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Distributed Work Isn’t Anything New, But Its Tools Have Evolved Significantly

people walking out of an office

This article originally appeared on Fast Company.

Distributed work arrangements are far from new territory; large companies have enabled their teams to work across offices or service clients around the globe for decades. 

The difference now is that companies of all sizes can unlock the benefits of a remote or hybrid workforce. And we have more proof than ever that distributed teams can be just as productive as (and even happier than) office-bound workers—if given the support they need. 

Workplace tools are a vital component of enabling effective hybrid or remote work. Our tools have evolved significantly over the past decades, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of how they will advance further to address our modern workforce needs. 

Let’s look back at where we’ve come from with workplace tech and examine what’s needed to enable our hybrid or remote teams to thrive in the future.

A Brief History of Workplace Technologies

Sparing an exhaustive review of how workplace technology has changed over time, a few landmark technological breakthroughs have helped us get where we are today. 

It may come as a surprise, but the foundations of remote workplace tools were laid decades ago (primarily in the 1970s and 1980s). In my early career as a trader at the American Stock Exchange and later as President and CFO of Shutterstock, all we needed was a phone, computer, and email to collaborate across the country. 

The following innovations in particular have been monumental in enabling us to conduct work from anywhere:

  • Telephone: Telephone systems have existed for more than a century. They became common for business use in the 1920s and got a significant lift in the 1970s with features like voicemail and call forwarding.
  • Email: The first email was sent in 1971, and in the 1980s, IBM integrated email into its office automation suite, PROFs. 
  • Home and personal computers: Personal computers became available in 1977 and quickly spread as they got smaller (the first laptop came out in 1981) and more affordable. That award-winning Apple 1984 commercial helped, too.
  • Fax machines: In the 1980s, the fax machine enabled us to send documents without relying on the postal service. Eventually, email would allow attachments, limiting the need for fax machines.
  • In-app messaging: Chat rooms existed as far back as the 1980s. AOL Instant Messenger became popular for business and personal use in 1997 (and lasted until December 2017). Now, messaging features are commonplace in our collaboration tools.
  • BlackBerry: The BlackBerry launched in 1997 and was one of the first personal devices that combined phone, email, and web access capabilities. Smartphones are now ubiquitous (and most knowledge work can even be completed with a smartphone).
  • Workplace technology suites: Microsoft Office 97 was an early workplace technology suite that introduced Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Today’s businesses frequently purchase technology packages or suites that give them everything they need (usually at a discounted price for their loyalty).
  • Video conferencing: People recognize Skype for revolutionizing video conferencing and making international communication seamless with its launch in 2003. Today, there are dozens of video conferencing tools available.

Each of the above tools still exists today, albeit with significantly different looks and expanded capabilities. And each of them has been critical in allowing teams to collaborate worldwide.

As we look forward to the future of work, we can expect these tools to come together in even more impressive ways to drive fully integrated and intuitive workplace experiences.

The Next Technological Revolution: Digital Workplaces

Virtual workspaces and enterprise collaboration tools are essential for the next phase of workplace transformation. In a hybrid and remote world, the virtual experience should be a priority, and digital or virtual workspaces can serve as a supercharged version of our physical offices. These should combine our tried-and-true technologies to connect employees with everything they need, from crucial files and information to avenues for collaboration and tools that enable their day-to-day work.

Forrester asserts that personalization is a digital workplace requirement, meaning that employees should have individualized workspaces with customizable interfaces that deliver content, apps, and notifications in targeted ways. Company leaders should actively listen to their employees and explore innovative solutions to improve their digital experience and help them engage with colleagues around the world.

IMPROVING YOUR TEAM’S DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

As a fully remote company, we’ve understood the importance of creating a positive digital employee experience from the start. We give each of our employees the ability to personalize and optimize their digital workspace, starting with:

  • The choice of a PC or Mac computer, a second monitor if they want one, and any peripherals that will improve their daily work experience
  • Excellent whiteboard software we’ve developed where colleagues can collaborate with each other over time, asynchronously, or in real-time
  • A meeting culture that encourages live voice and screen sharing, saving being on camera for when it makes the most impact instead of an every-meeting expectation
  • Regular requests for feedback (direct and anonymous) with an expectation people share what is and isn’t working for them

If you are looking for some easy wins to improve your employee digital experience, I suggest you start with a stipend for upgrading employees’ home offices, including updating equipment and furnishings. 

