Joanne Mangan on Remote work movement,remote for gender equality & advantages of going remote.

Introduction

Pushpak Mundre  

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Be remote podcast for today’s episode we have with us Joanne Megan. She’s an Employers lead at Grow Remote, welcome to the show Joanne. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Joanne Mangan 

Yeah, thank you Pushpak. It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me!

Pushpak Mundre 

awesome. So let us begin with an introduction about yourself, maybe your background as well.

Joanne Mangan

sure. So I work for an organization called Grow Remote. I’ll tell you a bit about Grow Remote in a minute. But I’ll start with myself. I don’t know if you know by my accent, but I am Irish, I live in Ireland. And I live in a really nice part of Ireland on the West Coast, called Galway, maybe some of your listeners would have heard of it. And I’ve been working with Grow Remote now since early this year, only since January. And before that I actually had a career in the tech sector, I worked in a couple of different multinational tech companies and management roles. And then I decided to make a change of career last year or the year before last, actually. And I left the tech sector and I went back to study. I studied gender studies in university and then decided I would like to get a role in the nonprofit sector. So we’re most sure a nonprofit organization. And here I am.

Pushpak Mundre 

Awesome. So like, tell us about Grow Remote and what exactly you do there.

About Grow Remote

Joanne Mangan   

Yeah, sure. So as I said, we’re a nonprofit. And our starting point in our kind of reason that we exist is we’re a community development organization. That’s, that’s at the heart of what we do. Okay, so the beginnings of Grow Remote, it started in 2018, as a very small group of people who came together in a WhatsApp group. And they were looking at remote work and the benefits or possibilities of remote work in terms of building and developing communities outside of cities. So a lot of jobs in Ireland and also in other countries, those jobs are in urban centers. So you know, they’d be in the capital city or the large cities. And if you wanted to get a job in, if you wanted to find a good job, you had to move, you would relocate from where you lived. And if you lived in a rural place, then you would go to the city. So the purpose of Grow Remote is to address that problem, to bring those jobs back to local communities, to bring those jobs back to regional and rural places. So that you don’t necessarily have to be living near the city, which can be expensive. And you know, you have a long commute and all the things that go with that. Not everybody wants to live in the cities. So remote work opens up the opportunity for you to live where you want. Location isn’t the first thing you think of when you’re trying to decide like the job location isn’t the first thing you think of when you’re trying to decide where you want to live. So that was the beginning of Grow Remote. And obviously, the pandemic has really accelerated remote working across the world, just so the same with us, we’re now in a place where we have 10 people on our team. And what we do is we work with employers, so remote employers, and now more and more companies who are making the transition to remote and into hybrid. We provide training, guidance and resources for them. And we also work on the demand side. So we work with employees and individuals who are looking for remote jobs, we upskill them in the skills of remote working. And we bridge the gap between employers and people who are looking for remote jobs. And we also have a community of remote workers in Ireland but also outside of Ireland across the world we have, they’re called chapters of remote workers, and they get together, meet up in person and virtual and help solve some of the problems of remote working like social isolation, and have built the communities.

Pushpak Mundre   

Yeah. So you said Grow Remote started in kind of 2017-18? Right. So yeah, 2018. Right. So like there wasn’t, you know, like, like, remote work wasn’t mainstream at that time. Right. So what kind of led you to start this movement in the community at that time? And also, like, were you working remotely before the Grow Remote also, like you work with companies, basically multinational companies. So were you remote at that time as well? Or you started working remotely recently?

