Month: March 2021

Will Remote Work Change Cities? Yes, If We’re Lucky

Image description: City skyscrapers at night. Photo by Peng LIU from Pexels

On March 29th the New York Times ran an article from Matthew Haag entitled Remote Work is Here to Stay. Manhattan May Never Be the Same. In it, Haag reports that “As more companies push back dates for returning to offices and make at least some remote work a permanent policy, the consequences for New York could be far-reaching, not just for the city’s restaurants, coffee shops and other small businesses, but for municipal finances, which depend heavily on commercial real estate.”

If New York wishes to fund the services that keep the city functional, something has to give. Either everyone needs to go back into offices in the city (which isn’t a good idea before we achieve widespread herd immunity) or government officials need to rethink where they get their revenue.

Businesses are Incentivized to Keep Remote Work

Rethinking a city’s revenue mix is the strategic thing to do. The pandemic has been billed as a once-in-a-hundred-year event. However, assuming that the next catastrophe will happen in our great-grandchildren’s lifetimes (and therefore is something we can leave them to deal with) is short-sighted at best. Climate change has already led to more destructive hurricane and fire seasons. Many of the major cities of the world grapple with housing shortages.

Hefty real estate costs and adverse weather events give businesses solid reasons to offer remote work options for their employees. To put it bluntly, remote work is an important part of a company’s risk management. Remote work offers businesses the opportunity to lower costs and continue operating during disasters. No CEO in his or her right mind would give up that advantage.

If cities want to recover from the pandemic and remain relevant, then they need to operate as if employees have more choices about where they live and work. If a white collar employee can work from anywhere, then they don’t have to live in a 500 square foot basement apartment with eight other people.

It’s Time to Think About Cities Differently

People have to want to live in a city for other reasons. Personally, I love cities. Nightlife! Culture! Restaurants! I’ve lived in some great ones–New York, Los Angles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Currently I live in the suburbs of Vancouver. It’s quiet, and boring, and exactly the sort of place I need to stay because it has a good school for my kids and I can afford things like music lessons and summer camps. I would move to downtown Vancouver in a hot minute if 1) comfortable housing was affordable 2) there were good schools for my kids and 3) there were reasonably priced, family-centric activities to participate in.

Families move out of cities and into the ‘burbs because cities aren’t set up for anyone but the wealthy or the single. Let’s change that dynamic.

The technology that enables remote work has been with us since at least 2009. The only thing standing in the way of mass migration of white-collar jobs to remote work has been the old-school management mindset. The pandemic wiped away a great deal of that “remote doesn’t work for MY company.”

New York isn’t dead. No city has to die. But if the world’s cities want to keep up (and keep the revenue rolling in) then they need to shift along with the times.

What’s That Douglas Up To?

I’m in a toxic relationship with my printer. The thing generally refuses to print anything and blames me for the issue–it says I’m out of paper when I’m not. Then, just when I’m ready to throw it away I decided to try printing something one more time. And you know what? Magically it starts working. But not for long. Oh no. Just long enough that I hesitate to throw it out the next time it fails to perform.

There are very few times I wish I worked in a traditional office, but dealing with failing home office equipment is one of those times. I would LOVE to hand this problem to someone else to deal with. Sadly, I need to break up with my problematic printer on my own.

Recent Publications

I wrote a running-themed quarantine piece back in March 2020, and it took until February 2021 to find a home for it. In Zombie Run, I talk about finding safety as a woman running during quarantine.

For Weekly Humorist, Cassie Soliday and I teamed up to create a tongue in cheek piece on celebration our one year COVID anniversary entitled 5 Ways to Make Your Pandemic Anniversary the Best on the Block.

And last but not least, Bombfire just published my 100 word story Spores, which is a weird take on past experiences affecting the way we see the world.

I procrastinated about writing on my book this week, which is not good. Instead I wrote something else while will be showing up in Quarantine Review some time in August. I’ll share that when it comes out.

See you next time!

You Can Fire People Humanely Over Video Call

Image description: Person holding box full of desk supplies.

In the 2009 movie Up in the Air, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man whose job it is to fly to workplaces and fire people. His nemesis is a woman who wants to fire people via video meetings in order to save money. By the end of the film, you’re left with the impression that the only humane termination is one done in person.

The recent Huffpost layoffs seem to bolster that idea. Staff were reportedly told at ten am that if they didn’t get an email by 1pm, their job was safe. This means some folks waited three hours to find out if they had a job or not. Worse, they couldn’t be together when it happened since the team was working from home due to the pandemic. The people manager in me wonders why Buzzfeed didn’t just send out those infamous emails all at once. Getting fired by email isn’t great, but waiting three hours to get fired by email is even worse.

