Making remote work work.
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| Actual footage of me working remotely. |
I've been perplexed over the last year or so, like many people, about this whole Return To Office (RTO) thing. One of the silver linings of Covid was supposed to be that we'd all learnt that a lot of roles can be done remotely...and now we seem to be backtracking. I've not understood it.
Lately, however, reading the things that people say on LinkedIn, chatting with people, doing cursory research, I think I've stumbled upon the issue a lot of organisations have had with remote work:
They've not tried to make it work.
Sounds obvious, when you say it like that...but there seems to be a total lack of understanding that you can't just give everyone a laptop, send them home and expect a great remote working culture to just appear.
Whilst the internet is already littered with such articles, I thought I'd scrape together a little list of the practical things you can do to make remote working work better. Underlying this is a single concept that seems to be so often overlooked:
Make building trust everyone's problem
Everyone is quick to complain about RTO, that managers don't trust them. They're being micro-managed. Why can't they be left to get on with their work in peace?
I think it's helpful in this discussion to empathise with the perspective of a manager. As a manager, I just kinda want to know where people are and what they're up to. I don't think that's unreasonable. I have some responsibility over the delivery of software...so I want to be sure people are working in ways that help this happen. And there's some kind of duty of care. If you didn't show up for work, how long would you want it to be before your manager put in a wellness check just to make sure you were OK?
If it's only ever the manager seeking to build trust and having to ask folks questions all the time, obviously it's going to start feeling like micromanagement. So, as I go through these practical tips, I'll talk a little about how individuals can be proactive and do their bit in building trust.
I guess I should add, here, that I don't believe trust is something that you need to "earn". I believe in trusting people by default, until they give you reason not to trust them. But I also feel that trust can be maintained, and deepened. So when I say "building trust", I mean further building on whatever level of trust already exists.
Make sure people are set up for working remotely
When Covid hit, all bets were off. March 17th. Everyone had to go and work from home. Even if they had nowhere sensible to work. Even with the children tornado-ing around them. Even if they had dial up internet. They just had to work from home.
This meant that some people had a much better experience of WFH than others. Balancing on your breakfast bar, hunched over a laptop, watching a laggy video call whilst someone rams Miss Rabbit's schoolbus into your leg for the 50th time that hour isn't great fun. Locking yourself away in a nice little office with everything you need to work productively - much better!
This meant that some people had a much better experience of WFH than others. Balancing on your breakfast bar, hunched over a laptop, watching a laggy video call whilst someone rams Miss Rabbit's schoolbus into your leg for the 50th time that hour isn't great fun. Locking yourself away in a nice little office with everything you need to work productively - much better!
These days, there's less panic. People don't have to work from home if they don't want to. And organisations have a right, if not a responsibility, to make sure people have a plan for how they're going to work effectively and safely while remote. Modern DSE assessments are decent enough at highlighting potential issues in proposed working environments. So there's no reason not to make ensuring that people have somewhere sensible to work our first step.
And, of course, "somewhere sensible to work" doesn't need to mean "home" - people may have access to a co-working space or other environment that would enable them to work remotely without concern.
Once you've identified where someone's going to be working, you have to make sure they have everything they need to work effectively from there. We all know I'll drone on til the cows come home about the importance of a proper keyboard and mouse....but making sure monitors are at the right height is also important. Make sure everyone has a decent chair. And give people external webcams, otherwise you'll just end up with people hunched over the laptop again every time they're on a call.
Remember, not everyone is just setting up their home office...so if they're going to be working out and about, what else do they need? Additional laptop screens? Decent noise cancelling headphones? Portable laptop riser?
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| Alas, my home office has been a bit...knocked down. But even in my temporary bedroom home, I'm still pretty well set up to work happily and healthily. |
Agree kit expectations for working remotely
As with most things, open conversation is the quickest way to bottom out how we'd like people to be working when they're remote.
We shouldn't have people working off a laptop on their sofa. It's not productive and it's an ergonomic nightmare. So, as above, I wouldn't expect this to be what was happening on an ongoing basis.
On the other hand, if someone's away from home and it would help them to be able to work this way for a week, that's probably fine. As long as both parties know that this isn't acceptable as a permanent arrangement, all is well.
On the other hand, if someone's away from home and it would help them to be able to work this way for a week, that's probably fine. As long as both parties know that this isn't acceptable as a permanent arrangement, all is well.