Joanne Mangan 

Okay, so yes, you’re right, in 2018 remote work wasn’t really mainstream. And in Ireland, and I know in other countries as well, it was quite the same, you would have an opportunity to work remotely in certain industries. So for example, in the tech sector, it would be not unusual to be able to work remotely if you were a developer, for example. But it was very ad hoc. It wasn’t really formal or it didn’t have kind of structure around So, for example, in my experience, I’ve worked in SAP, which is a multinational organization, and we would have the opportunity to work remotely, if you were a top performer, for example, or if you have been with the company for a certain length of time, so there was opportunities to work remotely, but it wasn’t necessarily available for everybody. And in a previous role to that, I worked in another tech company, I had an agreement with my manager that I could work remotely, but it wasn’t really, I couldn’t tell anyone about it. So it was kind of done in a secret kind of arrangement, you could work remotely, but nobody really knew why you were working, or where you were. So one day of the week I’d be at home, but I couldn’t really tell everybody. So it’s just kind of it was a reward, or it was something you got if you put in enough time. Or if you have personal situations, for example, that you needed to be working at home, but it was all very ad hoc and kind of agreed with in this kind of arrangement with your manager. So that is the time when I started looking at remote work, it was to try and find ways to make those jobs more visible, to make remote work, to take it from that kind of invisible space and make it very visible to anyone who was interested in finding those jobs. Because the challenge that was uncovered at the time was a lot of people weren’t aware of those jobs and where to find them. Where, you know, we have employers like Shopify, for example. Shopify hires hundreds of people in Ireland, but they don’t advertise locally, they don’t advertise in the local community. So if you’re looking for a job, you need to know where to look. So that’s where Grow Remote started. And that’s where they saw the opportunity to make those jobs more visible. And now, if you look at where we are today, with the pandemic, you can see a lot of companies are putting a structure on it. They’re systematizing remote work, very visible. Now, it’s being implemented into their policies and their processes. And they’re coming out saying publicly that they’re going to make remote work available. So it’s no longer this kind of, I’m just not at my desk on a Wednesday, and nobody really knows why. And I can’t tell anyone about it. Much more visible now, and much more and much more accessible to people. So if I want a remote job now, there are more places for me to look.

Pushpak Mundre 

I think that was really impressive. Like, you know, you were just convincing employers to like, let you work remotely. How did you do that, like the like, even before the pandemic, like people had no idea about remote work and like getting a job, sometimes for people, it’s a hard thing, and you’re like convincing people like, you have to like, give me a remote job, basically. So how did you do that? Like, yeah, I want to know about that.

Convincing employers to go remote

Joanne Mangan 

So I wasn’t with Grow Remote at the time, but I’ve heard plenty of stories about the challenges that they had at the time of trying to convince employers and it was very difficult. And the main way that it would be done would be to show how other employers are doing it. And particularly I think the tech sector is a good example of where remote work would have been available. And to be able to highlight the benefit to the employer is a really good way of convincing them and one of the best arguments you can make for remote work. And this would have been true before the pandemic is that it’s about talent, access to talent, if you want really good people, don’t just narrow your search to within your local geographical area. If you have remote working, you can open it up, it’s very, it’s opened up broadly, suddenly, you have access to a wider pool of staff. So the Access Challenge is a huge challenge in a lot of industries, particularly in the tech sector, but in a lot of other industries in the knowledge economy. So being able to make that argument that you have access to more people, access to more talent, and people want this. And I think what’s changed as well since the pandemic is, employees maybe didn’t know that they wanted remote working, it wasn’t really on their radar. It wasn’t something you thought of as an option. So now, after 18 months of working from home, suddenly you realize, Wow, I really enjoyed this, I don’t want to go back to the office, where you know, it wouldn’t have been common in the past. But now people have had a taste of it. And they don’t want to go back. So employers now it’s easier to make that argument. Before the pandemic, it was challenging to make that argument because employers didn’t really see it because they weren’t getting the same push from their employees. But now employees have a voice and they want to be remote. They want to be able to work from home, maybe not all the time, but they want to have that option. So it’s definitely put employers employee and employer power dynamic has shifted. And it’s very employee driven how employees are saying they want it and they go somewhere else if they don’t, if they’re not able to get it. And the great news is I think from what I’m doing in my work, I can see employers are listening. There’s a lot of stories out there of certain employers who have said very publicly, no, we hate remote working. We’re never doing remote but that they’re the minority. Employers are making a change. And that’s amazing progress when you think about where we were almost 18 months ago. banging on doors saying, hey, you know what? Why would we do that? It’s really been an amazing change.

