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If you’ve decided to ditch the office and work remotely, whether that’s from home or on the road, it’s really important to start your flexible working journey off on the right foot. And if you’ve got stakeholders involved, like a boss, a manager or other team members, it’s really important to keep them on board too.

Cora (@corasauras) wrote some excellent tips on that for our blog, as well as some solid advice for making your teleworking experience a success. But I’d like to add some of my own tips - and they’re to do with using Skype to add context to your teleworking experience.

San Sharma (@WorkSnugSan) is community manager at WorkSnug

Off on the wrong foot

I’ve heard horror stories of people starting a flexible working arrangement off on the wrong foot. Some are afraid to leave their laptops and risk being accused of ‘slacking off’. I knew one flexible worker who would turn the volume up high on his computer, so he could hear Skype notifications when he wandered away from his desk. And another, who won’t be named, who would take his desk phone with him into the bathroom, in case his boss rang when nature called!

But the truth is flexible working isn’t the same as being in the office: coworkers don’t see you come in in the morning, or pop out for lunch. They don’t know when you’re away from your desk or when you’re in a meeting.

That is, unless you let your coworkers know where you are and what you’re doing.

It’s really important to do that - not only to manage expectations of your availability - but also to add contextual information about where you are and what’s happening around you, and to invite your coworkers to imagine your work situation for themselves.

Adding context with Skype

Skype is a part of almost all of our work lives - so it’s a great tool to use for this purpose, as it doesn’t involve introducing a new system to the rest of your team.

1. Change your Skype status to truly reflect your availability. If the thought of someone Skyping you via IM, voice or video, doesn’t fill you with dread, then set your status to ‘Online’.
   If that would be a bad idea, like if you’re right in the middle of something, like a document or a meeting, and don’t want to be disturbed - you’ve guessed it! - set it to ‘Do Not Disturb’. And if you’re nipping away from your computer for a bit, set it to ‘Away’.
   You can actually set how many minutes the computer must be inactive for for it to automatically set your status to ‘Away’ in Skype’s preferences, but don’t switch that option off altogether. There’s something quite annoying about thinking someone’s there when they’re not. Oh, and the ‘Invisible’ status seems like a cop out to me. What do you think?
2. Use your ‘mood message’ to display your whereabouts. Skype wants your ‘mood message’ to be like your Facebook updates, for some reason, but I find it far more useful to use it to display my whereabouts. I pretty much change it from ‘At Snug Office’, to ‘Working from home’, ‘At the Hub Kings Cross’, which is a coworking space, to ‘Working in a coffee shop’ - to give some context to my coworkers, wherever they are.

So, by using your Skype status and mood message, you can let your coworkers and stakeholders know where you are and what you’re doing, and start to paint a picture for them about what your day is really like.

Unified Communications

If your team is really serious about flexible working, and has a big enough mobile workforce to support it, it may want to look into a unified communications solution, like Microsoft Lync. UC software, like Lync, combines IM, conferencing, voice chat, Office integration and mobile apps, as well as a more robust way to manage and broadcast your status to the rest of your team.

Do you use UC software, like Lync? Is it worth bringing it up with your IT manager, do you think? Or does Skype work just fine for you guys?

Let us know what you think about that, and about using Skype to add context to your teleworking experience, in the comments.

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Photo credit: Justin Shearer

Do you need to ‘be there’ to be in business? That’s the question The Economist Intelligence Unit asked 862 business leaders in its survey, sponsored by Cisco.

And it’s a prescient question, as distributed teams, like our own, are fundamentally changing how organisations deal with colleagues, partners and customers, separated by long distances.

Long distance relationships

Is in-person communication as powerful as we think it is? Or can we make it work over the airwaves?

Find out the results of The Economist and Cisco’s survey in the infographic below - and let us know what you think in the comments.

