Coffee Shop Connections
Coffee Shop Connections
Revolutionizing Remote Work: Tackling Onboarding, Industry Impact and the Great Resignation
Are you ready to revolutionize your understanding of the remote workforce? We're stirring up an insightful discussion, brimming with the nuances of this global shift, underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic. We're addressing the elephant in the room - the challenges of onboarding remote employees, the impact on various industries, the implications of the much-hyped "great resignation," and the changes it is bringing about in our lives. We're not just talking about it; we're dissecting it over a virtual coffee. So, grab your cuppa and join us!
Diving deeper, we're examining the architecture of a successful remote workforce. We're talking cost, culture, relationships, and the right employee fit. We're exploring the galaxies of remote onboarding strategies that can turn your path to success into a starry night. Lean in as we discuss the role of Atomic Habits and Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) in this journey. Get ready for an episode that's set to serve you insights as warm as your coffee!
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Welcome to Coffee Shop Connections. We have a great show in store for you today. Erin and I get to talk about Hot Topic right now, and a topic that's near and dear to my heart the remote workforce and onboarding remote employees. Grab a cup of coffee, a biscotti, and enjoy the episode ["Coffee Shop Connections"].
Erin:Welcome back to another episode of Coffee Shop Connections. I'm Erin here with my co-host, ashley, and I just want to jump right in. Ashley, how are you doing today?
Ashley:I'm doing so good. I got my lovely pumpkin biscotti in the mail. Yes, and I'm not gonna lie, I hit them from everybody Almost because they're so good. So I have that with my coffee. It's a good way to start the day and, you know, sleep's improving. It's a good thing in our house and I'm really excited about the topic we're talking about today because it's near and dear to my heart and it's a hot topic. So what about you? How's your morning going?
Erin:It's been a rough start to the day and I am leaning into my toolbox of flexibility and adjusting to how I think it should be going. I can be very type A, I like things to go a certain way, and they're not going that way this morning, so I am just taking a breath and working through it and it's gonna be fine. Everyone may be tired, but it will be fine.
Erin:So I have my coffee. Everyone's sorted out and I wish I had my pumpkin biscotti. I ate all mine already and I did not pace it. It was not hidden and I'm kind of sad about that.
Ashley:I think you're. Oh, I think your glaze is. I can imagine with the cream cheese, but the glaze is very. I don't think you don't mess it up. Keep it with the glaze.
Erin:It's a certain glaze.
Ashley:It reminds me of the maple ones you made.
Erin:Yes, it's very. It's similar to the maple one and a chip of all, which is nice, unlike the cream cheese. But yeah, I'm pretty pumped about it. We actually only had the cream cheese one and I'm like, ooh, I've got more pumpkin leftover, like I should make another batch with the glaze just for us, for my house and I think I might do that today as an activity, because I just it's pumpkin season, it's October, I just want one.
Ashley:I know you know what you should make is a pumpkin yule log. My mom's been on me about the yule logs we used to make with your dad. And I'm like wait, your dad did a lot of the work for us, but anyways, you should make a pumpkin. Yule log.
Erin:I should. I tried to make one two years ago and, oh my gosh, ashley, it was such a fail. I had seemingly forgotten everything my dad had taught us about making these beautiful yule logs, and it was a complete and utter disaster. And I just couldn't do it last year because it was the one before was so bad. But, he does. I think I have a pumpkin yule log recipe.
Ashley:I think you do too. I think you sent me it yes.
Erin:So I might pull that out. I'm feeling more confident this morning, so maybe Shout out to Mr Murray.
Ashley:Thank you, yes, yes.
Erin:Maybe we'll post it on the Instagram page, if I can pull it off.
Ashley:I think so I think you should. I just remember we usually just would I would come over and we would just decorate it with the chocolate he had already melted.
Erin:He did all the hard work.
Ashley:He did the hard work the two days worth of work that it takes to put those things together. Yeah so yeah, always a good time, always a good time so well, more on to that, yeah.
Erin:what's an even better time is our topic today, which is remote work.
