Your Remote Learning & Development Resources Blog

By Ali Riehle, Freelance Designer and Researcher, working remotely since August 2018.

We're grateful to Ali for sharing her experiences, especially as we've dedicated time in our remote community to discuss challenges and solutions to hybrid team relationships. Any opinions expressed within this blog post are those of the author and not necessarily held by Workplaceless itself.

Most recently in my role on the design and development team at LUMA Institute, I worked at the company headquarters for a few years, called in from home occasionally, and worked remotely and nomadically for one year. These experiences have presented me with many challenges and have changed the way I think about collaboration and work in general. 

Being a member of a hybrid-remote team isn’t easy. At times, I’ve felt isolated, left out, or frustrated by the technical problems this setup can create. Aside from all that, I’ve benefited greatly from this...

Remote work is growing—rapidly. Work-from-home roles have grown by 173% since 2005. But that remote work trend means different things for different people, and for different organizational structures. Some teams are 100% remote, but more often we see teams that are a mix, or hybrid of different working models. 

So when we refer to different working models, what do we mean?

• Co-located: A company or team whose employees all work in the same location.
• Distributed: An company or team whose employees all work remotely (also referred to as “fully distributed” or “remote-first”).
• Hybrid: A company or team with some employees who are co-located and some who work remotely (also referred to as “remote-friendly” or specifically as “hybrid-remote”).

You can reference all of this terminology in our remote work dictionary. 

Within a hybrid team model, there can be variances of experience: if there’s only...

“Workplaceless aims to positively impact both the supply and demand of sustainable remote work opportunities.”

We believe in the power and potential of remote work, and we’ve been working to define for you how we make remote work work for the long-term. Let’s break down our mission.

The demand of remote work refers to the number of workers seeking remote or flexible job opportunities. People are seeking remote work for a wide variety of professional and personal reasons. 

Entrepreneurs, working parents, freelancers, travelers, digital nomads, people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, students, military spouses, retirees, and anyone who wants better work-life balance might be able to find work where they couldn’t before.

However, when we take a look at remote-first companies, such as Doist, we see that the number of job applications far outpaces the number of roles available at 1,000+ to 1 ratio. The likelihood of getting hired...

Any opinions expressed within this blog post are those of the author and not necessarily held by Workplaceless itself.

When we decided to dedicate two months of our Networkplaceless events to discussing challenges and solutions to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in remote work, we knew it would be impossible to tackle everything in that time. We also knew that we needed to tap into diverse perspectives to truly round out the picture and provide tangible advice. With that in mind, in addition to hosting a diversity strategist in December, we reached out to a variety of organizations who are bringing forward opportunities for conversation as well as action. We’re grateful to Power to Fly, LGBTQ+ Workplace, NTI, and Startup Setup for taking the time to share their expertise. 

Lauren Hagerty, Senior Manager of Marketing and Community, at Power to Fly, a community and recruiting platform that connects companies to women in tech, sales, marketing and...

“Remote work has a particularly unique opportunity to offer more diversity and have a more robust, diverse population… But it certainly in and of itself will not resolve diversity issues.” 

Jordyne Blaise, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategist with remote team experience, shared this sentiment during her guest speaker presentation for our December Networkplaceless event. The topic of discussion was, “Exploring Solutions to DE&I for Remote Teams”—admittedly, a lofty goal to accomplish in a 25 minute presentation. However, Jordyne provided us with a framework to establish solid DE&I strategies and challenged us as individuals to instill new habits with DE&I in mind.

Jordyne shared the following grounding principles. While DE&I strategies are not one-size-fits-all, these basic principles hold true regardless of the type of organization or current status of DE&I commitment and strategy development. 

1. Achieving...

Whether your team is fully or partially distributed, you know that people are your greatest priority. Talent is the true lifeblood of any company, and employee motivation is one of the key tenets of any healthy organizational culture. In a number of global surveys and reports, remote workers themselves have shared what drives them: a sense of purpose, the ability to work independently, and the chance to accomplish more while achieving a better work-life balance.

If this isn't news to you, you've likely given some thought to how you can specifically encourage your team not only to do more but do better—a focal point for managers who care about progress and well-being of their peers in addition to the trajectory of their company and their own careers. However, a roundup of employee recognition statistics reveals a disconnect: workers acknowledge the need for recognition, but leaders are not equipped with the knowledge, access, or decision making power to provide adequate...

By Simon Bliss, Managing Director of Principal People, a recruitment consultancy specializing in Health, Safety and Environment.

We're grateful for expert contributors to our blog content. Any opinions expressed within this blog post are those of the author and not necessarily held by Workplaceless itself.

Working from home can benefit both employers and employees. One often-cited advantage is increased productivity since workers don’t have to spend long hours commuting. Companies can also save on costs if they don’t have to maintain a large office. In addition, since employees are working from home, they can enjoy flexible working hours. Furthermore, this structure can help companies expand their presence in strategic locations.  

Remote work usually involves performing a job at home, either on a full-time or part-time basis. However, people working at home will also be isolated from their colleagues and have no direct supervision. Another...

By seeking remote hires, companies open themselves up to a global talent pool of endless possibilities when it comes to driving diversity initiatives. However, companies leveraging this strategy need to proceed with caution if they’re hiring remotely as a quick-fix or cure-all for diversity challenges. In fact, during our November Networkplaceless virtual networking event, the overarching theme was:

Remote does not automatically equal diverse, nor equitable, nor inclusive.    

It’s important to note that any discussion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is informed by context, culture, and the experiences of teams and individuals. As our Networkplacless community exemplified, remote teams and remote workers experience unique yet overlapping concerns when in comes to DE&I. As the participants shared their own backgrounds and insights with the group, several common challenges were identified:

• Thinking remote will "solve" diversity...

During the first week of November I attended Nomad City 2019, a 3-day event in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain featuring workshops, keynotes, and discussions about remote work. Conferences are valuable learning experiences, and this event was no exception! I left the event feeling energized, informed, and better connected to a community of people who believe what I believe: remote work is critical to improving work, and by extension, our lives.

To use the conference tagline,

“We work from the places we love.”   

Workplaceless’ mission is to positively impact both the supply (remote roles available) and demand (employees seeking remote roles) of sustainable remote work opportunities. We do that by providing engaging learning experiences that prepare people to thrive in remote work—and since these experiences are informed by current trends and best practices in remote work, we make sure that we’re involved in conversations like the ones...

Since Workplaceless first engaged in the mission of teaching remote skill development, a primary aspect of our vision has been to leverage remote work as a way to increase accessibility of employment opportunities for under-served areas and populations. As we set out to advance this goal, we were grateful to be connected with Lorraine Charles, Director and Co-founder of Na’amal, who shares a similar vision of remote work as a means to provide opportunities for refugees and other vulnerable populations.

 We are excited to announce the next phase of our relationship: a pilot Workplaceless training program specific to Na’amal and the refugee communities it supports.

Background on remote work for refugees

Charles has studied employment opportunities available to refugees and examined remote work as offering potential solutions.

 “In many refugee-hosting countries in the Middle East, refugees have limited access to employment because of legal...