The Power of In-Person Communication

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

We’re fashionably late to the Evernote party. The note-taking suite of apps and services has been around since 2008, and we’ve used it - on and off - since then, but we’re only now beginning to fully understand its potential for workers on the go.

We think it’s the - ahem! - second best app for mobile workers out there, and here’s why…

1. It’s everywhere. Because Evernote is supported by so many devices, platforms, browsers and third-party apps, it’s always with you - and just a click away when you want to capture something. So, whether you work for an organisation with a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy or not, you can find Evernote on whatever platform you use or are supposed to use.
2. It makes your devices more useful. Evernote’s mobile and desktop apps use more than just your keyboard to take notes. When at your desk, you can use your webcam to quickly scan handwritten notes (and recognise text), or your mobile device’s camera and microphone to take pictures and audio notes on the move.
3. It helps you travel light. Empty your rucksack of paper notes and business cards, scan them to Evernote and they’re always on you - in the cloud, rather than on your shoulders. Evernote can also ease the load on your inbox: just forward important email that you’ll need to reference again to your Evernote email address - out of your inbox and into an Evernote notebook.
4. It’s collaborative. We wrote about our favourite collaboration apps for virtual teams, but shamelessly left off one of Evernote’s unsung features - and that’s its shared notebook feature. You can create notebooks that are shared with one user, the entire world or somewhere in between, and give others rights to create, edit and delete notes. Its great for idea-forming stages of projects, especially when team members can’t be in the same place at the same time.
5. It makes working anywhere easier. Ever emailed a document to yourself to work on when you got home or at another computer? Email it to Evernote instead, avoid your inbox and focus on the task at hand. It’s secure too, so the IT department won’t have to worry: both the Windows and Mac desktop clients let you encrypt text in notes.

What are your favourites apps for working on the move? Let us know in the comments

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Photo credit: Johan Larsson

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

In the book Future Work: How Businesses Can Adapt and Thrive in the New World of Work, authors Alison Maitland and Peter Thomson break with the old paradigms of what constitutes work in the digital age. They argue that we now live in a “creative economy” where ideas and innovation are now the make-or-break factors in succeeding in business. The best way to cultivate and encourage innovative thinking is to create workplace environments where people can “take the initiative, make connections, and seize opportunities without waiting for direction.”

While the authors discuss work in the context of large companies, focusing on what management can do to change their organizations to work more efficiently, the central idea of “managing well by managing less” resonates for everyone.

For all kinds of remote or flexible workers, the idea of autonomy as a driver to be more creative and productive isn’t anything new. Many of us take on different projects, or consult and work on different projects because we value that independence.

But even independent professionals sometimes fall into the prevailing patterns of work, putting up boundaries of how, where, and when we work. Drawing from the themes of Future Work, here are three ways to improve the way you collaborate and work with and alongside other location independent colleagues, freelancers and team members:

1. A little faith goes a long way.

Trust. How open-minded and flexible are you when it comes to working with others? When I first started working for myself, I was guilty of being a control freak, micromanaging contractors, vendors, and even fellow editors. Typical command-and-control. I learned, however, that this only stressed me out and alienated other people. Now, I let each person I hire or work with generate his or her own inertia toward meeting a goal. Maybe I give them a little push, but otherwise I leave them alone. People relying on self-direction rather than the proverbial “lash” work harder. Autonomy is a great motivator. If you expect firm results and communicate that expectation well, people usually rise to the occasion and give you results. 

Simplify projects by setting down weekly and monthly goals (e.g. “I want to see Chapters 1 and 2 revised by the end of the week”), and then letting your team members do their thing to achieve those goals. Resist the urge to check-in every day. Sometimes no news is good news. That may smack of “bad communication”, but it actually makes a lot of sense. You only want to hear from people during the week if there’s going to be a snag in their timeline to deliver. From a manager’s perspective, it can be liberating to “let go”. Now, I can focus on playing the role of the coordinator and enabler that everyone likes, rather than no-fun, finger-wagging supervisor.