Ashley:Woo, dear and dear to my heart. So remote work we've been talking about. This is like what fits your blueprint and what works and coming out of COVID and the good and bad things that happen with COVID. And you know we're going to a new normal and the remote workforce was born as a gamble with COVID really, and I think there was a lot of good that came out of the remote workforce that people found and I think you find, I think part of and some of the bad things too, like I think part of the great resignation too is people figured out. I'm missing out on a lot of things on home and I want to be there and I'm now being able to do this position at home and when I have to return back to the office maybe I don't want to do that job anymore. So I have to pivot, recalculate my blueprint right and figure out something that might be a hybrid or fully remote or something like that of the sort.
Ashley:And I think right now it's a big hot topic because people it's been long enough with COVID being over, that people have returned, people are trying to get employers are trying to get their folks back into the office, back into the brick and mortar and what does that do and how does everything affect? You know your bottom line. But also, how do you engage your employees and how do you get creative, especially in the different industries, because some industries you can't do that, some industries you have to be there service industries, healthcare professions, and that one's actually getting more remote and hybrid, in my opinion. Being in that role of healthcare, but if you're like manufacturing or where Aaron's been, it's you are there on the line and there's, you're not working from home. And so, talking about the rise and fall of remote, how to onboard what makes it, how to support your employees and what does that look like and kind of all the things that come into the remote workforce.
Erin:Definitely so. One of the things that stuck out to me is, when we were researching this topic, was the percentage of people who prefer to be remote, and at one point one of the articles said 97% of employees would like to be remote, and I think that's a very telling sign of there's something to be said about if you're just at a computer doing your meetings, like even in manufacturing, I would go into the office and I got to a certain level where it wasn't on the line anymore, but it went through the leadership. I was on so many calls that it was back to back to back and, granted, this was during the pandemic, but like back to back to back zoom meetings, it didn't even matter that I was in the office because I couldn't get out my door because I had so many meetings with everybody else, and so one of it is calendar management. But the other part is is why do I need to be in an office for that Right?
Erin:More people are using zoom, the technology has advanced because of the pandemic, and then there's so there's this innate feeling of why do I need to drive my commute to get into the office, to sit at a desk to do the same thing I could have done at home and you know, been at home so and have that flexibility. So I thought it was just super interesting. One, the number of people that would like to be remote and then, two, the companies that have continued to offer it have seen double their growth in recruitment and hiring bad companies who are going back to the traditional model or trying to do a hybrid model. They're the top talent. This is a high profile benefit being remote, and people are showing that with where they're choosing to work and where they're not choosing to work.
Ashley:Yeah, and it's one of those things and we're getting a lot of this information from Forbes and just following the trends that come from this and it is the remote work is the biggest draw for top talent is how can you be flexible? And if you're talking about having a green footprint as well, I mean, just like Aaron says, you're saving time, you're not driving to the carbon green. Your footprint that you're leaving is minimal because you're saving that time by not getting in your car and you're not getting your car.
Erin:The real estate cost must be honest. The leasing of the buildings, the maintenance and the temperature control of the buildings right, all of those elements. You saw a great cost reductions when you weren't saddled into a lease. I mean consolidating buildings. That was one of the things that my organization really benefited from and cut a lot of cost on during that hard time of the pandemic. And I think it's the dual side of you see, the businesses, particularly the ones that thrive in a downtown environment, are saying wait, come back, because now we have all these empty buildings. What are we going to do? It's a 22.
Ashley:Yeah, it's affecting the economy. It's doing really awesome. And, like Aaron said, the downtown, your cities, are getting hit really hard because those things within the city that support the city is getting hit by people not being there. And then you have your suburbs that are just flourishing because it's cheaper to live in rural areas too. I mean, I live in a rural area. You're seeing the influx of people because you can have a bigger property of land for cheaper, you have more amenities at your fingertips and people are realizing like, hey, I can save money, I don't have to work my butt off and just keep chasing the hamster wheel either, and so I think that's a thing to look at and like benefits.
Ashley:I think the benefit piece that's the other really big piece about remote workforce is that folks see the benefits outweigh the other things of being in an office, and you talk about culture and how to build that.
