 We talk about the fourth industrial revolution and this decoupling of work from place is part of that. If you think about the industrial revolution, you went to the factory because you had to do your work in the factory. That's where work took place. It had to be in a location, whereas now, you know, digital software enables us to work from everywhere. So why aren't we taking advantage of that and building platforms, building capabilities that allow people, like you say, to live the lives they want to live and have the identities they want to have. Hello and welcome to a weekly webcast on remote from your friendly folks at GetLab. Here we'll tackle the real challenges, ask the hard questions, but of course try not to take ourselves that seriously. I'm Darren, head of remote at GetLab. I've worked across the entire spectrum of remote for 14 years, my entire career. And in this webcast, we want to share some best practices, things that we've learned at GetLab, but also bring in insights from very interesting people around the world. And today we want to invite Bethan Vincent, marketing director at NetCells. You may remember her from a few episodes ago. We talked about tooling and wrangling the software madness. And today we want to talk about something a little bit different, a little bit deeper, more philosophical. So first off, welcome Bethan. Thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you so much for having me. So something we discussed leading up to our first conversation was what happens after COVID-19 is no longer an immediate concern. And so for historical context for those watching, we're currently recording this in April of 2020. Most of the world is in some form of forced isolation under some sort of stay at home orders. And so the workplace has shifted dramatically overnight for those that can do their work from home, almost everyone is, even if it's not ideally suited or even if their management and team say, we're not going to allow work from home, we're not going to allow remote work. The pandemic that we're in has kind of forced the hand on that. So for historical context, that is where we're at. And you and I were talking about the here and now there's a lot to solve. And GetLab has written some guides that will list in the show notes on what teams and individuals can do right now to kind of stabilize and build a foundation of getting through and establishing business continuity. But I think what's really interesting is thinking about how this is going to change society and the working world as we know it. So you were gracious enough to join us again and talk through that. And I want to break it down into three stages, sort of first order, second order and third order changes that will come from this. So for the first piece, let's talk about what's going to happen six to 12 months after the pandemic. And then we'll go one to five years and then five to 10 if we should so dare. So let's start with six to 12. Where do you see the world going after we've gone through this and sort of the immediate near term after this happens? Yeah, it's such a fascinating question. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot because obviously kind of in my role, I'm planning for the future and looking what's going to happen and making sure we've got the resources capabilities to meet that. And I think to be honest, lockdown, I know the plans here in the UK are probably looking towards a rolling lockdown where areas of the country might come out, certain demographics might come out, but a lockdown kind of presence will continue within society. And I think also people will become naturally almost used to being socially distanced. You know, we found our roots for entertainment. I'm doing a weekly quiz with my friends instead of going out to the pub. And that's a tradition now. So it will almost be hard to unlearn everything we've learned throughout this process. And I do think people have learned a lot about self reliance about getting work done and less than ideal conditions. That's something I personally, I know now that wherever I'm situated, I'm going to be able to pick up my laptop and get on with stuff just because I've had to get used to it. So I think a lot of workforces are actually going to come out of this a lot more capable, not that they weren't capable before, but they they've almost been forced to understand how capable they can be. And for a lot of companies, this will be their first experience of trusting people in a remote capacity. I know net sales, it was our first experience and it's gone extremely well. And we're actually, I think, pleasantly surprised. So I think a lot more companies when it comes to kind of remote working, working from home, even being kind of co located with teams, that's going to be a trend that it was there before, but it's going to be accelerated by this. So the next six to 12 months, I think it will be much of the same. I think people will become used to the patterns they're working in and actually become a lot more self reliant in what they're doing. Great insights. I'm curious if you have any perspective on, for companies that are going through this and they may be not having such an easy go at it, whether that's cultural, whether that's the inability to get the right tools in place, maybe it's just the line of work that they're in. Where do you see people netting out in terms of like we're rushing back to the office, but even if we're doing that, we recognize that we now have to enable some amount of workplace flexibility where maybe in the past, we could get away with it because remote was seen as this luxury, not like a business continuity