Pushpak Mundre 

So I think like, if the talent is good, like if you’re a highly skilled individual and you could like provide value to the organization, then I think companies and employers would be like, you know, willing to give you a job because you are giving that kind of value to the organization. I think

Joanne Mangan 

absolutely, it gives you, you’ve got the power in your hands. And a lot of companies have a shortage of talent, and they struggle to find talent. So if you are a highly skilled individual, and then you do have some say in how you work, and I think that’s I think that’s great. I think it should be that way whether you’re highly skilled or not, you know, that’s the way it should be. And I think remote working has really changed the mentality and the culture and a lot of companies because they see that employees will vote with their feet, if they don’t, if they don’t have the option to work remotely, they will leave and we’re seeing now I think they’re calling it the great resignation. Globally, there’s a phenomenon that people are leaving their jobs or planning to leave their jobs. So employers really need to take notes, so they will lose their talented staff. And nobody wants that.

Pushpak Mundre 

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I wanted to ask you about, like as a mom, like you, you are a mom like working remotely. It’s kind of a game changer for you, right? And I think you have written an article about how it is good for gender equality as well. So I want to know about your personal experience, like working from home by also having the daughter so like, and like how it could help other women also like, do remote work, basically.

Joanne’s experience as a mom working remotely

Joanne Mangan 

Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I can tell you, I’ll give you a typical day in my life before the pandemic when I was traveling to the office. And I would be have to get up very early in the morning, I’d have to get my daughter ready for school, we would have to leave the house, maybe 7:30 In the morning, so that she could go to the childcare place where she would be taken care of before school, and then I would rush rush, rush into the office, station traffic for 45 minutes, try to find a place to park run, run run to my desk, and usually not be there by nine o’clock. But you know, generally try to be there before nine o’clock, and then work all day at my desk until five and do the same thing come home again, Rush tried to get to the childcare before they close and be home for maybe 7 pm. So that would have been a typical day in my life. Now, I won’t tell you what time I get up. But it’s later, I have extra time in bed, and my daughter goes off to school from my house. So she’s ready, and she’s gone. And I’m ready to start my day. By the time she leaves. It’s 20 past eight in the morning, and I’m ready to start my day, I walk my dog. Yeah, I can walk down to get a coffee, she comes home, it’s :30. I’m here at the house, I’m here to say hello to her. I finish work whenever I choose, it’s much more flexible. So in terms of my personal experience, remote work has given me so much more flexibility as a lone parent. And it has given me choice in how I structure my day. And that’s really important. I’m still working as hard as I ever worked before. But I’m able to turn around my life rather than having to plan around that nine to five. And it’s really important for gender equality, to recognize that there’s lots of women in my situation. And even in women who have a partner and would still for the most part, I think it’s fair to say he would probably be doing the majority more of the care work more care responsibility, that’s not a great thing. We all know that it is the way right now. So I think in terms of access to the workplace, while still being able to take care of your work, your life and focus on your life. Remote work really opens up so many possibilities for people like me, who would have struggled very hard to fit into that nine to five. But it’s not just gender, even though gender equality is really I think it’s very important. Remote work is a very important step towards bringing more women, especially women with children into the workforce and keeping them there. But it’s not just women, I think there’s opportunities when you look at people with disabilities, people who have hidden illnesses, if you love to people don’t five in the nine to five world that office space nine to five world, I even read an article yesterday was really interesting about introverts, and how introverted people are really thriving now in the remote world, because they don’t have the stress of people around them all the time having to talk to people all the time. So it’s really interesting what’s happening now. I think there needs to be some careful consideration about the data set because I think while there’s opportunities, there’s also some risks. For example, if you’re a company and all the women with children are working remotely, but everybody else is going into the office, then there’s a huge risk that they’re going to be not very visible. So you need companies to look at how they’re structuring their policies to make sure that it’s very inclusive. And also to make sure that everyone knows they can work remotely. So if you’re a young guy, and you’re 25, and you’re ambitious, you don’t have kids, are young, or a young woman, that you also know, if you want to, you can work remotely, and it won’t hurt your career. It’s not just for people who have, you know, a need to focus on things outside of the office. So, but yeah, my own personal experience with remote work, it’s just really changed my life in terms of my stress, and my work life balance. And that’s been amazing for me, and I see it for other women. I know they’re balancing the same.

