HR Coffee Time with Fay Wallis - Remote Working
HR Coffee Time is a weekly podcast hosted by the fabulous Fay Wallis. Fay used to work in HR and has coached many HR professionals, so she understands many of the challenges that you’re up against
To check out all of her episodes CLICK HERE
I joined Fay on episode 76 - “HR Insider tips on how to create an amazing remote working culture, with Claire Cathcart”
The episode covers:
The LinkedIn post I shared about a remote working initiative that went viral, with nearly 3,000 reposts
How to make your onboarding process as good as possible for remote workers
How to help managers do a great job at managing remotely
Great ways to encourage collaboration & connection throughout your remote workforce
To listen to this episode click below.
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.
Fay Wallis: 00:00:02
Welcome to HR Coffee Time. It’s great to have you here. I’m your host, Fay Wallis, a Career and Executive Coach with a background in HR. And I’m also the founder of Bright Sky Career Coaching.
Fay Wallis: 00:00:16
I’ve made HR Coffee Time especially for you to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR and People career without working yourself into the ground.
Fay Wallis: 00:00:26
In today’s episode, you’re going to meet the brilliant Claire Cathcart, who is Head of People at YuLife. She shares some fantastic ideas about how to create an amazing remote working culture.
Fay Wallis: 00:00:39
Because, of course, the pandemic has meant that nearly all of us have had to get used to working remotely. And even now lots of us are still either working remotely or in a hybrid way.
Fay Wallis: 00:00:51
I’m personally a big fan of remote work because I think there are just so many plus points to it. But I also know that it brings a lot of challenges, because it’s easy for people to start to feel disconnected and unhappy if the organisation they work in hasn’t put strategies in place to create a good remote working culture.
Fay Wallis: 00:01:12
And if you’re in the People team, you can feel a lot of responsibility to get this right. But you might not be sure how to get started or what will work. So, this episode of HR Coffee Time is here to help. You’re going to meet Claire in a moment.
Fay Wallis: 00:01:28
But before you do meet her, I just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been supporting HR Coffee Time by recommending, rating and reviewing the show. And a big thank you especially to Jennypoo92 to who is the latest person to review the show on Apple Podcasts. She wrote, “I can’t recommend this podcast enough. I’ve started a new job recently with a half an hour commute. So Fay has been getting me off to a positive, refreshing start every morning before I get to work. I’ve had a terrible case of imposter syndrome. But Fay has kept me on track balanced and shared inspiring and thought provoking ideas that have supported my work. Thank you, Fay”.
Fay Wallis: 00:02:12
Well, thank you, Jenny. All of this support meant that incredibly HR Coffee Time hit the number four spot in the Apple UK Careers Chart last week, which was just an amazing feeling.
Fay Wallis: 00:02:26
And now, let me let you get back to the main part of the show. And let’s hear from Claire.
Fay Wallis: 00:02:33
Before we dive into the main questions for today, I would love to ask you to share how you recently became a LinkedIn celebrity.
Claire Cathcart: 00:02:41
It was like a long time ago now I shared the post that went viral. So how did it start? So, at YuLife we were talking about menopause – quite a taboo topic, actually, I think still. And we were holding an event with Davina McCall. So it was kind of lots of hype about it. And someone approached me and said, “Claire, I really think we should be talking about menopause internally with our employees at YuLife and looking at what support we kind of offer those people at YuLife”. I said, “Great – great idea; I’m with you. Like let’s do it. I’m happy to talk about taboo topics. So, you know, let’s start the conversation.”
Claire Cathcart: 00:03:22
And then there were a couple of questions that came up in our all hands company meeting around what are we doing to support people with menstruation at work? Another great taboo topic. So it felt like all of these kinds of conversations were coming together. So we created a small working group. And we started to talk about the impacts of these things – menstruation, how it affects people at work; menopause, how long it goes on for; all the symptoms that people experience.
