Many of us know companies pushing Return to Office or #RTO, forcing #remoteworkers to quit and find new remote opportunities. However, this tactic is not yet illegal in the strictest of guidelines. Still, it is a way that major companies are trying to skirt their responsibilities and requirements to follow the WARN Act.
The WARN Act stands for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which was installed into US Federal Labor Law in 1988. This law requires employers with 100 or more employees to report if they plan a layoff within the next 60 days. You can find out more information at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn.
So, companies are taking a page out of the 2013 Yahoo CEO’s book to force remote workers back to the office to, in theory, improve communication, creativity, and synergy. However, that theory was wrong, and the data now shows that in-person workers have fewer hours of productivity than their remote counterparts, as detailed by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). Also, remote work leaves room for neurodivergent workers like me who are comfortable in remote work to have more space to not emotionally mask and be more creative problem solvers.
With Halloween being the first holiday of the layoff season, we need to be mindful of how companies are using this #RTO method to skirt the law so as not to pay unemployment, not disclose to the WARN Act or investors about the need for layoffs, and change the narrative of the future of work. The law hasn’t caught up to this trend yet, but it could be interesting to see how companies adjust when it does. But this is additionally making it so companies are having a hard time attracting talent because so many want remote work and are not willing to #RTO or do #hybrid.
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As many may be aware, Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” detailed a lot of statistical data on how the lack of representation of women in leadership hurts the workforce. This is also true in the case of if you are a minority in your field. Being mixed race, I have not always seen a leadership representation of my Latin American heritage. Often, I was one of the few minorities in the workplace and often the only woman. This made the trail of my career hard to blaze because it’s hard to visualize yourself moving up when you don’t see examples in your workplace that resemble you.
Representation is essential in onsite and remote work, and encouraging diversity and inclusion increases productivity and morale. It also has been shown to help develop mentorship in the workplace.
Which are key to having a thriving workplace culture, especially in the remote workplace. Where remote work has had a lot of research and practical literature regarding the effects of remote work on culture, the peer-reviewed research shows that work culture, like any organizational culture, is meant to evolve and change. As such, remote work is here to stay, so the culture in the workplace has to change with it. Let’s make the changes to enhance diversity and inclusion this Hispanic/ Latin American Heritage Month.
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For those of you who are regular readers and social media followers of my content, you know that I teach at Stan State, AKA California State University Stanislaus. I teach Operations Management there as a part-time lecturer while finishing my dissertation research on remote work. I never thought I would enjoy teaching as much as I do. My students teach me as much as I do them. I also go out of my way to help and engage with them so that they work on the networking with faculty part that is so important for students at a state college. I also pride myself on being an example for my disabled community members of color to keep working hard because we all belong in academia if that’s where we want to be.
Since there is so much bad news in the world, I thought I would share some good news. I had a student who went back to school due to health issues that made it so that they could not work in their career field anymore. This student has a wedded partner, and they informed me that while applying for jobs, they wanted to know if I would write a letter of recommendation. This email also included that his health has significantly improved and that their partner expects a little bundle of joy this spring. Which is great because this student graduates at the end of the term.
I am so happy and proud of this student. As teachers, we don’t always get to keep in touch with our past students. So, getting an email like this to hear that things are coming together for a past student is amazing and one of many reasons that I work so hard to teach.
So, I am posing a challenge to other teachers worldwide. Like and comment here or on my social media and share a moment or a student encounter that made you glad you are a teacher. Happy memories. Teaching is tough, and we have all had to adapt a lot as teachers, so let’s all reflect on the happy memories of our students that make it all worth it.
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For anyone who has gotten the tap on the shoulder for a promotion knows that promotions are generally in management roles. Most companies have few promotions and pay raises for those who are just happy doing their job and do not want to or don’t have comfort within leadership roles. This has the unintended consequence of those who want the promotion and added pay that often follow but are not skilled leaders taking roles they shouldn’t be in and creating a hostile work environment. As I have pointed out, many toxic leaders don’t know that they are toxic either because they never wanted a leadership role or were never trained to lead.
There is also the unintended after-effect that when there is no room for those who are happy with what they are doing to gain promotion or added pay, this raises turnover. It raises turnover because it becomes more financially advantageous for employees to strategically job-hop instead of developing company loyalty.
