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This week, Ryan and Heather chat about their recent remote onboarding experiences and addressing challenges like building your network, constructing onboarding plans, and more.
In the Digital Workspace Works podcast;
We will cover the ever-strengthened digital workspace. Together and with the help of experts we will unpack this broad term - Digital Workspace.
The ecosystem that blends people, process and technology so that work can get done.
We will focus on the various moving disjointed pieces which need to work together in harmony to enable the user with seamless and highly effective end user experience.
Ryan Purvis 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In the series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines. The problems they're facing, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the digital workspace inner workings.
Hey, how are you?
Heather Bicknell 0:32
Good. Didn't wanna let me enter the meeting today.
Ryan Purvis 0:37
You know, it's the first time I press that, but and, yeah, it's a silly place to put a button when you press it the wrong the wrong time, you
Heather Bicknell 0:46
know? to happen one of these times, yeah.
Ryan Purvis 0:52
Yeah. So how you been?
Heather Bicknell 0:56
Good. It's been a busy week. And I've also been trying to catch the eye, a little bit of the Winter Olympics. So I stayed up late last night to watch figure skating. That's really all I care about in any summer, winter Olympic. I love figure skating. I like gymnastics too. But I don't know. I know, a lot of people think the Winter Olympics are not as exciting. But that is a sport that I always look forward to.
Ryan Purvis 1:25
Yeah, it is interesting. I just, I mean, it's on the TVs here. But it does tell us for some reason, it doesn't have the same interest for most people, like most people will be talking about the sprinting, or the, you know, the field athletics, whereas here like it's on the TV, but people are not even talking about which I find bizarre, except for the Jamaican bobsled team, which is back for the first time in 20 years or something ridiculous like that. One of the guys actually goes to school with one of my weights and Sheffield. My friend works at the university. One of the athletes is Yeah, yeah. So that brings a bit a bit closer, because now you know, someone potentially, you know, two degrees of separation, which I think is now the, it used to be six degrees of separation, I think we're down to about three degrees. Now. If you consider the way technology is accelerated things with social media and that sort of thing.
Heather Bicknell 2:26
Oh, interesting. You mean, just in general, the degrees of separation has
Ryan Purvis 2:32
merit, there was a there was, yeah, there was a study that came out two years ago that you basically six degrees separated from from Kevin Bacon or something. And now, I think someone was telling me on Saturday night that it's down to about three, because of social media, because you know, you're not, you're not necessarily friends with somebody that you meet on Twitter, or Facebook or whatever, in a networking group. But you have like two sentences, but then all of a sudden, your friends, too. Now you connect it so that the relationships are not as strong. But now you are connected. Which is an interesting way of looking at because I hadn't really thought about that much. Until you said it, because there's lots of networks that I'm involved in where I've never met the person in my life. But now because I've been involved in a net in the network and a topic, which hadn't resolved for WhatsApp, on a one to one basis. So we were like pseudo friends, to put it that way. You know, when I get back to the UK, you'll probably meet up for a beer and that'll be like the most, like, what is awkward blind date things because you know so much about each other, but you've never met each other face to face, you've never, you know, you don't know what you what you're meeting.
Heather Bicknell 3:43
So yeah. That's odd, actually, that ties in really well to something I was thinking we could talk about today, which is the experience of onboarding remotely. Because I don't think we've really gone in depth on it. And we've both been in our new gigs for about a little over three months. And I think it's something that with the great resignations, still, you know, churning away, I think there are a lot of people starting new roles remotely for the first time, when they met, they have not had that remote onboarding experience yet they might have still been with their company that they were with pre pandemic, so it's not it could be interesting.
Ryan Purvis 4:26
Yeah, that's, that's a great, that's a great topic because someone that I'm hiring comes in next Monday. She's she's making a huge effort to listen to all these episodes. So I won't mention it by name, because I've got a permission but she can she can take that as a low. And she's gonna go through that experience now and I can I can give you my view from from a hiring point of view as well as say, onboarding. Let's start with your thoughts first.