Of course, workplace tools can only get you so far. Teams should also develop a digital skills roadmap that guides their technology strategy and helps employees stay resilient as tech stacks change. Investing in team offsites that allow distributed team members to get to know each other can also go a long way to improve hybrid workplace environments.

By combining modern workplace tools with human-focused policies that help employees overcome the natural hurdles of distributed work, companies can reach heights they never could have imagined. 

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6 Tips for More Effective Virtual Training

Virtual training has become essential in the new age of work, and it comes with benefits!

Virtual training sessions are less costly than renting out a venue and catering a meal for hundreds of trainees, meaning you can allocate that budget elsewhere. And because you can record a virtual training session, you can repurpose its content to provide lasting value. Further, people with accessibility needs can join virtual training sessions more easily from wherever works best for them.

Given this incredible potential, companies should ditch their old new-hire process and build a modern training strategy to reflect the needs of remote and hybrid work. 

How To Host Successful Virtual Training Sessions

Effective virtual training offers many of the same elements of in-person training—small group exercises, Q&A, and hand-outs—while using the digital environment to its fullest potential.

As you restructure your new hire training, consider these best practices for hosting virtual training sessions:

  • Include Breaks Between Training Sessions: Employees need a mental break between training sessions. Breaks also allow them to grab a snack or use the restroom. Ideally, you should provide at least one 5-10 minute break per hour to achieve optimal retention.
  • Provide Engaging Content: Trainees are most focused when given visually engaging presentations and opportunities to interact with the training content. When creating your training slides, include brief details on slides and use bullet points when possible. Further, you should continually outline the processes you are working through and create opportunities for new hires to analyze and think critically about what they are learning. 
  • Recap Material Twice Daily: At the end of a training day, summarize key points and ask team members what concepts stood out. Host a similar conversation the following day and ask if there are questions that trainees may not have realized they had when you initially covered the material. 
  • Vary Your Training Structure: Your training content should be as easily accessible as possible, whether it’s a presentation, video, or hands-on project. Experiment with each training structure and switch up your style across training sessions to keep the content engaging.
  • Ask Employees How They Like to Learn: Employees have different learning styles and may prefer to consume your training content in specific ways. Ask employees about their training experience and how they prefer to learn. Consider catering your training to individual needs and creating resources that repurpose the content for different formats.
  • Create Spaces to Connect: Whenever possible, enable trainees to collaborate during the training. Onboarding is a valuable opportunity for them to get to know each other and build a meaningful connection. 

Virtual Training Is Essential For A Fulfilling Employee Onboarding

Regularly seek feedback about your company’s training and ask employees how you can improve their training experience. By experimenting with different training structures and repurposing your content for new formats, you can appeal to the range of different learning styles within your company.

One of the most common times you train employees is during their new employee onboarding, which can make or break your new hire’s future with your company. Don’t worry: we’re here to help. Download our virtual onboarding ebook for a complete walkthrough of how to deliver a fulfilling virtual onboarding experience, including how to develop a virtual onboarding plan and strategies for engaging new hires. 

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6 Virtual and Remote Training Tips and Tools to Improve Your Workflows

A recent analysis of over 96 studies revealed that virtual learning can be up to 19% more effective than traditional, in-person learning. Not only can virtual learning be more effective and accessible to more people, given its nature, but virtual training, when done right, is an easy way to learn a great deal. 

If your organization is taking the leap into remote training or virtual onboarding, there is much to consider: 

  • What platform should you host sessions on? 
  • How often should sessions be scheduled? 
  • How do you keep attendees engaged? 

Below, we explore how to host successful virtual training sessions from anywhere, and technology and software outside of traditional meeting or conferencing software that will elevate the experience for you and your trainees. 