You might think that this kind of trust should be earned over time after people have proven that they are reliable. Well, if you’ve screened well and hired the best people for a job, then you don’t have anything to worry about. The real test is not in what they put in, but what they produce. Results, results, results…which leads me to my next point.

2. Decouple achievement from time.

I’ve written about how corporate clockwork is the bane of our working existence. It’s time we all start rewarding output and results rather than input. Why? The “long-hours” culture rewards face-time and penalizes people that can get a job done in a shorter amount of time. In fact, the more hours spent on a job often leads to a lot of time wasted. When you crunch the numbers, that’s less productivity per hour. Not very efficient, not good for business, and not good for everyone’s morale. 

But, if we work by the ‘results only’ philosophy, then we tap into our reserves of ingenuity, thinking of better ways to get work done. Daniel Pink, author of Drive, writes about how motivation plays a crucial role in how much people can achieve. You don’t have to read a ton of books on management practices or implement arcane strategies with strange acronyms. It’s all about harnessing the power of self-drive, self-direction— and empowering and trusting people to make decisions on their own. Let everyone on your team decide what works best for him or her to do the work. “Don’t dictate, delegate” is a useful maxim for managing your team. We’ve all grown up with the prevailing view that time in only matters. With this ingrained view, it’s not easy to see that there are other better ways to handle projects and get work done.

3. Finally, find a balance and know the preferences of your team members.

When people are dispersed across borders, working in different locations, or when you don’t have a central office, it’s easy to get complacent and manage by prescription— throwing out old rules only to put in new rules. There’s a comic by Roger Beale of a man complaining to his coworker because his boss told him to be “autonomous, location-independent, and results-driven”. He gripes, “She doesn’t need to see me for six months. It sounds like the sack.” 

Remember, flexibility means giving your team members the choice to decide their own schedules. How people produce their best work will always depend on their individual preferences and quirky work habits. One person might be more of a night owl (that’s me!). Another may be an early bird. Some people might want to work longer days, but fewer days during the week; others prefer shorter days but don’t mind working on weekends. I know many people who do their best work when they work alone, enduring long solitary spells in a home office that requires intense concentration. I also know colleagues who can’t handle working at home alone. The silence is deafening. They get distracted by the TV or with doing little errands around the house. If your entire team is highly self-driven, lucky you for scoring the A-Team of workers— but if not, then you’ll need to provide the needed “office hours” to meet with them either in person or over Skype, giving more personal encouragement. Who knows, maybe the 8-hour day, five days a week works for some people, and they don’t want to give that up, no matter how you rail against the corporate clockwork.

In the future of work, that’s OK. The real revolution is not in the actual practices, but in letting people decide for themselves and to take ownership of what they do.

Genevieve DeGuzman is the co-founder and managing editor of Night Owls Press, a San Francisco-based editorial services and digital publishing company for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. For more stories on how to take advantage of collaboration to become more creative and work more productively, check out, Working in the UnOffice: A Guide to Coworking for Indie Workers, Small Businesses, and Nonprofits.

Photo credit: joncandy

We blogged recently about telecom company O2’s ‘off the wall’ idea to suspend local business man Caspar Mason (@caspar01) half-way up a wall in East London to prove that you really can work anywhere.

We tweeted Caspar, whilst he dangled there, and he put us in touch with Gemma Kantecki (@gkantecki_o2uk) at O2, who we’ve interviewed for the latest episode of our podcast. We asked Gemma why she hoisted Caspar, what O2 is doing to support flexible working and her own work-style.

Listen now

You can listen to the interview below, subscribe in iTunes and feast upon past episodes. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Find out more about O2’s Work Anywhere programme for small businesses at o2.co.uk/workanywhere and for Enterprise at o2businessreadiness.co.uk

About Snug Sound

Snug Sound is an audio podcast, presented by WorkSnug community manager San Sharma (@WorkSnugSan), and produced by WorkSnug in association with Plantronics.

