Remote Work Revolution

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR “I often talk about the importance of trust when it comes to work: the trust of your employees and building trust with your customers. This book provides a blueprint for how to build and maintain that trust and connection in a digital environment.” —Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom A Harvard Business School professor and leading expert in virtual and global work provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by Covid-19 have accelerated the transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. This massive transition has forced companies to rapidly advance their digital footprint, using cloud, storage, cybersecurity, and device tools to accommodate their new remote workforce. Experiencing the benefits of remote working—including nonexistent commute times, lower operational costs, and a larger pool of global job applicants—many companies, including Twitter and Google, plan to permanently incorporate remote days or give employees the option to work from home full-time. But virtual work has it challenges. Employees feel lost, isolated, out of sync, and out of sight. They want to know how to build trust, maintain connections without in-person interactions, and a proper work/life balance. Managers want to know how to lead virtually, how to keep their teams motivated, what digital tools they’ll need, and how to keep employees productive. Providing compelling, evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, Remote Work Revolution is essential for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face. Filled with specific actionable steps and interactive tools, this timely book will help team members deliver results previously out of reach. Following Neeley’s advice, employees will be able to break through routine norms to successfully use remote work to benefit themselves, their groups, and ultimately their organizations.

Embrace connectivity, increase empowerment, and achieve better work-life blending We live in a new age of global companies, hyper-access to information, and accessibility to tools that enable us to bring any idea life. Strangely, our workplaces are lagging behind the promise of this open and collaborative world. Most organizations are rule-based, top-down, dreary environments optimized for conformity and little else. The Work Revolution creates a compelling portrait of a different kind of work. “I believe that freedom in the workplace is worth fighting for and that every person and every organization can be excellent.” Julie Clow articulates the rules we follow today in our work force, the reasons they no longer work, and what we can do instead. The Work Revolution deconstructs the magic behind thriving, liberated organizations (such as Google) into clear principles that any individual, leader, and organization can adopt to create sustainable and engaging lives. Provides actionable changes anyone can make, regardless of where they work, to create a more sustainable work-life blend Details concrete ways to influence existing organizations to change Guides leaders to make tangible changes in their teams to enable greater autonomy and impact Outlines organizational culture principles that support and nurture high-performance and healthy environments, providing clear options for instituting cultural change based on specific organizational challenges Rejecting productivity Band-Aids and quick fixes, The Work Revolution conceptualizes a completely new workplace that embraces the always-connected reality to create organizations in which high achievers can sustainably thrive.

“This book will challenge you to rethink what it takes to make remote work work—not just for companies, but for people.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife The future isn’t about where we will work, but how. For years we have struggled to balance work and life, with most of us feeling overwhelmed and burned out because our relationship to work is broken. This “isn't just a book about remote work. It's a book that helps us imagine a future where our lives—at the office and home—are happier, more productive, and genuinely meaningful” (Charles Duhigg, best-selling author of The Power of Habit). Out of Office is a book for every office worker – from employees to managers – currently facing the decision about whether, and how, to return to the office. The past two years have shown us that there may be a new path forward, one that doesn’t involve hellish daily commutes and the demands of jam-packed work schedules that no longer make sense. But how can we realize that future in a way that benefits workers and companies alike? Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with workers and managers around the world, Out of Office illuminates the key values and questions that should be driving this conversation: trust, fairness, flexibility, inclusive workplaces, equity, and work-life balance. Above all, they argue that companies need to listen to their employees – and that this will promote, rather than impede, productivity and profitability. As a society, we have talked for decades about flexible work arrangements; this book makes clear that we are at an inflection point where this is actually possible for many employees and their companies. Out of Office is about so much more than zoom meetings and hybrid schedules: it aims to reshape our entire relationship to the office.

Nations and businesses across the globe have been working through the difficulties of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Industry, academia, NGOs, and governments have been "feverishly" searching for ways to address this deadly virus, which may continue to spread for at least the next year and perhaps beyond (in terms of a resurgence and different strains). From a business standpoint, there have been dramatic effects on logistics and supply chains, economic downfalls, bailouts of major industries and small businesses, and far-reaching calamities from around the world. Even though the COVID-19 story is still in its making, this book focuses on the business of pandemics as applied to COVID-19. The book brings together a global panel of experts across industries and NGOs to help guide business executives and managers through the complex array of issues affecting business in the time of a pandemic. Offering solutions to the business of pandemics as applied to COVID-19, the book is written for organizational decision makers and leaders, as well as those involved in crisis management, public health, and related fields. Its chapters focus on key areas that relate to the business of pandemics, including Lessons learned to date Big data and simulation Logistics and supply-chain management challenges Conducting global business virtually Global economic impact Media and risk communication IT infrastructure and networking Social impact Online learning and educational innovations The new work-from-home environment Re-opening markets and businesses Crisis decision making using analytics and intuition With chapters authored by experts from leading organizations, including the World Health Organization, the RAND Corporation, and various universities throughout the world, The Business of Pandemics: The COVID-19 Story provides high-level guidance and insight for business leaders who must deal with the complexities and challenges presented by this unprecedented crisis.

