As we all get into the new reality, Digital Marketing is better placed than most to work remotely. But how do you manage teams remotely or how do you want to be managed remotely? On Wednesday 5th August Dixon Jones set to explore this with an expert panel.
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Your Host
Dixon Jones is your host, and while he may be ancient in industry terms, remote work and managing people remotely is a whole new thing to him. Luckily he has some amazingly well qualified panellists to ask:
The Old Guard
Gareth Hoyle of Marketing Signals has been running large scale remote teams in India and across the world for years as well as more local teams.
The Vanguard
Aleyda Solis is the co-founder of remoters.net, a remote work hub offering a free remote job board, how-to guides, tools, events and more resources to facilitate remote work.
The New Blood
Jo Juliana Turnbull has been remote working since 2010. Now growth hacking for Authoritas plus SEO consultant for SMEs, Jo is also well known for running Search London and Turn Digi.
Jo is running a survey on remote working, and has presented interim findings in her presentation “Remote Working Tips” at the highly regarded group, Women in Tech SEO. Jo invites you to participate in the survey here ( Google Forms Link ).
Transcript
Dixon Jones
Thank you very much for coming in as few people saying hi.
Welcome to another version of old guard new blood and this time we’ve got the remote working edition, which we’re all getting pretty accustomed to now. I’m really delighted to have a another bunch of experts in here again and this show just before I get started is sponsored by Majestic- absolutely delighted that majestic keep on letting me put this on every month so in spite of my technical met ups.
If you haven’t had the opportunity or if you haven’t seen the Brighton SEO post, there’s a brand new training course that’s just come out through the academy at Brighton SEO for link training, it’s free, it’s got me and Santé Achille putting it together.
A good couple of hours of video on link training so please do register for that and do try out Majestic’s new keyword generation tools so thanks to Majestic and hi to you guys, hello Gareth, hello Jo, hello Aleyda are you doing?
Jo Turnbull
Good and how are you?
Dixon Jones
I’m very very well. Listen do you guys want to give a very short introduction about yourselves so I’m going to go from top right, so Gareth why don’t you go first.
Gareth Hoyle
Of course.
Dixon Jones
No one knows you.
Gareth Hoyle
Yeah well hopefully they don’t in this crowd; otherwise my job here is done. I’ve been running agencies for the last 15 years.
I have taken my staffing up to multiple hundreds of people running three shifts a day seven days a week, down to I currently have 15 people based in one office in the UK and a handful of people offshore that we just do some data work.
Dixon Jones
So you’ve been managing remote workers for forever really.
Gareth Hoyle
Since at least 2008, before that I used to work for general electric and I was
Dixon Jones
I don’t need to know that. That sounds pre-internet mate.
Gareth Hoyle
I was still managing remote workers.
Dixon Jones
Okay all right, fair enough then. Aleyda, you’ve just started up remotest.net
Tell us about yourself and your experience with remote working.
Aleyda Solis
I started working remotely when I was still an employee in-house and then also at an agency in 2012 it was then when I became independent I realized in 2014 I realized if I wanted to start something on my own remote was a requirement.
I really enjoyed working remotely so I have been working remotely for myself since that year and then after years passed by I started working with more people and I have a couple of people working with me, supporting me with clients and we are all spread out. One of the persons is in France, another is in Mexico- and the clients that I consult with are from all over; a lot of them in the US, in Asia, here in Europe so yes pretty much remote
In 2015, we realized that a lot of people were asking us, how do you do to work remotely, and we found that remoters that year, and it started by sharing a few insights, how-to’s guides, how to work remotely at that point, and now we have a free job board for anybody- can upload, can publish their remote job openings, a lot of how to guides, a tools resources section, event section- so the goal of the website is for anybody who wants to start working remotely. Whether an organization, independent consultant or an employee- they have all of the resources that they need to start doing it so through the website.
Dixon Jones
So can you put the domain into the into the panel as well so then chat just so that people can grab it and while we’re doing that, Jo why don’t you talk about yourself, you’re remoting as well and also you’re doing a survey
Jo Turnbull
Yes thank you very much, hi I’m Jo Juliana Turnbull also known as ‘SEO Jo Blogs’.
