He writes:

As time passed technology made most of us capable of working remotely at least part time with few special arrangements. It also enabled more people to tie into virtual meetings via various types of collaboration programs and online tools. The emphasis shifted away from remote workers as special cases that had to be monitored to an assumption entire teams might be assembled from workers who are located somewhere other than where the leader is or teams in one location being led by a leader located somewhere else.

Or as Wayne Turmel put it in his thoughtful meditation for Management Issues on the themes raised in the Canadian HR Reporter post, “it’s impossible not to acknowledge that while IT was busy building tools (and empires) to cut costs and minimize travel, the discussions frequently didn’t include HR beyond how much they could cut costs (and head count).” He concludes: “As often happens, HR is left to come in after the cow has run off and safe-proof the barn.”

So what questions is HR now scrambling to ask and answer about virtual work? Both Crisp and Turmel have suggestions, such as:

Are employees expected to be connected 24/7? If so, should they be paid extra for it? And, I’d add, what are the longer-term risks of burnout created by such a policy?
Are productivity and effectiveness being measured properly when it’s no longer possible to simply drop in on an employee’s cubicle and see what they’re up to?
Do managers need training in how to communicate effectively at a distance? Issues like the tone of email, handling conflict across distance, making the most of virtual meetings and deciding who to include in which communications come up here, as do questions of how managers can maintain an “open door” policy when they have no door.
How should managers or HR handle the situation when cliques or subgroups form within virtual teams and information isn’t properly shared?
How should managers solicit feedback?

What other questions do HR departments have to confront as virtual work becomes more widespread?

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Holiday cheer: No office required

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:02:04 +0000

Last week here on WebWorkerDaily, we pondered what the rise of remote work is doing to that old office tradition: the holiday party. Tales of distant teammates congregating around Skype made for a pessimistic picture of the future of the institution, but it seems some unconventional workers have found better ways to mark the season.

On Fast Company this week, writer Matt Haber tracks down the best in New York City office parties for those who don’t have offices, reporting on shindigs in Brooklyn and Manhattan where those at the forefront of the future of work gathered to wish each other a happy holiday season. For example, in Gowanus, Brooklyn:

No Office Holiday Party was thrown collectively by the websites Brokelyn, Brooklyn Based, F’d in Park Slope, and the email newsletter the skint. “A lot of our writers and readers and editors are freelance types who spend a lot of time at home in front of their computers all day,” Brokelyn’s managing editor, Tim Donnelly told Fast Company. “We’re not in a position to hand out bonuses, but we can hand out fun bonuses. The drinks were pretty cheap and the punch was pretty strong. The benefit is the human contact. To know you’re not alone out there hacking away at the Internet all day in a silo.”

At the Paragraph writers’ space on West 14^th, about 50 freelance writers also mingled and marked the season without their usual laptops in tow. Their ability to get convivial with colleagues despite not having cubicle-bound lives suggests the future of the office party might not be so depressing after all. By switching from expecting each year’s event to be a gathering of a particular organization’s workforce regardless of their location, the way forward may be to flip this around and view the holiday party as an opportunity for professionals in the same general geographic area to get together no matter who pays their bills throughout the year.

Much like the switch in mindset that allows workers to move off corporate campuses and mingle at co-working spaces in whatever location best suits them, the new way of looking at holiday parties may focus less on grouping people by employer and more by their chosen geography and community. Holiday parties, like the rest of work, are becoming more about intangible ideas like your personal network and professional goal than traditional organizing principles like company directories or actual office buildings.

Are you celebrating with your professional network this year?

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Is remote work making Americans’ vacation starvation worse?

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:04:28 +0000

It’s the holiday season, so obviously Americans are taking it easy at the office in favor of shopping, spending time with family and friends and generally getting into the festive seasonal vibe. Or not, according to a recent survey, which finds we’re actually taking scant time to recharge at the holidays.

