is work a place? distributed teams & the future of work

IS WORK A PLACE?

@quiip @alisonmichalk

Creating a company & culture without an office. Distributed leadership, teams & the future of work.

About Quiip

• Founded in 2010 by Alison Michalk

• Specialising in online community and social media management.

• Team of 22 + partners (HR, Finance, PR, Legal)

• Distributed “micro global” organisation, no central HQ.

• Operate 24/7 (social media, analytics, monitoring, engagement)

• Based in Australia; Australian staff have work from Iceland, Costa

Rica, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Canada, UK, America.

• I met one our employees (of 5 years) for the first time last year!

• Our clients — SEEK, RealEstate.com.au, CBUS, Origin Energy, BIG W,

MYOB, AMP, BWS, ReachOut.com, SANE, NSW & Vic Health, State &

Federal Government and more.

@quiip | @alisonmichalk

http://RealEstate.com.au

http://ReachOut.com

Start Up

Progressive Organisation


Who can benefit from this talk?

TraditionalOrganisation

• There is more to remote work than ‘working from home’.

• Running a distributed company was intuitive & intentional

• Don’t confuse autonomy with “alone”.

• Many of the issues re: remote work are related to the

central office attitude, not the remote workers.


“Remote” vs Distributed


Myth-Busting Remote Work

Reducesstress

IncreasesProductivity

HappierHealthier

Employees

More time for life & family

ReducesAbsenteeism Attract &

Retain


Show me the… benefits!

Work smarter

= High Performing Teams

Nocommute

“The future of great workplaces lies in helping

employees fuse their personal and

professional lives in ways that position them

to deliver their best work.”

Bums in seats!• Sitting in front of a computer no longer predictive of quality work.

• Big discrepancy between the science of what works and what we do in workplaces.

• Modern workplaces are based on principles of scientific management made popular

in the early 1900s in factories.

• We live in a complex environment where knowledge is the product.

• 9-5 is not effective, efficient or conducive to quality work.

• Removing the “40-hour scaffold” is revealing and brings real contributors to the fore.

• Focus on OUTCOMES not HOURS.

• Have a jog, take a nap, pack the dishwasher. Access Restorative Spaces and

Minimise Cognitive Reverberations.

Where do you do your best work?


Managing “radical flexibility” - critical management skill

• The term flexibility is mis-used. Not to be

confused with standard employee rights.

• Managing distributed teams is a CRITICAL

MANAGEMENT SKILL.

• Requires a focus on performance and

collaboration.

• Requires new systems & processes.

• Requires different structures, let’s look at ours.



Structures

• Not a hierarchy or flat, but networked structure.

• Very agile. Form teams around projects.

• No one works full-time.

• No one has set hours in their contracts

(exception being our shift work).

“Encouraging employees to build a schedule for

meeting goals instead of requiring that they sit by a

computer to meet a predefined schedule sends a

powerful message of trust and sets the stage for

sustained performance.”

- Ron Friedman, Best Place to Work.


Culture

• Don’t confuse perks with culture

• Culture is formed either intentionally or through neglect

• Culture is about how you work, how you interact, your

expectations and what you reward (and punish)

• Increasingly we’re Working Out Loud (WOL) which is

about making work observable and narrating your work.

• Culture of trust is key to distributed teams


Tools & Asynchronous Workplaces


“When we provide them (employees) with the flexibility to

succeed in both their personal and professional lives, we achieve

more than an extraordinary workplace. We create an

organisation that performs at its very best.” - Ron Friedman

@quiip@joolliee

Thank you from Quiip.

Partnering with Australia’s leading brands for online community success


Some days you’ll find me working here!

is work a place? distributed teams & the future of work

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