Thank you very much for having me on today Dixon, yes I’ve been working off and on actually since 2010, but actually I wanted to work remote from when I was young- we moved around a lot, many different countries, which were lucky for, but as a kid sometimes you just want to stay in one country. I remember I was about eight and I remember asking my dad, well why do you have to move all the time. Why can’t we just stay in one place- so I didn’t know remote working existed then, but I always knew I wanted as a grown-up, as a kid you always think as a grown-up you can do whatever you want- as a grown-up I wanted to be able to choose where I lived.
So in 2010, I started doing remote working and then I was in Australia for some time; I’m Australian as well, and then I’ve recently moved to Barcelona so I set up my remote working business in now three countries and I really want to actually find out from people, if they have saved any resources
Many people talk about money, “oh this costs a lot you know to commute for example to London or to New York or Sydney”, but no one and talks that much about how much that’s worth in terms of money- your time I know in the UK when I was commuting into London sometimes it could take 60 hours a month, but no one’s going to give you that extra pay for that 60 hours, and they’re not going to take that into account, you know you could get to the office at nine, but you’ve had to leave your house at quarter past seven.
I’ve done a remote working survey and we’ve had quite a few people respond- 131 to be precise, but would love to have some more and because I wanted to find out really from everyone, how much resources you saved, what activities you’ve done, are you going to continue to do this. I am pleased to see that companies will be embracing remote working, but I just wish that it hadn’t have been because of a pandemic. I really wish companies had embraced it before and not that you were being lazy for not wanting to come into the office.
So I’ll share that link in there too.
Dixon Jones
Yeah if you put the link to the poll in there, that would be absolutely brilliant, then anybody that has the opportunity to fill out the survey.
It’s gonna be great and hopefully when we’ve got some results and things for it you can let us know, Majestic can we put on the Majestic blog as well, that’s good.
So remote working, I think we’ve got some experts in remote working here, and I’m not, I mean Majestic was built up with people on the ground and I enjoyed the idea of an office. Although remote working for me individually has been something I’ve done quite a lot, as you know, going through life I’ve kind of had the opposite approach and lockdown has kind of opened my eyes to the power of remote working, really guys I’m gonna start off with one tip, one sentence tip of your best tip for remote working, whether as a remote worker or as a remote manager can you give me one tip and Aleyda let’s start down with you.
Aleyda Solis
I think it’s important for me to always start by clarifying that remote work is about being location independent and that is a great power, but it’s also a great responsibility that is critical that you are self-aware that you have self-discipline that you manage your time well that you keep productive.
That you understand based on your own personalities and characteristics and the type of work you do, what works better for you and this is the thing as humans, and as employees, who are sometimes very used to work and in office, we have allow others telling us how to do it, but if you are working remotely- then it’s up to you to choose if based on your own characteristics and character, and yeah you prefer to stay at home working all the time, or if you prefer to go to a co-working space, or to go to a coffee shop or if you are an extrovert an introvert, because a lot of people think automatically that remote is about working from home and or working by yourself all the time- so how people do to socialize and this is the thing.
It’s about having flexibility and it’s about doing it so when it whatever you feel more comfortable, but again you then need to be able to make sure that your internet works well, that you are able to concentrate, that you are in a in a space that allows you to keep productivity, that you’re able to disconnect at the end of the day, and to keep your good work life balance so all of that is in your hands and that is why it’s super important that my recommendation will be for organizations to update their protocols, their policies, their guidelines for their employees, for their teams to facilitate all of this, for them because it’s quite new.
Dixon Jones
That’s more than one.
Aleyda Solis
And yes on this on the other hand if you work for yourself then there are many tactics that I can discuss later to facilitate this self-discipline and control and be able to have a good balanced life and at the end of the day enjoy of the profits and benefits of remote work rather than only facing the backlash that a lot of people can’t think about.