Being proactive, an individual might flag this with their manager
"I know working conditions aren't ideal here, but it will only be for a week"
It's easier to have that conversation than to have your manager call you up and say
"Are you able to work properly where you are? It looks really uncomfortable!"
Probably the most contentious question in this space is the big "camera on / camera off" debate. A lot of people have strong feelings about this, and we must remember that people aren't all the same, carry their own anxieties, etc. As with anything, though, I think people just need clear expectations set.
Personally, being the hip young millennial I am, I'm used to being on camera every hour of the day, so I'm never bothered about having my camera on...and if my camera's off, it can usually be taken as code for "perimeter breach: a crying child has made it to daddy's lap!". It's also pretty rare that I'll blur my background, or use virtual backgrounds etc - just because I think it's nice for people to be able to see where I am and what's going on.
Personally, being the hip young millennial I am, I'm used to being on camera every hour of the day, so I'm never bothered about having my camera on...and if my camera's off, it can usually be taken as code for "perimeter breach: a crying child has made it to daddy's lap!". It's also pretty rare that I'll blur my background, or use virtual backgrounds etc - just because I think it's nice for people to be able to see where I am and what's going on.
Being proactive, if there's no reason not to share your camera, I'd share it. It's better to be seen quietly nodding in agreement and reacting to what's being said, rather than have the manager call up with
"You didn't say much in that meeting...I just wanted to make sure you were following what was going on?"
The use of headsets also seems more controversial than it ought to be. It's a fairly hard and fast rule that when you're in a noisy environment, decent headsets with a boom mic do a much better job of cancelling out background noise. (lots of videos like this one on youtube if you don't believe me!)
Being in a noisy environment typically causes two problems: 1) People are less inclined to speak, as they don't want to add a load of noise to the call. 2) When people do speak, it's hard to hear them...or there's distracting noise.
Being in a noisy environment typically causes two problems: 1) People are less inclined to speak, as they don't want to add a load of noise to the call. 2) When people do speak, it's hard to hear them...or there's distracting noise.
So it feels like a slam dunk decision to me - if we're working somewhere noisy, we expect to wear a proper headset. Even if it means you look less hipster in that coffee spot you've decided to work from.
(the opposite is also as issue, by the way. Maybe don't join calls from a library or quiet carriage where you're unable to speak freely!)
Proactivity can also help here.
"Hey, James, I've been at WeWork a bit lately, and people have said there's a lot of background noise on the calls. Would it be OK to get me a headset with better noise cancellation?"
A much nicer conversation than
"Hey, Alex, your colleagues have been telling me they struggle to hear you on standup - why aren't you using a proper headset?"
So, now we've got our setup sorted, let's start thinking about how we actually want to work together...
Everything should be transparent by default
Now, I'm sure there's a philosophical counter-argument to this. I'm sure there's a motivational poster somewhere, I can see it now. A desert island, a stunning sunset and the words "trust is not needing to see what's going on" - or something like that.
...but back in the real world, people trust things more if they can see them. So if there's no reason for it to be a secret, share it. And yes, I know there are times when things are secret, and it's not possible to share it. But make this the exception, not the rule.
So, for example:
Booking meetings is easier, because you can contextualise people's appointments.
Calendars should be open by default
It just makes sense. People can use their calendars for sharing their whereabouts, as above.
Booking meetings is easier, because you can contextualise people's appointments.
"I see he's at a trade show from 3...better not book him in for an interview at 2... "
Also, and I know this isn't directly about remote work, it constantly encourages people to think "should this meeting be private?" which is just a good discipline to have. People just assuming something will be private is not really a good security behaviour!
Be proactive, keep your calendar open, model best practice when it comes to making events private.
When you do this, it's easy to:
Use calendars to share whereabouts
As I said before, managers care where people are. And their colleagues probably care too. As a manager, it's never great to field a call that goes like this:
Team mate: "We've been working really hard on this bug for the last two hours, but Tony is nowhere to be seen? Where is he?"
Manager: "Errrr."
If my manager ever got that call, they'd be able to look in my calendar and it would give them the answer. Let's see how that conversation would go for my manager.
Team mate: "We've been working really hard on this bug for the last two hours, but James is nowhere to be seen? Where is he?"