Pushpak Mundre 

That’s amazing. Yeah. So you know, as you said, like, suppose all the women with babies like they’re working from home, and then like, other people are like working from home. So it is kind of a hybrid model, and there could be like, inequality kind of thing. Because like, then you would give preference to people who are like, into the office, right? So I think the solution for this thing is like I had a talk with the CTO of Data Stacks, so Data Stacks is like 10 years old, a decade old, remote company from the United States. So what they did is like, even if you’re in the office, and employees who are like working from home, or whenever you’re having meetings or scrums, then everyone will be meeting on Google Meet or, you know, an online platform. Because otherwise, you know, like that, that won’t be like equal thing like. So that’s the one kind of solution which you know, could help in a hybrid model. Yeah.

Joanne Mangan   

Yeah, that’s a really good idea. And I’ve seen other companies do that, too. And it really helps, again, drawing on my own personal experience when I worked from Oakley. And in my previous job, I would dial in to meetings where everybody was sitting around a conference table, and I’m the only voice coming through on the speakerphone. And I’m going Hi, I’m here. Can you speak up? Could you say that again, and people would be having side conversations, and I wouldn’t hear them. So that’s really, that’s a huge risk in terms of keeping people out of the conversation. So I think having everyone dialed in at their desks, whether you’re at home, whether you’re at the office, whether you’re in your car, wherever you are, that everybody does, and remote, virtually into the meeting. And that really, that’s a really simple way to solve that problem. There’s other things as well, I think companies really need to look at how they’re rewarding people. And I can talk back to that comment about introverts versus extroverts. A lot of times in the past, people who got on well, in the in the office and who got promoted, they probably be the loudest or the most confident, or the one who spoke up the most, and the one who was most good at selling themselves, not necessarily the person who did the best job. So I think companies need to look at presenteeism, this idea that being sent to your desk for hours and hours means you’re going to get promotions that has to go, that culture is over. So it’s not about that. It’s about how much you’re producing. What are you producing, and if you’re doing your work, and you’re producing high value, high quality work, and that’s what should get you the reward, regardless of where you are, where you’re sitting, and whether the boss can see right now, but it’s a real, I think it’s a mindset shift for a lot of managers who are used to just kind of you see, you see your team, and you can watch your team. And that makes you feel like you know what they’re doing. So there’s a shift there for the managers, I think they need to look more at what people are producing and less about, are they in the office? Are they talking in the meetings? And so I think looking at how you’re promoting people, how you’re rewarding people, performance management, all of that needs to be looked at as well very carefully. And make sure that there’s opportunities for everybody, that women who are working at home can still get the promotion if they’re doing a good job and not to have any kind of unconscious bias about that as well. remote work. It’s here remote work is here, but I think we have a danger of slipping back to thinking oh, remote work is just for people who you know, have care responsibilities or remote work is is for people who don’t really care that much about the career we need to kind of keep that that thinking can’t come back we have to you can be as productive in fact you can be more productive when you work remotely and yeah. So I think that that culture, that mindset of just because you can’t see the person then you don’t really know if they’re working or not that has to go

Pushpak Mundre   

Yeah, I know what I think a lot of companies so which are like remote first companies and who really, the companies are really doing well remotely like some companies like at Crewscale we have observed that the productivity of employees has gone up and there is no micromanagement so like we don’t look at the employees like what exactly does it what we go for is like, if the work is getting done or not, we don’t care when you’re doing the work or you know, like you don’t need to like micromanage basically. So you know, that is a game changer for a lot of people. Like if we stop micromanaging people, just let them do how they want to do the work and just focus on the results instead of, you know, just asking like, Hey, what are you working on? Like even I think daily scrums are not even necessary. Of course they are necessary depending on what exactly people are working on. But sometimes it could be avoided, you don’t even need to meet daily if you know exactly what you need to work on. So yeah, this could also help in a lot of situations. Yeah. Yeah,