We must ask why companies are doing this. Many companies make a budget to address turnover by constantly hiring. And pre-COVID, that was semi-reasonable. However, leaders are screaming, “talent shortage,” “No one wants to work anymore”, and my personal favorite, “workforce shortage.” However, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows this isn’t true.
Now, some industries are seeing a talent need shift towards those who are skilled in engineering and automation. The job reports show that a growing number of people are over-employed. Business is seeing an organizational trend among the labor force of no longer willing to put up with uncomfortable work environments with toxic leaders and leaving jobs the minute anyone starts demanding in-person or hybrid over remote work. The workforce prioritizes lowering stress and no longer making their life all about their job.
At first glance, one would want to argue that these workforce shifts are not good things. However, a lower-stress workforce is more productive. Remote workers are also statistically shown to have more productive hours in an 8-hour workday than an in-person worker on average as well.
Studies also find that remote work also tends to displace middle managers by enhancing shared leadership. And as remote work becomes more popular as a work modality, we need to start thinking about our teams and what they need, which includes higher pay. Recognition of their work through non-management promotions and regular pay raises for those who just like their job and do not seek to lead will help enhance your workforce and lower costs associated with turnover.
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While I have had time off from posting on this blog, I have been bouncing in between working on my dissertation, doing consulting work on remote work and remote leadership development, and developing a postdoc fellowship at Stan State University, which is targeted at helping students find, obtain, and maintain remote work positions. This fellowship is in partnership with the California Department of Rehabilitation, Stan State University School of Business, and The Stan State Student Disability Center to create this year-long program.
The goal of the program is to help students define what modality they are most productive in and work with the lifestyle they want while helping them gain remote employment as an effort to gain experience in remote work. Many companies are hesitant to provide remote work when someone is at an entry-level phase, but developing remote work experience is helpful to these students. This way, they have more experience and education at graduation.
This fellowship comes at a time when employees, according to an article published in Forbes.com, are screaming for remote and hybrid modalities, and students are also joining in the chorus. According to the Forbes article, 65% of workers prefer a 100% modality, with 32% preferring a hybrid. Inside Higher Ed did a recent survey in 2021 of 400 students and found over 27% preferred remote education. While a 2023 survey published by Edscoop.com showed that 69% of students prefer fully remote and hybrid/ blended learning options.
I personally this term has a remote synchronous class, an in-person class, and a hybrid/ hyflex class that I am teaching at Stan State, and honestly, I enjoy my hybrid class most. It allows my students to select the modality that works best for them. I value my students, and as the Dean of the Stan State School of Business often says, “You have to go and meet the students where they are” really rings true. My students have less stress in my hybrid class and seem to have more room to express themselves. However, I will wait for them to give more of their qualitative feedback.
If you would like to participate as a remote employer for this fellowship or as a remote leadership specialist, please email me at seubank@csustan.edu. You can also reach me on my other social media platforms. Remember, Remote Is Here To Stay.
The movement towards the future of work being remote is still going strong and is still fraught with controversy. However, transitioning to remote work becoming part of the business norm has some added benefits. Today we will explore the fact that remote work has been increasing diversity in the workplace. Specifically, remote work has increased the number of neurodivergent people in the workplace.
First let’s work on our vocabulary. The dictionary defines neurodivergent as “differing in mental or neurological function from what is considered typical or normal (frequently used with reference to autistic spectrum disorders); not neurotypical.” Although, it should be noted that this term also includes those who are diagnosed with ADHD.
Now that we have the term clarified let’s focus on the fact that diversity in the workplace has been researched to be a massive benefit to an organization’s creative problem-solving and production. When you have a diverse population coming at a problem from different angles, you get an inspired answer. The disabled community since COVID, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), has entered the workforce from 9% of the workforce in 2019 to over 20% of the workforce as of 2023, which in large part has been because of the growing use of remote work as a modality. According to the article by Gonzales (2023), the BLS federal statistics show disabled workers are becoming a growing population in the workforce and the fact that traditionally disabled workers suffer a higher rate of unemployment compared to their neurotypical counterparts. In the article Gonzales (2023) also went on to detail that in the disabled community, over half of that population are 65+ and traditionally have a higher rate of unemployment and workplace discrimination than their counterparts. Further to the article, Gonzales (2023) comments on how the disabled community is also one of the fastest-growing demographics of entrepreneurs. The BLS notes that neurodivergent workers of the disabled community are the most likely to start their own businesses. Especially those with ADHD.