Claire Cathcart: 00:03:54
So we kind of delved into the impact on people. And then someone suggested that we look at how we can support people in a really small way but actually, it would be quite meaningful for people. So, the suggestion was because we are a primarily remote workforce, that we just simply put a Slack status that said, “not feeling 100%” Because the reality is we have days where we can work, we can sit in front of our laptops and do our emails, and we’re not feeling great. And you might just want to sit with a hot water bottle or, not brush her hair that day. And so I thought actually, it’s a great idea, something really small that we can action really quickly but would be meaningful for people.
Claire Cathcart: 00:04:46
But then the conversation progressed into well actually there are occasions when people can work but aren’t feeling great outside of those taboo topics. So whether they’re having low mental health, whether they’ve suffered a period of bereavement, and they’re just returning to work.
Claire Cathcart: 00:05:06
So, I captured all of these things on my LinkedIn post. And it was quite funny because on the Friday evening, so terrible time to post on LinkedIn, all the gurus will tell you, “Do not post on a Friday evening”. So, I posted it anyway, just I was sat with my phone, as you do in the evening, talking about this conversation that we’d had.
Claire Cathcart: 00:05:27
And it honestly just exploded. And I think the reason for that is because there were so many different facets. It covered mental health, it covered the taboo topics like menstruation at work and menopause; we were talking about wellbeing, remote working. And I just think it really polarised people’s opinions.
Claire Cathcart: 00:05:47So within a couple of days,: 1000Fay Wallis: 00:05:56
I can put a link to the post in the show notes as well, so that for anyone listening, if you want to go and have a look at it, you can see it and see the impact that it had. When I saw it, what I just loved was the simplicity of the idea of being able to indicate to everyone that you’re not feeling 100%. And that actually there’s a company culture that embraces that and accepts that and encourages people to share that information. Especially when so many of us are working remotely. Because if we were in an office together, you might spot that someone was looking a little bit low or not feeling 100%. And you might ask them if they’re okay. Whereas when we’re all behind screens, I don’t think it’s as easy to pick up on those cues. We may not even be seeing them on video, we might just be at our screen typing away the whole day. So that’s what I really loved about it was, it was simple, but it was brilliant.
Claire Cathcart: 00:06:51
And I think that the employees that are using it, really appreciate it. Because they don’t have to broadcast, “Hey, I’m not feeling great today”, every time they have a meeting. It’s just a really small indicator that people can just recognise really quickly and go, Hey, there’s something going on today. So yeah, a small thing, but definitely has had a huge impact for us.
Fay Wallis: 00:07:14
And have you been able to measure that impact at all, or get any sort of feedback to see if people are using it and how it’s landing within your organisation?
Claire Cathcart: 00:07:23
It’s an interesting question. And this came up on the comments section on LinkedIn. People were asking me, how are you going to track it? And my initial response was, I have no intention of tracking this whatsoever. Because it kind of defies the purpose of people being able to use it. We want to create a safe space where people do feel open, saying, Hey, I’m not feeling great. So to then say we were going to track it and measure it, it almost felt contradictory to what we were trying to achieve.
Claire Cathcart: 00:07:54
That being said, I think anecdotally I can see that people are using it. So can I sit here and say it’s been a success? Yes, because I have seen so many people using it. And I have had conversations with people about it, I was very clear that if from a HR or People perspective, we saw it, we wouldn’t instantly reach out. Because they weren’t approaching us to say hey, I’m having a bad day, they were letting their colleagues and peer group know that kind of what was going on in their head.
Claire Cathcart: 00:08:25
So, we don’t kind of jump on it instantly. But if I am having a conversation with someone naturally that has that status, I will talk to them about it.
Claire Cathcart: 00:08:35
So anecdotally, it’s working. I think it’s great. Am I tracking it? Absolutely not. Is it going to go to People? Absolutely not.
Fay Wallis: 00:08:44
And that’s just one example of many, many things that you’re doing at YuLife to create this fantastic, remote working environment, something that so many people are struggling with right now. Because after the pandemic threw nearly all of us into the position of working remotely, I know it’s something that the HR community has been working really hard at helping their organisations get right.