Dixon Jones
Gareth what about you
Gareth Hoyle
Well yeah, how do I follow that so, I love you really Aleyda.
My one big tip really is to have empathy with your remote workers situation. I think from a short short-term perspective, it was relatively easy for me to split from office to remote; I just bought myself a desk and put it in one of my spare rooms.
There are other people that are living in shared houses; there are people that are living in a house without an empty room that you can make an office, or even a dining table that you can sit on. So I think short term be kind to people because you know my kids haven’t been to school for months, like they are literally feral now, I’m surprised one of you
Dixon Jones
But they’re your kids, they’re bound to be
Gareth Hoyle
For those of you that come to the corona pub Thursday night is a quiz night, occasionally my kids will just jump behind me and that’s how I work now and that is that is my working life.
We have to look post covid, because this thing is going to end and I think with long term planning if you’re employing people, so I think there’s going to be a trend where people are initially going to employ more remote staff further east than I am currently sat now.
That comes with its own challenges, so reliability of power supply, reliability of internet speed, reliability of how much effort has that employee made to get to his desk that morning. And there are things that we just wouldn’t understand in the west, that somebody may be in South Asia has to go through just too just to get online.
So I would hate for people to be sharp with each other when it’s not easy, not everybody is finding this transition as simple as they may appear, so empathy please guys.
Dixon Jones
Okay and Jo what’s your one tip, although this has been like several tips bugged into the intro so you know, but that’s okay, that’s not a problem.
Jo Turnbull
Thanks, well I would basically say to treat your home office, and when I say your home office, it can be your desk, it can be anywhere where you’re not working in that old-fashioned or the traditional office that you had before, so treat your home office as your proper office so the office that you would actually or the work office that you would commute to and where you do the work inside those four walls.
The reason why I say that was because just because you’re not spending three hours a day commuting to town and it doesn’t mean that you can extend your working day I think what you need to do and ties into what Aleyda said is to be organized, so I would say, do your eight hours; yes you could sometimes do a bit more than that but don’t do that all the time.
So do your eight to four or your nine till six, or you know take a long lunch break, but really I would say it’s about don’t, but before we had the things of you know having your email connected to your mobile phone or being to access your work email and you’d be sending emails on the train in the morning or late at night- no just don’t do that.
Try and have that disconnect again going back to what Aleyda said you know, you need to have your eight hours. If you are working 12 hours a day in front of the computer and you’re not getting up because you’re not going to buy lunch because you have it right in the fridge, you know then you’re just going to you’re not going to feel very well at all mentally and physically so really just stick to pretend your home office, so that could be your desk, your co-working wherever it is, is within an eight-hour window or you do four hours and a long lunch break and another four hours. Don’t send emails past nine pm don’t send emails before six a.m.
Dixon Jones
Okay I’m going to add as my one tip, if you’re as old as me, make sure you get a decent chair.
Honestly sitting in that chair it can really do your back in pretty damn quick, so if you can get a decent chair.
And honestly I’ve just moved, I did have an office chair and I’ve now put in a dining room chair, because it’s more solid, it’s better and it’s just doing my back more good.
Aleyda Solis
Headphones too sometimes to isolate and be able to concentrate also is important
Dixon Jones
On that point that you just made there Gareth, about being kind.
We’ve got a question in here from Rohan: “recently I got rejected in an interview which was remote based and the reason was that the organization said it’s mandatory to have a separate office room to work from at home, which he doesn’t have at this time.”
So the question: “is that a common ask in most of the remote jobs to have a separate office room?”
Gareth Hoyle
No because, we don’t really consider it work from home, we consider it work from anywhere. So already one of my head of paid- is moving to Porto on the 1st of November. I’ve got no idea where he’s going to be living as long as he has the internet it doesn’t matter.
Like my motorcycle is getting serviced tomorrow. I’m going to take my laptop on my back and I’m going to find get a coffee and I’ll just work while it’s getting serviced.
I think long term if the employee is going to be based in that one remote location then yeah absolutely, I have a duty of care, and at the start of lockdown I made all of my team send me a picture of their working environment.