Heather Bicknell 4:54
Yeah, so I guess you know, what you what were you what you were just saying around religion. sonship and the difficulty of kind of meeting people in a more, I guess, connected and a deeper way through like online networking groups, and then having the eventual experience of being a person and being kind of awkward about it. I feel like that relates to what i How can I, how I feel about the the worst part of the whole remote experience for me, which is the difficulty forming relationships and the kind of uncertainty of when you'll meet in person. But I think that's the hardest thing is just building your network remotely. And even just kind of getting those office for I know, we've talked about Office friendships in the past, and how that's more challenging in a remote world, I think it just takes longer to build those relationships, I'd love to hear kind of what maybe you have done to try to do that. Because for me, the most effective way of found of doing that is to have more meetings that have more one on ones like informal chats. And I think that's the best way to do it. But it also means you're putting more meetings on my calendar. So
Ryan Purvis 6:17
yeah, and that's exactly what I do. And it's exhausting. You know, you and I've been I've been fortunate in this in this role. I knew a lot of people before I came in. So those those one, two ones, we're not for a large part catching up with someone that I'd spoken to get five years ago or three years ago or two I'd always been friends with. So just kind of like kind of just joking about me moving across in other organizations. And I've typically in the last 10 years worked for global organizations. So people are a little bit more good birds. And in fact, Shell has a really nice thing that called them. It's got an acronym called it with acronyms called now. But when you joined, they say you need to go and do this acronym, whatever it is. And basically, that means you got to give you a list of people to go and speak to. And some of those people be peers, some of those people will be more senior, some of those people will be more junior, but as to give you some people to talk to that, that are not going to be immediate working people. And it's kind of randomized in some respects. So one of my goals, when I do any new company is to meet as many people as possible doing that. That one to one thing, but I don't do them for like long, you know, maybe 15 minutes. Because booking half an hour, even some guys book an hour, I think that's that's, that's terrible. It's like dating, you don't take the data for the first time for more than coffee, because you won't have you know, low investment. Low Risk for both sides, the minute you committed dinner and a movie, you know, the pressures really on both you and you both both feel uncomfortable. So it's the same thing, you know, 15 minutes, quick chat. Who are you? What do you do? You know, what about your family maybe, or some personal stuff, so you've got something to talk about. And then, you know, follow up again, in a couple weeks. I've been very bad with that in some places, and some places really good at it. But I find that works. And I also draw a map, a mind map of all the people that I've met and where they fit. And I find that really helps. Especially like now where I'm accelerating on some projects. I know the people who do their job now. So when when this I speak to so and so I'm like, Oh, they know me. So like, Oh, I'm surprised you know them. And it just makes it easier to have that first book with a conversation. Because now there's already a frame of reference for both of you. And a lot of trust is developed to so it helps generally speaking.
Heather Bicknell 8:51
Yeah, I I tend to rely a lot on org charts, to figure figure all of that out. But that, you know, I think that's one thing that really helps if an organization keeps that up to date in a remote setting. So you're not because I you know, you're not sending out emails and not getting responses, because you just don't know who's still at the company.
Ryan Purvis 9:15
Yeah, so that helps but but I find it's not so much the org chart that I'm looking for. It's I spoke to you because of this person mentioning you. Which sometimes will be the boss in most cases it is. But often you'll find this in, in many places. And then a very good book team of teams that I've recommended a few times. And they talk about it with the US military had to change the way they fought in Afghanistan. Which now is kind of sad how that all ended up but the day were very hierarchical, and decisions took too long. And information didn't flow and you know, various other problems. And what ended up working for them was becoming much more networked. And as the same premise as much as ever hierarchy, and I think you need a hierarchy for for HR things. But it's really about the networks. And you know, I speak to Joe Joe, Tommy speak to Tommy speak to Peter Peters the guy on talk to because he gets stuff done. And that's almost a reputational network in the same way that you always want to know who the who the go to people.