Fay Wallis: 00:09:08
So, I have three things in particular that I really hope to ask you today. And I hope you don’t mind and that you’re happy to share. Because there are so many things that I could ask you, I thought, “Right let’s narrow this down for Claire”. And I’ve just based these really on my own personal experience of having had chats with people and heard where they really feel the challenging crunch points can be with remote working. I’m sure there are others as well. But these are the ones that leapt out at me. So, they are firstly, how you manage to make the onboarding process as good as possible? Because having spoken to people who have started new roles since the pandemic in a remote environment that’s one area that I know a lot of organisations are struggling and not necessarily doing as great a job as they could be. The second thing is how you help managers to do a great job at managing remotely? Because managers have got a tough job as it is; throw remote working into the mix and it’s a whole additional challenge for them. And then finally, the third thing I wanted to ask you about is how you encourage collaboration and connection throughout your remote workforce? How does that sound? Is that going to be okay for us to talk about?
Claire Cathcart: 00:10:21
Yeah, perfect. Should we start with onboarding?
Fay Wallis: 00:10:24
That sounds good to me – sounds like a great starting point. So, please do share all your insights around onboarding with us.
Claire Cathcart: 00:10:32
So, I think the onboarding experience at YuLife is probably one of the best that I’ve seen. We are aware that people work remotely, they aren’t coming into an office to meet people face to face. So we’ve really tried to focus on the connections that people make from the day that they make the offer to the day, they’re starting we’re talking to them and interacting with them. So, we start with, we actually send out 13 books to all new starters, and say, “Hey, read all of these books and you’ll get a great idea around the philosophy at YuLife.”
Claire Cathcart: 00:11:03
We send people swag. And if you’ve seen any of our LinkedIn posts, people love sharing their swag pictures. We have rucksacks, water bottles, all sorts of great stuff.
Claire Cathcart: 00:11:14
We also ask them to do a pre onboarding module as well through our HR system. So, even before people have started, they’ve put in their personal details, their address, their bank details, all of that good stuff.
Claire Cathcart: 00:11:27
So, even before their very first day, they’ve interacted with us loads, we get all of their IT equipment sent out to them before they start, we help them set up with their desk and chair, making sure their workstation’s all set up. So pretty much before day one, they are good to go. That they’re set up fully.
Claire Cathcart: 00:11:48
Then, from day one, they have lots of meeting invitations. And it might seem a lot when you kind of first walk in on day one. But they have 10 to 12 meetings, and they meet all of the founders, they meet senior managers across the business, they hear about the organisation, our mission and our vision, our values, our behaviours.
Claire Cathcart: 00:12:09
And we really get them embedded into the business as quickly as possible. So at the end of their induction, they’ve forgotten that they’re working remotely because they’ve been speaking to so many people through through their first couple of weeks. And I think building those connections early on is really important. They will at some point, I’m sure meet people face to face. But I’ve personally experienced that working remotely, you can still build connections, strong connections with people. And I discovered that when I met people for the first time, someone actually later came back to me that day and said, “Claire, when we met in the hotel earlier this morning, I didn’t realise that was the first time we’ve met face to face”. So it is definitely possible to build strong connections remotely.
Claire Cathcart: 00:12:55
So yeah, we build in kind of lots of different meetings for people. And they they are supported through the first two weeks with we have Slack channels for new starters, #WelcomeToYuLife is our Slack channel. So they have opportunities to ask questions. People are given a buddy. So someone that will contact them, reach out, say, “Hey, how are you going? How are you getting on?” So lots and lots of support for people. And we do track the feedback for that; we actually send out surveys. And it’s all been amazing. We want to keep improving it but we’re not quite sure what the next step looks like. But feedback has been really, really positive about our induction so far.