I then gave each person a kitty to upgrade their work from home setup so some people took a new router because they just had the piece of crap that came with the ISP, some people took a chair as you say Dixon, because some people were literally working on a stool- one person had his laptop perched on top of their chest of drawers so there was no leg space underneath.
I’m a man that’s all about efficiency and if you’re not sat comfortably you’re not being efficient, so I spent about 300 quid on noise cancelling headphones and- thank you kind words, Topher wants to come work for me.
It’s all about just getting you all to work a bit harder to be honest this is the reality.
Aleyda Solis
I have to say, responsible remote working organizations do what Gareth is doing right, they care about the resources that they provide and they actually have an esti pen because they realize that they are not paying for an office anymore- such a big office as before.
So they allocate money and an esti pen to be to make their employees on their team to be able to have a great connection at home, to have a great desk, a good laptop that should be provided ideally by the organization right and this is what I am afraid of, there are a lot of organization that have just jumped into remote because of covid, but they don’t have that mindset and they don’t have the right protocols or principles and then they start requiring all this stuff without realizing that they should be the ones giving this to the employee or their team.
If the organization and this is the thing, whenever I work with clients and have worked for a lot of clients and companies that I don’t think that they ever knew where I was and it shouldn’t matter to them, what Gareth said before, it shouldn’t, it should be transparent or the same for them if I am connecting from New Zealand or from Spain and from the US and sometimes I did, and sometimes I did at 1am- just to not change the schedule time right, and I keep doing it and for them it was exactly the same, I was able to do my work as good, from anywhere in the world as good, as long as I am able to do that it should be exactly the same for them.
However if they do require something specific or you should have this type of connection, or this type of environment, okay perfect- pay it I mean give it to your employees that should be it yeah
Dixon Jones
Jo I’ll come on in a second, I’ll come to you next, because I want to get on to your survey and find out a few questions about your survey.
But one thing that’s the different in the UK, Topher in the US of course, so we’re in the UK; in the UK of course I don’t know how it works in the US, but there’s quite a lot of laws around your employees, the fact that they’re not in your office actually makes it harder in many ways, because you still have to have public liability over them, your insurance policy may not cover that. You still have to have risk assessments on their working environment and as you say, duty of care and there’s all sorts of problems with data privacy and things when you’re starting to share it out around the internet as well.
So you know there are quite a lot of laws that are protecting or should be protecting, but I think with covid they haven’t quite caught up with the speed of which we’ve all been moved into remote workings.
So Jo, sorry feel free to answer that or add on but what I really wanted to get on to was the surveys you’ve got so far. What are the findings that you’ve made so far from those 120 odd people?
Jo Turnbull
Yeah thank you well actually now, so thanks to everyone doing responses we now got 133, I just wanted to find out if people are saving any resources, so the first question:
Are you working from home; enjoying it?
Yes 67.7% are saying they enjoy working from home and only 4.5% percent so only six are saying they don’t.
But obviously there was quite a few that actually wanted to work from home before covid so actually there is 10% that did want to work from home before but they were not allowed, which I’m not surprised about but and there was nearly 20% that were not working from home.
I think there’s quite a few people that have said that they are more productive, so it’s 52.2% that they are more productive, and 13.4% said that they are no they are the same so that was interesting because there’s a lot of people that say that, “oh you’re not productive if you’re working from home”, but you have different distractions.
I did want to find out what people were doing more of now that they’re working from home and there’s really high percentage of people that are obviously looking after themselves, so 64% are actually doing cooking, followed by spending more time with family and close friends- obviously because you’re not allowed to see that many people. But there’s still also people looking after themselves, so we had 64% cooking and 56% are doing exercise which is great so these are the things that I think a lot of people don’t do when they’re spending those three hours a day commuting, it’s really easy to gain weight and it’s great.
Dixon Jones
Yeah unfortunately I used to be able to cycle to my office so now I can’t, I literally have to get up and cycle around the block just so I get some exercise before I start work, but of course I don’t I just have another cup of coffee and then lie in so hence the stomach not going the right way guys, it’s not going the right way.