Flexible office space company Regus asked 12,000 workers in 85 countries about their intentions to work during the end-of-year holidays and found a few of the year’s biggest occasions aren’t enough to keep Americans away from the office (or their smartphones). The company found:

64 percent of U.S. business people will work during the last week of the year.
56 percent of those working during this time will travel into the office to do so.
Yet a hefty percentage of American respondents – 39 percent — believe workers will get very little done in this work time.

These numbers come on top of an another poll from RingCentral showing 70.4 percent of U.S. business owners, executives and independent pros surveyed expect to work more this holiday season than last year. Only 14 percent plan to take a real vacation, meaning a complete break from work, including work-related emails or phone calls. Filling in this dismal picture of vacation starvation is the annual doom and gloom from Mercer’s 2011 Worldwide Benefit & Employment Guidelines, which shocked exactly no one by showing workers in the U.S. have among the least generous statutory employee holiday entitlements (entitlements they don’t even take full advantage of).

What does this have to do with connectivity and the future of work? Simple: Constant connectivity and eroding work-life boundaries may be making it even more difficult for vacation-starved Americans (and even those in more vacation-friendly countries) to really get away. Just take the tiny percentage of workers RingCentral revealed will be taking a real vacation by severing their connection to work entirely as exhibit A. Add to these difficulties the seemingly endless pressure of a dire economic climate and the vacation complications caused by our increasingly international teams, which creates the need to decide which holidays, if any, remote employees are entitled to and you have a recipe for increasing levels of holiday deprivation-induced burnout.

Do you get the sense that our Americans vacation starvation is getting worse due to larger workforce trends?

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Your desktop of the future is likely to be a whole room

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:32:30 +0000

The idea of physically manipulating digital data through gestures, as shown in the movie Minority Report, may seem like sci-fi, but there’s much that applies to the desktop of tomorrow. Speaking at the GigaOM Net:Work event on Thursday, John Underkoffler, Chief Scientist, Oblong Industries — and creator of the interface used in the film — noted how nearly a decade later, people are still talking about it.

“The next disruption will come with big advances in UI because that’s all you have,” he said. Behind the scenes, computers and networks are still abstract machines that essentially flip switches, but people don’t think in the abstract. So the user interface is a way to turn the abstract into concrete efforts that humans understand. How does one “de-abstract” the machine?

The biggest clue, Underkoffler says, is space, and pointing is the simplest human gesture that applies to space. We point for the benefit of others, who can determine what space we’re trying to reference. Applying that idea to computers is what Oblong does, and the key is giving tangible space coordinates to every pixel on any screen in a room. Essentially, an entire room around you can be a desktop.

But you can’t drive three dozen screens with a single piece of hardware, so Oblong is focused on the operating environment to create a user interface that works across networked computers in a way that multiple workers can collaborate. This “removes the tyranny of meeting rooms and conference rooms where one person owns the experience,” according to Underkoffler. Screens for input and output — such as an iPad – can be used as a two-way screen to control main and add data.

We might be using one or two screens today in a desktop environment, but in the near future, every available screen in a room could extend our workplace beyond the constraints of an old user interface.

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Work 3.0 is just getting underway, says oDesk’s Gary Swart

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:00:02 +0000

Gary Swart, CEO of freelancer sourcing site oDesk took the stage at Net:Work 2011 to talk about how work is changing in the face of remote work trends. He started by pointing to a key competitive determinator all companies seek and must compete for: talent.

Swart said that competition for talent is rapid, despite economic woes. He specified two big problems: getting work to workers, and the hiring process, in terms of investment of time and resources. How to deal with both those problems has been steadily evolving: Work 1.0 was rigid, single-employer, and on location, probably what describes your grandfather’s career. Work 2.0 was about more flexible work schedules, better collaboration between remote teams and some ability to take work home with you. It’s sort of the model that’s still in place at big tech firms in Silicon Valley.

