Why does remote working work for StreamAlive but not others?
The latest news from StreamAlive and the world of online, offline, and hybrid live events.
Hi there!
It seems like every week there is another company backtracking on flexible work and demanding workers return to the office.
Big corporations such as Disney, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are all implementing an office-first policy. Elon Musk is famous for demanding that his employees turn up to the office every day.
Other companies are switching to a hybrid approach. There were some eyebrows raised when Zoom announced a return to the office, but that mostly turned out to be clickbaity headlines - Only 35% of Zoom staff have been asked to go into the office two days a week.
So what happened?
There are many reasons put forward by companies. Everything from loss of company culture to collaboration problems to productivity being called into question.
In one of the biggest surveys on remote and hybrid working, Microsoft spoke to 20,000 people in 13 different countries and looked at trillions of Office 365 productivity datapoints.
The findings?
People are more productive than ever, with productivity signals trending upwards
Despite this, 85% of managers still believe that remote workers are lagging behind in productivity compared to being in the office
If managers think employees are unproductive at home, it’s time to look at how many meetings are being demanded of them - Shopify’s 10,000 employees are all remote. Earlier this year they cancelled all recurring meetings and saw productivity growth equivalent to adding 150 new employees
People are more likely to go into the office if their ‘work friends’ were going in. They don’t want to go to the office because their manager will be there
StreamAlive follows a different path
There are many well-known companies that have grown enormously successful without requiring employees to come to the office.
StreamAlive has ambitions to become one of them 😊
Basecamp, Automattic, and Buffer all have one thing in common: None of them have physical offices, and all employees work remotely.
While we might not go down the path of radical transparency that Buffer follows, we believe that we can emulate these successful tech companies by not dictating where an employee must be based.
This way we can hire the best person for the role. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges to building out a remote team as people can feel disconnected or the transfer of knowledge is impeded.
You also lose out on serendipity when a marketer, salesperson and engineer (which sounds like the start of a bad joke!) are pushed together by shared lifts, coffee areas or after-work meetups.
How StreamAlive facilitates serendipity with its remote team
To counter the siloes created by remote working, we have multiple all-hands meetings each week to bring the team together.
Monday All-Hands
We spend an hour or more catching up with everyone on the team. There is no agenda other than everyone gets to have a chance to speak.
Each employee is encouraged to share what they did over the weekend, what they worked on last week, and what they hope to complete in the coming week.
The only rule is that you’re not allowed to say “I didn’t do much”.
Letting everyone know what you’re working on helps with serendipity. When the product owner talks about the feedback received for a feature, the developer might have an idea on how to improve it and the marketer might have an idea on how to better position the feature.
Testing & Together Time
Critically important for the team is to know the product inside out.
Marketers need to know how the product works, developers need to know why they are building out a feature, and the product team needs to observe how the product is being used.
During this meeting, we all use StreamAlive as if we are customers of the product. We stress-test the product, try and do unusual things to force errors, test out new features, or catch a bug that no one has seen before.
How do you facilitate serendipity and foster a team spirit for remote workers?
These are just some of the ways we are currently helping our remote team feel connected to each other.
As StreamAlive grows and more team members join, we’ll keep adjusting and improving the ways we keep people connected.
Stop killing birds with your stones
If you missed out on our recent live workshops, we have another one coming up on September 5th.
What’s common to the best teachers, preachers, marketers, writers, politicians, comedians, and storytellers?
👉They use analogies, not cliches.
Analogies are everywhere in life, from writing to work, cliches, comedy, memes, and more.
In this fun and interactive workshop, we will start you on the path to crafting compelling and unique analogies—and stop killing birds.
📆 September 5th
⌚12 noon EST | 9:30pm IST
Join us to:
Learn why analogies are important
Get a formula to think up your own unique analogies
Stop using cliches and start recognizing analogies in everyday life
The Slide-Streaming & Livestreaming TL;DR
It’s been a busy week in the world of livestreaming and slide-streaming. Here’s a rundown of the stories we’ve been reading:
The 13th annual Streamy Awards was streamed last night to over 600k viewers. The who’s who of livestreamers and influencers were in the audience, duking it out for awards such as Best Creator, Best Collaboration, Best Streamer, Best Influencer Product, Best International Star, and Best Short-Form Creator. No surprise that Mr. Beast won the Creator of the Year and Kai Cenat won Livestreamer of the Year!
🦖Hunting the Loch Ness monster (via livestreams)
It’s like the legend that keeps on giving for the Scottish Tourism Board. Despite the fact that there is no possible way that a pre-historic dinosaur inhabits the loch, there will always be believers. This weekend, Loch Ness saw the largest monster hunt in 50 years take place, and it was all livestreamed on YouTube. The result of this big hunt? One of the boats picked up a strange noise but ‘forgot’ to record it 🙄
🎤Using Microsoft Teams for meetings, webinars and live events
Microsoft Teams has come a long way in the last five years. During the pandemic, it felt like they were adding new features every week and today Teams is a formidable communication platform. Whether it’s one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many, Teams is becoming the livestreaming, webinar-presenting platform of choice for many businesses.
Catch us on our social pages
If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.
All the best,
Lux and the StreamAlive team
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