But anyway it’s good to see that people are making use of that work-life balance and improving their like work-life balance rather than working for the man or the woman, you know all hours concerns and not switching off but I imagine that switching off is more of a challenge for some people in a remote environment, you know what about you guys experienced, you don’t find it difficult to switch off or do you?
Gareth Hoyle
Well as the business owner
Dixon Jones
Yeah we all are I suppose yeah.
Gareth Hoyle
24/7, like the, what I have started doing is, so I’ve lost weight during lockdown I go to the gym three times a week, I play tennis once a week.
Dixon Jones
I thought we’d close the gyms
Gareth Hoyle
Well I’ve got a personal trainer that comes to my back garden, the bloody hell Dixon, come on
Dixon Jones
You’re gonna push, you’ve got to push for the facts mate just the facts you know
Gareth Hoyle
So I put this down to the extra time that I have not messing about getting to and from work, and just having more.
I also think that where I myself as a business owner that employs people that now work remotely has benefited, is sometimes I think I used to feel secret guilt that I had 20 people in an office while I’m sat drinking cocktails with Aleyda and Dixon in Brighton, so, and Jo of course, sorry Jo, so there is an argument that I feel mentally released somewhat, now that I know that my whole organization is reaping the rewards of being based online, and that we can all just be based we’re drinking cocktails in Brighton with our friends.
Dixon Jones
Well you know maybe I should be asking not the four in this room, but I should be asking the panellists, the attendees you know, do you guys, most of you look like you run your own stuff anyway, a lot of you do there and the ones I know, but you know do you think that there are employees that find it, well hard to switch on, I mean there’s the problem, is when you’re working at home, you can be thinking about the kids, or the dog, or the you know other bits and pieces and there’s nothing to stop you from switching off onto not such important stuff, so how are you going to manage people and expect people to spend those eight hours however they may want to, how do you get any reassurance that they are spending the right amount of time.
How do you measure success, or measure objectives and key results if you like of remote workers? Aleyda or Jo
Aleyda Solis
I think this is the beauty of our work right that, we actually need to deliver actions to our clients; we need to also achieve specific results, in their SEO processes or PPCS.
And a lot of our teams right, they are also involved and are responsible for them right, so if this is the thing, I think that we should be necessarily mindful, “oh do they start exactly at 9 00 a.m. sharp or do they finish at 5 00 p.m. or 6p.m?”Or no is that are they continuing to achieve the results that we have set for the account, or for the client, or for the project as long as they are productive and achieving the expected results.
It’s more than fine right, this is this is what we do for a living like achieving specific results from an SEO perspective and managing the clients and if the clients are happy then it’s more than fine, client happy, achieving results- it’s all great right.
Then on the other hand about also taking care of people balanced, because what Jo said, what the results that you have gotten in your survey is not necessarily as different as the trends that we have been seeing year over year of remote work the main challenges usually are, unplugging after work loneliness and then communication and collaboration challenges with bigger teams right, there across different time zones.
So realistically, I think it is super important that companies and organizations provide clear guidelines to employees saying look, please do little breaks every time after a couple of hours, five minute breaks, ten minutes breaks, because honestly like and give also typical type of resources for people to be able to keep productive and have this type of disconnection to like for example I followed the ‘Pomodoro’ technique- which is amazing to keep productivity while also disconnecting up a bit with brakes too, and then the tip of Jo, I think this is critical having a specific area of your home, so for example I have a whole room as a home office right, so it’s really easy for me whenever I start working, I enter to the room and then I know that at 6 00 p.m. I shouldn’t be tempted to take my laptop with me but leave it here and I leave work right.
If you are not able to do this because you don’t have enough a home office, at least allocate a certain space at home, even in your living room and you know that when you take out or you move on from that space, you are moving on from work and you shouldn’t be keeping or shouldn’t be bringing the job with you that that is a big risk you, bring the laptop and keeping working while you watch the TV for example.