Heather Bicknell 10:28
Yeah, and I think that's, that's one of the hard things about, about doing this all remotely as well as is because you're not seeing people and it can just take longer to get to the person you really need to talk to who has the subject matter expert on that point. So, you know, the quicker you can get through to that person, the better. Right? That's, that's where I use the org chart as I if it's something you know, where I'm not sure, I might start there. And then eventually, you'll get tossed around to the right person, but not it'd be preferable to. I guess, the longer the longer you're at a company, the more time you spend, do you have a better a better idea of where to go to people? I think that's natural, but I think it just takes maybe a little bit longer in the remote sense as well. Yeah, no, you're right.
Ryan Purvis 11:23
So what else you want to talk about in the onboarding process?
Heather Bicknell 11:27
Well, I thought, you know, we could talk about any, maybe technology or productivity tools, or if there's anything like that, that you found helpful. And then we could also talk about that in the context of onboarding team members. Because I do have experience as well with that, in the past, trying to craft onboarding plan. I've used some project management tools for that. So I'm curious how you handled it, and kind of how how to treat new members onboarding remotely, and kind of what's needed there that maybe is a little bit more different than in the in person sense?
Ryan Purvis 12:14
Yeah, look, it's not something that I've been known to be good at. But I've worked really hard. And I've been fortunate my last two roles, I've had the autonomy to bring in the tools that I've wanted to use, as opposed to being forced to use some corporate key chosen stripped back version of the product that usually stripped back so far, that it's not even useful. And Case in point example of this is Jira, it's a good tool, but you can never use it properly in a corporate anyway, so what I do is, you know, when I come in there, there needs to be a central knowledge place. So I use notion as my tool of choice. And initially, what I will do is, I will start consuming the information that, you know, this is me coming on board. So I'm consuming what what is important, and I start building out a framework from there. And that becomes the teaching tool for people to join the team or even the team itself. So in my current role, I had to take on people that have all done a specific job for a period of time. Now we do in a different way, I've needed to give them direction. So notion has become the central point for that, you know, it's a good tool for a lot of things. And one of those like that is it's flexible enough that if we need to change the process, we just change the process. There's no, there's no, you know, back and forth will develop or anything like that, because it's really just a bunch of Excel spreadsheets, tied together with relationships, which if you look at how most businesses are run, is Excel. And that includes, even though they have a big SAP or a big SYSPRO, or whatever it is, people still extract all the data to Excel, they manipulate and they send that out. To notion gets us away from that plastic could do some of the other things that we want to do like with Word documents and PowerPoints effect, I'm running a program now. And the entire CFO briefing pack is in motion as pages. So you know, my ability to update is really quick, because it's updating of live information. And that's, that's a huge thing. So what happens there is that motion is the brain. I've got a new person starting on Monday, so I'm actually looking at this. And her first day is going to be all about how to use notion and how to navigate our book of knowledge Ruby, and then it'll give her visit is actually a single page because we run a an overarching process, and I treat my division as a tee as a business itself. We have one core process to delivery. This one page articulates the entire thing into it. And and it's treated like a wiki so anyone can come in and update or improve on it, etc. But it's the backbone of the team. So when she starts on Monday, that's where she's gonna start. The other thing that I do is every meeting we have about what we do we record. Now, most times people that have extra recordings, but because of the timezone differences, it actually is hugely useful for guys that are in a different time zone. So I'm unfortunately in the middle. So I ended up telling most calls, you know, early morning and late night. But the people that are like in India or the US or the county both, so they at least can watch the video if they have to. And if there's something that needs to be looked at, then I'll put a message in the chat and say, you know, so and so please check out this video, there's something important for you to watch. And I don't, I don't need to give them a timestamp, because I can't remember the timestamp. But also, I think they should watch it from the beginning or and they can watch it at two extra speed. So an hour long conversation or half an hour, most of our meetings are shorter, about half an hour, maximum 45 minutes, and they can get through to 22 minutes and find the thing that that I wanted them to look at. So I think so that's where technology separate definitely helped me. So video recording, we're using teams for instant collaboration. And so I've got teams set up for everything that we work on an actual channel, that's something that I got from Tom have enough when he was on that you have a team channel for project. So we have that now each team's channel has its own document, storage location. So all our documents for that thing go there, all the chats go there. And the team is set up in such a way that I just add people to it as we involve them. And that's creating that network. So everyone, everyone who's added, they can see what we're doing in there, they can comment and add etc. Because what you don't want to have is that you create an isolated team, you want to rather create a team that that is expanding as you move on to progress. So, so notion has links to all those things we have in the in the actual notion we have on our task management. And they've got some nice tools. And those tools are not the best. But you can see visually what's going on. And obviously you could start assigning tasks for work to be done. So the thing that I'm putting in for my new personal Monday
