Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Time: 1:00pm Eastern / 10:00 am Pacific
Presenters:
Christian Nielson, Chief Revenue Officer
Matthew Wride, President
The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote work the new normal for many organizations. But while remote work offers many benefits, it can also be challenging for organizations to keep remote employees engaged and productive.
This webinar will provide you with proven strategies for setting clear expectations, creating a sense of community, and fostering regular communication. You will also learn how to celebrate successes and recognize achievements, and how to address challenges and concerns.
Transcript
Christian Nielson | 00:00
We can go ahead and get started. I know we’ll have a, a few folks trickle in here as we get going, but wanna be respectful of everyone’s time. Uh, my name is Christian Nielson. I am part of the senior leadership team here at Decision Wise, as well as, uh, uh, my, my career has primarily been in organizational development consulting, and I’m excited to be part of this conversation. I’m joined by, uh, decision wise President Matt Wride, and we’re very excited to, to get in and, and explore this, this topic today we’re talking about how to keep your remote team engaged and productive. At least that’s where we’ll, we’ll start. We’ll probably go down to a few different corridors together as we, we explore this. And as always, we encourage a lot of, um, interaction in the chat. Uh, we, we love hearing from, uh, the experts that attend these, these sessions as well.
Christian Nielson | 00:50
Um, the housekeeping, I usually forget this session does qualify for Sherman. HRCI credit. An email will be sent out following this meeting, um, uh, with the, the code to, to get that credit. Alright, well, Matt, let’s, let’s see where we’re headed. Uh, we, we’ve got, um, a, a, a plan that we, you’ll may deviate from a bit, but we’re gonna talk about, are we still talking about this, this topic? It’s, you know, we’re not in the middle of the pandemic the way we were a couple years ago. Uh, but this persists as a, as a key, uh, conversation and an important topic for, uh, most modern organizations. Uh, we’ll talk some insights from our database. We’ll get into some tools and, and at this point we wanna talk, also hear about recommendations from the group around tools that you found helpful for remote work. Uh, we’ll get into benefits of, in-house interactions. Talk a little bit about the trade-offs of remote work. What are we getting? What are we giving up? And then we’ll, we’ll, uh, uh, conclude with some summary takeaways. So, Matt, first thing, are we still talking about this?
Matt Wride | 02:01
Yeah, we are. And I think you were telling a funny story the other day about bumping into a colleague here. And I, I don’t remember what what you said to him, but he is like, the implication was that’s old news, right? Return to return to the office is, is, nobody’s still talking about that. So why would we be doing a webinar about that? But, uh, that’s not true. In fact, this morning I, I noticed CNBC had an article on this topic saying that return to the office was a sneaky way that organizations were trying to do layoffs, right? Just by implementing harsh, uh, return to office policies as a way to weed out people. And I don’t think that’s, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s happening across the board, but it just goes to show how much people are still talking about return to office, about what should remote work hybrid work in office five days. It’s, it’s still very much top of mind.
Christian Nielson | 02:58
No, for sure. And, and I, I just quickly grabbed a few of these headlines just that were in the last couple of weeks. It’s, it’s definitely top of mind. Our clients are talking about it. We as an organization have, are still finding our own balance with what does remote work look like and what are we getting, what are we giving up? Where does it make sense? Where can we absolutely not go with remote work? And so it’s, you know, you know, a lot of these topics we get to be both subject and scientists. ’cause we’ve got the data we work with, uh, you know, hundreds of organizations on these type of topics, but we also have our own employees and we have our own experience in, in remote work. And so I think it’s, um, we we’re coming at it from a couple different lenses, but definitely a, a a still a priority. And I think it will be, uh, it’s very difficult to introduce some new sense of freedom or flexibility and then take that back as many of us have, have felt as you’ve seen some of those return to work policies that are mandated and, and where others have kind of leveled into some hybrid and, and other, uh, arrangements. So definitely still talking about it
Matt Wride | 04:01
And this, and our title doesn’t match entirely what we want to talk about today. I mean, it is true. We wanna talk about how to, to, um, engage remote teams, but our take on that is not about, you know, do this or, you know, have a have a Halloween zoom call where everyone dresses up and, you know, that’s not what we’re gonna talk about today. And what we’re really trying to talk about is setting proper expectation and being transparent and talking about these trade-offs and making sure that employees understand what the trade-offs are and how, and that, that are, are, I think, hypothesis. And, and really what we’re gonna talk a lot about is that’s what’s gonna drive engagement. Transparency in how we run and, and manage remote teams is gonna be very important in keeping an engaged workforce.
Christian Nielson | 04:49
I, I love it. And I know that was just an aside, but a dress up zoom Halloween call sounds kind of fun as well. So let’s, let’s just note that for future ideas, but no, it, yeah, I am glad you clarify that We’re gonna go beyond kind of that what, what our title suggests, but also please in the chat, but you know, if this spurs any conversations, feel free to jump in and we’ll try to keep an eye on that as we go. Alright, so I mentioned that we, are we, well, actually, before we get into some of our data, I want to warm everyone up in the chat. Um, this is a question, please enter in the chat some, some responses around this. What are the challenges of being a remote employee? So some of us have, have experienced some form of remote work over the last couple of years and maybe prior to that, but what are some of the challenges of being a remote employee ourselves?
Christian Nielson | 05:38
Um, or if you haven’t ever been, you can turn on that empathy and, and, and what have you heard from your, your employees? Uh, please use the chat. Um, uh, throw some things in there feeling connected to your team. I love this connection in the first two, uh, comments. Struggling to connect with the people, uh, who they’re, they’re moving quicker than I can get to ’em. Lack of communication, getting distracted by home requirements, disconnected from other employees. Certainly lack of ad hoc conversations. I love that one. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that. What do we give up? These kind of what organic collisions that happen when we’re, we’re walking around in the office. I love that. Tech struggles certainly. Um, sure. Training. Training. Uh, let’s see. Not up on the day to day. Yeah. With current events. We we’re not in the
Matt Wride | 06:26
Flow of that. Did you see the food truck, Juan? We cannot go to the food truck. They announce every day
Christian Nielson | 06:31
<laugh>. Yeah. But that’s a real, that’s a real challenge for a lot of organizations. Uh, there’s, there’s almost like FOMO of the perks of, uh, of some of the in-house, uh, kind of amenities that we, you, you’re not able to, it’s a challenge to, uh, see reactions. Yeah, we miss out on a lot of communication just because we’re not there to see it. And, and even if we’re using Zoom or Teams or something like that, uh, the camera doesn’t catch all of the nuance of it face-to-face interaction, uh, forgotten about. Wow.