Work 3.0 is where we’re at now and where a good chunk of work is heading, according to Swart, and it’s only just getting underway. It means “access to the best people no matter where they are in the world,” and the “ability to work with those people as if they’re in the room with you.” Swart says it’s a transparent process, one that takes place primarily online using tools with built-in reporting elements. It’s a very situation-based, ephemeral mode of staffing, too: He applied a movie production analogy: the team comes together to accomplish something specific, then separate again.

He discussed examples of companies forming in order to source and staff remote work projects. Thumbtack is one, which serves 170,000 customers today, Swart says, and provides access to the services of 230,000 service professionals in discrete areas for on-demand, just-in-time labor requirements.

In short, we’re moving from rigid, structured, non-specific workforces to on-demand, targeted transparent freelancer-based staffing. Doing so saves on infrastructure, by cutting back on costs like transportation and facilities, and also leverages talent on a global scale that otherwise might go unnoticed and unappreciated. Swart sees Work 3.0 as just getting started, with its most significant effects on how we do business yet to be felt.

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The dark side of mobile work: How can we resist its pull?

Jessica Stillman — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:00:11 +0000

When iPass recently conducted in-depth research into how the explosion in mobile work was affecting workers, they found a stark divide in how the ability to get stuff done nearly anywhere and at any time affected people. Many responded, unsurprisingly, that the freedom to connect added several hours of work to their average week.

More surprising was how those additional hours affected people: About a third told iPass the extra flexibility (and attendant jump in hours worked) added stress to their lives; another third disagreed completely, responding that mobile work made them more relaxed. (It’s assumed the remaining third or so were about equally relaxed with or without mobile work.)

What’s going on here? Dr. Carolyn Axtell of the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield recently analyzed the numbers (and will be speaking about her findings at Net:Work), trying to sort out why some workers respond well to the connected lifestyle and some suffer. In the process, she identified three “buffers” that insulate connected workers from the worst effects of a constant connection to professional demands. She describes them as:

Achievement. Many professional workers are lucky enough to be in a position where they really enjoy what they do. They become truly involved and engaged in their work because their jobs provide challenge, recognition, financial rewards and even power. Their work is interesting and motivating and gives them a sense of mastery and achievement, and these characteristics are related to greater well-being and satisfaction

Control. Having greater control over setting one’s own schedule means that work demands can be moved around other obligations to a more suitable time. Research consistently shows that having greater control and autonomy is related to higher wellbeing.

Support. It might be that some of these mobile workers are able to work so many extra hours because they receive a lot support at home for childcare or household duties (e.g., hired help; a spouse who takes on the majority of the childcare duties) and they may also have more support at work (e.g., people to delegate work to). Certainly research has shown that professional managers who work long hours often have such support available. Research has consistently shown that having more support acts as a protection against the greater stress that can result from high job demands.

Certainly having a nanny or a spouse who is handy in the kitchen and willing to man the washing machine is helpful, but not something companies can be expected to provide. Nor are most organizations able to create a sense of achievement in a worker who feels his job is unimportant or uninteresting. But there are things organizations can do to help boost these insulting factors that keep employees safe from connected work stress, according to Axtell.

For example, organizations can allow workers “greater control over their ‘off-job’ time,” which presumably translates to not bombarding them with communications and requests at all hours. This also might amount to giving workers as long a lead time as possible before a task is due, so they can set their own schedule and won’t feel intense pressure to work all hours to meet a tight timeline.

Companies should also “ensure that employees have the right resources to do their job and have the necessary support to overcome obstacles.” This support can come in the form of concrete help like necessary training and adequate information, or as emotional support, such as providing opportunities for employees to bond and relax.

Finally, Axtell suggests managers explicitly encourage workers to set firm boundaries and find time to recharge. Rather than phoning up at 11 p.m. to ask about that meeting next Tuesday, bosses should, “encourage employees to maintain a boundary between home and work and not work excessive hours.”