Is it hard to recruit exceptional talent? Are you struggling to retain and inspire the employees you have? It's time to rethink hiring practices and examine a revolution that allows professionals to live and work remotely around the world, trading cubicles for experiences that leave them stimulated as employees and as people. After living and working in the corporate world for more than thirty years and launching his own successful start-up in 2010, CEO John Elston decentralized his office. He set off on a journey that allowed him to work while living around the world. Now he shares what he's learned in The Remote Revolution and shows you how to work within this new paradigm. His real-life experiments as a location-independent professional prove that remotes can bridge work and life experiences to boost productivity, sales conversions, creativity, and more. Prepare to take yourself and your company to the next level. With The Remote Revolution, you can transform this impending movement into an amazing opportunity.

In the new remote-first and hybrid workplace, many organizations are struggling to catch up with new tooling and ways of working. Many are discovering for the first time that the physical office was covering up poorly defined teams and poorly defined areas of focus, threatening their DevOps transformation efforts and the overall health and success of their business. Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, coauthors of the highly successful Team Topologies, provide proven patterns for a successful remote-first approach to teams. Using simple tools for dependency tracking and patterns from Team Topologies, such as the Team API, organizations will find that well-defined team interactions are key to effective IT delivery in the remote-first world. This workbook explores several aspects of team-first remote work, including: •How the new “remote-first” world is highlighting existing poor team interactions within organizations. •Why organizations should use the Team API pattern to define and communicate the focus of teams. •How organizations can track and remove team-level dependencies. •How and why organizations should design inter-team communications consciously. •How and why organizations can use the three team interaction modes from Team Topologies (collaboration, x-as-a-service, and facilitating) to help. The ideas and patterns presented here will help your organization become more effective with a team-based, remote-first approach to building and running software systems.

The pandemic imposed a major shift on how we live and work. National lockdowns eradicated the lines between home, office and school, making conversations around live/work spaces more urgent than ever before. Instead of driving people apart, social distancing, remote working and the reliance on digital communication have led to a huge demand for physical togetherness. How can we design a future that enables greater collaboration, connectivity and social interaction? The trend for shared living spaces is showing no signs of slowing down; collaborative spaces have been hailed as the solution to the 21st century’s culture of overwork, a broken housing market and chronic loneliness, particularly among the elderly. When implemented carefully, considering different degrees and models of sharing, they tackle the question of independence (and its complex relationship with solidarity) and the longevity and power of intergenerational living. A practical and inspirational design guide, this book draws on Naomi Cleaver’s own experience as a designer alongside the work of other experts including Rockwell Group, Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, Squire and Partners and DH Liberty. Featuring detailed and highly illustrated case studies across co-living and co-working typologies, it takes in new builds and conversions of various sizes that have been implemented internationally. It concludes with a best practice toolkit that provides valuable advice and lessons for designers working at any scale. Case studies include: Humanitas Deventer, The Netherlands K9 Coliving, Sweden Mokrin House, Serbia NeueHouse Hollywood, Los Angeles Outpost Ubud Penestanan, Bali The Project at Hoxton, London. Foreword by Professor Sadie Morgan OBE, Director of dRMM and Chair of the Quality of Life Foundation.

Disruptions are being caused in the workplace due to the development of advanced software technology and the speed at which these technological advancements are being produced. These disruptions could take diverse forms and affect various aspects of work and the lives of entities in the workplaces and families of the individual employees. Work and family are caught in the crossfire between technological disruptions and human adaptation. Hence, there is a need to assess the overall effect that the Fourth Industrial Revolution would have on work, employee work-family satisfaction, and employee well-being. Future of Work, Work-Family Satisfaction, and Employee Well-Being in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a critical reference source that discusses practical solutions and strategies to manage challenges and address fears regarding the effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the future of employment and the workforce. Featuring research on topics such as corporate governance, job satisfaction, and mental health, this book is ideally designed for human resource professionals, business managers, industry professionals, government officials, policymakers, corporate strategists, consultants, work-life balance experts, human resources software developers, business policy experts, academicians, researchers, and students.