Matt Wride | 07:04
I like problem solving because I’m, I’m a big believer that problem solving happens sort of in those ad hoc, um, sort of spur of the moment type of things where, uh, a lot of good ideas come. And, and again, when we talk about the challenges, we’re not trying to take a position one way or the other that I think there’s a lot of reasons remote works, and I think there’s a lot of reasons that we ought to be transparent and talk about how we in-person still important for certain types of work and, and for certain types of organizations.
Christian Nielson | 07:33
I agree. I agree. It’s, uh, there are certainly trade offs and, uh, we’re gonna talk about some techniques to kind of overcome some of those, but I think it’s important to have an authentic conversation around some things you can’t replace
Matt Wride | 07:45
Right
Christian Nielson | 07:45
Outside or we, we certainly haven’t figured out how, um, uh, duplicate efforts if not everyone’s on this. Yeah, that’s, yeah. Sometimes we’re repeating ourselves or, or a silo and we have competing teams that working on the same issues. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and things like that. A lot of, uh, uh, alignment challenges that’s kind of stem from communication. Well, let’s, let’s, and I don’t know if we’ll get a lot of the same answers, but I, I thought it’d be interesting to kind of put on our, our HR or our manager slash leader hats and think of it that through this, what are the challenges for the organization? What are the challenges of having remote employees? Oh yeah. Work-life balance. Those, those boundaries blend when we’re remote employees. Let’s put our hats on this other way. And, and I’m curious what the conversation kind of surfaces here as an organization. What are the challenges of having, uh, remote employees accountability? That’s a good one to put out there.
Matt Wride | 08:38
Well, while it’s populating, you know, for me, I think it’s hard to learn as a, I mean, the learning has to happen organizationally, and I think it’s hard to learn sometimes when everybody’s distributed and how do you come together and say, Hey, did we, did we all get on the same page about something? So I think learning on a corporate organizational level, not like training the development, but like how we, how we get better for the next time and keep the stuff from, from happening because its harder when it’s remote.
Christian Nielson | 09:06
Yeah. I love that. Learning is a, is a really great one. And sometimes we have to learn as individuals and, and we miss that on some of the, I don’t learn what you, you may have figured out a few things.
Matt Wride | 09:18
There was a couple about how do we create equity for the workers, and also about how do we make sure we think about them remote workers when opportunities arise. And that that’s true. And that’s, um, I’m, I don’t think we’re gonna come with an answer to that. That’s why we’re more about just being transparent in the trade-offs and accepting the trade-offs are there, rather than trying to devise, uh, a structure where you can create equity, because I just don’t know that it’s possible. I think that’s what we’re running into is it’s, it’s hard.
Christian Nielson | 09:48
I, I love this one that’s, uh, employees don’t interact outside of their own small groups. Yeah. That we, we miss some, some level of that cross pollination. Uh, it might happen in, in, in the break room or, uh, you know, ad hoc lunch gathering, this type
Matt Wride | 10:03
Of thing. We’re gonna see it in the data points are coming up next. We’re gonna see that one for sure.
Christian Nielson | 10:07
Certainly. I think, I think the, the comments in the chat are, are right in line with what our, our data is gonna kind of highlight here. Authentic connection, collaboration. Well, thank you. We’ll, we’ll come back to the chat a few times. Feel free to keep using that and we’ll peek at it. We’ve got a few other questions. Um, but let’s look at some of that data. So as, uh, many of you know, those of you who worked with s digitalize, we have a, a lot of, um, we track a lot of different metrics and, and we have robust benchmarks that we use for both our, our employee engagement, onboarding and exit service. But also for our 360 feedback assessments, we’ve got leadership competencies and we can really dig in and understand. And what we, uh, pulled for this conversation, uh, we pulled our, we asked our data science team to, to give us some current data from remote versus non-real employees in the same organization.
Christian Nielson | 11:00
I’ll caveat that a little bit because I’m a data purist, uh, that, um, we don’t have, there’s some inconsistency in the way different organizations flag remote and non remote. So some of this might inc be inclusive of hybrid and, and some of those things. And in fact, that’s one of the recommendations we’re, we’ll, we’ll come back to, is greater clarity and classification of your employee work arrangements so that you can really understand their employee experience feedback. Uh, otherwise we’re limited to kind of lumping them all together or having just kind of two broad of, of categories. But I think there’s some, some power in the, the data I’ll, I’ll show here, but I do have to caveat this so that I can sleep at night. Um, so what, what we’ve pulled here are, and there’s I think from about 5 million employee responses across 40 different organizations.
Christian Nielson | 11:50
So, um, all those employees across a number of surveys. Um, and these are from engagement surveys. And we, we look to see where we have data for remote and known remote employees within the same organization. Where do we see the biggest negative gap for, uh, remote employees? In other words, where do remote employees fill less favorable than their remote counterparts? And I, I pulled the five items with the biggest negative differences, and we’re gonna go through each one of these, but I wanted to put ’em all in one slide first. Uh, the first one we see my job is stimulating and energizing. Uh, there are opportunities for my own advancement. This organization, this organization has effective methods for receiving and responding to suggestions for change. We deliver quality products and services on a consistent basis, and people from other departments willingly cooperate with our department.
Christian Nielson | 12:41
I, I like the, well, for me, these are these, uh, I’ve, I’ve run so many surveys. These are like song lyrics to me. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve said these statements so many times. Uh, those of you who run surveys with us probably, uh, recognize a number of these items. Uh, maybe not surprised that these are the ones that show up lower for your remote employees. But let’s, let’s, uh, dive in and, and chat about each of these. Matt, uh, the first one, my job is stimulating and energizing. Any, any take on why remote employees might feel less favorable on this than their remote employ, uh, counterparts?