Joanne Mangan  

I agree. And I think there’s a balance as well. It’s tricky. You know, I say this a lot. It’s not easy to set up a remote organization and have everything working perfectly. And even the remote companies that we’ve worked with who’ve been doing it for years, they still have questions, and they still, you know, I, I think it’s funny, the office has been around for 100 years. And we didn’t get that right. So we can’t expect remote work to be perfect after like 18 months of doing this. So I think it’s an evolving thing. But I think the big challenge that companies need to overcome is the culture and the culture of how micromanaging versus giving people, you know, very clear task, you know, very clear indications of what it is you’re supposed to do very clear ways to measure their productivity without checking what time they clock in and what time they clock out. But then that also needs to be balanced with keeping in touch with people because your remote working can be isolating. So it’s a tricky thing, how much do you keep in contact with your employees just to make sure they’re okay, and make sure they’re not feeling isolated versus managing monitoring them and micromanaging them. So it is a bit tricky for managers, and managers. So I know that it could be easier, sometimes when they’re in front of you. To manage them, there’s a little bit more, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It just means you have to learn new ways of working. And a lot of companies are adopting those principles. And what’s great to see now is companies who are bringing in remote work, they’re bringing in some of the nice things that come with remote work like very flexible start and finish times and freedom to kind of structure your day yourself. Like I’ve talked about, yeah, start late if you want to walk your dog, or if you want to take a long lunch break. But again, with that comes it’s a double edged sword. Because with that comes the possibility that people might be working too much, might be working through their lunch break or working late into the evenings, because that’s also something we see with remote working, the lines between your home and work life become blurred. So again, it’s just about keeping an eye on that and making sure somebody might want to work a little bit later in the evening, because they like working late. They prefer to work in the morning. So maybe they start late and work late in the evening. But managers need to keep an eye on that to make sure that the staff aren’t overworking and that they’re taking their breaks and that they’re putting down their laptop in the evening time. And they’re focusing on their life. So it’s not it’s not a simple thing I have to say I see a lot of employers are struggling with finding the balance. But it’s early days, as I said, it’s only been around for less than two years now. And a lot of companies it was, you know, it was brought about because of the pandemic. So they didn’t really have time to plan and they didn’t really have time to structure things correctly. So now, there’s a lot of activity as companies start to look at these problems. And what’s great I think is, well, we see this a lot of remote companies are sharing and are happy to share with each other and with other companies how they’re doing it. So we’re building a playbook, for example, for smaller companies, and we’re bringing in lots of different companies we work with. We’re asking them, how do you do this? How do you manage benefits in a remote world? How do you manage performance management, and they’re very open to sharing it with us, which is fantastic, because I think everybody understands it’s been such a challenge. And it’s been such a transformational couple of almost two years that they need to share. And they need to be open about such because everybody’s kind of on the journey together now. Yeah,

Pushpak Mundre

yeah. Totally. So what do you think, like one of the most challenging tasks that founders and employers face when running a remote company? I think you said the culture is one of the most challenging parts, or anything else along with that, and how do we overcome this? You know, how do we solve these problems?

Challenges for the employers

Joanne Mangan  

Yeah, I do think the culture piece is is one of the more challenging because i i when it comes to policies, processes, you know, legal obligations, or employee rights, I think that is happening in the back, you know, countries are coming up with policies, and the legal side of it will sort of, it’ll be brought together. I think over the next six months to a year we’ll see more and more guidance. So you know, that’s a very binary thing, once you get your policy in your process, you just want to so once you know okay, what are my rights as an employee, for example, and the company can just make sure that they’re adhering to that. So the policy and process stuff I think is a little bit easier when you have guidance around. What’s really tricky is the culture. I mean, quote, culture change, it’s not an easy thing to do, right? Because it’s easy to say, oh, companies need to shift their culture, but it’s not so easy to actually make a cultural shift. So I think the biggest challenge that companies are facing is making sure there’s equal access to opportunity and equal access to jobs, to promotions for everyone, and balancing the mix of people working remotely and people working in the office. So if I think fully remote companies, it’s a little bit easier if everyone is remote, that’s very, that’s easier to manage. Because everyone is in the same working situation, I think where the real challenge is for this hybrid model. And we in Ireland and across the world, there are a lot of companies we’re bringing in a hybrid model. And they see that as the best solution. Because it’s kind of they see it as the best of both worlds. It’s a little bit of remote, but it’s also a little bit of the in the office. But with that comes huge challenges, because you have some people who are working at home, you have some people who are coming into the office so many days a week, it’s very, there’s lots of different ways that companies are approaching us. One, one way that I see happening, that’s quite challenging, I think, is companies saying you have to be in the office two days a week and making it a mandated thing. So you have to be in the office two days a week, because that doesn’t give anyone opportunities to see live where they want. For example, if I have to be in my office two days a week, I can’t move away and I can’t relocate. And I think it also adds a level of talking about the diversity or the inclusion piece, it removes all of those benefits as well, you still have to structure your life around being in the office two days a week, you still have to take care of your childcare or whatever it is. So I think that hybrid model, where it’s not very flexible, that’s to me, that’s the most challenging model. And I think that’s the one where there’s the most risk of employees leaving and employers losing their talent. I think when it comes to hybrid, if it’s very flexible, and people can choose, that’s a much better way from the employees perspective, because then you can schedule your life and your day as you wish. But that’s really tricky to manage, because then you have people coming and going and you don’t know when is Mary going to be in and when is this person going to be here? So hybrid Overall, like I could go on and on about challenges of hybrid, but I think managing a hybrid workforce is the biggest challenge facing companies.

Pushpak Mundre 

No, I don’t understand why do companies have to go hybrid? If they can, you know, work remotely? Then? What is the point of going hybrid? If everything is going remotely smoothly, then why do you want to go hybrid?

Joanne Mangan  

There’s a couple of reasons. So I know, there are some companies who can’t do fully remote because some of the jobs just have to be in the office. For example, we work with an electricity company and some of their staff have to be located near to assets, you know, physical assets. And or you might have a company where there’s part for retail, part tech support, part customer support, and some of that retail, obviously, it’s done face to face second in a shell. So that’s one reason I’ve seen why companies are doing hybrid because they have to, they have to have some people in the office or in a certain location. And other companies, I think there’s a hesitancy about it, they’re a bit scared of fully remote. It’s too much. It’s too far down the road, you know, so hybrid is like a let’s it’s kind of a little bit of a halfway point between fully remote and back to the office. And I also think some employees don’t want fully remote. I think really, if you look at the statistics, there’s, you know, there’s a 30-30 Actually, it’s probably more like 40-40-20 split or something like that. But there’s a good chunk of people who don’t want to do five days at home, they like going into the office, they like meeting people. So those are some of the reasons I think why companies are doing hybrid. There’s management, senior leadership as well who are uncomfortable with remote rules, who wants to keep the office, there’s again, there’s also the fact that some companies have invested a lot of money in real estate, and they don’t want to, you know, you felt huge campuses. Look at Google, Apple, and Facebook, they’ve built these huge campuses. And you know, I’ve worked in these tech companies, and they’re the buildings and the campuses. It’s a real appeal and employees love it. Like I’ve been to Boston, you know, to different places around the world where we have these amazing offices, and you just get so excited going in there because there’s all this stuff, who’s volunteer tables, and there’s free drinks for everyone. And so there is a bit of that too I think for big companies, it’s not so easy to let go fast and go fully remote. But I do think the needle is moving and it’d be really interesting to see in the next say 5-10 years what will happen with that as companies start to realize, well, you know, the foosball table and the free drinks are nice, but people really prefer to be more casual. I think it’d be an evolving situation. But for now, I think there’s definitely a percentage of people who are just not so ready to jump full force into the model. Yeah. And it is. So it is so much more complicated. I receive this. I work with a lot of employers, and they have to think about every every policy, every single part of the business and look at it. Okay, well, what if we used to have a canteen, so people got some that were able to get subsidized food, but now we have some people at home and they have to pay for their own lunch? And they’re like, do I need to give it? How do I deal with that? And even that’s just one teeny example. There’s so many Yeah. Fully remote cross boards, definitely, from a management point of view is much easier to manage.

Pushpak Mundre  

Yeah, I think it’s kind of difficult to predict, like, how the future will be because some companies are already fully remote. So they’re gonna be like remote all the time. But it will completely depend on, you know, company to company and culture to culture, like what they’re doing. Yeah,

Joanne Mangan  

I think so. And I think some companies are waiting to see how things go. They’re not really ready to make a full decision. And I think that’s smart, I think it’s not really a good time to make these decisions. We’re just coming out of a pandemic, nobody really knows when normal life is going to come back. Because in a lot of countries around the world, you still can’t go into it. Not everybody can go to the office, for example, and they don’t know when that’s going to change. So companies need to be ready. But they need to kind of be ready to adapt, and to shift and be open to the idea that this will evolve over the next few years. And the companies that have the, you know, have that in their minds and know that’s the way it’s going to be and are ready to shift and be agile. They’re the ones who are really going to succeed. I think any company who says right now, oh we’ll all be back in the office in six months. They’re crazy. You can’t make that judgment right now. So you need to be prepared. Yeah. And open. And actually, we’re seeing it at Grow Remote. We’re seeing a lot of companies who are coming to us saying we’ve decided we’re going to go fully remote. And that’s not we’re giving up our office, we’re you know, we’re not renewing our lease. It’s amazing to see that change, and to see companies embrace this is really amazing. And that, I mean, I think those will see more and more of that happening as other companies see those companies succeed. And so it is it’ll be interesting. The next three to five years, I think, will be really interesting.

Pushpak Mundre 

Okay, yeah, yeah. So what advice would you give to companies for you know going remote and who are struggling to do it? Like? What is that one piece of advice, which, you know, would be helpful for people like for founders, employers, basically?

Advice to companies struggling to go remote

Joanne Mangan 

Yeah, I think the first most important thing any employer should do is talk to their employees, and find out what they want, whether that’s just do a very simple survey. And, and just find out what the employees want. Because that’s, as I talked about the beginning, you need to start with the employees. They’re at the heart of what you’re doing with your business. So employers who care about their employees, they’re the ones who really try. So I would say, Take pulse check, ask if people want to do a survey, bring in some focus groups, or if you have the time, get a few people together and make sure they’re representative of different types of diverse demographics. So, you know, bring in young people, bring in people with children, make sure that it’s a nice mix, but really find out what the employees want. I think that would be the first step. And I think the other thing is to be open to sharing and talking to other employers. And we have in Grow Remote, we just put together an alliance of some of Ireland’s largest employers, and they’ve agreed it’s great. They’ve agreed to come together once a month and share in a group there, some of them are competitors of each other. It’s really interesting. But they’re they’ve they’re all in this situation now where they have to bring in this huge change. And they’re willing to share with each other how they’re doing things in this forum. So I think look for opportunities to learn from others is another piece of advice I will give and take training, train your managers, particularly managers who are at the forefront of this change. So make sure that managers have everything they need to give them lots of support. It’s not an easy time to be a people manager. So make sure that you give them plenty of support, guidance training.

Pushpak Mundre

Yeah, this advice is really useful. Like I think one of the most important thing is like talk to employees. This is like a very simple thing, but like people don’t understand like, you know, they don’t do it, actually. So yeah, that’s really helpful. So what are you into outside like, what do you do exactly when you don’t work? Like what are you outside of like what we are, how do you spend your time when you’re not working?

 Life outside of work

Joanne Mangan 

Well, I mentioned at the beginning, I have a daughter, so I spend a lot of time with her actually I think the fact that I’m able to be here at home, when she comes home, when we can finish early, we can take the dog out for a walk, or we can go, you know, go into town, it’s just been a real amazing thing for me. She’s at a really nice age right now. So I spend a lot of time with my daughter, I have a dog as well, his name is Luke, he is a rescue dog. I got him from an animal rescue. He is one eyed,  he’s really huge. I would show it to you but he’s not here. So he and my daughter take up a lot of my time. And I think I’ve been able to do more running, I’m able to do more, you know, outdoor activities because of remote working, but I wouldn’t if I lived in Ireland. So this time of year, it’s starting to get dark at like 5pm. And if I was working in the office, I would go in in the dark, and I come home in the dark. But actually, yesterday, I was able to take an hour and go for a nice little break. So being able to enjoy life outside of work is a really amazing thing for me when it comes to being able to work remotely. But yes, my daughter really does take up quite a lot of my time. Anyone listening who has kids will understand what I’m talking about.

Pushpak Mundre 

Yes. So you stay in a city or it’s a small town?

Joanne Mangan 

it’s a small town, I mean, a suburb of a city that you probably won’t have heard of. It’s called Galway in the west of Ireland. But I live in the suburbs. So I’m about 25 kilometers from the city. And it’s great. This is something that we at Grow Remote are really passionate about. And I see it myself every day I walk down, I’m maybe two minutes walk from the town center, and I go down and I get a coffee. And so I’m spending money in my local shop. And there’s people around during the day, in suburbs, generally during the day when everyone’s in the office, you wouldn’t see people around. So it’s great. It’s great breathing another life back into the town, and I’m really appreciating living. The pandemic has done this to everybody, I think you kind of appreciate the simple things in life. And I haven’t really been able to travel or leave the country for quite a long time. But I’m really appreciating just the little things like get tired and getting a coffee and saying hello to my neighbors. So that’s great. And I think that’s a brilliant thing about remote working. But actually, we’re heading off on our company retreat at the end of the month for branch banking area. So I’m very excited actually, even though I love my small town life, I’m really looking forward to getting out and going somewhere else, especially if there’s going to be some because it’s getting cold here in Ireland.

Pushpak Mundre 

Yeah. So what are your top three favorite remote tools like which likely help you working remotely?

Top 3 remote tools

Joanne Mangan

I think for me, I really like using Miro, I used it recently for a brainstorming session. And I find I found it really good because it can be hard to get on a remote call, it can be hard to get people brainstorming like you could do in face to face. And I used to love doing, you know those brainstorming where everybody puts a poster on a wall and you just kind of empty your brain of ideas and stick it all up on the wall and then kind of bring it all together. So I found Miro quite good for doing that with our team. And I actually use just for a couple of other things, just my own mind mapping and things like that. And you can share it with everybody. So I like that we use at Grow Remote, we use quite a few different tools, I think there’s a danger of going down too much using too many tools. I definitely I’m not into that. I like to just keep things quite simple. But we use I use pickup for my task management. And I like that because you can assign it to other people or we can work even more on a project with a few different people. And we use Slack a lot. I’m sure you hear this from every show. We use it for our community and we use it internally. And I just I find it’s very it’s a great way to just share very casually, very informally what’s going on. So I really like that as well. Those are probably my top three.

Pushpak Mundre  

Okay, yeah. So any resources or like any people you follow, like or any book, which you would recommend for people who are working remotely basically anything you know? Yeah, where you can learn more about this.

Joanne Mangan

Yeah, um, so there’s a couple of things I find it’s not really great for information, but just I think Chris Herd I love on Twitter. I don’t know if you know him. Yeah, first base HQ. I just love his attitude. And he says things and I’m always like, yeah, he’s posted some really funny stuff. And I think he’s really influential in getting the message out there to other companies as well. Yeah, he really makes it seem crazy to be going into the office. It’s brilliant. He has a great way of putting up. I just find him very entertaining. I’m actually working at the moment on the playbook for small companies. So I’ve been looking at different resources that other companies have. And to try and see what we can bring together and have a brilliant handbook, online, a playbook for remote. So I find that really good.

That probably is the most useful tool that I’ve come across or the most useful resource I’ve come across lately. Yeah, I think that’s

Pushpak Mundre

cool. Awesome. So yeah. Thank you so much, Joanne, for being on a podcast. I think. We had a really nice conversation and there’s a lot of insights. Yeah, I think this could help a lot of people, especially employers who are running the companies. So yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was really great talking to you.

Joanne Mangan  

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.