Is this akin to expecting Darth Vader to ask Luke to stay away from the dark side? At the end of the day, whose responsibility is it to set work-life boundaries in a world of perpetual connectivity, the worker’s or the organization’s?

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Governments get behind agile working

Jessica Stillman — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:01:58 +0000

Next week at Net:Work, tech geeks, journalists and forward-thinking business folks will gather to discuss the untethered, agile future of work, where we will be able to get things done nearly anywhere. But apparently, it’s not just these private actors cheerleading an evolution of how we work. Governments are getting behind the change too.

That’s what the Intranet Benchmarking Forum is reporting on its blog, where it rounds up new initiatives in the U.K., U.S. and Netherlands to encourage agile working. I include myself with the many Twitter addicts who were already familiar with the Dutch campaign thanks to its catchy appeals to “start your day in a bathrobe, not in a traffic jam,” featuring people being productive in dashing pink dressing gowns.

Obviously, it’s a memorable and much-linked-to campaign, but the slogan wasn’t just for humor. Behind the laughs was a serious message for “New Way of Working” week that encouraged people to cut down on their commuting for the benefit of the three Ps: planet, profit and people.

The Netherlands may be renowned for its forward thinking policies, but the rise of agile working isn’t just some Dutch utopian dream. The much less idealistic governments of the U.S. and the U.K. are also cheerleading new ways of working, according to the IBF post:

Mindsets still seem to be stuck in old ways of working.

This was the message from Norman Baker MP at last week’s Worktech conference in London where he unveiled the UK governments [sic] “Anywhere Working” program. He made the case for agile working practices clearly and unequivocally, citing mounting pressures on transport systems, environmental concerns and business efficiencies as key factors….

There has also been a recent executive order from the US government on “Promoting Efficient Spending” which points to digital and agile working practices as central to realizing efficiencies. According to an article in the Environmental Leader, limiting travel and using alternatives such as video conferencing, and the efficient use of online instead of printed information were both cited by the government as important. Although not a direct agile working campaign, again this adds weight to the argument.

So with governments getting behind the idea, what’s stopping businesses from adopting it? Inertia is IBF’s simple answer and one we’ve heard before. Still, official efforts to encourage new ways or working should help convince skeptical traditionalists (though the government here in the States could pass much-needed legislation that prevents double taxation of telecommuters as well).

And speaking of government actions that would encourage new ways of working, the coworking community has a few requests too. DeskMag recently published this list of 10 things the government could do to help the movement out.

Do you think governments are doing enough to encourage agile work? What other actions might help?

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The latest research on telecommuting, via video

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:01:15 +0000

A few weeks ago on WebWorkerDaily we brought you the preliminary results of a recent, rigorous Stanford University study into the benefits of telecommuting, suggesting that even the most reluctant boss might be persuaded to allow you some location flexibility after looking at the findings. Now, one of the authors, Stanford economics professor Nick Bloom, has taken to YouTube to present his research results via video, meaning even the laziest among us can get the gist of the study without so much as putting on ou reading glasses.

In the nearly six-minute video, Bloom outlines the three main benefits of telecommuting for both companies and employees, including reduced need for real estate, improved retention and reduced or eliminated commutes. He also addresses concerns that the study, which was conducted in China, wouldn’t apply in the US, and also discusses what sort of workers get the biggest boost from working from home. Check it out below.

Looking for more information of not only the whys of telecommuting but also the hows? on December 8th in San Francisco GigaOm’s Net:Work conference will host discussions on the rise in remote work and the benefits and challenges it brings.

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Another reason to work remotely: Commuting is killing you

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:03:06 +0000

Sky high gas bills, uncontrollable road rage, unpleasant body odors on packed trains: The many downsides of commuting are well-documented and already constitute a solid argument in favor of opting to work remotely. But a recent study out of Lund University in Sweden offers another reason to trade your train pass for a home office: Your commute is bad for your health.

The study tracked 21,000 full-time employees in Sweden aged between 18 and 65, comparing their health and asking about their method of commuting and sleep and stress levels, as well as tracking how many days they missed work. The results indicate that taking a car, train or bus to the office is likely to negatively impact your health.