Matt Wride | 13:13
Well, we saw a lot of responses in the chat when we asked about the challenges of being a remote employee was isolation. And, um, our job is stimulating the work itself. We, we want it to be stimulating. We hope it can be. It, it not, it, it is not, that’s not always the case. And when we’re away from colleagues away from the opportunity to vent the away from the opportunity to, uh, stop by and just sort of process something out loud that can be, that could take out some of that social stimulation and energy that we get from others. Um, and there are a lot of experiments on how, on how to do that. I, I think we’ve all seen that maybe you have, there’s a gadget out there where your team, it’s a, it’s like a, it’s like a panel and it’s a camera system where everyone’s camera’s sort of always on and you could look down and see kind of a Brady Bunch view of your team at any one time. And just like, you could just like, as if you’re working in the same area together. It’s trying to do that with a camera. But I just don’t think that’s the same. I don’t think we’re experiencing, I don’t know that we’re ever, ever gonna be able to sort of recreate everything virtually. But that’s one thing is, yeah, it’s just lack of just human interaction that can be spontaneous.
Christian Nielson | 14:33
I love that. And, and that interaction, I think that, so even if, even if we have a strong preference for introversion, we’re seeing that those employees still miss out from the interaction. You know, when this first happened, a lot of folks were saying, oh great, this is gonna be perfect for me. I won’t miss anything. But, you know, think about when something went really well and you could celebrate with people right then, or you had a, a personal victory. And there’s, there’s not only that recognition from your supervisor, but from your peers and colleagues. They get to celebrate or you get to celebrate with their wins or when there’s a, a challenge and you get to empathize or sympathize with, with those around you. So we do miss out a lot. There also is a possibility that there’s a bit of selection bias with this.
Christian Nielson | 15:14
Yes, introverts certainly still need human connection. Yes, it’s, uh, most certainly, um, the, um, there might be a little a bit of selection bias with this because, you know, when we, we saw the remote migration during the, the early stages of covid, it was anybody that we could push remote, we saw getting pushed remote. And then as we’ve seen people pull back, um, some jobs let themselves more to remote work for ex and, and those might have been some of the less stimulating jobs. For example, if I’m doing medical transcription or something that I can do very independently in isolation, maybe that’s a role that stayed, maybe those types of roles stayed remote. And so that might also be a, a factor in the data, something to consider. But I think Matt, you, you hit the, the first thing that when we’re removed from people, it does take away some of the richness of, of the, of the work.
Matt Wride | 16:06
And that’s the
Christian Nielson | 16:07
Challenge.
Matt Wride | 16:07
That’s the challenge in this webinar that I don’t think we have any of us have a handle on, is we can try to push all of our efforts to using, to creating virtual experiences that are stimulating, energizing. And, and we should, and, and we should try to do our best to, to understand remote teams. But, um, I just don’t know that that’s a, that that world of sort of virtual that we can make everything the same is out there. And so it comes to trade-offs and it comes to how do we properly, how do we create pathways through an organization that include remote periods and maybe hybrid periods. Like what does that look like? And that’s where I think we’ve gotta go to the next step. Instead of sort of trying to solve everything with technology, I think we have to solve it as experienced designers. Those on this call are designing experiences and thinking about what it’s like to be with this organization. And they, and they’re needing to put those, that experience design hat on to think about how to solve this question of stimulus stimulating and energizing.
Christian Nielson | 17:09
I love that. And, and you know, I, I’m so glad you used the word experience and experience design because a lot of the work we do, and if you’ve ever been on a webinar with, with us, you’ve probably heard me use this statement, which is, we’re trying to answer the question, what experience are we creating and is it the right one? Well, it’s the right one if it’s we’re leading to the right results or results we’re comfortable with both as organizational performance, but also for employee experience and, and, and engagement and the things we want to provide to the, the those that we work with and that we employ. Um, so really trying to understand what experience are we creating and is it the right one, right? And that’s why it’s also very important to, to tag that data the right way, categorize the work arrangements you’ve got, capture that feedback so that we can understand and improve it.
Christian Nielson | 17:58
Alright, this one didn’t surprise me either. There are opportunities for my own advancement at this organization. Growth, if you’re familiar with our magic framework, meaning autonomy, growth impact and connection growth, one of those key, uh, elements of, of, of inviting employee engagement. We’ve got, um, some real trade-offs with remote work. When, when we talk about growth, um, especially around advancement, when we, we remove ourselves from the day-to-day, whether it’s formal or informal, uh, lean acknowledged, uh, there’s a change in perceived growth and advancement. Uh, Matt, I don’t know if you articulated any other way or what, what angle you see on this one.
Matt Wride | 18:38
So this, this is a, a really interesting one because someone mentioned equity early on. You know, how do we ensure that remote and not, and non-REM remote employees have equal access and opportunities to advancement and new opportunities and growth? And that is on us to make sure that we’re creating systems since most of us on this call in charge of people systems that we create systems that do that. But as I was thinking about this question, and I, I asked you this same query, I said, is it possible, do we think that in 20 years someone who’s been entirely remote would rise to the level of say CEO? You know, I just was thinking about that question. I’d be curious what the chat thinks. Like, do we think that you could be entirely remote and and actually have the ability? I I think you can. I’m not saying you can. I I understand that, but are we so wired? I just don’t know what the answer to that question is, is would someone that has grown up in an entirely remote environment rise to the level I, I suppose it’s entirely possible, but it just kind of is, has stumped me.
Christian Nielson | 19:52
It’s a really interesting question and yeah, I welcome any, any thoughts in the group, but, um, for me, I have to stretch my imagination on that question a bit to imagine the, the scenario and, and maybe if it was a completely remote organization that, that every employee was remote that, you know, equal playing field. But I don’t know many of those that are, they do exist. Um, in most cases. Part of climbing up the climbing the ladder is, is also around, um, is also around, uh, networks and, and connections and people that can vouch for performance and have worked with you directly. And, and we lose a little bit of that in, in the remote or a lot of that in the remote world. Let’s see what some of our comments are. I think it could be difficult to rise to the c-suite if they’re always remote.
Christian Nielson | 20:44
It’s hard to build connections. Yeah, exactly. It’s that connection. If you have some people remote and some, uh, non remote, I think it can work. Communication would be key, but with advanced technology, it can work. That’s the other thing that it was, we prepped for this conversation. Um, I, I really tried to challenge my own imagination because I, I’m definitely looking through the key hole of my own time, and I only know the technology and, and advancements that we have now. I don’t know if there’s things that can break down some of these barriers and, and unlock remote work in, in ways that I, I can’t even fathom at this point. But given that the landscape and what I do know, I think it’s, it’s really unlikely.