Fay Wallis: 00:13:37
I’m not surprised to hear that you’ve had really great feedback about that. It’s funny actually hearing you talk, it’s made me think in a way remote working has given us this real opportunity to look at what we’re doing and make sure we’re doing it as well as possible because everything you have just described that would be fantastic to put in place for anyone starting a job that isn’t remote working that where they’re actually going into an office. I mean, gosh, how many of us have had the experience of turning up and there’s no IT setup or you’re just sort of grabbing time to talk to people because nothing’s been scheduled in the calendar. So, this really, as you’re talking, I thought, “Gosh, this is best practice, actually, for any situation, whether we’re all working together face to face, whether it’s hybrid, whether it’s virtual.” So yeah, it’s great to hear it; thank you, Claire, and I’m completely intrigued as to how you chose the 13 books that gets sent out to everybody. You may know I absolutely love books. I have an out of control reading list at home at the moment. There are so many books everywhere. How did you choose those 13?
Claire Cathcart: 00:14:45
There is a story behind it and it kind of brings everything YuLife stands for; it brings it all together. So the founders like to read books, you know, they are inspired by people and authors. So they decided actually, these are the books that they have really taken something from and that are meaningful for them. So they are their recommendations.
Claire Cathcart: 00:15:09
And actually, it does tell you a lot about their own philosophies, their morals, their values, what they stand for how they want to run the organisation. And I think when you start to read some of them, you can start to see that being translated in practice that you life.
Claire Cathcart: 00:15:25
So it’s, you know, 13 books arrived from Amazon, and you’re like, Whoa, how am I gonna get through them all. But as you do start to kind of pick them off. It’s really insightful. There’s no expectation that everyone’s going to read all 13. And, you know, certainly within a certain timeframe. But yeah, it’s just one the founders and that they’re kind of sharing their story with people even before they start.
Fay Wallis: 00:15:49
It’s a really nice idea in so many different ways. And I’m not just saying this, because I do love reading. It reminds me actually, of when my son started secondary school. And he wasn’t going to know many people who were there, there weren’t that many people from his primary school going there with him. And the school arranged that every single child to be sent the who was starting the same book. And the idea was that when they all turned up on the same day, they would have something to talk about. So again, even if you haven’t read all of those 13 books, when you’re starting work at your organisation, the fact that you even know their titles or might have dipped into one of them means that straightaway, you’ve got something else to talk about with everyone haven’t you’ve got some way of forming a connection?
Claire Cathcart: 00:16:33
It’s definitely a conversation starter. Which books have you read? Which ones do you recommend? Which one should I read next? And even for, you know, not just speaking to other new starters, speaking to existing people, ‘hey, did you read 13 books when when you were sent them when you started?’ So yeah, definitely a conversation starter. I personally haven’t read all 13 yet, but I am goign to tackle them. I’m getting through them slowly.
Fay Wallis: 00:16:58
I’ll have to ask you afterwards what the list of 13 are, you’ve got me completely intrigued now.
Claire Cathcart: 00:17:02
Yeah, I’ll send it on to you.
Fay Wallis: 00:17:04
And there was something else? You mentioned that about the Slack channel, you said, you’ve got a Slack channel for new startups, what does that look like? So for someone listening, who thinks, oh, yeah, I really want to start trying out some of Claire’s ideas. What does that involve? What are the practicalities of having that?
Claire Cathcart: 00:17:22
I think this is a really key point for remote workers. Slack is a huge part of our culture and how we communicate with people. So the channel for new starters, welcome to you live. They are put into this channel on day one, and they stay there for a month. It’s primarily by our lovely IT guy, Adam. And it’s an opportunity to ask questions, because you’re not sat next to someone that says, Hey, you can’t just ask them, Hey, how do I do this? So any techie questions, struggling with setup, all the systems we have to use these days, it’s just a safe space for them to make sure that they’re fully set up and kind of good to go after that first month. But equally, we do have someone from the people team in there.
Claire Cathcart: 00:18:05
So if the questions aren’t related to it in tech, we can take that away as well. I do explain to people that after that initial month, they graduate, they fly free, they get kicked out of the channel, and they kind of on their merry way. But we do have other channels helping me helping you where they can ask their questions. So the support does continue. But we have a dedicated channel for one month for all our new starters.