How to Host Exceptional Virtual Training Sessions

  1. Have a clear learning objective you want attendees to take away
    1. One of the best things you can do for your trainees is provide them with clear guidelines that articulate precisely what you want them to take away from training sessions. Doing this will help both you and your trainees understand where their goals should lie, and you can point back to these objectives throughout the training so they can self-assess their progress. 
  2. Chose different ways to engage attendees throughout the session
    1. Some people love to raise their virtual hand and participate in discussions, while others are more keen to stay behind the comfort of the chat box and participate from there. Regardless of how different attendees like to engage, it is crucial to attempt to engage all participants in multiple ways so that each member has a chance to shine and participate in a way that works for them. When posing questions to the group, switch back and forth between asking for answers in the chat, coming off of mute and answering a question, or using polls and other meeting functionality to encourage participation. Incorporating easy-to-use games like Kahoot! makes checking comprehension and participation more fun for everyone involved. 
  3. Take breaks often
    1. At this point, we’re all familiar with “Zoom Fatigue” and its ever-present strain on remote work and education, but that doesn’t mean dealing with it has gotten any easier! It is still as important as ever to factor in breaks, especially if you want to ensure trainees retain as much information as possible from your sessions. The cognitive load of video calls is significantly higher than other forms of learning and communication, making breaks to stretch, walk around, and look at things other than your screen exceptionally important! Our rule of thumb is to factor in a five-minute break for every 30 minutes of content. If you are delivering a longer content block, consider slotting in breaks of 15 minutes or more between sessions. 

The 3 best tools for virtual training engagement 

  1. Virtual Whiteboard
    1. Whether you are leading a brainstorming session or want to build connections between different ideas, a virtual whiteboard is a great way to help make connections among learners, and encourage participation across the group. Products like Miro are great collaborative options that you can often install directly into your chosen video conferencing software. 
  2. Multiple Screen Sharing Software
    1. If you want to ensure everyone follows your instructions or guide them through a complicated situation, employ a multiple-user screen-sharing software. Sharing multiple screens at once can give you a similar experience as walking around a classroom to ensure everyone is on the same page. Additionally, this allows learners to show they are paying attention without turning on their camera feed—thus providing a reprieve from worrying about how they appear on camera while giving training leaders the ability to verify everyone is engaged with the lesson. MultiShare is an excellent option for unlocking this capability and can be installed directly into Microsoft Teams calls to allow up to 15 users to simultaneously share their screens at once. 
  3. Quiz Software
    1. An engaging quiz platform is essential to the virtual training environment! Platforms such as Quizlet are great for creating flashcards for trainees to utilize or short quizzes to check comprehension, and it’s easily accessible with a widely-used free version. It’s a user-friendly option for training leaders to design study or supplemental materials for your courses and for learners to build their own quizzes to enhance their information retention. 

Training and onboarding are challenging in any format, and virtual training is a unique problem deserving of a unique approach. If you want more resources to host virtual onboarding sessions, explore our Virtual Onboarding Handbook. The guide is packed full of new ideas and proven strategies to make training and onboarding as smooth as possible. And when you need that collaborative spark back in your virtual training sessions, MultiShare is just what you need to bring the classroom feeling to the virtual world.

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The Future of Work Begins Now—Here’s Who’s Designing It

By now you’ve probably heard this a thousand times: hybrid work is here to stay. People love their remote and hybrid jobs, and everyone has come to the general consensus that workplace flexibility is not something that people will easily forgo. As companies and workers alike look to the future, it’s helpful to keep an eye on the biggest change-makers in the industry. Here’s a look at our team’s round up of the people and organizations to watch as we navigate the ever-changing future of work. 

Nicholas Bloom

Bloom, a Stanford Economics professor, is the foremost expert on remote work and remote work trends, authoring some of the most insightful research on the subject to come out in the last decade. In 2017, when only 8% of the U.S. worked from home, Bloom gave a talk about his research and how leaning into work from home could change the world. Now in 2023, he’s become a key advisor to many Fortune 100 companies, and definitely someone everyone interested in the remote work revolution should keep their eye on.

Katie Burke

As Chief People Officer at Hubspot, Katie Burke has shaped the company’s post-pandemic approach to business and has even shifted how they pay their employees. Compensation at Hubspot is now based on one anchor city per country; for example, New York City is the anchor for U.S. based employees, so no matter where U.S. Hubspot employees find themselves, they are being paid fairly. With this move, Hubspot is leading the way as many other organizations look to become both more equitable and attract top talent—no matter where they are in the world. 