Manager: "Did you look at his calendar? It says he's got a medical appointment, but he's due back in 10 minutes"
Nobody's ever told me to do this, it's just what I do - because I don't want to have the alternative conversation:
"Your team have been trying to reach you all afternoon - where were you!?"
Before we go any further, a note: I've written these things down in an order. There has to be an order. But, yes, I know. There are other ways individuals can prevent this conversation. Hopefully we'll come to your ideas shortly.
Focus on onboarding
When people are working remotely, the extent to which they can see and interact with your organisation is controlled by the accesses and permissions you give them. As such, it's really important that onboarding is done correctly.
If they don't get an invite to monday.com, they won't know to look there for project updates. If you don't add them to a team chat, they will miss out on updates and struggle to ask questions. If you forget to invite them to company meetings, they'll be left out and miss key information.
Most of these things will shake themselves out in the fullness of time, but a thoughtful and controlled onboarding will really help your new starter hit the ground running.
This segues nicely into:
If they don't get an invite to monday.com, they won't know to look there for project updates. If you don't add them to a team chat, they will miss out on updates and struggle to ask questions. If you forget to invite them to company meetings, they'll be left out and miss key information.
Most of these things will shake themselves out in the fullness of time, but a thoughtful and controlled onboarding will really help your new starter hit the ground running.
This segues nicely into:
Use instant messaging properly
Whether you're using Slack, Teams or whatever else, understand that instant messaging is the lifeblood of a remote workforce. So invest in training people in how to use it.
Unsurprisingly, as instant messaging is at the heart of an organisation, a lot of the "culture" of that organisation gets wrapped up in the way people use their instant messaging platform. This is to say that training someone on how to use Teams isn't sufficient. You need to train them on how to use Teams in your organisation.
Some organisations are very strict on thread etiquette, others are less so.
Some organisations expect you to acknowledge announcements, others don't.
Unsurprisingly, as instant messaging is at the heart of an organisation, a lot of the "culture" of that organisation gets wrapped up in the way people use their instant messaging platform. This is to say that training someone on how to use Teams isn't sufficient. You need to train them on how to use Teams in your organisation.
Some organisations are very strict on thread etiquette, others are less so.
Some organisations expect you to acknowledge announcements, others don't.
Some organisations have naming conventions that you must adhere to.
Some organisations have standards for how integrations should work.
Some organisations have meanings to certain emojis that outsiders just wouldn't get.
Some organisations expect you to actively monitor certain conversations, where others expect you to ignore anything you're not explicitly tagged in.
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| Cute little folks, aren't they. But does reacting with the eyes emoji meant that you've seen what they said, or that you're going to look in to what they said? Clarity and consistency is key. |
All of this stuff should be accepted for what it is - a kind of codified definition of your culture. It should be embraced and actively taught to new starters - so they can't start communicating in a way that is fitting for your organisation and they can start feeling like they belong.
I'd also refer back to the "everything should be open by default" above. Again, encourage people to share information with the largest possible audience. Encourage people to continually ask the question "who should I be communicating this to?".
There's a balance to be struck, of course. You can't expect candour or vulnerability to be as strong in very large discussion groups, so there needs to be some control. But encourage people to err on the side of including more people in a conversation.
(you may need to preach on the prime directive, no blame culture etc to get people into the right head space)
Sometimes you'll hear people say things like "there's so much noise when people start talking about X, Y or Z" - but in my experience, this says more about individuals' notification settings than it does about the conversation that's happening. Again, a simple training gap that needs filling.
Proactively sharing things with as many people as possible does also help to avoid more of those micro manager conversations....
Manager: "Bob, did you message Dave to ask about adding a new pipeline?"
Bob: "Yeah, I sent him a Slack message yesterday"
becomes:
Manager: "Bob, did you message Dave to ask about adding a new pipeline?"
Bob: "Yeah, didn't you see that in the DevOps channel?"
or even:
Manager: "Hey Bob, I saw you asked Dave about setting up that pipeline. Thanks!"
Much nicer.
Written comms like this become so vital in a remote organisation, it may well be worthwhile trying to run a bit of your recruitment process over instant messenger.
I'd give a particular shoutout to the humble emoji here. In the olden-days of a town-hall meeting in the conference room, the leadership team would share news, or make announcements, and be able to see how many people had taken the information in. When these announcements are made on instant messaging, it can feel like speaking into a void.