It provides wi-fi hopping, coffee-sipping mobile workers a free slice of news, guides and reviews – and helps digital nomads work their best wherever they work.

How to subscribe

You can subscribe to Snug Sound in iTunes or directly via RSS (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SnugSound). You can also listen to Snug Sound via the AudioBoo website and mobile app. It’s better to subscribe, as you’ll automatically get new episodes as they’re released.

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Music: ‘Wired But Disconnected’ by duckett

We posted exactly 26 reasons why collaboration is a good thing for virtual teams, so we know you don’t need any more convincing! But what are the best tools for collaboration? Here are our five favourites. Let us know yours in the comments.

San Sharma (@WorkSnugSan) is community manager at WorkSnug

1. Google Docs: As an alternative to Microsoft’s desktop offering, Google’s free web-based suite of office applications is fine - at worst, mildly irritating, as you get used to working in your web browser. But as a rival to Microsoft’s bloated ‘track changes’ features in Word and Excel, Google Docs really comes into its own. Real-time collaboration means that up to 50 people can work on a single document at the same time. Have fun chasing each others’ cursors around the screen - or chat with your collaborators in real time.
2. Writeboard: For quick and dirty collaboration (well, not necessarily ‘dirty’ - it’s actually a very clean interface!) - you can get started remarkably quick and easily with Writeboard from 37signals. Don’t expect much in the way of style and formatting: Writeboard works best with plain-text documents. For that reason, it’s perfect for copywriters, bloggers and editors. You can quickly compare versions, add collaborators and comments - and you don’t even need an account. Just give your Writeboard a name and a password and get collaborating.
3. MindMeister: For whiteboard-style planning sessions without the whiteboard, MindMeister allows location-independent teams to work on mind maps anywhere and anytime - in the browser or from an iPad, iPhone or Android device. What we really like about it is its History Playback feature, which is like a Flux capicitor for collaboration, allowing you to travel back in time to previous versions and play back your thought processes. This kind of collaboration comes at a cost - £9.99 per month, but you can take advantage of a free 30-day trial.
4. Doodle: For all this virtual collaboration, sometimes it pays to meet up in person - that is if you can decide on a date and time! That’s where Doodle steps in. Doodle lets a meeting coordinator set up a poll of available date and time slots and invite meeting attendees to vote on a slot that works for them. The most popular slot wins! But the real winner is your inbox, which is kept from the usual back-and-forth of meeting planning.
5. Skype: Skype is a no-brainer, right? But its potential for collaboration extends beyond simple voice and video communication. Did you know that you can use Skype to share screens? It’s as simple as pushing a button - and far less laborious than trying to explain what you can see on your screen. Great for IT support, working on design documents and - for the very patient - helping mom and dad with their ailing desktops.

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Photo credit: qusic

Your collaboration tools

What tools do you use to collaborate with your team? What would you add to this list? Do you use packages like Jive or Podio that bring a lot of this stuff together? Let us know in the comments.

It’s Social Media Week - and far from being a week of cat videos, Reddit memes and “S*** Social Media Experts Say”, you’ll find a ton of useful information about how collaboration is empowering change. And you’ll hear this term a lot: Social Business. What is it? And what’s in it for you?

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Social Media: What is it good for?

What is social media?

Social media uses the web and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue, with user-generated content, such as blogging, photo and video sharing.

It’s already transformed the way we communicate with one another. In our personal lives, it’s become inescapable.

In business too, social media has changed the way we promote our products and services and keep in touch with our customers.

But sharing and engaging with media on Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest is just one way in which businesses can explore the ideas of “social”.

The question is: How else can businesses apply these principles to other aspects of their organisation and make things better?

Social Business

What is social business?

Social business extends the ideas and principles of social media to enable employees to have more open and collaborative relationships within the organisation and with the outside world.

