It's predicted by 2027, 50% of the US workforce will be working remotely. With fast-growing companies like Shopify now having over half of their employees working remotely, remote work is on
We talk to Liam Martin, Co-Founder of TimeDoctor, and the Running Remote conference. We catch up with Liam to talk:
- Why Running Remote isn't a virtual conference and the importance of remote companies having retreats where employees can get some face to face time.
- How a lot of remote-first companies are structuring their departments using 'siloing' and if that's the best way to organize remote teams.
- The issue of loneliness in remote work and if this is something that employees or employers are responsible for solving.
Happy Growing!
Time Stamped Notes
[2:45] - Liam talks about the fact he has done 409 podcast interviews in 2019 and is aiming to do 500 by the end of the year.
[3:30] - Liam's first business was a remote company; it was an online tutoring company. From that business, he started TimeDoctor that has 100 remote employees across 32 countries. The average worker who goes remote is 40% more productive. Liam is passionate about helping companies go remote.
[5:15] - Liam's conference about remote work is called 'Running Remote'. It isn't an online conference. Liam thinks of the conference as a company retreat where the most beneficial part of it is networking.
[8:00] - Liam recommends remote companies have at least one company retreat where all employees attend, and another that's for each department, e.g., marketing, customer success, etc. Remote work is still so new, there aren't any well defined best practices for it.
[10:20] - The primary attendees of Running Remote are HR departments and remote first founders.
[11:30] - One of the topics attendees at Running Remote are interested in is how to communicate with people across timezones. Twist is an example of a messaging tool that will inform you if you're sending messages to people outside of their working hours.
[12:30] - Shopify hired over 2000 remote support reps in under three years. Over half of their company is now remote.
[15:30] - We talk about time zones and if teams need to be in the same time zone to build an efficient business. Liam does siloing, which means each department is in the same time zone. For example, the entire engineering department would be in the EMEA timezone, marketing on a different timezone, and so on.
[19:15] - Joel Gascoigne, the co-founder of Buffer, won't allow anyone to work in the same city as him, Boulder, Colorado, because he doesn't want his employees to feel like those who live near him and can meet him in person would have a more prominent voice than everyone else.
[22:20] - We talk about the problem of loneliness in remote work. From studies Liam has done, retention for remote employees who leans towards being more introvert is higher than extroverts. Liam feels like the responsibility to solve those feelings of loneliness lie with the employee.
[27:15] - We debate the advantages and disadvantages of remote work for both introverts and extroverts. Liam gives some examples of people who may never have been hired in on-premise companies but will thrive at remote-first companies.
[30:30] - We talk about career progression for remote employees and the impact of not having to deal with office politics. For a lot of remote companies, they're able to measure the impact of employees by the work they do vs. how good they are at playing office politics.
[33:35] - Liam's company TimeDoctor has several features that track the performance of remote employees. We discuss if some of these features help reinforce the negative stereotypes around remote work. Liam's tool provides those features as some companies need them to create a remote work policy they feel good about.
It's projected that by 2027, 50% of the US workforce will be working remotely.
[38:45] - Liam rewards his sales team by ARR closed per hour. Instead of looking at the total ARR closed to calculate bonuses, they instead look at how much ARR is closed per hour.
[42:20] - Based on Liam's data, the average workweek should be 26 hours and 32 minutes.
– Liam on LinkedIn / Twitter
– Kieran on Twitter / LinkedIn / Medium
– Scott on Twitter / Linked / Medium
Topics: Podcast, Founder, Remote Work