Fay Wallis: 00:18:29
Fantastic. And I promise I will stop asking you about onboarding in a minute. And we can actually move on to the other topics. But you just have me completely intrigued, and I want to make the most of the opportunity of having you here. So with the buddy system, how exactly does that work that people get buddied up with someone who’s in the same department with them? And is the buddy given much guidance? Or is it just are they given a bit of a free rein? I’d love to hear more about that.
Claire Cathcart: 00:18:56
So our buddies have all stepped forward to say they would really love to be part of the buddy programme. So that’s great. They’ve already got that desire and interest to be part of it. They’re not chosen kind of randomly. But we do kind of look across and say we don’t want someone in the same department. Actually, we try and kind of mix it up across the business. We pick people that we think are good personality fit, they’ll get on quite well together. And yeah, so we just kind of match people up based on what we know about both people.
Claire Cathcart: 00:19:26
Are they given guidance? Yes. So they know how many times they need to reach out to people, they know kind of the support that they need to give. And really it comes down to the two people the buddy in the new starter deciding what arrangement they want going forward. So it might be at the new starter says yeah, do you know what I’d love to keep meeting every couple of weeks? Or they turn around and say actually, I’m good now. Thank you so much for your support. I’m ready to go alone. Again, it’s something that I experienced and having that buddy there that wasn’t in my department was great and they could give me an insight into the wider bausiness. So, again, a very successful part of the onboarding programme.
Fay Wallis: 00:20:04
Let’s move along then to focusing on the manager. So we’ve just touched on the buddies, which all sounds absolutely brilliant. How is it that you help managers to do a great job at managing remotely?
Claire Cathcart: 00:20:17
I think one of the key things that you like is that we don’t have traditional teams, we have a squad structure. If you haven’t heard of that before, let me just talk that through and kind of what it means. So typically, you would have specialists together. So for example, you would have a group of developers sitting together, and they will all be doing their own thing working on their own projects, probably heads down, headphones on not talking to each other doing their thing. But the idea of a squad is that you bring people together to work on a single problem. For example, you might have a sales person and marketing person, a project manager, or developer, an analyst all in a squad.
Claire Cathcart: 00:20:59
So what that means is that they have to talk to each other because they’re all working on the same thing. So it’s all about collaboration. It’s not about working on your own or working on your own thing. You’re all working towards the same goal. So when we’re working remotely, I think that naturally encourages conversation, it’s not forced, because they all do have that shared goal. So we don’t call our managers managers, we call them squad leads, they are there to guide the conversation and make sure that people are delivering their best. They’re achieving what they need to achieve. So it’s probably management in a less traditional sense.
Fay Wallis: 00:21:37
Imagine I was to join tomorrow, and I’m a squad lead. And I don’t have a huge amount of management experience. And I’ve never managed remotely, what kind of things have you got in place to help me do a brilliant job for my squad that I’m looking after?
Claire Cathcart: 00:21:53
I think everyone at YuLife is using slack in a really nice way. That’s kind of our primary communication channel. We have a manager community, sounds like a lot of channels, we do we have lots of channels for things, but it’s how we communicate. We have a manager community. So we’re starting to encourage managers to share what they’re doing. So we might pose a question in the manager community that says, ‘hey, what does a good one to one look like?’ And then they’re sharing their ideas. So we’re actually encouraging people to have those conversations, we encourage people to have natural touch points.
Claire Cathcart: 00:22:33
So for some people that might be daily stand ups, and particularly the product and tech space where they need that more regular interaction. Some people might just have a weekly one to one, people might have a team meeting once a week. So we really say to managers, it’s down to them to decide the cadence of those meetings, how frequently they have them, who they’re meeting with. But the expectation is clear. Speak to your people. And honestly, we don’t have a problem people are doing that people want to reach out. They’re collaborating, they’re working together. So yeah, touch wood everything’s working okay at the moment.
Fay Wallis: 00:23:05
So how many people if you’ve got in your squad?
Claire Cathcart: 00:23:08
Just to complicate things further, there are a couple of squads, teams that aren’t squads because we have to work together as a traditional team. So HR and finance, I think, are really the only two that aren’t kind of in that squad. In the people team, I think we had about seven people. But yeah, a more traditional HR team that your listeners will probably recognise.