Matt Wride | 21:23
And this is the, the thing I’m passionate about as part of this webinar is I don’t have a sense of that. And there’s a few chats that said, Hey, yeah, people have successfully promoted remote employees to senior leadership positions. And I believe that, and that’s what my point is, is we’ve gotta move from just sort of tech and tools and, and we’ve gotta start thinking about pathways. How do we ensure people have not only experiences, we used to think about giving them experiences across different functions of the organization. Now we have to think about giving them experiences that cross this remote, this hybrid, this in-office, right? We’re realizing we have to, to branch out. And so I think as people leaders, we need to be, you know, creating pathways that include the opportunity to be remote, but also, and so they understand what it’s like to be a remote employee, how to lead remote employees, but eventually to be with people and directing them and benefiting from the human interactions that come from in-person work. Um, and I think it’s time to make that shift. And if that’s really the takeaway from this webinar, I hope that that’s what we do, is we start shifting and planning these, these pathways that include elements of remote work and hybrid work.
Christian Nielson | 22:38
And I, I, I love that this, this is, I think this is an important part of the conversation we have. So decision-wise in our own teams, we, many of our employees have some kind of hybrid arrangement depending on their role and, and, uh, and, and their manager. Uh, we do have fully remote, uh, fully remote devel DevOps team where we’re, we’re our engineers to build our, our wonderful software remote. And they’re led by a remote management as well. And there’s growth opportunities for those employees. Um, uh, and, and they’re, but I, I’m, I’m curious in terms of if there’s, if we as an organization and if our clients, and if your organizations have had that thought, I’m like, okay, but what, what are the limits of that growth? What are the trade-offs of being remote and how far can you grow here? And is that a, an important conversation to, you know, to your earlier comment about transparency, um, in, in some roles, I mean, in our dev, I, I foresee that being remote going forward and, and, and so there’s lots of room for growth and advancement. Um, but other teams, I, I’m thinking through some of my clients with remote teams, there’s you certainly some growth and advancement opportunities, but there’s probably, uh, thresholds that’ll be hit. And so that’s okay as long as everyone understands the game they’re playing, that we all understand the, this is one of the trade-offs for flexibility or if we’re able to get past that and, and find those, those growth paths all the way to the c-suite. But a really, really, I think, an interesting thing to reflect on and think through the lens of your organization.
Christian Nielson | 24:12
Alright, I’m gonna jump to the next, next item here. Oops. Let’s see. There we go. This organization has effective methods for receiving and responding to suggestions for change. This is what I, one of our items that I would put in a category that we call employee voice. Does an employee feel heard? And what’s interesting, and Matt, I know you’ve worked with clients where, um, a, a a major, a opportunity area would be around, does this organization care about me? We’ve got a lot of wonderful evidence that employees feel cared for when they feel heard. And so these items around voice are really important. I, you know, one, one of the ways to think about employee engagement is how much of myself can I bring to the role? And if I feel like I don’t have a voice, then I, that feels like I’m bringing less of myself to my work. And so it’s really critical to think through, are we listening? Are we, do we have channels in place? Uh, and also behaviors and values that support listening to our remote employees. I think it’s a, a really important one.
Matt Wride | 25:20
This one made me reflect on, uh, as, as a takeaway, as a suggestion for those on the, on this webinar. Um, I am in no way suggesting that just because something’s hard, we don’t do it. Meaning, and there was a comment in the chat about the importance of recognition, just ’cause it’s more difficult to recognize remote employees doesn’t give us a a a a hall pass to now recognize them. And so one way we do this, one way we help managers understand the importance of treating everyone the same, is we need to rethink our competencies. We do a lot of measurement at the individual level through, through sixties, and we need to think about competencies that begin to talk about behaviors that are pro remote and pro hybrid in the way they work, so that we can start to set the expectation with leaders and upcoming managers and new managers that they are expected to take the time to consider the impact on and rec, like, for example, recognition to make sure that they, they are, as a people, as a leader, they are recognizing everyone and that there’s no gap between what remote employees might feel or non remote employees.
Matt Wride | 26:34
And so that’s a second suggestion is, is, um, begin to revise your leadership competencies in order to start sending the message of that, that we expect remote friendly behaviors, uh, across the organization.
Christian Nielson | 26:54
Yeah. Uh, it’s a, uh, I think a, a very, very important point. And I, I love that you singled it out because it’s something, I don’t think many organizations stopped to pause when we moved everyone remote. Did anyone say, okay, well, what are we now asking our managers to become? And what are we asking? What are those, uh, key behaviors of a manager of remote employees? How do we measure that? How do we train for that? How do we communicate that? Um, it’s amazing how many times we promote someone to a manager without telling them, here’s what being a manager means. And then to go a step further, here’s what being a manager of remote employee means. And there’s, here’s how it’s different. Here are some, some behaviors, and to your point, those can be assessed through 360 feedback and, and other,
Matt Wride | 27:39
And perform and your performance review questions if, especially if you’re using multi-rater. But the key is, is instead of trying to create sameness between remote and hybrid, we need to just start realizing they are different environments. How do we integrate them? Like that to me is the, the, the bigger question integration as opposed to trying to create, uh, equivalents. They’re never gonna be equivalent, but we can do proper integration. That’s fair.
Christian Nielson | 28:09
A really good point. And and you, you also, uh, it got me thinking about, you know, Tracy, our CEO in, in, in his book that introduced the concept of magic. He talks a lot about the 50 50 proposition. So there’s this piece also, what do we own as an organization and also what do we need to communicate to the remote employees as a remote employee? Here’s where we need some proactivity for you to own your piece of this. Yes, it, it, we will work on getting channels and behaviors aligned. We’ll try to align the organization, but we also are gonna need you to step up in a way that you might not have to a, as a, as an in-house employee to be hurt because you’re not on site. We don’t see you a as often, especially if we’re, you know, half the organization’s in house and half are are remote. There, there are some other behaviors in and communication or expectations. And that, by the way, could be also applied to that advancement and growth piece. You know, um, here’s what we can do to grow you, but what can you do to help, you know, proactively own your own career, uh, growth and development.
Matt Wride | 29:09
The, the key is, is we need to teach people like the 50 50 proposition is real, Tracy was, right? But we need as an organization to say, this is what I need as a remote employee. I also need you to, to step up and pull things from the organization. Yeah. I need, you know, and to create those that we talk a lot about competencies for, for managers, but there’s competencies for teams and team managers could set the competencies they expect of their team. Like, how do we interact, Hey, if you feel lost, I need you to step up and ask me to especially, you know, know it’s not an, and I’m not giving anybody a pass by saying, oh, I, I got an open door policy. But that said, if you’re gonna be successful remote, and if you’re gonna go from pure remote all the way to the c-suite, you’re gonna have to be, you’re gonna have to learn to be a really good networker that goes and pulls information from the organization and, and make sure that you’re heard and that you’re standing out. And that’s an individual task, not an organizational task.
Christian Nielson | 30:06
Oh, right. I think well said. Very well said. Um, let’s look at the next one. I could talk about each of these for a long time. Uh, we deliver quality products and services on a consistent basis. I think this goes to some of those earlier comments in the chat about just being removed and, and, and if we’re removed from the customer or the, the end goal of the organization, it really diminishes the sense of meaning around our work. And it also kinda removes our connection to what are we all trying to accomplish, the, the, the collective effort and, and the sense of impact of one’s work impact and meaning, uh, two elements of that magic framework that we, we keep going back to. Uh, but I think remote you, you do, uh, run the risk of being removed from, from that side of the work.
Matt Wride | 30:55
Yeah. And this is, this is probably one of those areas where I would put this as a revised competency for ma leaders of remote people. It takes the time to ensure that they, that helps employees see the, how their work impacts the customer, you know? Yeah. Some statement like that, that we begin to measure, we begin to talk about, because it is up to the manager to help these people, to help their employees see how they’re making an impact. And they can do that, whether they’re in office or working remotely.
Christian Nielson | 31:27
I love that you brought that back to the manager. It reminds me of a, a a, a question that we, a coach, uh, a former consultant here used to always ask, which is what’s obvious to me? To me that’s not obvious to them. And as a manager of remote employees, this is one of those areas that’s, that you could really benefit from. Okay. It’s obvious to me that their work is positively impacting our business or this, this client or this customer. But do they know that? Do I need to connect the dots? Yes. In most cases, if they’re remote
Matt Wride | 31:55
Yeah. I, I see, I see leadership changing a lot. Uh, you’re gonna have to be a great connector. Yeah. You’re gonna have to help your team not be siloed. You’re gonna have to reach out and, and put people together and create collisions that naturally occurred when we were in the same building, but may not. And so you just have to step in and, and be a matchmaker, meaning like that.
Christian Nielson | 32:17
I like that you, I, I feel like you’ve, uh, you’ve given a few things that I would, I would put on a motivational poster. I like the matchmaker concept. If it as a, as a remote ma a manager of remote employees, that, that is such a, a really good, uh, way to, to look at that. Then the last one, and then we’ll get into kind of some tools for remote work here in a bit, but people from other departments willingly cooperate with, with other, or excuse me, with our department. And that, that was, I think, called out initially in the comments from the chat, which is, you know, we don’t have that cross pollination. We, we tend to just kinda gravitate with our immediate team or those that we rely on directly for our work. And there’s less of the, you know, what are they doing over there? How can I help them? Or do they need my help? That type of thing. It, it just kind of makes it, uh, much more difficult. It doesn’t happen. It, it, it, by the way, that’s, that’s tough when we’re all in the same building. Um, and, and, and for an organization, collaboration is usually one of the lowest scoring items. Uh, but our remote ploys, that’s, that’s magnified. They feel it to a, an even greater extent.
Matt Wride | 33:21
Yeah.
Christian Nielson | 33:22
Okay. Let’s jump into, uh, a, a shift here and talk tools for remote work. And I’m gonna ask the group again. I’m going, he heavy on, on crowdsourcing, uh, information from the group is it’s, I think a format we, we prefer for these webinars. What tools have you found helpful for remote employees? Now, I know we’re, we’re using Zoom and, and Teams and some of those, the just the, the video chat, uh, things. But are there other tools that we can all learn from that, um, that have helped with remote work? Uh, feel free to jump drop ’em in the chat. I know there’s other things like Slack and I, I think the pandemic forced our organization to use more of the shared, uh, editable documents. Before we were emailing attachments and things, and now we’re, we’re, we’re using more of the collaborative, you know, open Link documents, so where we can all edit the same thing. So we’re seeing some of that Slack and Asana. Those are certainly in the mix.
Matt Wride | 34:22
I have a follow up question too. While you’re responding, I’d like people to respond if they have too many tools. There’s a little bit of an overload right now. Now we’ve thrown a lot of technology at problems. Are there too many portals to consider, or is it not enough? Maybe the answer is, is we’re not empowering people with enough tools. But I don’t know.
Christian Nielson | 34:40
That’s a great, that’s a great question. I I love that. Uh, virtual rewards and recognition Yeah. Mentioned by Dwayne. That’s, that’s, uh, one of the key challenges. How do you recognize people? Yeah,
Matt Wride | 34:52
The, I think there’s a real place for those. We have company here in the valley next to us, Mo Varsity. I think those virtual reward companies and, and connect recognition platforms are gonna, they’re gonna be vital, I think, in, in creating the connectedness that we need.
Christian Nielson | 35:08
Yeah, I, I agree. We’re,
Matt Wride | 35:09
Here’s one. We did a three day connection week bringing all staff together with some formal meetings. So yeah, this is the idea of planning for the need to create human interaction that I’ve been trying to get at. I really like that where, okay, we accept what we are, how do we create some of those human interactions? That’s great. Smartsheet, yeah. Click up project.
Christian Nielson | 35:30
I don’t, project management got me thinking also because in some ways the pandemic forced greater adherence to some project management. We had to be, be a little bit clearer in, in, in specking things out and, and things like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So glad that was mentioned. Uh, staff week each year. That’s a great idea. You, you can, you can kind of do those supercharged events where we bring people together and, uh, and a lot of times it’s, it’s fun ’cause it’s the first time some employees have met other employees. If you’ve onboarded as a remote employee, that can be especially meaningful run dot coms. Yeah. There’s a lot of wonderful Yeah. Project and productivity tools here. Okay. Well, Matt, we, I I wanted to set add a, a, a spot here for you to kind of introduce something that I, I think is a really wonderful tool that we did kind of as a, as a social experiment, but also just trying to, trying to do something early in the pandemic. But this was your brainchild and I, it, it’s something I personally benefited for, benefited from. So do you wanna talk about our check-in?
Matt Wride | 36:36
Yeah, so this is Yvonne Chenard. He founded Patagonia and he’s, he’s the ultimate remote worker, right? He wanted the freedom here he is to surf, right? And he has the book, let My People Surf, but he’s someone who wanted to enjoy the very things that his organization was about helping others do, whether that’s fishing or climbing or surfing. So he created a, a, a little tool, um, that he actually called the five 15. This is a little bit of the basis of a company called 15 five, but his tool was known as the five 15. And what it was, was designed to be a little 15 minute report from those below him that he could read in five minutes and stay connected. And they sent, they sent this to him every Friday, I think it was. And then he had the opportunity to sort of, and by having some structure, he, he, he realized he could stay connected in a way.
Matt Wride | 37:31
And, and so for us here, we realized, oh, well we know how to do that. That’s, that’s a good use of computers, that’s a good use of technology. And so we just systematized it and rolled out an early version, which we have now updated. And, um, it is in final testing right now, the new update, and we’re gonna launch it here in a couple weeks and you can check back and we will also email anyone on this, uh, webinar. This is not, um, an advertisement for our services because this isn’t, we’re not charging for this, but it’s a, what happens is, is, uh, a weekly report invite goes out to the people on your team and you ask them for their accomplishment, priorities, challenges, and then the learnings and other things that they take away. And so on a mobile phone or a a device, people can sort of input what they have.
Matt Wride | 38:22
And that’s what this, this screenshot shows is it’s showing someone filling out, um, their, their weekly check-in starting with their priorities. Yeah. The, the next, the next shot kind of shows how we group that information. So this is what a manager could see for Magee and can see her accomplishments, her priorities, her challenges, her lessons. Um, you can kind of see the mobile view to the right, what that would look like. Yeah. So this is the desktop view and it’s just a, a really easy way for teams to sort of stay, keep track. And I understand you can do this in through email and you can do this certainly in Slack, you can go back, but this is an actual way for the team to organize their data and to, and when it’s organized, people get a sense of, oh, this is, this is what I plan on working next week, right?
Matt Wride | 39:12
In the priorities, this is what I, how great is that to just quickly be able to glance and see, uh, yep, that person’s aligned to what I want them working on. Um, I think we’ve got a few more, uh, oh yeah. Screenshots here. Um, here, here are our, our our, we can just dig, dive in and see her accomplishments. Um, and then you can see that what, what happened in over the last few weeks. Um, and so it keeps a record. And then our privacy and data policy is we keep this stuff for 60 days and then we flush it. And we don’t wanna store data. We don’t want to be a big brother. We don’t wanna mine it. We don’t wanna sur we don’t wanna surveil our
Christian Nielson | 39:54
Yeah, we don’t advertise to, or it doesn’t go. We love our marketing drip, but it does ongoing. This is not part of that. Yeah. But so,
Matt Wride | 40:01
And the question is, is it fillable? Yeah. It’s, it’s definitely fillable and, and, and people can kind of, and it’s just this really very, very simple lightweight tool, but it’s almost so lightweight that it works. And that’s the goal of it.
Christian Nielson | 40:14
I I have to, uh, you just kind of do a personal plug on this. I used this with my team and it was, it, it, the, the, uh, early version of it. And it was fantastic. Uh, I didn’t have to worry about it as a manager. I set it up, decided on when I wanted to go out, and every week my team got a quick prompt. It was not super cumbersome for them, but I got the data I needed. It really improved my one-on-ones. Uh, because prior to every one-on-one, I just do a quick review. I knew exactly what we needed to talk about and it was, it was a better use of their time and my time. I didn’t have to, I I, I, as soon as I got away from using it, I, I call it manager amnesia, where every, every one on one I’m like, okay, what did we talk about last time? And, you know, so it’s, it’s a really powerful, and I, like, we tried to err on the side of simplicity here. We don’t always do that. Um, but it’s, it’s really
Matt Wride | 41:06
Useful. This will be accessible in two weeks and we’ll send out an email and then it’s free and you can share the link with others and you can maybe do a pilot group in your organization just to make sure it works. Uh, we’re not selling this and that’s our commitment, or we’re not really about doing anything. This is just how you set up your email invitations when you want ’em to go out. And it’s just a, a, a way to let computers do something really great for you, which is manage the structure, manage the flow of data, but let the people actually respond. So, kind of excited about it, glad we had a chance to revamp it and we hope that it will be a tool that some, that someday will pop up on that list when we asked about tools that help remote work. So thanks for letting us do that. But I feel Okay. ’cause it’s not really a plug. We <laugh> just want you to use it.
Christian Nielson | 41:54
Yeah. We, we try not to be super salesy in these, so this is, this is just more something we’re proud of and, and think can help. So, uh, please use it. Um, we’ll get, we’ll get the word out, uh, as soon as it’s, it’s, uh, gone through our qa. We don’t want a QA on on you. We want <laugh>. We don’t want you to be our testers. We’ll, we’ll make sure it works perfectly before it comes out, but, alright, let’s talk trade offs. Um, collisions, conflict accidents and eavesdropping. We, we kind of put this together and, and this was interesting ’cause Matt and I were talking, uh, last week, I think it was when at about this webinar and just kind of organizing our thoughts. And while we were talking, a colleague walked by the office and just heard what we were talking about. And he stopped and said, Hey, what about empathy?
Christian Nielson | 42:42
And, and he’s like, when I work for remotely, one of the things I miss is that I don’t get to come in and, and when we’re dealing with a challenge, it’s so nice that people understand what I’ve been through and I can talk to someone. And so there’s, there, his point was sound and we liked that, but what stood out to Matt and I is this colleague of ours was just walking by our office and heard us. And so he stopped and talked because it was interesting. And that’s much more difficult to do with a remote, uh, in, in a remote setting. So we don’t have, I, and so I put eavesdrop, I should have maybe put benevolent eavesdropping, but I, it was, I meant more you overhear a challenge that you might have something to offer something towards. Um, and, and those collisions, healthy conflict accidents, uh, just just how many things did we discover by accident that could be beneficial? Um, that those things are sometimes more difficult to have happen organically when we’re, we’re working remote. I don’t know if you’d add anything. Yeah,
Matt Wride | 43:42
I’m a, the one that’s most interesting to me, and I’ve, I’ve actually done a little tried to research this is the impact on, um, the pandemic on on healthy conflict. And what, what I mean by this statement, healthy conflict is the ability to challenge each other’s thinking in an appropriate way, in a respectful way. You know, we’re not talking about personal attacks or anything, but there is a benefit to challenging each other’s ideas. And I think it’s hard to do conflict, um, remote because if more than 50% of communication’s non-verbal, I think when you’re trying to pick up those cues, I think it’s really easy, for example, to give praise and do some other things remote. But I think this is one area that’s difficult. I highlight it because I don’t think we’ve got it figured out yet. But I do think managers need to start thinking about how do they create the ability for people to challenge thoughts and ideas and to do so in a way that makes sense.
Matt Wride | 44:41
So I just, I don’t, I don’t have a solution. I’m sorry for that. But I think that’s the point is we’ve gotta start highlighting again this notion of how do we integrate remote workers? And one of the things we want to integrate is the ability to challenge ideas appropriately and do so in a way that that matches our evolutionary biology, right? We’re wired to pick up on nonverbal cues. What are we gonna do about that? You know? Yeah. So just, just that one’s kind of interesting to me. And then I, I really like collisions ’cause you just run into people in the break room and you learn about someone that does something different than you. Those are important.
Christian Nielson | 45:19
Yeah. I, I agree completely. And, and you know, it also, I think we kind of put this slide here ’cause we wanted to talk about trade-offs, but also, you know, as you’re considering remote work policies and different teams, you know, think through what the nature of that work is and how important are these elements and does it, does it mandate, you know, maybe at least some a hybrid option so that we, we don’t give, you know, we can spare people their awful commute occasionally, but we, we bring them in the office periodically so that we have some of this happening. And so it’s, I think, an important part of the conversation. Yeah,
Matt Wride | 45:55
I love this. Uh, there was an email etiquette training suggestion. Um, and that’s, that’s right because if we’re gonna handle conflict properly with, with remote hybrid workers, we, we probably have to set the expectation. Again, this is about transparency. How do we set the expectations that we engage in conflict? How do we want that to look like for a team? This is no longer trying to replicate and create the remote world again, just like the the in office world. It’s how do we make it work? And I just thought that was a great suggestion. You know, I’m a big fan of of of hybrid though. Yeah. Because of the abil You get both. I think so
Christian Nielson | 46:33
I now out of out of curiosity and attend and dresses, uh, come on on what, what happens on Wednesdays, uh, on Monday and Friday in the office Tuesday and Thursday at home. Uh, but no, that, that’s, that, that, yeah, we’ve got a lot of employees that are on, on kind of that hybrid and I think that the, the trade offs and the balance there has been working for us. I think there’s a few areas we want to make some adjustments here and there, but with the hybrid it’s, we’ve been able to get the best of <laugh>, the best of both worlds. Sorry, I didn’t mean to audit your, your week there and Jessica, but, um, I think hybrid is going to, will, will continue to see that, um, for a long time that it, we’ve proven that remote work is, is doable and we can be productive and, and some things lend, lends themselves very well, but I think that the hybrid is, uh, what we’ll start to see more and more on.
Matt Wride | 47:27
And just one last point before we go in. You, you and I have been working along with our colleague Dave Long on the, the three types of managers, workforce managers team first managers, and me first managers, me first managers, we know what that is. Team first managers actually appear to be virtuous. They protect their team. They appear to be doing what you want leaders to do. But it, it’s actually counter to what we want. We want org first managers. Uh, doesn’t mean they’re not people centric, it doesn’t mean they don’t advocate for the people, but they look to move the organization forward, hand in hand with those that they lead. And I think this is the org first catching the vision of this will be how will solve this, this remote conundrum is partnering with our employees and say, how do we move the organization forward and do so remotely? Like how do we contribute? Like instead of framing the question of how do we make this better for employees of the, maybe we reframe it and say, how do employees and managers come together to make the organization more effective? And they can do so through a remote environment.
Christian Nielson | 48:28
Mm-Hmm. I really great point. Uh, I put this concept down here just for a, a conversation point, but this kind, this concept of earned versus granted remote. Um, because I do think there’s a difference in when an employee has proven themselves, you know, the quality of their work, accountability and also, um, uh, that they have the network and a reputation internally that people trust their work. That that’s very different than hiring someone completely remote. And now obviously the different functions and responsibilities, the example, and I’m, and I’m, I’m certainly biased by my own experience, but I remember I worked for one of the big four in the consulting side, and at first they said, you’ve gotta work, be centered out of a major office. Uh, but once I’d worked there for a number of years, they said, okay, we we’re comfortable with the quality of your work, your reputation, live wherever you want.
Christian Nielson | 49:24
And so I I, I moved back to where it made a little more sense for me. Um, and, but I just thought it was an interesting thing. Sometimes we just give people, yeah, you’re remote. Um, and there’s other cases where people have proven themselves and we’re, we’re comfortable with the quality of work and also we’re comfortable with what they want out of growth and advancement. Maybe they’re saying, I’m thrilled being a, a subject matter expert and, and I am, I’m comfortable doing my work. Uh, this way. I I have enough of a network and connection throughout the organization that I can, I can be productive and effective. Um, and, and there’s, there’s just a different lens there in terms of earned versus granted remoteness. Um, and, and I’m sure there’s a better way to articulate that, but
Matt Wride | 50:06
Well this is part of thinking through these pathways, right? Figuring out when does it make sense for someone to be remote? When did they need to sort of, uh, maybe pivot and have some more in-office time as they prepare to lead people, right? There’s a natural transition from doing, being a super doer to leading through people. And you need to be people focused as you move up your, your leadership ladder. And so are we planning around that and making sure the opportunities match people’s growth, um, as they move up?
Christian Nielson | 50:37
Yeah, Michelle has a good point there. But it looks like if someone’s maybe floundering in a remote, uh, arrangement, they bring ’em back in, uh, around focus issues.
Matt Wride | 50:47
I wanted to, I wanted to respond to Aisha above that. She said, what’s, or, or this person said, what is the office balance between two days offsite or three days? And the answer is, we can’t answer that until you guys, until you all start tracking and get those demographics. As we said, please add demographics to your surveys so that we can get a better sense of that and have, and, and come back to you and solve that problem. But we’re a little bit limited by what our clients are tracking.
Christian Nielson | 51:14
Yeah. And it depends on the, the, the nature of the work and things, but tracking is key. What, you know, what, what, uh, arrangements do you have in place and what is it leading to? What experience are you cre you creating with that? And is it leading to business results or is it leading to turnover? And is it leading to, you know, what, what’s, what’s the, the trade off there? And so there’s some level of experimentation, there’s some, but tracking is gonna be key across the board. In fact, that’s Aisha that’s a really great, uh, transition into some takeaways here. Um, a you know, as, as we start to, and we could add to this list, I, there’s been a lot of wisdom dropped in that chat and we appreciate, we appreciate that and that’s what these sessions are really all about. Just, uh, sharing our collective understanding of on a topic, but transparency and clar and clarity are key.