Many of you may have seen Connor De Wolfe’s YouTube videos on ADHD neurodivergent content, where he speaks about social and scientific differences neurodivergent people have as part of their lived experiences. As he has displayed on his channel, ADHD people learn skills quickly, are very creative, and have unique problem-solving abilities. However, managing workers that are neurodivergent is not the same as managing a neurotypical worker. Their motivations are also vastly different. Ok, money is a common motivator for both groups; there is nothing wrong with that. However, motivation styles must change on the part of leadership. Remote work is also an excellent tool when leading remote teams in a diverse workplace that includes neurodivergent team members. It allows room for the neurodivergent person to not be overwhelmed as easily and to engage in ways that give freedom to not have to emotionally mask their symptoms.
There are also YouTube influencers on the topic of ADHD and neurodivergence that have great ways to help your teams stay focused and successful. Influencers like @olivialutfallah, Olivia Lutfallah, and Ludovico Saint Amour Di Chanaz, a Ph.D. who studies ADHD as a researcher. My personal ADHD motivational and memory tool is to use music. Such as, when I run 5k’s or go hiking with my kids, I play a specific playlist, so I memorize where I am based on the timing of the song, and over time the location makes the song play in my head, and I remember where I am. As I get better at remembering, I set a playlist that is faster to set a pace to help me speed up production. I do the same work in my workplace, and the benefit is when I start singing along with the music in remote work, only my seven-year-old is bothered. (Although a word to the wise, always make sure you are on mute before you belt out songs cause that can turn into an awkward moment). This is yet again another opportunity afforded by remote work so that I don’t have to emotionally mask and I can be my authentic self as a business leader.
If you would like to learn more about how you can train your teams to better balance the changes to leadership that the remote work revolution is creating for the future of work, please check out my social media and my consulting practice for ways to help develop more comfort levels for remote work. Remember sharing is caring, so like and subscribe. As always, remember, that remote is here to stay.
There is a lot of research on the benefits of walking during the workday to increase productivity and creativity, reduce stress and help with mental health. However, taking a walk during the workday onsite can be hard. Let’s face it, most business clothes are not breathable and comfortable. They just aren’t. In remote work, there tends to be a more flexible dress code. I enjoy an early walk to our local mom-and-pop coffee shop with my boys (before the central valley heat makes us burst into flames). It’s only 3 miles round trip.
During my walk, I listen to music with my kids and husband, answer calls and emails from my phone, and prep project pitches that come to me in the relaxation of walking. I often say I could rule the world from my phone and would be Galadriel from The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and how she had power and chose not to be corrupted. I get a lot of work done on my walks with my family and a lot of relaxation.
There are so many memes and skits by several content creators like @LOEWhaley on managers who focus on policing their teams instead of supporting their teams and managing the work. One of my financial sector mentors told me, “Manage the work, not the people.” And she is right.
When we as leaders spend so much time trying to catch people in the wrong, that’s all we see and all we address. This makes it so we ignore our high producers and don’t put our energies into managing the work and creating trust with our teams. Letting go of control is tough, but what we get out of it as leaders by giving room to build trust will help enhance your team.
If you would like to learn more about how you can train your teams to better balance the changes to leadership that the remote work revolution is creating for the future of work, please check out my social media and my consulting practice for ways to help develop more comfort levels for remote work. Remember sharing is caring, so like and subscribe. As always, remember that remote is here to stay.
A topic that comes up a lot in my consulting and dissertation research is forcing employees to turn on their cameras. Because this is such a hot-button issue, when asked about my opinion, I always ask, “What is the company in question’s camera policy.” Often there is no policy because having such a policy can create legal hardships for a company. With across-the-board remote work being so new (even though remote work has been researched since the 1980s), many companies do not want to address the legality. And for good reason.
During COVID, many were forced into remote work with no training or correct work-from-home setup or support. What I mean by this is that many of us who work from home have a setup around our kids going to school on-site, and any other people in the house are also off-site. So, during COVID, when health care and childcare were hard to come by in small spaces, many were dealing with chaos in their workspace that could not be addressed. Then there are those like my family who moved when able to accommodate space needs. The healthcare and childcare sectors are still trying to recover, and we are still addressing more needs and support for people to have a work-life balance.