Fay Wallis: 00:23:30
Ah, okay, yes, that makes sense. I was trying to picture in my head, how you might be part of a squad. That brings us along to the final area that I was hoping to hear some of your insights about. And I know you’ve already touched on this quite a lot, actually, even by talking about the onboarding, and the management. But it would be brilliant to hear how you’ve really encouraged that collaboration and connection throughout your remote workforce.
Claire Cathcart: 00:23:56u’re posting at, I don’t know: 10:30 Claire Cathcart: 00:24:51
There’s no judgement like what, why are you posting on a social channel? Why aren’t you working? You know, it’s not that we only expect communication at lunchtime for example. So social channels where you can just freely connect with people on things that are not just work related, which is really nice. And if you need to keep your house plants alive, it’s a great channel, the plant one. But yeah, social channels, really important. We touched on company meetings and this is a really great way to bring people together.
Claire Cathcart: 00:25:23
So every Monday morning, our founder and CEO, Sammy Rubin, he leads the Monday morning meeting, every week, he stands, obviously, virtually stands in front of everyone. And we have a really nice ritual, that we have a gong and someone hits the gong, it’s a nice way to start the week, you centre yourself, you focus on your breathing, and he encourages that across the whole company. It’s quite something to see when you’ve got almost 200 people just, you know, preparing for their week. So we have that on a Monday morning.
Claire Cathcart: 00:25:28
And then Thursday, every Thursday, five o’clock, we have ‘all companies all hands.’ And that is led by our COO. And it’s really an opportunity to whether it’s a number of thing is recognising success and saying thank you. So we have shoutouts to people that piers have sent in, we have a workflow through slack that you can say, I’d like a shout out to Joe Bloggs, for this reason, attach a nice little gear for fun GIF, and that gets fed out of the all hands meeting. So starts quite vibrant and fun. Then we move on to company updates. We have lightning updates, and company news kind of to finish off. So in terms of people working remotely feeling connected to the business, they absolutely do. And there’s probably more communication than I’ve experienced working in an office environment is always that you take it for granted being in the office, that you hear everything that you need to hear. Whereas when you work remotely, I find that people are making more of an effort to communicate, so it’s actually better. So yeah, communication and connection is really working well.
Fay Wallis: 00:27:09
Well, I completely agree with the whole idea of the pet photos for Inspiring HR, which is my group coaching programme. We always have eight people on the programme at one time. And one of my goals of having people join inspiring HR is to really help them build connections, so they get to know each other. And I love the idea that at the end of the programme, they stay friends for you know, forever and that they can turn to each other for help with their HR careers at any point. And so because we’re all meeting remotely, I was thinking how can I help build up this connection apart from the group sessions that we have? So I set up a private Whatsapp group rather than slack? Sorry, I don’t use Slack. Well, not at the moment anyway. And one week I thought I know, I’ll share a little video of my dog Cookie eating a Puppa Chino, because Starbucks opened on our high street and we found out that if you take your dog in they offer you a little dog coffee. It’s absolutely hilarious. It’s just whipped cream and a cup but cookie absolutely loves it.
Fay Wallis: 00:28:14
So just shared this one little video. And I’ve been trying all different things in the WhatsApp group to try and help people feel they get to know each other. Oh my goodness, I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything so popular. Everyone started sharing pictures of their pets and one person’s photos were amazing. They were so funny. Like her dog all dressed up in gym gear ready for a workout, a picture of her dog at the computer looking as if he was typing. And you know when we all replied saying well, these are fantastic. She said oh yes, we do it at work for the remote working we’ve got a channel so everyone can share the pictures. So I haven’t tried the plant one yet Claire, you’ve now given me an idea that I should try that for the next time I run Inspiring HR.