“Generally car and public transport users suffered more everyday stress, poorer sleep quality, exhaustion and, on a seven point scale, felt that they struggled with their health compared to the active commuters,” like cyclists, said Researcher Erik Hansson. The longer the commute, the worse the effects.

ABC News spoke to Dr. Redford Williams, professor of medicine at Duke University about the findings. He argued that while sitting in your car is not an inherently healthy activity, the actual problem with commuting may be as much the lack of control we have over the experience as the hours of inactivity:

We know that people who have a lot of demands and very little control over how they meet those demands are at a higher risk for negative health effects. And when you’re relying on a train to get to work, it’s totally out of your control most of the time.

This is entirely in line with existing science we’ve covered previously on WWD, which shows lack of autonomy is linked to higher stress, which, in turn, correlates with worse health. Flexible and self-directed, new ways of working that are web enabled and location independent, boost autonomy and so should also boost health.

And if you’re still on the fence about approaching your boss about ditching your commute, the grim math about how much your commute is daily journey is costing you might spur your courage and get you into her office.

At Net:Work, we’ll explore the benefits — and challenges — of an increasingly mobile workforce. The event will be held in San Francisco on Dec. 8.

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Coffee shop denizens reveal their top pet peeves

Jessica Stillman — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:01:27 +0000

You’re a digital nomad, a remote worker, a freelancer around town. Which means you probably spend a fair amount of time toting your laptop to coffee shops. Sure the caffeine is flowing and the seating comfy, but the experience of working out of the local café isn’t without its annoyances.

Which is why WorkSnug, which helps mobile workers find the best available work spaces near them, launched their ‘Coffee Shop Code of Conduct.’ Holding out the prize of 10 new smartphones and headsets for the most popular ideas, WorkSnug solicited coffeehouse denizens to offer up their top coffee shop pet peeves and vote on others’ suggestions. More than 6,000 heeded the call to complain (and hopefully help shape up the behavior of the digital nomad community).

We encouraged you to gripe about your top annoyances, now we’re reporting the results, presented in a handy infographic by WorkSnug:

Which coffee house sin is the worst in your book? The most frequently committed?

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oDesk CEO: The future of work approaching quickly

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:04:51 +0000

Work used to be a place. Increasingly, thanks to tech, we can get stuff done from nearly everywhere. That’s definitely changing how companies procure talent and manage it, and how workers build careers, (all of which is due to be discussed at GigaOM’s upcoming Net:Work conference) but exactly how fast these changes are percolating through the economy remains open to debate.

Today though online labor marketplace oDesk is announcing numbers that show this shift may be happening more quickly than many expect. The company released growth numbers showing contractors earned a record $22.3 million through the company’s website in October, which represents a 90 percent increase on last year. More broadly, they’re expecting the market for online work in general to grow to $1 billion in 2012.

We called CEO Gary Swart to find out what’s driving this growth, which is occurring across regions and sectors, and whether he expects it to continue, only to find him optimistic about the future of platforms like oDesk for three reasons:

The economy. The lousy traditional job market means more people are searching for work in non-traditional ways, but the squeeze on companies is also good for online labor platforms. Services like oDesk, Swart says, “Enable startups to have a level playing field and get access to great talent.” In Silicon Valley at least that means they, “don’t have to compete with the likes of the local big players that can afford to give everyone a bus ride and three square meals a day at the office.”
Globalization. “The globalization train left the station 20 years ago and more and more businesses want to take advantage of talent outside of the area,” says Swart. “We’re seeing a lot of growth from companies in Europe, Canada and Australia who want U.S. workers. It’s a global opportunity, so we think that the market will continue to grow.”
Technology. According to Swart, “The availability of broadband in more rural geographies is creating opportunities for those not located around a metropolitan area. So while people in the San Francisco Bay Area have choices, people in Flint, Mich. do not.” That’s great for workers marooned in towns with less than vibrant job markets, but also good for the likes of oDesk as well.