Canva

Canva is an approachable graphic design platform that is changing the way people create and collaborate on visual content. With a user-friendly interface and extensive library of design templates, Canva is empowering individuals and teams to create professional-quality designs without the need for specialized skills or software. This democratization of graphic design is helping to break down barriers to entry for those interested in design and enable more creativity in the workplace across various industries. Furthermore, Canva’s cloud-based platform allows for seamless collaboration and sharing of designs across teams. Canva is playing a key role in enabling remote collaboration, they even bolster a large roster of entirely remote employees around the world.

Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran, the founder of NextMapping, is a recognized expert in the future of work and its surrounding thought leadership. She has been at the forefront of the conversations surrounding the future of work, providing insights and guidance to organizations worldwide. Cheryl’s vision for the future of work is one of innovation and human-centeredness, where organizations are able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and leverage the latest technology to achieve their goals. As an acclaimed author of 10 books and an inspiring keynote speaker on the topics of remote and hybrid work, Cran is a visionary thought leader in the future of work. Her insights and expertise have been featured in top-tier publications including Fast Company, Huffington Post, and Forbes as she works to shape the future of work by empowering individuals and organizations to embrace change and create success regardless of their industry.

Frameable

Frameable has brought a new perspective to what it means to collaborate remotely. Developing sleek and easy to use tools for elevating day to day meetings, productivity, and even large-scale virtual events, has positioned them to become a stand out in the remote work space. Their flagship product, Spaces, gives teams a virtual office that is straightforward and easy to use. And for organizations that already use Microsoft Teams, they even offer a built-in application specifically for Teams users to make work more streamlined and collaboration seamless no matter where coworkers are located. 

If you’re looking to take your remote team to the next level, see how Spaces can improve your team’s connectivity and productivity–no matter where they are. Schedule a demo to learn more.

Front

Front provides a shared inbox platform for teams to manage their emails, social media messages, and other communication channels in one place. Its platform offers features like email templates, message assignments, and automated workflows to help teams work together more efficiently and effectively no matter where they are. On top of this comes integrations with top technologies already in use by many, like Slack. By simplifying and automating many repetitive tasks that come with day-to-day work, Front is positioned to keep changing how we work.

Chris Heard

CEO of Firstbase, Heard founded the company that is now changing the way organizations handle the hardware needs of their remote workforce. By giving teams access to the physical items they need to get their jobs done and keeping track of everything in the cloud, Firstbase is making it easier and more efficient for companies to take advantage of going remote. Follow him on LinkedIn where he regularly discusses the future of work and shares conversations from his podcast Against the Herd.

Hive

Hive is a new platform for managing both projects and teams. It offers a centralized workspace where team members can collaborate, track their tasks, and communicate with each other. Hive’s big differentiator is its ability to integrate with other tools that teams often use, such as Google Drive, Salesforce, and GitHub.Its user-friendly interface and powerful features make it a popular choice among teams of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. 

Notion

Notion is the productivity and project management app taking the world by storm. From solo-entrepreneurs to full teams, Notion’s user base has quickly grown and it’s easy to see why: Notion is approachable. Whether a team needs to plan and scope a large project, or a young adult finds themselves needing to create a budget, Notion is straightforward and customizable to users’ needs. This all in one powerhouse that can be a CRM, calendar, note taker, and even an Excel competitor is definitely one to pay attention to. 

Okta

Okta provides identity and access management solutions. With a cloud-based platform, it allows organizations to securely manage and authenticate users’ identities across different applications and devices. Okta’s platform is highly scalable, allowing businesses to easily integrate it into their existing infrastructure. As remote, hybrid, and work-from-anywhere models continue to grow, the need for secure and efficient identity management solutions is definitely not going anywhere.Their continued expansion of capabilities has positioned them to become a new leader in the industry.

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19 Tips for a Successful Sales Kickoff (SKO)

Make your next  SKO a success

Whether you are kicking off a new fiscal year or a new quarter, it’s imperative that you set the right tone for your team. An effective sales kick-off can make all the difference for maximizing your team’s energy, effort, and optimism when it comes to the upcoming season. 

Starting off on a positive note is crucial. But how do you do so without sounding cheesy and disingenuous? Doing this effectively requires setting both reasonable first milestones and not starting off on a negative note or creating an association of fear with the project or quarter. 