Claire Cathcart: 00:28:56
I think the key to all of this is just finding the things that you have in common with people and you will naturally lean towards people over other people. And you know, that’s perfectly ok. So I think the pet channel is very popular. There’s less people in the plant channel about finding that connection isn’t that common interest that you can kind of talk to people about. We also have ‘fancy a cuppa?’ it is managed through slack. But it’s another channel where every fortnight the system will will pair people up and it just says hey, you’ve been matched with this person. And then it’s between the two of you to arrange literally just a 15 minute conversation, over a cup of tea, grab a coffee and it’s just a way that we encourage people just to speak to people that they wouldn’t normally work with.
Claire Cathcart: 00:29:48
And I think that’s so important to be able to speak to people outside of your squad or your team. I think that that’s part of the success of the culture it at YuLife that we do a lot of remote events, we’re encouraging connection. We do it all the time. It’s not just a, right once a month, we need to do this. It’s lots of different methods, lots of different channels, lots of different initiatives that we’re using. So just constantly there for people. Some people won’t be interested in fancy a cuppa, but they will be interested in the pet channel. So I think making lots of different channels available for people is really key.
Fay Wallis: 00:30:26
I haven’t heard of that before the idea of being able to automatically randomly pair people up for the fancy a cuppa thing, what brilliant idea. And you touched there on saying that you do remote events as well. Can I ask you to talk a little bit more about that?
Claire Cathcart: 00:30:41
Yeah, so we had a quiz, and they put us into breakout rooms is probably the stuff that people were doing through COVID, making more of an effort to try and bring people together. But we’ve continued some of those things. So we’ve done that we had lunch and learns. So again, virtually people kind of coming together, we do bring people together twice a year face to face, we fly people over from all over the world. And they do have that option to interact with people face to face. But I think the virtual connections are really great.
Claire Cathcart: 00:31:16
So some people are a little bit bored at the virtual quiz. They were over it when the pandemic was finished. But I think that the more you can do those things, people that do work remotely, really appreciate it. And I think it’s also an opportunity. So I have a seven year old son, it was six o’clock in the evening, he was there. And we could kind of interact with people’s families. And I think that was so lovely. It’s a great way to get to know people. So yeah, if you’re bored of them, maybe think about doing a couple of your remote teams, because they are fun, and they do work.
Fay Wallis: 00:31:52
Well, thank you so much for sharing all of these incredible insight, I can almost guarantee that there will be so many people listening back to this episode, furiously writing notes, you will have given so many people ideas that they can take forward. It’s really generous of you. And I also suspect you’ll have people hammering down the door to come and work with you at YuLife because it sounds absolutely fantastic. But before I say goodbye, if I could just ask you my final question that I asked every guest who comes on the show, which is can you share your nonfiction book recommendation with us?
Claire Cathcart: 00:32:30
Yes, I’ve been reading a lot of bits lately. I’ve been sent 13. The book that really got to me the most and it is one of the 13 that YuLife send out is ‘When Breath Becomes Air’. And I was reading it on the tube in London and I had tears streaming down my face. It’s such a powerful book. So be warned. If you do go ahead and read it, make sure that you’re prepared for the emotion, really powerful story really brings home that life is short and to make the most of it. It’s a really powerful emotional book. So yes, When Breath Becomes Air.
Fay Wallis: 00:33:07
I think I might have heard of it. But I’m now worrying I’ve got it completely wrong. Is it about a doctor who had a brain tumour and they wrote the I don’t know if it’s the story of their life or the situation they were in? Would you be able to share a little bit more about it?
Claire Cathcart: 00:33:20
That was exactly yeah, he was nearly qualified, I believe when when he passed. It was a little while ago that I read it now. So hopefully I don’t get the details wrong. But yeah, he spent his life on, training and helping people. And then sadly, he lost his own life too. He had a brain tumour. Just a very powerful, inspiring read. So yeah, highly recommend it.
Fay Wallis: 00:33:44
Well, I will put a link to that as well in the show notes. For anyone listening who wants to go ahead and take a look at that book. I will definitely be taking a look at it. Thank you so much for your time today Claire and for the fabulous book recommendation.
Claire Cathcart: 00:33:58
No worries. Happy to be here. Thank you.