necessity. So that's question one and question two is what is humanity's relationship with video calls? One of the things that I'm seeing is we're kind of hitting peak zoom already, but it's not really fair because we're having to do everything through video. We're even having to do social interaction and informal communication and even ordering food. We're having to do it all, not just work. So I think it's a bit unfair, but I'm curious to see are we going to keep doing our entire days on zoom? Are we going to revert back to phone a little bit? What does that look like in the next six to 12 months? Yeah, that's super interesting. So for the first one, I think companies who aren't necessarily geared up for remote or there has to be some sort of office presence, I think they're going to have to give greater flexibility to workers. Some people will have to continue with self-isolation due to medical conditions, age, other factors. So being able to structurally incorporate those employees is going to be super important. And I think you've got to remember actually consumers have become used to this. It's not just businesses that have had to adapt. And I was thinking about this the other day because I like everyone else who's prime and prime in the UK has been really disrupted. So it's no longer next day delivery or next hour delivery if you're in London, Manchester. And I've become really used to waiting 10 days, two weeks for stuff to come. And actually going back to that instant delivery, I'm not that bothered. That sounds really weird. In the past, I would have been like, Oh my gosh, my new USB stick is taking a week to arrive. How ridiculous. But I think consumers are going to become a lot more tolerant of, you know, if you're a physical store opening slightly different hours. If you're more reliant on, I guess, kind of service-based businesses or call centers, things like that, maybe reduced services. Just because I think this, this is going back to the humanity thing. It's exposed the fact with all fragile humans who at the end of the day just want to live like decent lives and enjoyable lives and be connected to other people. And I'm a workaholic. And I will say that immediately. But this has forced me to realize work isn't everything, which has been interesting. So on the Zoom front, that again, I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls at the moment. And there is a cognitive load that's associated with that, which I'm noticing. And the weirdest thing is watching yourself. That's what I'm really struggling with. I'm like, Oh my God, my hair, you know, I'm noticing my roots get longer as I can't go and get them done. And you don't have that in face-to-face ever, unless you're in a room with a mirror, I guess, but that's unusual. So I think that is something that is super weird. And I've actually taken to doing more kind of phone calls, just because I really, I don't need to see myself eight hours a day. So I think the rise of the phone call for me personally, and I've noticed among other things is going to be interesting. I think for, yeah, for social connections, we might go back to in-person where we can with friends and family. That obviously makes sense. Yeah. One of the things I'm noticing is I used to be heavy on phone calls because I went when I was in a hybrid remote organization, because I would use it as an excuse to also get my steps in for the day. So if I saw a conference call coming up, I would think, well, this is an excellent opportunity to just walk around in circles for an hour and do two things at once. Being in an all remote environment like I am at GetLab, video is very important. It's the only way we can see each other face to face and build those relationships. But I do feel it sitting in a chair for too long. I'm starting to now think, okay, any kind of one-on-one or coffee chat where I don't have to document the agenda, maybe I should take this on phone and actually just mention that straight up. I'm using this to kind of stretch my legs and get out. The other thing is I'm becoming way more interested in recording and transcription tools where I could go on a walking meeting as long as it was being recorded and then anything I would verbalize would be transcribed. At GetLab, we do this manually because we like the subheadings and the indentations and the low context that comes from an actual human doing it. But I'm hoping a startup sees this as an opportunity to get smarter with transcriptions instead of just like a wall of words. Maybe they can detect the voice and detect the pauses and structure that in a better way so I don't have to be in Zoom all the time. So that wraps up 6 to 12. I want to jump to the second order effects. So one to five years from now. And I have some interesting thoughts on where society is going to go, but I want to let you lead on this one. Yeah, again, I think it's hard to predict, but there will be some underlying trends that will continue. I think remote work in particular will become much more available to people. It will unlock talent. This is something I've been thinking about a lot where when you're hiring from across the world, you're no longer constrained by physical geography. So the UK, like most markets with lots of tech workers, it's really hard to hire really talented people. So the ability to be able to hire and onboard team members from across the world is super attractive. And I think more companies will take advantage of that. And I think also we're probably going to move towards a phase due to potentially recession, but also due to consumer behavior of less consumption of physical goods. That's going to be