Swart is particularly excited about the opportunities oDesk presents for those in out-of-the-way communities, noting that, “while most of our workers are located in metropolitan areas, we think there’s going to be explosive growth in rural geographies because the pain is more acute. Rural workers don’t have the options. Then broadband, the Internet and platforms like oDesk permeate into these geographies. We think there’s going to be even more growth on platforms like ours.” Already, per capita use of oDesk in small towns of under 15,000 people is growing to match metropolitan cities, according to Swart, and workers there are billing more hours than those in big cities like New York City and Los Angeles.

He also feels that interest in online labor marketplaces will come increasingly from big firms. “We had some large customers who came to us with the same challenge,” Swart explains. “They needed to instantly, hire, manage and pay a flexible online workforce. Over the last year we had a lot of large companies calling us looking for help, customers like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Travelocity, and the phone continues to ring.”

While the advantages in terms of lowered cost and greater flexibility are obvious for the employers’ side of the equation, Swart batted down any suggestion that the deal wasn’t equally good for workers. Besides stressing his company’s ability to connect workers with open positions, Swart also explicitly answered criticism we’ve covered previously here on WebWorkerDaily that oDesk and similar platforms drive down wages for U.S. workers.

“In the U.S. alone, we’ve seen wages go from $19 an hour on average in 2007 to $30 an hour on average today,” he says.

Do you see a bright future for platforms like oDesk and location-independent contractors more generally? Do you think that will mean a better or worse deal for workers?

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Tales from the trenches: PGi

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:59:37 +0000

What’s the dream situation for a would-be digital nomad? Being employed by an open-minded purveyor of remote collaboration tools eager to put its products to the test and drum up publicity among location independent professionals.

Luckily, when Cora Rodenbusch’s software coder husband caught a bad case of wanderlust, that’s just the situation she found herself in. A corporate communications and internal community manager with virtual meetings company PGi, Rodenbusch approached her bosses about becoming a traveling brand ambassador by taking a year to visit the company’s offices in 24 countries, working remotely and reporting backing about the realities of life as a global telecommuter.

“They jumped on it immediately,” she reports. Now, three months into her adventure, we talked to her from the Copenhagen office where she’s juggling time zones, battling connectivity issues and planning the next leg of her journey: a drive to Milan.

Talent

Rodenbusch describes her team as “flat,” and says they work together as colleagues, so she need only supervise one direct report: a writer helping her put together the company’s internal newsletter. But just because she isn’t engaged in hiring remote workers, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have strong opinions about what types of people thrive best working away from a structured office setting. Work ethic is paramount.

“It’s almost like you’re running your own business because when you work remotely,” she explains. “You have nothing to prove yourself other than the end result of your work and you really have to own that end result and make it a success. You don’t have coming into the office early, dressing professionally or water cooler talk to help yourself. “

Tools

It’s not surprising that as an employee of a global meetings and remote communication tools company, Rodenbusch would be passionate about choosing the best tech for her trip. “Finding the right tools is key,” she insists and so is video. “That’s the one thing, honestly, that’s made the distance fade the fastest,” she says. Equally unsurprisingly, she recommends her company’s product iMeet. (As I’m an iMeet newbie, Rodenbusch insisted we give it a try for the interview and it worked without a hitch.)

Even if Rodenbusch is armed with all the best tools, connectivity can still be a challenge. “Connectivity is huge,” she says “Each country you go into has a different way to connect to the wireless, or they have a different cell provider, so that’s been probably the biggest challenge.” But she has found ways to work around the difficulties.

“Honestly, McDonald’s is my home away from home. They have the best Internet and a delicious cappuccino,” she says.

Tips

So how do Rodenbusch’s clients and co-workers react to her itinerant lifestyle? Rodenbusch’s takes pride in the fact that many of them don’t even know about it. “My goal is that no one knows where I am,” she says. “It makes me feel really good that I am still able to keep up with all the different time zones we have.”

