Video Interviews on Remote Work
Remote work and remote jobs are on the rise, which means companies are increasing their adoption of telecommuting and flexible work programs as a viable business strategy.
Below are a few video interviews from top leaders and influencers who are leading the charge on remote work. They share their stories and support for how remote work makes business sense at their organizations. Learn about their different strategies and perspectives on the benefits of remote work and how remote work helps support their organizations and employees.
These interviews were recorded at the TRaD Works Forum, an invite-only event dedicated to shaping the tactics and best practices of the next 20 years of remote work. If you are interested in attending this year’s event, request an invite.
Kate Lister - President, Global Workplace Analytics
Kate Lister helps lead the conversation of how businesses can calculate and model the economic, environmental, and social benefits of remote work. She discusses how remote work was propelled by the recession and tells us about the different departments that need to come together to make remote work a viable work model.
Sara Sutton Fell - Founder & CEO, FlexJobs
Sara Sutton Fell tells us about the importance of agreeing on what the terms telecommuting, working remotely, distributed, and telework actually mean. Agreeing on the terminology will help bring companies and people together to define a strategy for creating a new, tech-enabled way of working.
Mika Cross - Director of Strategic Communications, Digital and Public Engagement, U.S. Dept. of Labor
Mika Cross shares her story of how working in the military shaped her career to focus on using remote work to support workforce engagement. In a world where we have multiple generations in the workforce wanting different benefits, she tells us how remote work pertains to choice, autonomy, and trust, which are key to supporting the entire workforce.
Jodi Davidson - Director of Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives, Sodexo
Jodi Davidson likes to call herself a “quality of life practitioner.” She relates her experience of having a fluid schedule to helping stimulate creativity. She also points to studies and tactics that help keep employees productive and discusses how to get stakeholder buy-in when launching a flexible work program.
Sarah Chouinard - Director, Talent Acquisition, TeleTech Holdings
Sara Chouinard supports the hiring of 12,000 remote workers every year. She discusses the qualities they look for in remote workers and how a remote workforce yields a flexible and agile staffing model. She also offers some insights into the demographics of the workforce TeleTech hires and how offering flexibility attracts more experienced candidates.
Peter Yobo - Millennial Voice at PwC, PwC
Peter Yobo discusses how PwC creates a safe environment for workers to question the way the current workforce operates and to evoke change. This openness has led to a company-wide work flexibility program that he says offers a competitive edge for recruiting and servicing clients. He talks about how work flexibility can take many forms, including the form of remote work, and how millennials are pushing that conversation forward.
Nicole McCabe - Senior Director, Global Diversity & Inclusion, SAP
Nicole McCabe highlights the benefits of remote work to recruit the best talent and build the best teams. She discusses some of the reasons why companies are not taking advantage of remote work as a viable business strategy and how millennials are helping to give flexible and remote work a voice.
Monica Frias - Diversity Program Director, Anthem, Inc.
Monica Frias shows how developing programs that support a remote workforce helps to unite company culture at Anthem. She shares her own personal story and reminds us that as technology advances, we still have a lot to learn about how to best leverage a remote work strategy.
Marjorie Asturias - Happiness Engineer, Automattic, Inc.
Marjorie Asturias discusses why Automattic, a fully remote company of over 470 people, chose to scale remotely from the start. She talks about how creating a results-based, trusting culture where people have the freedom to travel all around the world helps create loyalty. She also shares how Automattic selects the communication tools they adopt.
Ken Matos - Vice President of Research, Life Meets Work
Ken Matos talks about why workplace flexibility is becoming a hot topic and why workers’ commuting costs are actually costs the employer bears. He also argues that spending energy on self-care for workers can help businesses and discusses how remote work can lead to more efficient performance management strategies.
Karen A. LaGraff - VP, Xerox North American HR Operations, Xerox Corporation
Karen LaGraff shows how she was able to put a global remote work policy together and how guidelines and consistency in the policy are important. She talks about the driving forces behind Xerox’s remote work policy and also the challenges behind choosing the best technology and management tools to enable the remote workforce.
Jennifer Sabatini Fraone - Associate Director, Boston College Center for Work & Family
Jennifer Sabatini Fraone takes a look at how workplace flexibility and remote work are drivers for workplace effectiveness and employee well-being. She discusses the importance of viewing employees as a whole person as opposed to just a worker, and also how to think creatively about the different types of workplace flexibility organizations can adopt.
Jennifer Jones Newbill - Director Global Employment Branding, Dell
Jennifer Newbill explains the different ways in which Dell’s employees value flexible work and how those benefits lead to more diverse and cohesive teams. She discusses the motivating factors that drive Dell’s goal to go 50 percent remote by 2020 and how flexible work is a competitive edge when finding top talent.
Amy Freshman - Senior Director - Global Workplace Enablement, ADP
Amy Freshman reveals that 21 percent of ADP’s staff works from home and dives into how those remote workers stay engaged in the organization. She discusses what tools they use to support their remote workforce and offers a personal tip to level the playing field when holding meetings in a distributed team.