Christian Nielson | 52:01
Uh, I, I think, you know, Matt, one of the things we didn’t, we haven’t brought up as much. Is one of the biggest tricks or challenges with remote work is inconsistency. If one team can be remote and one team can’t, or one team can be remote a hundred percent and one has to come in two days a week, suddenly there’s the, the this feeling of less than, and, and it, it can cause some real challenges. And so there are real reasons to do that. But just be clear on that and be very transparent. Here’s why we have a remote policy. Here’s what that remote policy is and here’s what happens if we, we violate that and, and, and why we have certain rules and things and why, especially if one rule differs across the team that has, um, that that is something you wanna be really clear on.
Christian Nielson | 52:46
Uh, know your demographics and track them. Uh, we are a bit of a broken record here, but this is the world we live in. If you can’t track it or if you, if you’re not giving those to us, when we measure your employee feedback, we can’t parse that out and give you, uh, the story of your remote employees. And so the, the more granular you can be in terms of hybrid, um, and, and even even there, hybrid two, two and three, three and uh, two, uh, one and four, four and one, whatever the combo, whatever you can track that’s gonna add to the, the, the value of the data we get from employee feedback. Um, no, uh, let’s say pulse perceptions routinely. Um, if you got remote work and we’re, we’re trying to really get a feel, you don’t, don’t drop a a 200 question survey on them every day, but periodically go back with a shorter survey to understand a net promoter score is a really great one. Employee net promoter. Would you recommend this organization is a great place to work just to kind of have a, a high level monitoring, but ask some remote work, uh, pulsing, um, periodically so that you have a close.
Matt Wride | 53:50
Yeah. And the one, and the one I would ask in addition to is, do I feel like I belong here? I would pair net promoter with, I feel like I belong here. ’cause it can get a lot of sense on belonging to power question, right? It, it punches above its weight.
Christian Nielson | 54:05
Russ Russell has a really good question around entitlement. Uh, this is a fascinating one and, and, and in my mind, remote work and, and I’m sorry, I know we’re, we’re getting close on time, but I love this, this topic, remote work kind of fi finds its way into the sense the same way we measure any perk. Anytime you give a perk to an employee population, very difficult to take it back. It, even if they don’t use that perk. And the example that I have is, we had clients that have, um, gyms in their, their office building and we had one client that had a gym that only like less than 2% of their population was using. Um, and so we, they, they took, they looked at that gym and they said, okay, we’re gonna reallocate that space for some other purpose. And the people that were going to the gym consistently were gonna give a gym pass to, or they’d made some other tion.
Christian Nielson | 54:54
So the people that were actually using the gym, they, they, they made it up to them, but even though l less than 2% of their population, when the second that gym went away, it was a perceived loss across the employee population. Everyone threw up their hands. They were, they, they felt like something was taken from them even though they never u went in there. And, and remote work is, is kind of seen with that, that it’s held onto that same way. Once you introduce a perk, people uh, will now protect it. They, they see it as the status quo and, and if you threaten it or take it away, it’s a perceived loss. And, and that sense of entitlement, I think communication is, is clear around it. But I don’t have a a, a really great answer on it other than at some point if, if it is a, a strategic decision to take away some aspect of remote work, just know you’re gonna see a decline in employee favorable responses on, on a survey. You might see a decrease in engagement, but it’s gonna be short term. They’ll get over it eventually. The the real challenge though is going to be the competitive landscape. Do all of your competitors offer those perks? Can they easily go get those elsewhere? So you, you have to think it through in terms of how attractive you are for talent. Um, and, and if it’ll cause a mass migration, those types of things. But, uh, those perks, uh, and remote work is no different, um, that people will defend.
Matt Wride | 56:13
You know, I think, I think the pandemic caused a surge in it and it’s, and it has taken on this sense of an entitlement or perk. I agree with you Christian, but as leaders, we need to realize it’s really a staffing question and we need to use that in all ways. Like, we don’t often track commute links, but in the time before covid commute link was a highly correlated to engagement. Meaning long commutes meant unhappy employees. Well, staffing is that, and there was somebody, and Andreas had just put in there that says, Hey, maybe their home day’s a Friday when traffic’s terrible or something like that. We need to think about remote as a staffing decision and as an org first decision, not just let me present you this and this, this is a title in or this is a benefit of this position. It needs to be a win for both the organization and the individual. And I think we need to start moving our discussions and the way we think about remote work into a staffing and, and issue of like how do we, you know, make the best place for our people to work and less of a, this is something, this is like a privilege.
Christian Nielson | 57:20
Well said Matt. Well said. Um, leverage tools to close gaps. Uh, some really great ones were thrown out here. Uh, another plug for manager check-in. Please use that when it comes available. We, we, we love seeing that. Adding value, reassess manager competencies for managing remote employees. We talked about that as well. Covered a lot of ground today. Had some real really wonderful comments in, in the chat. Remote work is here to stay. Uh, I think we’ll see different flavors of that, uh, uh, kind of emerge as as, um, in, in popularity and things. I think hybrid is gonna be more the thing, but also I think we’ll see more of the trade-offs come to the forefront in terms of what we give up, what we lose with remote work. Um, and as always, we’re going to be improving the way we, we measure the, this aspect of the employee experience and try to give leaders better data just so they can make better decisions. There’s not one clear right answer that we could apply across every organization. And so it’s, it’s very important to measure, understand, modify, and adjust your program and, and, and look for better results.
Matt Wride | 58:28
Alright.
Christian Nielson | 58:29
Alright. Uh, we do have items, uh, in our, our assessments around remote work. And actually we’re also beefing up those competencies for our 360, uh, for managers of remote teams. So certainly part of our, our, um, our approach and strategy and happy to, to chat more about that offline. But I wanna thank Matt and, and everyone for attending and especially for your, your engagement in the chat and in this conversation. It really adds a lot more to, to these sessions. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> for sure. So I’ll look for another one next month and look for that manager checking tool, uh, to come out very soon. Uh, thank you everybody. Appreciate your time today. Thanks.
Matt Wride | 59:04
Bye.