However, this doesn’t mean you have to avoid talking about gaps or areas for improvement entirely. Just be sure to round out any mentions of potential blockers by talking about how you will help alleviate them and ways that leadership can support your team. You want your team to leave the sales kickoff feeling invigorated!

The Essential Hybrid or Remote Sales Kickoff (SKO) Checklist

Our diverse team of experienced remote work professionals compiled a checklist of the best steps to take (and the order in which to take them) to make sure your remote or hybrid team’s project, quarter, or yearly SKO is a great success!

Enable Your Hybrid SKO’s Success with the Right Technologies

Of course, every team is different, and no checklist is one size fits all. But incorporating many or all of the above steps will ensure your kickoff is enjoyable, memorable, and tee’s up your next chapter on a good note.

Whenever and wherever your team works, Frameable has all the tools you need to make your next kickoff customized, fun, and functional. To discover how you can bring this same excitement to the way you work, learn more about Frameable Spaces for Teams and book a demo to get started.

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10 Games and Icebreaker Activities to Engage Virtual Meeting Attendees

There was significant uncertainty during most of 2020 about how long employees would need to work from home, with many people anxiously awaiting their return to the office. A year into the pandemic with vaccinations on the rise, workers hope to keep these flexible working arrangements, ushering in the era of hybrid work.

As we navigate this transition, companies will increasingly focus on combining the in-person and remote working experiences and improving the remote work employee experience. Notably, loneliness is one of the top three challenges for remote workers, meaning there is an opportunity for companies to connect their teams and build genuine and fulfilling work relationships. 

Online Team-building Games and Activities for Virtual Meetings

There is no single way for companies to effectively address the range of concerns for employees associated with returning to office work. However, an excellent place to start is to assess how your team can build and reinforce a positive culture in both physical and digital environments. 

Consider implementing these simple team-building games and activities at the start of your video conferencing calls to strengthen your team dynamic and lessen feelings of loneliness for your remote workers. Here are ten virtual meeting icebreakers and team activities to consider:

  • 20 Questions: Provide a series of creative questions for guests to get to know each other better. Compile your list in an easy-to-access document that all team leads can access ahead of their meetings. Realistically, 20 questions are too many for any single call, but you can aim to explore at least one or two questions each meeting.
  • Ad-Lib Games: Similar to Mad Libs, you can play any variety of free online ad-lib games, like Mad:)Takes. Simply select your word game theme and have meeting attendees contribute words to fill the story. 
  • Desert Island Scenario: In this game, team members must choose three of seven optional objects for them to use if they were stranded on a deserted island. This is simple to play, and you can share the list of options in your video conference platform’s chat box so everyone can quickly review their options.
  • Desk Show and Tell: Give attendees advanced notice of this activity, and have them point their camera toward their desk to show their workspace. Encourage them to share any funny stories about the items within their reach, or explain why certain items are significant.
  • Hybrid Work Bingo: Provide your team with a new bingo card at your regularly scheduled meeting. During the week, they will fill out that card based on their work activities. At the start of your next meeting, have team members share if they got bingo and encourage them to share a story or two about the items they checked off. 
  • Name, Place, Thing, Animal: Similar to Scattergories, provide attendees with a random letter to then list a famous person’s name, a place, an animal, and a thing that begins with that letter. Allow one minute for people to write their answers, and then have everyone share their responses.
  • Rank It: Provide a list of five random objects and a fictitious scenario, and ask meeting attendees to rank those items in terms of usefulness in the scenario. The goal is to provide a diverse range of options and out-of-the-box scenarios, including objects like “hairdryer,” “overcooked spaghetti,” or “a blue marker that only works half the time,” and scenarios like “ski vacation,” “year-end review of results,” or “space exploration.”
  • Scattergories: At the start of each call, give attendees one letter and five categories in your video conferencing chat window. Give them one minute to come up with a word that starts with that letter and fits within the category, and then have everyone read their answers.
  • Two Truths and a Lie: Ask guests to share two truths about themselves and one lie. Then, have the other attendees vote on which of the three statements is the lie.
  • Virtual Scavenger Hunt: Ask guests to find obscure items in their homes within one minute. You can grab a variety of free lists here.

Whichever game(s) you decide to play, remember that consistency is vital to establish a new pattern for your employees. Encourage all people managers and team leads to start their calls with a five-minute activity and solicit new icebreaker ideas from attendees.