interesting. There's going to be a lot more focus on kind of quality of life. And to think about kind of tooling and software that's going to enable this, you know, better video call options, better ways of connecting with people. And this was, again, a trend we were seeing before, you know, software as a service, obviously massive, but that's just going to become accelerated as people, they can't get the physical goods due to probably border restrictions, trade restrictions, all of that, but also become more focused on connection with other humans. So that's my kind of thinking around it. That's really interesting. Part of where I was going to go with this is more on the how towns and cities are going to change. But interestingly, it actually segues into the personal connection and the focus on quality of life versus the actual materialism is at the heart of where I see society as a whole going in one to five years. I think what's going to happen, let me give you an example. I think you're going to have millions of people that go through this, accomplishing their work from home. And then in three or four months, if the boss says, all right, resume your commute. That's going to mean different things to different people, but in really packed cities like London, Singapore, LA, San Francisco, this could mean resuming two to four hours of your day in a vehicle or on the tube or whatever it may be. And I think what you're going to have happen is millions of people are going to collectively look at each other and say, we just did our jobs from home for four months, we saw our families more, we were able to cook more, I could actually pick up a hobby again, I saw my children, maybe you were a homeschool teacher and that wasn't exactly what you were aiming for, but nevertheless, you saw them more. You contributed less greenhouse gases, you spent less money on fuel, so on and so forth. I think there's going to be this kind of collective chorus of voices that say, how about no, we don't default to working back in the office. And then the next order of that is when the lease runs out, you're going to really ask yourself, should I be paying this much to live in this city where I was really only here for work? I could actually go somewhere else, maybe a mid or small size town, where I could be more impactful in that community, because there are less people, I can actually feel the impact of what I'm doing here more, better air quality, better schools for children, cheaper land, more land and the job can remain. I think that this will help reduce the strain on cities that are already overtaxed, they've already gotten more people than the public services can handle. I think this could be a real boon for smaller towns that have experienced rural depopulation, where they've just had this brain drain of people who have just left, even if they like the culture there, they like the way of life there, they've had to leave for work and I think remote could enable the reversal of that. And towns in general I think are going to reevaluate how they encourage new business. Smaller and mid-sized towns may say, all right, we're going to carve out a piece of land, maybe we can convince a company or a corporation to come in and build a skyscraper here, so we can bolster our economic tax base. But now that looks a lot different. You may say, okay, what kind of medical facilities do we need? Do we have the right fiber optic network in place? Do we have good restaurants in place? Because we need to attract people now that work, maybe they work in a headquarters that is 3,000 miles away from our town, but we want to attract them to the town. We want it to be the most livable town, not necessarily the town with the most skyscrapers and office cubicles. I think that's going to be a massive change for real estate, but I also see people disassociating or decoupling their own personal identities with work in a big way. What I've seen with this forced isolation is people that have tied their identity to this physical building that they go to every day, now they don't have that. So they ask themselves, well, who am I? Oh, that's right, I'm a mother, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a daughter, I'm a pet owner, whatever it may be. It's like, oh yeah, I'm also that. I'm not just defined by my work. And I hope that in the next one to five years, we as a society will have a healthier relationship with identity as it relates to work. I don't think this is a bad thing. I think people recognizing that they're more than their work actually helps them be more intentional about what they want to give to their work. Yeah, definitely. And I think this is kind of, you know, we talk about the fourth industrial revolution and this decoupling of work from place is part of that. If you think about the industrial revolution, you went to the factory because you had to do your work in the factory. That's where work took place. It had to be in a location, whereas now, you know, digital software enables us to work from everywhere. So why aren't we taking advantage of that? And building cap forms, building capabilities allow people, like you say, to live the lives they want to live and have the identities they want to have. So we're going to close with five to 10 years out. And obviously that's a long way from now. So it's quite possible that we watch this in 10 years. And it's extremely comical. But hey, we're going to put something out there and see what happens. So I think this is actually potentially the most interesting one. A lot of people have asked me, what do I think this means for travel and just movement of people in general? Is this going