is a set of delivery tasks for her to go through to get us up to speed. So there's certain videos just to watch. So she'll watch maybe the last week worth of of meetings we've had, there's videos, there's some training, she'll have to do on the product, because we're technical product. So there's a need to watch those. And basically the first week, we'll be dumping as much information on her as possible. With a need to, you know, spend some time with her ask answering any questions. And I will just answer I'll ever team on to that. So, you know, it's all again, every list of people she used to meet with and get a sense of what's going on. And as much as you do this, you're still only expecting someone to be effective, probably a month later, to a maximum of three months later, depending on how technical the role is. The other things that are important, obviously this there's a time period onboard this time for the IT guys to create accounts to all you know all the laptops, get those things provisioned and sentence shipped across to in theory, come Monday morning, all that stuff will be in in place. Having not done this before here. I don't know if that's going to be the case we'll find out on Monday.
Heather Bicknell 18:24
Yeah, I think that's always a possibility with the IP setup kind of ends up taking most of the first day, and that you're just trying to get into the tools to start actually having the chats and everything. So that's part of it, too. But no, I think you know, one of my thoughts on this as well, and I wanted to talk about it is I feel like there's just more attention to be placed on the onboarding process in a remote sense, because some of like, it's easier to kind of get lost, I think, when you're not just physically visible, because there's just something about, you know, not not being you know, you're at the your desk in the office, and you go through your HR papers, or you go to your videos and people are walking around and checking in on you. And not that that can't obviously happen with tools like teams, but it just is easier, I think to give a little bit less visibility. So that's why I think that onboarding, having really solid onboarding plans is super helpful so that no one's ever stuck thinking what do I do next? You know, they have an expectation for when they're very new that here are some things I can go do here I can self serve. If there's a you know, a law. I can go reach out to this person I know they need to be a part of my network. I think just outlining that is all very helpful. I've been through it just in like a Google Sheets or Word doc, I've had the onboarding plans that way. I designed one for a colleague previously, using Trello. And I liked that, and I think she liked it too. But what was nice about that is I could I pinned like a set of cards for need to know sort of information, here's your ID, contact, your important contacts, here's your HR links, like, here's basically everything you will need, and then just kind of moving forward for LinkedIn contacts and stuff like that. And then I had day by day, a set of things that she could go look at some external training courses that she could onboard through, because she was shifting in from a different industry. And so she could kind of check things off as as they were done, which gave me visibility into where she was at, in the plan as well. So I think tools like that can be a little bit, maybe nicer to use than just doing it through, like I like worried, but, you know, whatever works,
Ryan Purvis 21:18
well, we'll have to have something is more important than not having something. Okay, we've got, we've got bamboo, which which send you emails, I've got a whole bunch of emails today about things that I need to do. And take those things off. So those tasks are defined, but I think that's fine for the general stuff, I think, and each team and what you're doing is spot on, you have something that gives them a good feel for the first week. You know, when you have that, first, that first week enthusiasm, you don't want to lose it by giving it a poor experience. And, and, you know, it's not only about the social aspects of it, but it's also the technology that you provide in person. So when they come in day one, you want the user account to be ready, you want the device to be ready, you want the money to the access that they want, but the applications they need really. And then if they need to go request access, okay, there's that they have to get themselves because there requires their username, password, and all that kind of stuff. But you want them to know that they have to do that stuff. And not I remember working, come in which bank it was, but but I got in there. And I had my my user account, like the first day the gospel surprised, like, wow, normally takes it two weeks to give us account. And, you know, a device and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, Well, I don't know, you know, my expectation you get it the day you arrive. So So you know, it doesn't matter how big or small you are. But but it does, it does make a big difference to perception of the business. If you can do this stuff? Well.