A Hybrid Workforce Needs Modern Video Conferencing  Solutions

Evolving your workplace culture to support a hybrid workforce is an exciting opportunity, and directly ask your team about how you can improve their experience.

Continue to introduce new games and activities during your conference calls to keep ideas fresh and provide new ways for team members to get to know each other.

Even the best efforts to connect a team can fall flat, though, if the right technology isn’t in place. Some video conferencing solutions are clunky, unintuitive, and will crush even the most fun team-building activities. 

Learn how Frameable can support your team’s video conferencing and virtual event needs.

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How To Combat ‘Zoom Fatigue’ For More Fulfilling Video Meetings

Employee face-down on their laptop, suffering from burnout

The rapid shift to online, remote-based work provided many benefits for employees and employers alike. These flexible working arrangements are here to stay, even once COVID-19 is no longer a concern. 

There is an unintended side effect of this new way of work, though, and it stems from ineffective, badly designed tools and misguided approaches to handling meetings with a remote team: “Zoom fatigue.” But by understanding the cause of this fatigue, you can adjust your approach to online meetings in a way that better engages your team.

What Is Zoom Fatigue And Why Are Video Calls Tiring?

Despite being a convenient replacement for our in-person interactions, video calls require a more significant effort to truly process the conversation (the primary cause of Zoom fatigue).

That’s because a great deal of crucial content is communicated not in what we say, but instead in how we say it, with nonverbal cues like hand gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact. Intrinsically, video calls make it difficult to absorb these nonverbal cues. Only so much of any given speaker can be seen, spotty internet connections can distort speech, and grid-style views can easily send an attendee into sensory overload. 

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3 Online Meeting KPIs That Can Uncover a Toxic Workplace Culture

With an estimated 42 percent of the U.S. labor force currently working from home full-time, your online meetings have become how you keep your workplace culture alive. Unfortunately, these same virtual meetings may also be contributing to creating a toxic workplace culture that leads to employee disengagement.

The good news is, unlike those in-person meetings held in your company’s cleverly named office conference rooms, your online meetings give you the potential to gather and measure data that can be used to identify and address potentially toxic workplace issues in the making. Here are three questions to ask your team members to weigh in on, and measure through your online meeting platform.

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Introducing now.me

Today we are excited to share now.me — a way to get right to the meeting you’re supposed to be in right now. At any given moment, if you visit the site, it will look at your calendar, see what video call you’re meant to be in, and take you right there. It works with most video call providers, including Zoom, Google Meet, Whereby, Social hour, and others. We have been using this tool internally for a while now, and thought we might as well share it with the world.

In a way it seems like a small problem to solve. It’s not so hard to open up your calendar, find the meeting you’re supposed to be in, find the link to it, and open it up. But at that moment when it’s time to get together with your clients or colleagues, that time is precious. We want those brain cycles in to go toward preparing for the conversation that is about to take place. Especially if we’re running late, or if we’re trying to get together materials to share, or deep in thought pondering whatever trade-offs we are about to weigh — it can make a big difference not to have to context-switch at that moment.

As we use now.me, we find ourselves dreaming of next iterations: Beautiful as it is in its current state, it could be nice to add support for custom themes where we could set our own images, or toggle dark mode. Another idea we’ve pondered is an option to keep a now.me tab open, and then when a meeting is about to start, it would show a notification and even automatically join the meeting in a new tab, with no interaction required.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Try it out at https://now.me

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Zoom treats you like a child

Deeply ingrained in Zoom’s defaults are choices that do not encourage us to expect the best from each other. We spend such vast amounts of time in video meetings now that we should question what behaviors our platforms are driving us to, and how they affect our interactions with our friends, family, and colleagues at work.

“Waiting for the host to start the meeting”

This message can be infuriating. The host is on vacation, or they’re in a car somewhere, or they’re there but having trouble logging in. Or worse, everyone wonders, who is the host of this meeting, anyway? Is it me? Am I holding us back at this moment? For God’s sake, when will we be able to get on with the actual work we have to do?

And really, why can’t we just carry on without the host? Of course if you go into all the right admin screens and click all the right buttons, you can turn this off, but since it is the default, this experience inevitably creeps in.

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