But keeping up with so many connections on so many continents is no picnic, Rodenbusch warns, and you should think carefully before deciding to take on the challenge.

“During the week, I work both India and U.S. hours because my team’s U.S. That’s where my stakeholders are, and so I think that’s something that’s really important,” she says. “The weeks are pretty grueling. It’s long hours, but the weekends, that’s the best, because I’m a tourist dropped in a brand new city for the weekend.”

So if you’re dreaming of the digital nomad lifestyle, how do you know that for you the benefits would outweigh the challenges? Rodenbusch offers advice for anyone considering giving remote work a try: “Have a reason that’s bigger than work for why you want to work outside the office. If it’s pursuing a personal dream like myself, you’re going to make it work. It’s worth it to you to do whatever it takes to make your stakeholders happy and make it a success. If it’s to catch Oprah at four o’clock, then it’s not going to work.”

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Extreme telecommuting: how to move to Italy and keep your day job

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Scroll through past posts on GigaOM and other tech sites and you’ll see a litany of new gadgets, gizmos and apps. There will be plenty of speculation on new ways of working and no shortage of predictions for the future. All of this is fascinating, but it sometimes makes you wonder what all of these new technologies and ideas add up to on the ground. Is the future of work really just the jabbering of pundits, or is all of this actually making a difference on the ground?

For those moments of doubt, there is no better cure than a conversation with Barry Frangipane, the co-author of The Venice Experiment: A Year of Trial and Error Living Abroad. A middle-of-the-road computer programmer living in Florida with a full-time job, Frangipane decided to see if he could make all the advances in remote collaboration and increased acceptance of telecommuting work for him — by moving to Venice for a year with his wife and keeping his day job.

Sneaking up on the boss

Frangipane knew better than to spring a transatlantic move on his boss all at once, opting instead to inch his way toward greater freedom by slowly proving that, for him, the office was only a hindrance.

“The first thing I did was I started working a day a week at home,” he explains, “and then that gradually grew until I was spending the entire week working from home. Home being five miles away from the office.” From that point it was a surprisingly simple leap from Florida to Italy.

“Once you iron out the technical details and your employer can see that your productivity is actually increasing working from home, then at that point approaching the boss and saying, ‘look, I’m thinking of moving my home. Oh, and by the way, that home is Venice,’ well certainly it’s a little startling, but when the discussion turns to just the facts,” the boss has no reason to disagree.

All upside

Did Frangipane’s customers revolt? Did he miss the office banter or feel like his career was suffering because he was 4,000 miles away? Quite the contrary. “I would say it was all upside,” he says. Leaving aside the benefits of spending a year in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Frangipane actually felt he got more done living abroad.

“In an office environment, there are so many interruptions. One of my partners once said that 32 15-minute interruptions is the entire day. And it makes you think a little bit,” he says. “When I’m working at home people don’t just stop by and stand in my doorway to talk about the ball game. I find myself substantially more productive because I can focus for longer periods of time.”

Dare to dream

Frangipane is adamant that there’s nothing special about him that allowed him to succeed at extreme telecommuting and insists that while living abroad for a year isn’t for everyone, it is for way more people than you’d think. “There was a time when this was just for computer people — web designers and programmers and things — but not so much anymore,” he says, citing the case of a neighbor who works as a customer service rep for a big-box store and has never set foot in the company’s offices.

“It wouldn’t even be noticed if she moved to another country and just continued answering the phone,” he says.

And if you think that Frangipane is simply braver than the average joe, he replies that simply setting a date to leave, informing yourself about your destination and carefully planning your move does wonders to embolden the timid. “Before you go, check the blogs online, check websites and talk to people who have already done it and ask them questions. You’ll see that many of your fears will be allayed,” he insists.