By becoming more social, businesses can be more creative and innovative, which - in today’s business environment - is a Very Good Thing.

These organisations make the most of human interactions in each of their business processes by making them more social and enabling better:

• Collaboration
• Mobility
• Employee retention

Benefits of Social Business

Social Media Week is a great time for businesses to think about how they can be social beyond their media output and improve their processes at the same time.

Here are a few reasons why that’s a good idea:

Collaboration

Project management software, like Podio or Basecamp, are geography-beating applications that allow organisations to build teams around skills rather than location - and enable collaboration beyond simple document-editing. While Facebook asks ‘What’s on your mind?’, social businesses ask ‘What are you working on?’

Mobility

The mobile workforce is growing. By equipping these employees with mobile devices and tablets that enable collaboration on the fly, productivity, responsiveness and innovation will soar. Virtual meetings software, like iMeet, keeps mobile employees in the loop and increases a sense of belonging and…

Employee retention

So, social businesses benefit from increased and global collaboration, as well as mobility, to ensure the whole team feels a part of the decision making process.

By building a social business based on trust and transparency, employees can tap into the creativity, innovation and community of the organisation as a whole and accomplish business goals faster and with greater efficiency.

Besides, we’re used to social practises in our personal lives - on Facebook, on Twitter and on YouTube. Isn’t it about time we brought these practices into our businesses and benefited from being social?

San Sharma (@WorkSnugSan) is community manager at WorkSnug
Photo credit: !!sahrizvi!!

What do you think?

How else can businesses take what they’ve learned from social media and apply it to their own processes? Can you see the benefits of being more social as a business? And what steps are you taking to be a more social business?

Let us know your thoughts, your tips and software recommendations in the comments below.

Ever wondered what an A-Z of reasons to collaborate would look like in fridge magnets? Wonder no more! Our friends at Plantronics have done just that - and put together this infographic with 26 reasons why working together is A Good Thing.

In fact, our contact at Plantronics explained to me how the list grew, thanks to a collaboration that spanned the globe - from the UK to New Zealand, France, Belgium and Germany!

What are your collaboration stories? Are two heads better than one? Or is collaboration a bit of a headache? Let us know in the comments.

ABC of Collaboration

Here are the first three reasons to collaborate - check out the infographic for the full 26:

1. ‘A’ is for… Accessing complementary talents
2. ‘B’ is for… Building community spirit
3. ‘C’ is for Complex problems require cross-disciplinary approaches

Infographic

Why Collaborate?

San Sharma (@WorkSnug) is Community Manager at WorkSnug

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

You’ve taken the quiz. You’ve packed your bag. It’s time to make your remote working experience a success.

Cora Rodenbusch (@corasauras) is a senior communications manager at PGi (@PGiMeetTweet),a virtual meetings company, providing audio, web and video conferencing solutions to over 75% of Fortune100.

In Part II: Three Steps to Taking Your Show on the Road we shared that working outside the office requires flexibility, determination and plenty of energy and optimism to get through the day. These traits are necessary for the remote worker because when you work outside the office, your final output is often your only success measurement. Forget showing up early, staying late and looking the part, most will only know you by the quality of your work.

Understanding this freeing, albeit slightly frightening, reality will help you shift gears and focus on what really matters during your work day. And thankfully, we’re not the first to figure it out. I’ve found that those who run their own business encounter the same challenge.

As a remote worker, take note from your successful start-up friends and ensure the quality of your work remains high by aligning your efforts with company goals, building your “customer base” and keeping your stakeholders satisfied, just as if you were running your own business. 