Ashley:We're going to talk about some of the things that you look for employees that are looking to be remote. What type of employee should you hire? But then also what type of supervisor and management you need to have to support your remote workforce to make sure that, yes, we're being productive. Because I think if you look at the studies, depending on which side of the coin you fall on if you're pro hybrid remote work or if you're pro in office you can make an argument on either side for productivity in revenue, and I think you can see when you look at it's like a 30% spread from one side to the other when you're looking at the statistics. And so it's just something to think about while we talk about this is really think about what you need as an employee or as an employer and figure out what does that mean for you and how to support that remote workforce.
Erin:You know, what that spread tells me is that it's not you're either one or the other hybrid in terms of remote work or not. It's your management. It's your leadership style. It's your company culture. It's the people that you are hiring. Are you vetting out your employees before you hire them and are you setting them up for success in either scenario? That's what that tells me. It's such a widespread that it's totally dependent on how you have built your organization. Do you have strong leadership? That's all that is. You could be successful either way.
Ashley:I know it's really huge and it's funny it comes at a really good time of year. We got our employee engagement surveys back and one of the things that we always and it doesn't matter where you work at, it's always kind of the same things that pop up right Compensation, benefits, communication, onboarding and training. You really focus on those and we've talked about it throughout the episodes of the podcast. You really have to have that good foundation to be successful in whatever you're doing With the onboarding piece and the hiring pieces making sure you're hiring the right people. When you're looking for that remote workforce, you're looking for someone who can collaborate, who has really good time management skills, that can work independently, that is not afraid to ask questions. I think that's a huge one. You can't be afraid to fail. You can't be afraid to ask questions. You have to be proactive in what you're doing, making sure you're looking for somebody who's very proactive and not really hesitant in the work that you're doing.
Ashley:The other things that you're looking for is, as an employer you have to look at how are you going to communicate with your staff? How are you going to collaborate? Do you have the technology to support what you're trying to do? I think the tech piece is a huge piece. Then orientation and check-in and management what do you have to really onboard your staff to make them feel like they have all the tools in their toolbox to succeed? If you're onboarding someone in the office, if they have questions and it's slow like that first couple of weeks, they can go down the hallway and ask somebody. When you're remote you don't have that. How do you integrate that connection point which we know is really important, how to do that? And look at what you're doing for orientation. I know when I was doing some research for this, I was like I need to take a step back and really look at what I'm doing for orientation for remote workforce, because there's some really good information and systems that you can use to help set up those scheduling for your employees.
Erin:I think the biggest disadvantage of the remote work is definitely you can go ask somebody in a physical space. I know there were a couple of different I don't want to call them experiments but trials that we did at my old employer where we had people sitting in specific areas. At first it was by department and it was very siloed communication and then we did a more collaborative style and seating arrangement. They were in the same building to begin with. First of all they were just down the hall by mixing them together the responses that they got, because they were in the same communication modes. They could look over the next cubicle, get their question and keep going.
Erin:Whereas before it was like I'm not going to walk down the hall. I've got 10 emails I got to answer, so I'll just shoot an email really quick. The water cooler conversations and the face-to-face connections, relationships that you're building I think that's the hardest part that leaders are having with the remote workforce is how do you build those relationships and connections so that way you're driving the right collaborative environment? There are ways to do that, but you have to have the right people hired, you have to have the right systems in place and it needs to be something that you are culturally recognizing and saying, hey, this was really good collaboration.
Erin:I think if you look at larger scale organizations, the international organizations, people have been finding ways to do this for a really long time. It may take longer to build those relationships, but their models have been done where this is not unachievable. I think those are things that you definitely want to keep in mind as you lean into remote work because you want to hire the top talent. Well, the top talent is also going to be the ones who are doing those types of things to be successful. Again, if you choose wisely, you're going to create a high-performing environment.
Ashley:Exactly A lot of it's trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn't work. One of the things that comes up is a learning management system or a blended learning style of figuring out how to really implement. What does this look like? As an employer, you're going I'm going to really take some time aside, set this up, make sure we have the tools, the technology, the platform. Make sure that we have a platform like Zoom or WebEx or Microsoft tools, slack there's a lot of different tools at your fingertips and then some Go to meetings that can help with conference rooms, webinars, training rooms, breakout rooms.
Ashley:So when you have an onboarding people and making sure you're onboarding, people may be in groups. I think that's a really thing that we kind of forget about is that we want to get people in so quickly because we need Bodies, we need people to work, but there's something about onboarding with a group of people. So you're in a cohort that you can automatically lean on, you have the culture and the connection piece and you feel like you're tied to Something I know. Anytime I've onboarded and I've onboarded with somebody, I'm like they're my partner in crime and I can always go to them.
Erin:Yeah, totally. There was the best onboarding experience that I had was with Enterprise rent a car and they brought in weeks training weeks of people. It granted, we were all like, typically like college aged Individuals, but the best onboarding experience was Enterprise rent a car and they brought in people to a hotel training area for a week and they, literally they walked you through role-playing difficult scenarios, role-playing selling the insurance, role-playing the different, what happens if there's an accident. They walked you through their it systems, their culture, the expectation of like what you're wearing. They commented on what you are wearing because they had a very professional business, professional standard of like this is You're it or nope. Try again. Yeah, and it was just a really good comprehensive Plan and it built that relationship within. So maybe that's a suggestion that you cohort and you onboard in person for a week. People get to know each other, start building those relationships which is always the hardest part is the foundational relationship building, and then they could go off and do their own piece.
Ashley:You know you bring up a really good point with Enterprise and what I'm thinking about. This I've brought me back to when I worked for the varsity brands, for the ucaudh, your camps and dance camps, and they did the Exact same thing. So they'd bring us on for about a week. You'd go down and it was regionalized because they sent us off to work camps all over the country but they brought in everybody in the. When you're doing management, camp administration or first aid, they brought us in for the week. Did the culture Put us through the ringer on what to do when you have a bunch of Cheer moms and dance moms and teams coming in to check in at a camp, get them set up at a university dorm, setting when to go, how to get them connected with their food, how to sell the cheer store, how to what happens when someone gets hurt, what's the process with all the paperwork? And that is by far one of my favorite jobs I've ever worked was for varsity, when I was doing camp administration. I always look back because I'm like I never thought I'd like to work cheer and dance camps and I absolutely Loved it and still like love watching the competitiveness of it. But their brand. They do an excellent job and talk about not a remote workforce but, like your Mobile workforce, are all over the country. You're sending people. You got a lot of different moving parts too and they're a machine. So if you've ever gone to, if you have kids in those Um that are in cheer and dance and we got into those camps you know they're a well-oiled machine and they have put on, but that's because they train their staff Effectively. Inefficently and I think that's a really good takeaway is and I think employers go well, we don't have the money to bring people in for a week or to do this, and I challenge that because if you're saving money on your overhead for brick and mortar depending on if you have buildings or not I would be curious if some something else that you used to spend on you could be moved to a different portion Of training. And then, if you're effectively training your staff, you're decreasing the turnover rate, which is cheaper for retention, but it also is going to increase your Productiveness, but also your service. You're going to be providing better service to whatever it is. If it's customer service, healthcare, for me, you'd be providing better therapy services all around. You know manufacturing. You're going to have less safe safety issues, less less Things not being made properly.
Ashley:If, if you start out with that ground the, the ground floor really having that good foundation for your blueprint and that's what everything says about when you're talking about onboarding remote workforce or in Workforce, regardless, that's what it looks like and making sure that when you have Schedules and delivering your training, that you have pre checklist like hey, you need to look over Um we're going to work on. What does a comprehensive assessment look like? Or what does setting up the manufacturing floor look like? Do your homework before that meeting so then you can ask the questions. We can walk through it and really Take time and be intentional about what we're doing.
Ashley:And if you're scheduling somebody who is remote and this is a takeaway I'm taking from is making sure, instead of going hey for your first week, you need to cover x, y and z, really schedule out during 10 to 12. Do this. One to two. Connect with Sarah. 12 to three. Watch this video on how to put this part together, how to connect with somebody, how to deescalate. You know, so you really have it tracked down, so you know what they're doing and it gives them structure. Structure is really important. I think they had this light bulb moment this morning. I ran, saw it go off, like, oh, I need to start changing how I'm doing things. But that's what it's all about. It's. It's continuously learning. Continue. It's especially anybody who knows has been Successful in leadership. You have to keep trying. We talk about failing forward, failing fast. That's all it's about. You learn from your failures.
Erin:Absolutely, I think, the intentionality I keep thinking of this word for this being intentional in how you're designing, you're learning for your employees, especially in the beginning, even more so as as they continue to grow, if you want to grow them into leadership, how are you designing their, their leadership skills? Because it's a different skill set going from a technical independent worker to a leader that, especially with a remote work, isn't necessarily as easy to train. So not only how are you onboarding your employees that are coming in, that are doing the technical job, but how are you onboarding your leaders? What is the expectation? Are you modeling those leadership examples for them through your work and, I think, providing them just as much structure?
Erin:And that's not to say that they're not fully capable people, but, man, to get kind of like a hey, this is your first week schedule, these are the people that you're meeting. I've already blocked out the times for you, instead of you having to go manage your calendar when you don't even know their last name and figure out that, like, I think that is really beneficial and creating a seamless entry into that company. It shows the employee that you are put together, you're thoughtful, you aren't just in this mad chaotic rush to onboard because you've been intentional about your hiring and your processing. What worse way of throwing someone into the fire than basically giving them zero training, hiring them not having their technology ready, not having their access points ready and not having IT support for them so they learn the systems and having them walk through it? I mean, there's so many logistical components to it that if you can even figure that out, like in, the employee walks in, they're like what did I just sign up for? What?
Ashley:is this and it's so. I know, especially for those of you guys can't see, I dropped my head with the technology piece because too many times that we had that happen and it's just, oh, it's so disheartening because you have to have your tech, especially if you're remote, you have to have your tech and you have to have it working too onboard properly and correctly. And so you know, I want to go back to that structure piece because, like, as human beings, we like structure, we like routine, we succeed in that. We know that. And it brought up something.
Ashley:I just went through a training from Dr Paul Baker and, if anyone's interested in neuroscience and behaviors and stuff, the person brain model is very interesting. But one of the things that he mentioned is like setting the scene when you're doing a training, or setting the scene of like what are the housekeeping rules? Like phones off, this is how long we're going to take breaks at this point in time, and one of the takeaways I really liked he's like we're going to start, we're going to go for an hour and 15 minutes, take a 15 minute break, go for another hour and 15 minutes, take a break, and he's like the reason I do an hour and 15 and not an hour and a half or two hours, whatever it may be, is because our brains, as our attention spans as adults, is an hour and 15 minutes and you need a break. And so he's like you'll notice, like when you start going through this training, that it makes a lot of sense. You're like, oh, this is where I was kind of getting antsy and stop listening and oh, my God, the guy was right. Like it's amazing, even when I think about like my day to day, I'm like I'm really solid. And then it's like, okay, where do I start?
Ashley:I've been paying more attention to where I need to like start taking breaks at, and so I think that's another thing. To take a take an effect Know our attention spans, know how much we can retain, because you're going to throw a lot of information at people. Are they really going to remember it? I know from work to a lot of places, the more information you throw at me, the harder it is for me to understand and retain it. So, if you can, if you can build a system in that you know where you're going to succeed, set yourself up for success and maybe that's something. So just throwing it out there our own 15 minutes, or brains we are. That's our attention span. It's like kiddos attention spans are ranging five to 15 minutes, depending on their age?