Mental and physical health issues must also be factored in when discussing camera use in remote work. One of my friends who died a year ago was balancing taking care of his father and fighting cancer simultaneously. He was doing his best to hide his struggles so that while he fought for his health and cared for his father, he would not lose out on growth opportunities. His career was a lot of what was keeping him going. Often within leadership, we feel showing vulnerability is a weakness. As many in leadership still operate on this concept, it creates a toxic culture of hiding illness and life from management to protect one’s earning capabilities. I have known several women who went through a divorce or domestic violence, and working remotely helped them continue to afford to provide for themselves and their families and escape the situation. Having the camera on would have not only shown a vulnerability but could have endangered their lively hoods as well, and for many, cameras were used as tools to harm them. So, cameras, for many, can be triggering and harmful to mental health. Not to mention women victimized in this way are often persecuted in business, and their ability to make solid business decisions is called into question. And for many, their ability to make money is their only tool to protect themselves.
There are also privacy issues and cultural concerns around the use of cameras. The background filters can only do so much. This brings us to issues of Wi-Fi. Many times, when we are dealing with cameras, this can strain the internet connection, make for spotty reception and loss of communication, and increase frustration.
So, for leaders who want to encourage the use of cameras without hurting their workforce and establishing connections and trust, here are my suggestions to help leaders with this issue:
Touch base with each team member and ask how they prefer to be communicated. Everyone is different. Some may prefer phone calls, instant messages, etc.
Share with your team how you prefer to convey urgency. Such as an instant message on teams means this is a priority. Or emails are a priority for tracking. Or maybe the instant message is when you can, and emails are the priority. It is up to you so that you and your team are all on the same page.
In big meetings, have cameras on for the intro to the meeting and turn off the cameras when not presenting. This makes sure to address any Wi-Fi issues.
In one-on-one, once there is flickering in the signal, give the verbal ok to your team to turn off their camera.
As your team members one on one who does not want to use cameras, why they don’t? Not everyone is comfortable.
If you have team members who say often they are not camera ready, show your team that there are days you aren’t either, and lead by example. Show not being camera ready, and if decorum is important to you, show little things your team can do to help. Tell them you want a one-on-one camera at the meeting and why. Then offer to have the meeting in 10-20 minutes and give them time to get ready. Sometimes, we all need to plan self-care, and taking 10-20 to look presentable is good. So, be flexible and show humanity on your end as a leader. You’ll earn more points than you think, showing you are also human.
If you would like to learn more about how you can train your teams to better balance the changes to leadership that the remote work revolution is creating for the future of work, please check out my social media and my consulting practice for ways to help develop more comfort levels for remote work. Remember sharing is caring, so like and subscribe. As always, remember that remote is here to stay.
When I started studying remote work and remote leadership in my master’s and now in my doctorate program and finishing my dissertation on the topic, I did not think I was taking on such a taboo topic. Even post-COVID remote work is a hot-button topic that many in leadership roles are speaking out in media against the move towards remote work. In this blog and my research, I have identified several causes for leadership to dislike remote work even though it benefits corporations greatly. Benefits such as higher productivity, as reported by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, lower overhead fees, lower utility fees, lower real estate fees, and a wider hiring pool by being able to hire all over the country.
With all this to consider, we must ask, aside from a bit of training in leadership in general to middle managers, why are companies trying to treat remote work like it is the same as being in the office?
Remote work was never a workplace design to mirror the office. It was designed to give more freedom of creativity and cost-saving opportunities for companies and employees. So, why are leaders trying to manage remote work as if people are in the office? Well, there are a few reasons why:
Public schools are designed to mirror the structure of old-school factories in timing, seating, rules, etc. As such, this form of leadership mirrored by teachers is what many middle managers and leaders mirror and attribute as a standard business structure. However, education isn’t cut and dry anymore; not everyone is productive or creative in those environments, and the same happens in business.
As a business culture, we are still idealizing old organizational cultures of “All go and no quit” and similar attitudes which foster burnout, workplace PTSD, and Workplace Violence. These attitudes praise those who stay later than others to get more work done when needing that additional time shows time management issues across the board, not good work ethic. Several research studies found that constant overtime contributes to these toxic work environment issues and hurts productivity and accuracy goals. Basically, the more work you do without rest, the lower the quality of work produced.
There is also the middle management feeling they must watch nonstop to see if anyone is in their mind taking advantage of the company in completing the work. I speak from experience and research when I say both show that looking for issues that’s all leadership will find at the expense of ignoring those working hard and doing the work. If leadership learns to let go and trust their team, even in a remote modality, the focus shifts to managing the work and letting the team do its job and leadership to do the same.