Dixon Jones
Okay so there’s, oh sorry Jo do you wanna just add anything in there
Jo Turnbull
I just wanted to say you know yes I agree with Aleyda about saying like it should be the results that matter but I know that there’s very traditional companies that are just like: “okay well I need to know this, this and this”.
So I would say use task management systems, so you can use ‘Asana’ you can use ‘Trello’, you know there’s a lot of agencies and it’s fine that use timesheets I think it’s just to be transparent so if something is taking you a long time- I think you should be clear and say well this is how much time it’s taken so you’re not measured on, “well you said you do I don’t know whatever it was, um and you didn’t do it” or it took you a long time, so I think
Dixon Jones
So you don’t mind if you’re asked to provide a time sheet as a remember
Jo Turnbull
No, I think it depends on how the company works, I mean we used to have to do our time sheets anyway otherwise wouldn’t get paid, when work agencies died, so it’s just a way of not over servicing because really just.
Dixon Jones
Yeah sorry, I’m just trying to keep it, I’ve got to load through and I went you know, I try and do this in 45 minutes; know it’s great I love it but I kind of need to need to sort of kind of move it all through, so sorry, so in fact Jo- I’m sorry finish what you’re saying.
Jo Turnbull
The point was just to say like if you don’t have that trust which, some companies don’t have because, they’re not used to remote working then just to be able to show what employers are doing, then just do project management, use project management tools and also keep the communication open, you know have your regular meetings with your team members, but try not to just have meetings for the sake of it have clear agendas and objectives.
Dixon Jones
Okay, the reason I went down that route is because Topher had asked: “how can you respectfully handle remote folks that seem to never want to turn on the camera and do face to face with managers and should that be something that’s mandatory?”
I think that’s an interesting question because what it’s alluding to is what I was trying to get to underneath, of not necessarily the people that I think like us who are pretty fanatical about work. It’s getting to the people who are working because they have to work to earn living and then they could not work forever in a day they’d happily do that and therefore perhaps they are not approaching remote working with the same expectation or enthusiasm.
So the question is: “Should you turn on your camera when you have a face-to-face meeting?”
Gareth Hoyle
I think 100% yes, you wouldn’t sit in a boardroom with me with a bag on your head, would you?
So why, we might as well have a phone call if we’re not going to turn videos on. I don’t know like it just seems like if we were going to draw up an etiquette guide to video calls well, I kind of want to see your eyes.
And so my biggest fear of remote working is losing my team culture, I think we have to look at each other if we talk.
So we have an open zoom room all day that people can just drop into. Turn your bloody video on purely, you know. I mean I don’t think whether we could make it a requirement, I’m not sure, but I think as a matter of manners, then yeah you should turn your camera on.
Dixon Jones
Okay brilliant, so answer is yes. Mandatory, mandatory visual okay, right so Aleyda, I mean remotest.net has been running for, as you say several years, but it just exploded at covid- no doubt. So my question is: “what is it that’s grabbing people on remotest.net?” You’ve got a lot of content out there, and if you go back to google analytics, and if you want to share your screen, you can. If I can press the right buttons, but what is it that people are going to and looking at on remotes.net.
Aleyda Solis
Indeed, so for example in January we had a 55,000 sessions. In February 48,000 sessions. In March, it jumped to 73k- 72 000.
In July, it has kept up like this, and now in July we had 76,000 sessions in the month, and then of course the pages that just to get more traffic, and not only organic, but you know direct of people going to check, is the jobs section, the job board. And we had in July, more than 100 jobs uploaded, which is good I have to say, that it has been very obvious the, also the increase of jobs that are being uploaded in June and July.
Unfortunately, for example, in March and also early April, even if the website had increased a lot of the traffic from people looking for jobs right especially.
We could see, on the other hand that there were not that many companies, publishing job adverts, so you could see that people were not hiring, unfortunately right. However, it’s nice to see how in July that’s completely different and we have also much more diversity of the type of roles that are being hired, it’s important to clarify this because usually when I have conversations, before covid right with people, and they assume that the type of jobs that were being hired remotely, these were low skill type of jobs VA’s, programming, copywriter, things like, but also like very digital oriented. But no, more and more we can see like operations manager, human resources manager.