Heather Bicknell 22:52
Yeah. And I think it's really critical for organization to get right in this really hot job market is, if that first month doesn't really feel right. It's easier than ever for someone to kind of start questioning and looking elsewhere. One thing I wanted to chat about too, and I'm curious if you've had any good experiences doing anything like this, but are just how to how to have fun and team build in a remote setting. I've done you know, different happy hours and informal chats. And I find if you get more than three people on a call like that, it's it's really awkward and hard to kind of manage the flow of conversation, but it just recreating that kind of, you know, celebratory sort of atmosphere is a challenge.
Ryan Purvis 23:49
Probably the worst first for that. And that's another reason that, you know, if I look at my day, and then this is very selfish of me why days around, and I'm trying to get so much done between kids going to school and kids coming home. It's all about the operational get stuff done mindset. But that's not to say we don't celebrate wins, and all the rest of it, you know, if we've delivered, I could deliver all that stuff now. You know, we recognize it and we we, you know, promote, we've done it, but then we move on. I just personally can't see that. You know, I've heard of guys doing like with one company that I consult to, they do a daily quiz, which the team gets together and someone to set the quiz up and they basically run a quiz every thing and it's all general stuff. Now. I don't think anything wrong with that. But I sometimes think I'd rather I'd rather do something more constructive with that time with the people you work with. And when we can travel the rest of it, then you do more meetups and face to face stuff and then you get bowling or whatever it is. Yeah. And the problem with that stuff, is there's always somebody that's going to go About. So you just got to pick the things that are I say middle of the line. So you don't have to, you know, you got all types of physicalities you got all types of confidence levels. You know, the last couple of things I've been on, which has been bowling and all the rest of it, the bowling was okay. But actually the fun part was the dinner afterwards or the the walking the talk between the bowling alley and the restaurant and, and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, you just you just need to get people out of the thing. I mean, I did wind which I thought was quite good. I didn't need to finish on porch because medical issue at home, but we did one of the museums in London, and you basically did like a, what they call it, you navigate it, like a treasure hunt sort of thing. And you had to work out. And it was clue there was clues and all that kind of stuff. And that was that was a great team teaming thing. Because there you've got, you know, all sorts of senior people mixie with junior people, and then you start seeing the characters come out, especially when someone like we had a couple of people that were quite the history buffs and arguing about, you know, some Egyptian knowledge in their head versus someone else's hobby. You know, you take it again, it was it was I love museums. So it was fun just to walk around the museum, I could quite easily just walk around the museum and not worried about the natural treasure hunt. But, you know, like I said that I think I think we have to go back to those are the things I think you still need to do in person. But there's nothing wrong with celebrating birthdays, nothing wrong with with having the odd quiz thing or with something straightforward like that. I know some guys do do the wine drinking on a Friday. But you know, I'm in Joburg. Now if I could turn on a Friday afternoon. I'm going to the bush I'm going to hang around for for a video conference call to drink wine.
Heather Bicknell 26:50
Yeah, I can't can't fault you there. Well, I know you need to tie up. Good chatting
Ryan Purvis 26:57
you to talk to
Unknown Speaker 26:58
said today
Ryan Purvis 27:04
thank you for listening today's episode, and the big news app producer editor. Thank you, Heather for your hard work on this episode. He subscribes to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW W podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website www dot digital workspace dot works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace that works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.
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