to get people more comfortable with kind of staying where they are? There's less of a need or a yearning to go out? I think five to 10 years from now, we're going to see a massive rebound in people moving. But for very different reasons, I think right now, or just before COVID, I think we'd kind of hit peak business travel, where planes were packed, record setting, passenger loads. But most of these people were traveling halfway around the world for an eight hour meeting. And then they kind of went back. And people were on the whole, not really taking a lot of the vacation that they could have. They were actually exploring less. They were still traveling. But for work, I could see that changing actually, where when you don't have to travel as much for work, it will open up more opportunities to travel for other reasons, whether that's to visit far flung family members, connections that you kind of lost touch with in university. Maybe you start checking off your bucket list more because it's just more accessible. You aren't so burnt out on travel that you won't go travel to an exciting vacation place. So I think movement is going to look a lot different. And it's going to be more inspirational movement versus kind of mandated movement. So I think that's going to be the biggest change from a societal perspective is travel will come back and movement will come back. I think we're just going to do it for very different reasons. Definitely. And that made me think of in a previous role, I spent two weeks working from Paris because my partner was there on a music composition course. And I kind of tagged along and I asked my manager, I said, look, I've got Wi-Fi. So can I just work from Paris? And it was one of the most inspirational things of my work I ever did. I remember I was sitting in parks. It was really sunny. I had my laptop out and I got a lot of really good work done. And I came back and the company had still obviously had my time working on projects and things like that. But what they got back was someone who was just invigorated by the experience. And I ended up going to developer meetups while I was there. So I was kind of doing work stuff outside of work as well, but was extremely beneficial. So like you say, it's just it's going to allow people to travel for pleasure as opposed to, oh my gosh, I've got to get this like in my life, you know, two hour train to London for a one hour meeting, then get back. Yeah. And I think the side benefit of that is remote will be so woven into the fabric of how we do everything that will be second nature for us to work and travel. It's not like we have to decide to do one or the other. Even people that aren't going to be digital nomads by choice, they all just have more flexibility to go visit people, but also weave work into it or go participate in a sporting event that their children are in, but also work and enjoy the place that they're at, whereas it may have been sort of a binary either can go or I cannot go. Now you have the option to go and remote work isn't something that you'll have to explain. It will be more woven into the fabric of society. I think you'll find charging ports and Wi-Fi in places that you would never have imagined 10 years ago, just because governments and municipalities realize, yeah, people are going to be coming in and out of here. We need to make sure we service them. So I think that'll be a good thing. I think it'll be good for people to have more opportunity to explore culturally and explore the world. It's a big world. We should give ourselves opportunity to get out there. So I want to close with this. I try to close every episode on a high note. And so I want to ask you what's one good thing that you've seen or heard in the past week or month? So in the UK, we've had a big kind of fundraising effort by a veteran who actually is a veteran of the Second World War. And he walked, I think it was 100 meters off his garden and his initial target he was trying to raise was like 10,000 pounds. And I think the total, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's about 20 million. And he was, yeah, and it's amazing. And he's actually been made a colonel this week as well. And I think it just shows what someone can do if they put their mind to it, because he's 100, you know, walking that far is extremely difficult for him. And it kind of, it shows the selflessness and it bridges a generational divide for me, because I think that can be a problem in all of this. And I've had even friends who have said, well, I'm in my twenties, I can go out and it's just old people and it's kind of their fault. We're isolating. Well, no, we're doing it to protect everyone. And we're all in this together. And I just thought it was a really, it's an amazing story. If you want to go look it up on BBC or whatever, it's really inspiring. I do love that. I think it's fascinating that the forced isolation is in some ways bringing us closer together and making us realize that we are all in this together and we're all humans first. And that's beautiful. And so for those watching, look after each other, lend a hand, lend a shoulder. You never really know what someone's going through. So be there for them if you can. And with that, I want to offer up, if you have any questions, tweet us at GetLab. And we'll try to work those into the next episode. You're welcome to connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn and visit all remote info to download the remote playbook, sign up for our remote newsletter and look at all of our all remote guides. We can't wait to talk more soon. Until then, stay cozy, be excellent to one another. Aloha and Mahalo.