Being proactive, just hit an emoji to show the writer that you've read what they wrote. Not difficult and makes someone else feel heard. Woot.
Being proactive, just hit an emoji to show the writer that you've read what they wrote. Not difficult and makes someone else feel heard. Woot.
Manage sync and async comms
When everyone was in the office together, there would be a lot of "synchronous conversations".
Person 1: <wheeling their little chair over to Person 2> "Hey, I don't know how to make the coffee machine give me a double shot - can you show me?"Person 2: <loses train of thought, sighs> "No, I don't know...have you asked Person 3?"Person 1: <resolves to ask Person 3 tomorrow and wheels back to their own desk> "OK, thanks".
Building a culture that is aware of the things that need to happen synchronously and those that can be picked up async is paramount to making the most of remote work. As above, instant messaging discipline can help to make it clear to people how quickly you need a response.
Take Knowledge Management seriously
When you're all remote and trying to be respectful of other people's focus time by communicating async, documentation becomes really important.
You can't count on someone being online exactly when you need them to be in order to unblock you - so it's much better if there's a document there to help you learn what you need immediately.
Structuring information prevents people from having to continually ask one another where things are.
And authoring, correcting and commentating on documentation is a tangible activity you'd expect to see from people in many roles.
Being proactive, you make sure your documentation is up to date, you do what you can to help other people with their docs and you're active in conversations around discussion points.
So you don't have so many
Manager: "James, could you please review the new ETL RFC and let me have your comments by Thursday"
and you have more
Manager: "Thanks for your comments on the ETL RFC, James, you made some really good points!"
Ah, that James is such a lovely, smart guy!
I'm aware, as I write this, that what I'm proposing may sound a little like pandering. Like as a remote worker you should be buzzing around, looking for ways to prove to your boss that you're doing something.
I don't think that's exactly what I'm saying....but on another level, I think it pretty much is.
It comes back to my main concept...it's everyone's responsibility to help to build trust. Showing clear activity helps to build trust, so you should do it.
We don't, of course, want this to be busy work. We all have stuff to do, we can't afford to be spending our time doing things whose only value is to help build trust in the team. Or can we? When we accept that trust is a really important thing that takes work, activity that helps to reinforce that trust becomes intrinsically valuable. Even if doing your own documentation, or reviewing someone else's, wasn't valuable in its own right - which it nearly always is.
Make space for small talk
Another way in which you can do something different to prioritise the building of trust. Just make space for people to chat, to get to know each other. Suggestions:
- Build small talk into the start of meetings. Call it out as a valuable activity. "For the first five minutes of each standup we just chat a little, check in with each other, have some glorious bants...then we move on to our progress updates..."
- Open small talk can be more comfortable for some people than others, so an alternative is to ask each person to share something each day along with their update. Sharing positive things that have happened in the last day can be quite uplifting.
- Include small talk in 121s. 121s are actually one of the few meetings in which "getting to know each other" is usually called out as part of the aim. So get to know each other. Chat about anything that gets a good conversation going, and make it a good "together conversation" that builds trust between you. Establishing high levels of trust will make other conversation topics in 121s so much easier to deal with, any way. So it's a great investment of time.
- Make a virtual water cooler. Where do people bump into each other, just chat, get to know people from different parts of the org etc? Tools like donut are great for getting people who wouldn't normally chat to each other in a room. Encourage folks to use them.
- Encourage social chat. Make a channel around fitness, one around netflix, one around Lego or (most importantly) a chat about coffee. Let people chat about these things and recognise them as important bonding time between colleagues. Try and silence the "don't you have something better to do" doubters - as, after all, what could be a better use of time than building a strong, trusting team?
- Organise remote socials. I think companies were pretty good at organising remote socials during the pandemic, but have done fewer afterwards. Particularly in the hybrid world, I think there's a tendency to think that away days etc cover off all the need for socialising. Even with these in place, it's worth trying to create a cadence of remote social activity - a decent social will get people chatting before, during and afterwards.
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| Another remote social. Another crushing loss on Geoguessr... |
More meetings
Is this an unpopular opinion? A hot take? I forget my modern hipster lingo. Anyway, I know, meetings are bad. Boo, hiss, meetings etc. But hear me out.
Managers can feel like they're flying blind while managing remotely. They miss a lot of information they'd get informally in an office. The implementation details they overhear when two engineers are chatting at the next desk. The things people are moaning about whilst waiting for coffee.