Five Tips for a Healthy “Work-from-Anywhere” Business:

1. Keep set hours to ensure your time in the “office” remains productive. The sense of urgency you feel in the final hour will help drive productivity throughout the day.  
2. Absorb small costs to keep a long-term customer (i.e. your employer) happy.  For example, put in an extra hour or two to make a deadline, fund emergency airport internet or splurge on a long-distance call. Don’t let a small cost keep you from a big win.
3. Stay front and centre by keeping your stakeholders in the loop – they probably didn’t hear you land that big deal, so once a month write up your successes and what’s to come in your very own “customer newsletter.”
4. Look the part – not just for those on the other side of the webcam, but for you! Keep a tidy workspace and look professional.
5. Ask yourself: “Is it working?” Once you’ve lived with your new work environment, check in with your stakeholders (and yourself) to make sure expectations are being met. The fact that it’s not working isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however not doing anything about it is. You can modify your remote working experience a number of ways so don’t head back immediately if you run into a problem. 

Plug Into the Mothership

Finally, don’t forget the power of the office. In-person relationship-building and collaboration is still best, so before you start your journey, make sure you’ve accounted for a trip to headquarters at least once a quarter.

Recharge your corporate batteries, check in your laptop in with IT, stop by your team members’ desks to thank them for their help on the latest project and don’t forget to pick up your corporate pom-poms before you leave – You’ll need those in the 11th hour when looking for inspiration.

Best of luck fellow remote workers! You can follow the second half of my yearlong journey to PGi’s EMEA and APAC offices in the Cora the Digital Nomad section on Blog.PGi.com.  

Do you work outside the office? What advice would you give to a new teleworker?

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional

Preparing to take my business on the road was one the most exciting and confusing times in my career. When I decided to leave my office in Austin, TX last August I had no idea what awaited me in Europe and Asia Pacific.  Regardless of my own questions, I still had to get my team on board, find a location and pack my digital tool belt. 

Cora Rodenbusch (@corasauras) is a senior communications manager at PGi (@PGiMeetTweet), a virtual meetings company, providing audio, web and video conferencing solutions to over 75% of Fortune 100.

Straight from my 6 months as a Digital Nomad, below are three steps to taking your show on the road.

Step 1: Get Your Key Stakeholders On Board.

Put yourself in your boss’s shoes and pitch accordingly. Most likely your boss is asking him/herself three questions: Can you do your job outside the office? Could you actually do it better? Will it make you a happier, more satisfied worker? 

Talk to those points, making your pitch as practical as possible. Share your story, be personal, but leave the emotions aside. And most importantly, make sure you’ve fully thought through your plan. Come with all the details such as office hours, cost ownership and accountability, but only speak to them if you feel your stakeholders are ready to hear them. 

For more support check out a recent GreenBlog.PGi.com post on Making a Case for Teleworking.

Once you have been given the green light, bust out the champagne, celebrate and calmly proceed to step 2. 

Step 2: Scout Out a Location

Whether you’re planning on working from home, the coffee shop or a remote island, make sure the internet connectivity is VoIP quality, its quiet enough to take a conference call and you can afford it. Once you’ve found a location that meets this criteria, see if it’s laptop-worker-friendly and if you enjoy being there.  

Step 3: Pack Your Bag

Before you step out the door, make sure your bag is packed. When your office is mobile, it’s best to pack light, so make sure your tools work extra hard. When evaluating a new tool for my digital tool belt, I always ask, is it mobile? Is it global? And most importantly is it social, does it have that human element?

What’s in My Digital Tool Belt:

• Smartphone for Quick Email & Helpful Apps: I live by my TripAdvisor and Worksnug apps. Both help me find the right places to land for a productive day in the “coffice.”
• Solid Video Conferencing Tool:  I use the iMeet® iPad app tool to keep it personal and teleport back to the office when needed. 
• Online Storage: I use Evernote to store important information when on the go. I can access my files on any of my devices and even offline, when en route to my next destination.  
• Emergency Internet: Kindle 3G for free global 3G wireless

Bon voyage fellow teleworker! Don’t miss next week’s Part III of the Digital Nomad 101: Your Guide to Working Outside the Office to find out how to make your teleworking experience a success.  

What would you add to your digital tool belt?

Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional