The Future of Remote Work – YPN Crossroads Summit 2019

At the 2019 YPN Crossroads Summit, I prepared a talk that discusses the trends surrounding remote work and how we do remote work at MarketBeat. Thanks to the help of Josh Novak and Main Street Media, I was able to record the presentation so that it can be distributed more widely. Below you will find my talk in its entirety.

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(Watch this Video on YouTube)

Prefer to read instead of watch? Here’s a rough outline I used for this talk (sorry for the typos).

• Nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies have employees that work outside of the office.
• 9 million people in the United States worked remotely at least half the time in 2018–up 115% from the number of remote workers reported in 2005. (FlexJobs)
• 52% of employees around the world work from home at least once per week. (Owl Labs)
• Forty percent more U.S. employers offered flexible workplace options than they did five years ago. Still, only 7% make it available to the majority of their employees. (Global Workplace Analytics)
• 50% of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telework and approximately 20-25% of the workforce teleworks at some frequency (Global Workplace Analytics)
• The Rise of the Digital Native
  • One study (https://www.shrm.org/foundation/ourwork/initiatives/preparing-for-future-hr-trends/Documents/10-15%20Randstad%20Presentation.pdf) suggested that Generation Z Will make up 36% of the workforce by 2020. These are people born since the mid 1990s. They grew up with technology from at least the moment they entered school. They probably had laptops or chrome books in school. They’ve always had cell phones.
  • By the time they enter into the workforce, they already know how to use Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack, Evernote, and other remote work tools, because they used those tools in school.
  • Every year a new graduating class that’s already trained with remote work tools are coming into the workforce. These new workers can start to learn how their remote jobs immediately because they don’t have to take the time to learn how to use the productivity, community and project management tools their companies use, because chances are they’ve already used them or other tools just like them.
  • This gives them a big advantage over other workers who technology skills were learned later in life or workers who may not have as strong technology skills.
• The Slowing of Rural Flight?
  • If you have the right skill set, are a good self-manager and can drive a lot of value for a company, there’s no reason you can’t get a job with a company in San Francisco, New York, Austin or any other startup hot-bed while working from Sioux Falls or even the hometown you may have grown up in.
  • If you’re a software developer, you might be able to make $50,000 to $70,000 in a larger South Dakota community like Brookings, Mitchell or Aberdeen. That same skill set is worth $100,000 to $150,000 to larger out of state companies, so if you find the right remote company to work for, you can get pretty close to a “big city” salary without the expenses of living in a big city or having to deal with a long commute.
  • I think one of the reasons a lot of people leave their home-towns is job opportunities and with the increase in remote positions, that will be much less of an issue in the future. I think that’s why we’re starting to see some smaller communities in the state have their population stop declining and level off.
  • Certainly there are other revitalization efforts for small towns, but if 10% or 20% of the population of a small town can get remote jobs, that’s a lot of money flowing into a community which will prop up local small businesses and increase the tax base. So maybe the local grocery store that may have otherwise stay closed can remain open.
  • I was a really good example of this when I was in college. I couldn’t get a decent job in Madison, SD, because there just weren’t enough jobs to go around for all of the college kids that wanted jobs. I didn’t qualify for work-study, so I had to make my own job. I ended up doing freelance writing and made $1,500 to $2,000 per month from a handful of different companies and pretty much all of those dollars flowed back into Madison’s economy in one way or another.
  • There are some rural cities and states that are even trying to pay to attract remote workers to live in their communities. The State of Vermont passed a bill in 2018 “will pay remote workers $5,000 a year for two years to make the Green Mountain State their home, as long as their employer is based somewhere else.”
• The Death of The Nine to Five
  • The 40-hour workweek is ingrained into society, but historically speaking it’s a relatively new phenomena. We didn’t always work five eight-hour days per week and take a couple of week-long vacations each year. It was 150 years ago (1869) that President Grant issued the National Eight Hour Law Proclamation in response to demand from labor unions for better working conditions.
  • Unemployment is at a fifty-year low and any employer in the city will tell you that it’s incredibly difficult to find and retain good talent. The power has really shifted from employers to employees, especially for highly skilled workers.
  • Employers used to be able to say, “Ask nicely and I’ll let you work at my company under my rules and the salary that I’ll set”. Increasingly employers are asking themselves “What do I need to offer to get someone decent to work at my company?”
  • This is causing some employers to allow their employees to do things like set their own hours, work at home a day or two a week or collaborate to develop a schedule that works for both employer and employee.
  • Workesr want more flexibility in their schedules and the 9-5 work schedule is really starting to crack at the edges.
  • As a group, employees are valuing work-life balance more than ever before. To attract employees, we’ll increasingly see employers in highly competitive industries do things like offer more paid-time-off and adopt policies that enforce good work-life boundaries such as disabling work email after 5:00 PM or having good maternity/paternity leave policies.
• More Workers Opting Out of Full Time Jobs
  • There are now young people opting out of taking a single full-time job and instead generating incomes by working in the gig economy such as driving for uber or lyft, by doing freelance work part-time, running seasonable businesses or having a couple of more flexible part-time jobs instead of a full-time job.
  • It’s not that these people couldn’t get full-time jobs, especially given where unemployment is at today. These people simply don’t want full-time jobs. They want more control over time and don’t want to be working in an office building all day. So, they piece together an income by doing two or three things that they can do when it’s convenient for them.
  • Of course, this may come at the expense of having employee benefits and it may mean they make less money. But, they’re okay with that, because they have the freedom to pursue their own interests on their own schedule is more important to them than maximizing their income.
  • [New Slide] My friend Andy Jorgensen is a good example of one of these people. He’s perfectly employable, but he’s instead decided to run a fireworks business during the summer and do whatever other odd jobs he can find to provide an income for himself. With his extra free time, he mentors young men and volunteers in his church.
  • [New Slide] Clint brown, who some of you know, is another good example. He generates an income by doing marketing agency work and doing consulting for Dakota Resources, but his passion is community development and entrepreneurship, so most of his time ends up going to those things.
  • On the employer side, there are also companies that recognize that not every job fits neatly into a 40-hour a week position. Companies are increasingly willing to find employees and contractors that can do one or two things really well and pay them just for that work with the understanding that they probably have 3 or 4 different arrangements to do similar things with other companies.
  • Gig economy companies like Uber, Lyft, Postmates, TaskRabbit and Instacart are good examples of this. People that work for them as contractors can work as little or as much as they want on a schedule they please, but usually doing these types of things aren’t intended to be a full-time income. If you put a couple of them together they can add up to $30K to $50K per year though.
  • At MarketBeat, we need a lot of graphic design work done, but we may not need a full-time graphic designer all the time. So, we work with Kristi Wire, who’s a freelance graphic designer who might be working with 3 or 4 different companies at a time.
  • These flexible work arrangements can work in many different ways, but the megatrend in the years to come is that there will be fewer people with 40 hours per week jobs and much more people that have two- or three-income sources from different companies.
• More Businesses Will Cater to Remote Workers
  • The most recent census data showed that 5.2% of Americans worked at home as their primary job location, which is up from 3.3% in the year 2,000.
  • As there are more people that work for companies in other cities or companies like MarketBeat that simply don’t have an office, there will be a trend of businesses that cater to remote workers and the remote work economy.
  • In the years to come, I think we’ll see an increase nationally in the number of co-working spaces and coffee shops with fast Wi-Fi that cater to remote workers. You already see it here in Sioux Falls if you show up to Josiah’s or Queen City Bakery on any given weekday morning. There’s always several people with laptops getting work done.
  • I think you’ll also see companies that act as consultants that help businesses and employees make a transition to a remote working environment. So, imagine having a consultant come to your house and help you setup a good workspace when you start your next remote job and giving you tips about how to be effective as a remote worker.
  • There are also now certifications and online courses that employees can take that teach remote work skills. Workforce training companies see the trend of remote work as a great way to sell more courses and certificates to workers and businesses. And realistically, there are probably more applicants than remote jobs available in most cases, so If you want to apply for a remote job, having a certificate credential that shows you know the basics of software that’s used for remote work situations, could be beneficial.
  • You might also see internet providers try to sell tailored business packages to remote workers that include faster Internet, a dedicated IP address and a specific service guarantee, such as if your Internet goes down, they’ll guarantee a tech will be there within an hour. I’m already getting direct mail from Midco about a business internet package at my house, so that trend is really underway.
  • There will be a lot of different business models that aim to cater to remote workers and it’s hard to know which ones will be successful at this point, but when entrepreneurs see a trend, they’ll try to capitalize it and the trend of remote work is no different.

 

How We Do Remote Work at MarketBeat

• [New Slide] Two of MarketBeat’s core values are to embrace flexibility and to pursue your personal passions. We believe one of MarketBeat’s primary purposes is to enable its employees to pursue their own dreams, passions and interests independent of MarketBeat’s business goals. We also understand that the things we enjoy doing the most don’t always happen after 5:00 PM or on weekends, so we account for that.
  • Our employees are allowed to set their own schedules and shift their days off to serve their needs and their family’s needs.
  • Most of us work some variation of an 8 hour workday. Some people work 8 to 4. Some people work 7 to 3. Some times we’ll take a break in the middle of the day to go do something. My
  • My expectation is that my employees do about 40 hours per week, but I’m not too concerned especially when that happens. Most of our work is asynchronous, so it doesn’t matter if a logo gets designed or code gets written at 6 AM or 6 PM
• [NEW SLIDE] We also embrace flexibility in terms of location where we work. I’ve asked our employees several times if they were interested in getting a company office and the answer has always been no. I’ve told my employees I don’t really care where they do their work as long as their work gets done. I have a single office downtown where I work because I have kids at home. Will works at the Zeal Center a lot. Rebecca, Ryan and Stevie all seem to enjoy working at home, and that’s okay. I want them to work at the place where they’ll be the most productive.
• We can only hire self-starters.
  • Since MarketBeat allows people to set their own hours and own work location, we really need self-starters to work at MarketBeat. Someone that requires a lot of hand-holding and direct supervision probably wouldn’t do super well at MarketBeat, so we try to look for people that have been freelancers or done their own thing before or have otherwise proven they have an ability to get things done without being managed directly.
• We equip our employees with everything they need to be successful
  • Almost all of our work is done with technology, so everyone gets to pick their own laptop, up to $2,500. I figure if I’m paying someone say $50,000 a year to work on a computer, I should invest in a good laptop for them because I don’t want poor technology to get in the way of my employees delivering value to my company.
• [NEW SLIDE] We embrace technology as much as possible for communication and productivity.
  • We use an internally-built system for task management that ties into our database. We do this because we can automatically generate to-do items for people based off the information in our database. We know that if our open rate goes below a certain percentage for the day, we might be on a black list, so that will automatically generate a task for Will to go check and see if we have any email deliverability issues.
  • [NEW SLIDE] We use slack as our primary communication mechanism. We use it to discuss projects, watercooler talk and pretty much whatever. We don’t use it for scheduling and we don’t use it for task management.
  • We use Google Docs for document collaboration.
  • We use Visual Studio for programming and Azure Dev Ops for source code management
  • We use DropBox for file sharing.
  • We use ManageWP to manage our big list of websites
    We use Zoom for both remote meetings and to use as the big “community screen” when we’re at a coffee shop that doesn’t have a projector.
• [NEW SLIDE] We have a digital “daily standup” meeting
  • Everyone posts ins #whatweareworkingon bullet points of what they got done yesterday and what they plan on working today, that way we know what everyone’s doing on any given day.
• We have bi-weekly staff meetings in-person.
  • 6 of our 7 employees are located in Sioux Falls, so we meet in person about once every week and a half to discuss projects and other stuff we need to focus on as a team.
• We’ll also have unofficial coworking sessions
  • Anyone is allowed to declare a coworking session and anyone that wants to can show up. You can talk to each other during the session, or not. Most of the time these end up being at Queen City Bakery, Josiah’s or Zeal because those are the places we ilke to be during the day.
• We onboard new employees in a unique way
  • Whenever someone starts at MarketBeat, everyone in the company spends a day at MarketBeat university, where we go over the history of the company, its business model, key marketing methods, key monetization methods and key business systems.
  • For the first week the new employee is given a buddy to work with so they have someone to work next to as they learn their job. It’s a different work buddy every day, so our new employees have a chance to spend time with everyone on the team.
• How we’ve organized our company around remote work has largely been organic. We didn’t read these ideas in a book. It’s simply a result of what we’ve tried as a company and what’s stuck after having remote employees for the last several years.
• I’m also proud to say that we’ve had 0% turn-over in the six years that we’ve had more than just me as an employee at the company. Granted, I’ve only ever hired six people, but they’re all still working at MarketBeat today. I think we’ve built a really unique culture and work environment and I think our employees value that. It also helps that we pay well too.

 

More Remote Work Tools to Try

• Team Chat and Communication
  • Slack – This should be your default choice for team chat. Use it unless you have a reason to use anything else.
  • Skype – Good when you need to communicate both internal team members and external partners.
  • Facebook Workplace – Walled off version of Facebook for “work only”. Also includes file sharing, live chat and video communication.
  • Jell – Daily standups. Keeps track of what everyone’s working on. Syncs with Slack.
  • Podio – Similar to Facebook Workplace. “Kitchen Sink” communications tool that also includes project management and ability to create own’s own project work flow.
  • Glip – Slack competitor that also includes light project management
  • Zoom – Team video chat and screen sharing.
  • YouTube Live – One-to-many live streaming
  • Me – Competitor to Zoom. Works really well for third-parties.
• Project Management
  • Asana – A good default choice for project management. Simple UI to create projects broken down by tasks and assigning tasks to individuals.
  • Trello – A good choice for an individual or small teams.
  • JIRA – Another productivity tool. Good for product road-mapping. Geared toward Software development firms.
  • Float – Team calendar and Time management. Also includes PTO tracking and “in-out board” functionality.
  • Scoro – Total business management software. Includes calendars, task and project management, basic CRM and invoicing. Geared toward services businesses.
  • Basecamp – Barebones project management software.
  • ToDoIst – Simply To-Do-List management. Good for individuals.
  • iDoneThis – To-Do Lists for Teams
  • Wunderlist – To-Do’s and Reminders for Individuals and Teams+Families.
• Design and Development
  • GitHub – Default choice for source code management for development teams.
  • Assembla – A more secure version of GitHub with project management features.
  • Pivotal Tracker – Project management for software development teams.
  • InVision – Product Design and Workflow Creation Tool
  • Codepen – Online code editor and web development tool.
• Other Tools
  • DropBox and Google Drive – They’re both good for file sharing. Google Drive has better collaboration tools. Dropbox is better for pure file storage.
  • Chimp or Champ – An anonymous weekly employee happiness meter for checking the team.
  • Teamwork – Time tracking that can be exported for billing purposes.
  • Hub Staff – Employee monitoring to make sure your employees are actually working. Screen recording. Time sheets. GPS tracking.
  • Every Time Zone – See what time it is where your remote team members are.
  • ScreenHero – Simple screen sharing
  • Doodle – Find a time to meet with your team.
  • Take a Break Please – Make sure you’re not sitting at your computer too long. Mac app.

Sources:

https://weworkremotely.com/remote-work-in-2019-what-the-trends-insights-and-predictions-say

https://remoters.net/remote-work-trends-future-insights/

https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/the-future-of-remote-work.html

https://remote.co/10-stats-about-remote-work/