Not sales people, right, not necessarily digital or technological or even low skill type of jobs. All sort of jobs are being hired remotely right now.
Dixon Jones
Okay, so it’s the job sport is the big bit there’s. Sorry did you guys want to jump in with anything there, I mean I’m interested you know, to see what it is that’s really grabbing, you know the audiences, the remote workers- and what they’re trying to find.
Gareth Hoyle
Well I mean the fact that I am not surprised the job board is exploding. Like for me the most exciting thing about remote working. is that my growth of my business has always been tethered by trying to get people to 10 miles south of Manchester city center. Now I can recruit people from around the world, but I want to cover US from a customer service point of view.
I just hire a PPC or an SEO exec in the US that can speak to customers. All of a sudden I’ve got 16 hours of phone support covered, like this is exciting guys. I can’t wait to be, my next hiring spree- as long as it’s not because people have left. As long as it’s because of business growth.
Dixon Jones
So yeah, I mean Gareth, where you’ve managed those remote teams- big remote teams, so how do people react to instructions over a video, you know, or a skype call or whatever tool you’re using. Do you feel they put in the hours automatically? Do you think they work harder or not as hard working from home? And how do you know if they’re doing their job? And others people say if the work gets done.
Gareth Hoyle
Well yeah, so you’re using attendance as a measurement. I don’t use attendance as a measurement.
Dixon Jones
Oh I’m not, I’m throwing out, what measurements are you using then?
Gareth Hoyle
Output. So if I take a very specific example, I employ a gentleman called James- he’s a link builder. James’s job is to deliver the links that I sell. Not all not all of them, you’ll be glad to know I sell more than one person’s worth.
So James’s job is dictated by me. If I don’t sell any links, he hasn’t got any work to do. So what do I want him to do, just sit at his desktop twiddling his thumbs. Go and enjoy your day. But be aware that next month I might sell 50 more, and then I expect you to be able to work that into your monthly workload. So, by and when does James work.
Dixon Jones
Is James working full-time for you?
Gareth Hoyle
Yes, he’s a full-time salary he gets a pension gets everything else. But his measure, his KPI is, are there any late tickets? Because if there are no late tickets, he’s done his job. Why would I care when he does it, where he does it, how he does it- well I kind of care about how he does it, but the other two does it matter?
Dixon Jones
Jo, have you found it the other way around, where you’ve been getting instructed to do stuff and the instructions that are coming from your remote manager, so to speak are entirely unreasonable.
Jo Turnbull
So I would say there was a time when I was working for 100% remote only company- not who I’m currently working for now. And it was the manager, the owner of the company that had no idea how to run PPC, for example. And so the instructions were that you needed to convert this page and it had to be measured on three days of running a PPC campaign with very minimal budget.
So in that case, I would say that it was from lack of understanding of the manager, and also he put a lot of unrealistic expectations.
I think if you’re working remotely and you have a good manager, and someone that actually understands the work that they’re doing, and they treat their staff with respect- then it’s great to do remote working. I think you only come across issues in remote working if there’s not a mutual respect, so maybe the employee, you know just as you were saying before Dixon, maybe he’s or she is just- “I just want to get paid, I don’t want to do that much work”.
But you would find that issue anyway in the office; you would see the same attitude. So it’s about trying to recognize the attitude, and what I do hope will happen, now that there is, you know the opportunity to have more remote work. That people will get paid still what they should. So I know Gareth you were talking about maybe there might be a shift to hire people, and maybe other countries is maybe the overall wage is less.