...and they can feel like they have fewer chances to communicate to the team, too. A vital part of managers' roles is to communicate to their people, to be the voice of the company, to offer context, to clarify company values and the intent of leadership. In the office, this stuff happens more naturally: Chatting about an upcoming project on the way to lunch. Talking about the way teams are structured while grabbing coffee. Asking people to gather round to talk about a sensitive issue.
Remotely, a lot of this stuff needs to be diarised.
I'd start by increasing the frequency of 121s. Doing half hour every fortnight is better than doing an hour per month. You increase the regularity general facetime. You're able to resolve issues and frustrations that much quicker. You get to hear about events while they're fresh in people's memory. And if something's going wrong, you're likely to have to make smaller adjustments after two weeks than after four.
I'd start by increasing the frequency of 121s. Doing half hour every fortnight is better than doing an hour per month. You increase the regularity general facetime. You're able to resolve issues and frustrations that much quicker. You get to hear about events while they're fresh in people's memory. And if something's going wrong, you're likely to have to make smaller adjustments after two weeks than after four.
I'd then make sure you stick to a schedule of team meetings. Encourage people to bring topics to talk about. Make sure that the companies mission, values and leadership intent are being discussed frequently. Ensure people have a safe space to raise concerns with the backing of their peers.
There are likely to be other useful meetings, too. Chapter and guild meetings. Three amigos sessions. Scrum of scrums. Things that might not always have felt necessary in an office when so much information was gleamed via osmosis probably need a calendar slot when remote.
Obviously, with "more meetings" comes more potential for waste, so it's really important to foster a positive cynicism of meetings, continually asking
Do we need this meeting?
Is there a clear agenda?
Do we need the full amount of time?
Do we have everyone here we need to really make progress?
Do we really need everyone that is here already?
That said, I've found repeatedly that people often have more to talk about than they think - so I'd err on the side of having meetings if in doubt. "Does anyone have anything to discuss?" often leads to "no", "no", awkward silence then "actually, there is one thing..."
Even if there's nothing to talk about, the very act of making time for each other builds trust. There are logical groups of people that might benefit from feeling more like a team. Maybe all the tech leads working in a given tribe. They're busy working on their own things and they're often often overworked. So the last thing they need is another meeting. But maybe seeing the other tech leads making time to meet with them makes them feel more able to ask for support when they need it.
Worst case: people get together, shoot the breeze for two minutes then discover they've nothing further to talk about - they have wasted a couple of minutes, if you view it that way.
Wasting any amount of time is bad, of course, but worse would be not to have a meeting when you need one. Not addressing problems rapidly allows them to fester. With remote working generating "more meetings" it is typically harder to find slots to get the right people together ad-hoc, so having the slots in just-in-case is very valuable.
Of course, the largest cost of all of these meetings is the increase in context switching. So let's try and make sure that everyone has a primer on the maker schedule and that people are empowered to push back on meetings that don't respect their focus time.
Think remote-first
Whilst remote working is more common now, an awful lot of companies still have offices. If they don't have offices, they have other places people get together to meet up. As soon as you've got a split between people that are remote and people that are colocated, you have to start thinking remote-first.
The most obvious change is to meetings. Have you ever been in one of those meetings where there are 8 people chatting in a meeting room and you're the one guy online trying to follow the conversation? You feel like a 3rd wheel and it's pretty miserable.
My preference in this instance would be for everyone to join the call from their desks - ensuring that everyone has an equal experience and good audio/video, via the kit we provided above.
Failing this, having the chair of the meeting be remote is a good way of ensuring remote voices get heard. Or the person writing the minutes. Failing either of these, you need to make agreements that everyone in the meeting room is responsible for ensuring remote colleagues have a good experience.
Simple video call features such as "raised hand" have made it much easier for remote voices to be recognised...but I remain convinced that the ideal is to either have everyone together in a meeting room or nobody at all.
Simple video call features such as "raised hand" have made it much easier for remote voices to be recognised...but I remain convinced that the ideal is to either have everyone together in a meeting room or nobody at all.
Taking this to the logical conclusion, if you're working hybrid, I'd advocate having the bulk of your meetings when people are WFH. This might seem counter-intuitive, but it means the time you have together in the office isn't all spent sat right next to each other talking to one another on headsets via the internet.
Have your meetings at home, when you will all have the same experience and you get some bonus face-time with your team. Then save F2F time for working together and those spontaneous interactions that are the lifeblood of innovation (apparently)!
Have your meetings at home, when you will all have the same experience and you get some bonus face-time with your team. Then save F2F time for working together and those spontaneous interactions that are the lifeblood of innovation (apparently)!
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| This stock photograph is horrifying to start with. But it's even scarier if you imagine that they're all on a call talking to one another... |
Beyond meetings, there are other obvious changes you can make to make sure remote workers feel like first class citizens of the team. Ensure that all information is digital, so everyone has the same access to it. Enable remote workers to self-serve on as much information as possible. (Yes, I know, I love post-its too). Coordinate comms so that remote workers hear messages first hand from leadership, rather than hearing things on the grapevine.
Management should work continually to ensure that people are getting good employee experience, irrespective of their location.
Be prepared to over-communicate in different ways
Different people best hear information in different ways.
Some people will happily read a blog entry linked from a Slack post. Some will never get to that, they need a company meeting in their calendar to make sure they find the time to take in this information. Others will best receive this info in a smaller group or 121.
Some people will happily read a blog entry linked from a Slack post. Some will never get to that, they need a company meeting in their calendar to make sure they find the time to take in this information. Others will best receive this info in a smaller group or 121.
You can get mad about people not all receiving information in the same way, if you want. The truth will remain, however, that if something is important you should be willing to repeat it in different ways until you're happy that everyone has got the message.
And people are forgetful. So try to help them remember things. Instead of mentioning your upcoming on holiday on standup a week before, repeat it each day for a few days before you leave. Drop it in the team Slack channel, too. Remind your manager about it in your 121. People still may sit on standup on Monday going "where's James?" - but at least you've done your best!
Be disciplined about admin
Just the word "admin" makes you shudder, doesn't it! But hygiene with admin is another thing we can do to build trust. And we're working in the spirit of proactivity here, so let's make sure we're:
- Providing frequent updates to our tasks in progress. Just adding a comment on a Jira card at the end of each day helps everyone to be clear on your progress should you happen to miss standup in the morning.
- Putting in time off requests in good time. I know it sounds daft, but we want to make it very clear that we understand that there's a pronounced difference between working and not working. When people start acting a bit laissez-faire about asking for time off, it makes it feel like it doesn't really matter if they're supposed to be working or not. And in a world where quiet vacationing is becoming a thing, it's important to be really clear about when you're working and when you're not.
For bonus points, and I know it's none of their business, actually write what you're doing in the time off request. I'll always write "taking the kids to the Isle of Wight" in the box. The worst that can happen is my boss tries to make small talk with me about it. In the meantime, I know I've done all I can to be transparent and build trust. - Stay on top of other admin. Timesheets? Employee surveys? Menu selections for the xmas party? Let's just kick proactive ass. Just get them done, let everyone see these things that have been done quickly and efficiently by you, whilst working at home. Dragging your feet on simple things just leaves space for that little resentment to creep in.
"Hm, well he had time for his kids sports day last week, but I've had to ask him 6 times to fill in that self-cert from last month..."
Just tick simple stuff off quickly. This is actually decent advise whether you're remote or not, but it's exaggerated in a remote context.
- This does of course work two ways. It's just as important that managers are on top of this stuff - approving requests quickly, responding to requests for help, paying for training courses. In a remote world, managers need to be proactive about building trust via activity at least as much as anyone else.
I think that's enough
As we know, I'm honour bound to Google to fill this site with nothing but low value content - and I'm worried this post is getting dangerously close to being actually useful.
So let's conclude.
Having written a little more, I'm still concerned that my suggested approach sounds like pandering to micromanagement. But I'm still equally convinced it's not.
I think success in remote work comes from the deconstruction of the power dynamic between manager and employee. Managers might feel like they're in the dark a little more remotely, but you can't have them chasing people for updates on everything - be that work status, whereabouts, or holiday requests. It's just too depressing. Employees feel smothered and managers feel like nobody's supporting them.
Instead, everyone should be encouraged to do their bit to maintain positive, trusting relationships by proactively communicating and supporting one another with positive activity. Get this right and you just might find that remote working...works.
As always, a tip of my hat to the spartan souls that have made it this far. Many appreciations!