Once he and his wife started learning more about life in Venice, “you start realizing that they’re really just not that much different. Everybody puts on their pants one leg at a time.”

Learning to think Italian

International similarities in dressing aside, there were differences between the Italian way of life and the American, according to Frangipane, and these made a deep impression on him. “I find that things that used to be considered big issues for me, office politics and things, just slide off my back now,” he says. And Italy also changed him in other ways.

“Venice is a town of only 60,000 people and functions as one big family. Everyone knows everyone. They’re happy to shut their stores for a half an hour and just take you to the local coffee shop. They value the relationships so much more than the money that that has certainly changed my focus,” says Frangipane. “I’ve learned that earning that last $1,000 or $10,000 a year is not as important as the relationships.”

How much so? He and his wife already have their eye on Paris for another jaunt abroad.

Image courtesy of Flickr user melename

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Why you should stop obsessing about distractions during remote meetings

Jessica Stillman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:36:20 +0000

In the minds of many managers, the tools that allow us to collaborate at a distance are a double-edged sword. Sure, your employee can get that last-minute email back to you from the check-in line at the airport using their smartphone, but what’s stopping her from using the same device to text message during meetings? Videoconferencing lets you connect with your team 24-7, but it’s hard to know if they’re listening intently or honing their doodling skills.

This fear of distraction may be understandable, but it’s also misplaced according to a recent post on Management Issues by Wayne Turmel. Among several tips to keep team members engaged when communicating at a distance, Turmel suggests simply acknowledging that being far away can make us a bit paranoid. We demand more reassurance and attention from remote colleagues than we would ever expect face to face:

Just because they do something else for a moment doesn’t mean they’re not hanging in there. If you’ve never “zoned out” during a face-to-face meeting, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din. Few of us are so riveted by what’s going on that we can’t do something else for a brief period then re-engage. Unless you’re specifically asking for their input, they will probably be back.

Turmel makes a great point about the insecurity that is born of working via the web rather than in person, but there are other reasons to stop stressing about getting your team’s undivided attention during remote meetings. Simply put, harnessing “backchannel” communications such as texting or tweeting, may work better than prohibiting them, whether you’re presenting in person or from 10,000 miles away.

For example, SXSW presenters Christopher Fahey and Timothy Meaney have argued on A List Apart that the old expectation of a passive, silent audience is out of date and speakers should aim to engage rather than enrapture their audiences. They focus is on traditional conference speakers but the point holds for those presenting or speaking remotely:

Conventional conference wisdom is that speakers are fighting a war for the audience’s attention. On one side, there’s the speaker, armed with beautiful slides, succinct bullet points, a commanding stage presence, and a great speech. On the other side is Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, YouTube, etc. The audience is in the middle, torn between datastreams.

The backchannel irritates many speakers. But giving the speaker the power to cut audiences off from the backchannel would be, we think, the wrong solution…. It’s time to empower the audience…. We need to react in meaningful ways. Not just clapping or booing, but actually communicating and conversing…. The model of the rapt audience so enthralled by a speaker that you can hear a pin drop actually prevents this kind of meaningful reaction.

Their solution is a Twitter-like app to allow audience members react to the speaker and each others’ comments in real time. But managers looking to utilize rather than suppress backchannel interactions on a conference call, for example, don’t need to invest in any special technology.

As we’ve covered here on WebWorkerDaily before, experts like Seth Godin and veteran remote managers like Orange Business Services’ Mark Fitzpatrick both recommend simply allowing participants to use text chat as a second communication channel running under the main speaker during conference calls and remote meetings.

“When you put text chat in parallel with a voice conference call, magical things happen,” Godin says, suggesting this controlled distraction increases participation, enables real-time commenting and tracks the flow of later ideas for later examination.

When it comes to distractions during remote meetings are you a hawk or a dove? Should managers give tech-enabled (perhaps tech-engendered) distractible minds a channel to productively wander or crack down on the equivalent of high-tech doodling?

Image courtesy of Flick user DoNotLick.

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