The thing Up in the Air and Buzzfeed both seem to miss is that you can, in fact, conduct humane terminations via video call. Just as you can conduct terrible layoffs in person. The mode of work–in person vs remote–doesn’t change that fact. Employees don’t lose their humanity just because leadership can’t see them.

I have a lot more to say on this topic. I’m in the middle of writing the “how to fire humanely over zoom” chapter in my upcoming business book right now. But here are two things to keep in mind if you need to lay off a remote worker in the next couple of weeks.

This is Not the Time to Hide Behind Business Speak

Human Resources and Legal Departments will want to vet whatever communications go out to your employees. That’s only natural. But make sure that your employees–both the ones leaving and the ones staying–get to see a human take responsibility for the layoffs. And make sure you show them your very human regret.

The Employees that Stay Are Watching You Too

Few people expect to stay a a company for life. But they’ll still hold it against you if you toss people aside like empty printer cartridges. They may put their heads down and continue working, but they’ll remember how you treated their colleagues. And how you act once the dust settles.

Think of it this way: you would never attend a funeral and expect the deceased’s family to go to a party right after to celebrate that they are still alive. And you would never tell the survivors that you’re happy they’re alive because they’re brilliant at what they do. The same holds true for layoff survivors. This is a case where doing the right thing is good from both a people and results perspective. Show a little respect for your employees’ feelings and they will more quickly refocus on the job at hand.

There is no magic formula that will make people happy to be fired. You’re separating people from their livelihood, after all. But you can–and should–take a human-centered approach when you do it. Doing so will both help your employees process the trauma of the terminations, and benefit your business results.

What’s That Douglas Up To?

Writing, writing, writing. I was having a tough time finding the opening for my business book’s chapter ‘How to Fire Humanely Over Zoom,’ until I had a conversation with someone about how not to lay people off a week or so ago. And just like that, the first few pages unrolled in my head and I had to type furiously to get it all down.

As a result, I don’t have a lot of other writing to share with you. I have no fewer than three accepted pieces waiting to be published in other outlets, but this is from work I wrote weeks ago. Two of them are literary and one is comedy. (When I’m blocked in one type of writing I usually switch to another so my subconscious can work through the issue on its own time.)

I’m Teaching My Kids How to Cook

This has resulted in some truly spectacular dishes. Some of them are spectacularly good while others…are learning experiences. So far we’ve learned not to use as much pickling salt as you would table salt, and that tortilla soup does not need to be thickened with tomato paste because soup is supposed to be runny. I think we’ve avoided having to learn that you shouldn’t put marshmallows in butter tarts even if you like both of those things separately. Whew!

That’s it from Douglas HQ. I hope you can find little pockets of joy this week. I’ll see you next time.

So Close to Free

Someday soon, we will get to meet people for coffee indoors. Image: Woman sitting in an indoor cafe across from a man. Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

On March 10th, 2020, I gathered supplies for what I thought would be a three-month hunker in my house. Ha. I bought a sweater quantity of yarn, a pound of chocolate, and two books from the sci/fi slash mystery bookstore White Dwarf. It was a farewell tour of some of my favourite indoor places. At the time, it seemed a little melodramatic–maybe even silly–so I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. But I believe in saying goodbye, and in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t let feeling silly stop me.

This year, on March 8th, 2021, the US CDC released guidelines that say fully vaccinated people can gather together indoors. BC’s provincial health officer went one step further and said that Canadians wouldn’t necessarily have to wait for shot #2 before we can gather indoors in some capacity.

So I find myself thinking about the supplies I’m going to need to go out into a less socially distanced world.

Sewing pants topped the list. What better way to commemorate meeting people than making an article of clothing you can’t see on Zoom?

I love working remotely, but I am VERY EXCITED to see people in person. The first time I get to sit in a cafe and ignore my fellow human beings, I’ll probably be grinning like an idiot the entire time. Or ugly crying. Possibly I’ll be grinning while ugly crying. That will make me very popular, I’m sure.

Do you have post-vaccine plans? I’d love to hear about them. We’re so close.

What Does Any Of This Have to Do With Remote Work?

Not a ton. I actually planned to talk about how to discuss the pandemic on the anniversary of the lockdown. I’ve been hearing people in various industries talking about the gains remote work made during the pandemic. This is understandable. It’s in our nature to try to make sense of things that happen to us, to try and find a bright side to the last year. But if we’re not careful, we can start using phrases like “blessing in disguise” and “it turned out for the best,” and that would be wrong.

There is no world where my grandma dying from COVID was for the best. Many of us would gladly return the lessons we learned this year to get our loved ones back.

Remote work will continue into our post-pandemic world. And as I’ve said before, it’s the people with high emotional intelligence that thrive in this space. Our ability to “see” the people at the other end of our emails and texting platforms will help us do business effectively and humanely. Let’s remember that many of those people are grappling with losing loved ones and phrase our enthusiasm for remote work accordingly.