Middle management also has often never experienced anything but in-person work, so physically, not seeing the team in the office feels like a loss of control and a loss of influence. It is hard for leaders to build trust with their team and know their skills if they do not build skills to manage a remote team vs. an in-person team. This is probably why many middle managers push back on the idea of remote. The new method scares them.
Because middle management is not often taught how to lead but instead is promoted as one of the high performers, these managers are at a deficit. They don’t know how to motivate other than toxic leadership methods shown in TV, movies, and a few self-help books. Where these methods may have worked in person in the past many workers are no longer willing to tolerate the behavior, so motivating a team has to be done by learning how to be vulnerable and human as a leader and gaining faith from your team. I often quote the line from Disney’s Remember the Titans, “Attitudes reflect leadership”. This means we must teach our leadership teams to let go and trust their team so that the work performance can speak for itself rather than trying to police one’s team.
If you would like to learn more how you can train your teams to better balance the changes to leadership that the remote work revolution is creating for the future of work, please check out my social media and my consulting practice for ways to help develop more comfort levels for remote work. Remember sharing is caring, so like and subscribe. As always remember remote is here to stay.
Many of us have seen dramatizations of the changes in the workplace due to remote work all while seeing much of these scenarios evolve in real time. A great example I have seen and experienced was detailed on Laura AKA @Loewhayley accounts on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc., in the form of Human Resources asking hard working specialists who have been at a company for a long time to take on a leadership role. However, in business culture we do not praise those who choose to stay in their role because that is what they are good at and the challenges in the role evolve and are fulfilling to the employee. Current business culture tends to favor a business leadership centric financial reward system. Which was good for those who fall into the past preferred attributes of leadership. However, remote work turns all those norms on their face.
Since the beginning of academic research in the business sector about the concept of remote work was started back in the 1980’s business culture has always favored a leadership focus. So, let us start with some nomenclature. Most business research is even from the leadership perspective. Research that specializes on the perspective of employees is called the study of followership. However, in between these two perspectives of leadership and followership are the grey Jedi’s of the business world. These grey Jedi’s are called Subject Matter Experts or SME’s for short.
Now that we have the terminology down let’s focus on the current business culture that has been developing since at least the 1900’s which is predominantly leadership focused. Where there is research on followership there isn’t a lot of it. As such we have social media influencers who advertise as workforce, business, and finance specialists that make memes. However, this is yet another instance of art reflecting life.
Business culture focuses on the advancement and struggles or leadership in the workforce instead of the focus on the experience of the labor force. Which causes more than a few topics of divide both for onsite and remote modalities. Although studies show in remote teams there is natural space for more autonomy for remote workers. Also, studies show there is more room for creative processing and problem solving especially in remote teams with a diverse and collaborative makeup of the team. As such in remote work an interesting thing develops. That is shared leadership.
Shared leadership is where everyone holds responsibility for their own contributions, there may be one or more people doing the coordinating and administrative work such as payroll submissions, or other leadership tools. However, with the transparency and room for creativity and autonomy that remote work creates it means the time of the middle manager is growing to a close.
This ushers in an interesting period in workforce development in business. It means businesses will shift in seven fundamental ways.
Companies will focus higher pay in hiring hire quality talent,
The days of people who just hold leadership jobs will no longer be a concept in middle management,
The business sector will have to redefine what leadership is and what a good leader looks and acts like,
There will be less of a focus on trying to promote people to leadership roles and instead try to work with employees on developing more challenging roles in each aspect of business and more of a culture of loving one’s role instead of working towards the next step up. Employee satisfaction will become a bigger tenant of business.
SME’s will become the filling in between to help companies develop skills for employees and fill in the organizational gaps of this shift.
Upper management will need to be sought after using a totally different lists of skills, and attributes versus just experience as leadership.
Lastly leadership and business psychology will need to become a bigger concept along with overall operations in business school to better prepare employees.
Now these organizational changes will not come overnight. All systemic changes come with growing pains and pushbacks. The change is in the air and the research for over a century is pointing to these changes to be necessary for businesses to stay on the cutting edge and avoid the current situation of business of having too many food critics in the kitchen and not enough chefs.
If you enjoyed this post, please like, share, and subscribe. And remember, Remote is here to stay.
Dr. Stephanie Diana Eubank DBA Remote Team Research (AKA Dr. Bear) 