Erin:Yeah, totally. And something to be said for the blocking, the way you block and set up your onboarding schedule of don't just make them sit there and watch 15 hours of videos. To begin with, the video is such the easy cop out of, like sure it saves overhead, sure it does. You know, the same person isn't having to repeat themselves every week on the same content. But you miss that relationship building connection. But also, if you block it in a way where, like okay, let's talk about, let's just say, invoicing. You need to invoice the customer, okay, here's the procedure, walk them through it. But then give them the space and time to, like, do a couple of practice runs. How would you do it? Like here, a couple that we need invoice. Like go, you're going to have someone sit with you and watch it. They're going to show you. Then you're going to do it and you're going to mimic it and you're going to get that. Maybe that's day two or whatever, after you get through all of the HR stuff, but mixing up the structure of the day. So it's not just like today's all paperwork and today's all videos and today's all hands on. But I am definitely an application based learner, so you can tell me everything I need to know, but until I actually start doing it, like, I'm not going to have a question until I'm in it and working it. So the first time that they have tasks right, have someone even if it's a co-working space where they're just like simultaneously working on their own thing but they are there, ready, available to answer that question, because it's nothing worse than like I'm stuck Now what? Like yeah, it's so much easier to have someone there with you.
Erin:But I think be intentional and mix up your media. Same thing with PowerPoint slides and talking about like, taking the break, like setting the scene. I think you can also set the scene with the rules of the game of we're going to have our videos on. Like you're going to have your microphone on, you're going to have the chance and opportunity to be called on and be talked to and we expect you to engage, because that's how we run in this organization.
Erin:No, certainly there's times when you have like a really big call or a webinar or things like that, when you don't want for a band with reasons or other reasons, you don't name people chiming in. But if it's like a small group call or work meeting with your staff. Those should be based on my next expectations. And sure there's one off, like if you're not feeling, well, fine, don't turn on your camera, but like that's the exception, not the rule. And so I think you set that stage early with the culture, because if you let it slip once, sure enough they're going to slip again and it's going to go down the slide. So set those expectations early and then people are fine, because you're creating new habits, and the best time to form a habit is at the beginning, which we know from James Cleary and atomic habits. You've created a new space. You can create the new neural pathways to set them up how you want them to be set up Exactly.
Ashley:And those atomic habits slide right on into the wildly important goal with the wigs.
Ashley:So you know it all ripples effects on this, and so I just think you know I think we've hit a lot on remote workforce and onboarding.
Ashley:I think the big takeaways if you're you had to sum up what we're talking about today is make sure you have structure, make sure you have your technology right, make sure you have those platforms, make sure you have a place for connection and make sure that we're being intentional with everything that we're doing. And I'm having light bulb moments too. While we're talking about this, I'm like, oh, I need to fix this. So I just think it's just the more you read about it and more you research about it, I think, just being really intentional, getting feedback, noticing how do you start being successful from the ground up and really going from there, and also know like there's a lot of wealth of information. There's a lot of information from Forbes. Please know that none of this we are not sponsored by anything, but there's a lot of different platforms out there that you can use, and so hopefully we can talk about this topic again, because remote workforce is near and dear to my heart.
Erin:I think it's definitely the way of some sort of future for everybody, until we all get taken over by AI, in which case I need to learn a trade again. But no, and I just I know we've talked about it for quite a while, but I just want to circle back feedback get feedback from your onboarding class, have a survey, implement some of their feedback suggestions. People will. If you've created that culture, people will tell you how to improve and then you can make it better for the next round.
Ashley:It's continuous improvement and it's amazing, if they trust you, that you're actually going to do something about it, you will flourish as a company and industry.
Erin:Talk about a quick win. Yeah, quick win. From an onboarding perspective. They give you feedback. Then they hear the next group was like oh, they did that for you. That's, that was my suggestion. Oh, that's so cool. I'm so glad they took that. Did it make a difference? Yeah, I mean I'm on formation.
Ashley:Oh, I'm feeling confident. This is fantastic. We'll leave it with her. Do we miss?
Erin:anything. I think that's good. I think it's good for now. Feel free to check out our Instagram page, coffee shop connections dot podcast, where we'll leave some quotes and some photos there for you. And yeah, but please connect with us If there's anything you're interested in hearing us chat about. We are happy to take feedback and suggestions, and then you can be the person saying, yes, they took my idea, so just let us know. Yeah, definitely.
Ashley:We'll give you a shout out as well and hope you guys enjoyed the podcast. So, as always, hope you enjoyed your coffee. You've better have found a biscotti and enjoy your day.