I really hope that doesn’t happen, because you should get paid the sort of- what you should get paid based on your skill, because there are many companies; people that can’t afford to travel, or don’t have the visa requirement to live in a country where they may get paid a wage that they really want to and just because you happen to have a certain passport- you’re able to work in that country. So I really hope that with this remote working, the money that people save instead of spending all that money on rent- will actually invest in as Gareth, you have done to your employees, give them a remote working allowance and also pay people what they should get paid, not just- “oh you’re in a cheaper country we’ll pay you a cheaper rate”
Aleyda Solis
I think that you touch a really really important point. Also again Jo, for example the companies or start-ups especially that have been historically removed first, they have really good protocols about this. For example, they have this base type of amount that they pay to their employees based on the roles, and positions, and of course what they bring to the table from their work perspective.
And then they had certain percentages of money that they will pay additionally based on where they live because, for example if you live in New York, or San Francisco, or very expensive places you will need a little bit more to maintain yourself and that is great. But instead of having this other type of views or mind-set that you see sometimes coming up now or trying to take advantage of remote work to pay far less; one-third to someone who lives in Latin America or in Asia, to what you will pay to someone European, right that is not fair and it’s trying to take advantage of the situation right.
So it’s about being reasonable, having good principles, having good protocols, and starting with what you pay to people indeed.
Dixon Jones
Okay right guys and we’re already nearly at times, so you know, I told you it’s going to go fast, so you know. But then you guys have been on so many of these you know these things go fast anyway.
But I can see that we’ve got a pretty educated bunch in the in the chat room here, so if any of you do want to be on a future panel, I’m going to put a link to a to a form there as well. So just drop me a line and let me know, you know if you’d like to be on a future panel; be great to have you guys in.
The more broad my group of guests, the better I think. And the more entertaining these things get to be. Thanks again to Majestic for sponsoring the webinar obviously, get everybody on the link training course at Brighton SEO, the one that I’m on- the one that I’m running, the free one, not the paid one. You don’t need to do that one, you know Gareth Simpson, you don’t need to do that, that’s fine.
Also guys before you go, is there any last words you’d like to say apart from the fact there’s a corona pub search quiz tomorrow. Look up the corona pub, and find it if you want to join in.
Aleyda, Jo, Gareth, some last goodbyes and where people can find you from.
Aleyda Solis
Well finally in remoters- hopefully will allow you if you want to, you know keep working remotely if in case you have a company right now like requiring to go back to the office and you don’t want to.
We are publishing continuously new jobs, adverts and hopefully you’ll be able to find something there. Also there are a lot of how-to’s, a lot of tips, regarding how to be able to work remotely in an effective and balanced way, in a positive way that is good for you too.
So hopefully you will find any tip there. And if there isn’t something that you cannot find there. Please do let me know over twitter, I’m very active in Twitter, @aleyda is my handle. Just let me know over there and I’ll be more than happy to help you with anything remote too.
Gareth Hoyle
So just to clarify remoters takes guest posts.
Aleyda Solis
Yes, we do.
Dixon Jones
Yeah but they don’t follow any links from you.
I don’t know, I’m sure you could do a good post though.
Aleyda Solis
We can talk about it don’t worry.
Dixon Jones
Okay any last words from Gareth or Jo?
Gareth Hoyle
Just embrace this new way of working guys. You have got your freedom back.
Dixon Jones
Oh god I’ve never heard him be so wise. Jo?
Jo Turnbull
I would just say, I’m on @SEOJoBlogs on twitter so please connect with me there. I would say that just really try and take a break from work, and truly try and make sure you have a nice work life balance. So don’t try and think I need to do all these things and have a massive checklist.
I think just use the time wisely and just remember that because you can’t get back time. You can always make more money.
Dixon Jones
That’s brilliant.
Okay guys, so thank you very much we’re gonna do the same thing next month, around about the first Wednesday of the month. That’s where I’m aiming for.
If you come back and then well, that’d be great. If you want to see the recording of this or tell a people about, it’ll be on blog.majestic.com within 48 hours I’d say, so that’s great.
Thanks very much guys, just so you know when I end the zoom call it all dies and I’ll email you and say thank you directly afterwards.
Cheers everybody.
Jo Turnbull
Thank you very much Dixon.
Dixon Jones
Cheers bye.
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