Hasta La Gadget!

Remote working is on the rise, with 37% of US workers now working from home on occasion. This has forced businesses to change the way they operate. For the first time, managers are having to come to terms with the fact that their sales teams could be working from home.

It can be done, but it requires some planning. You need the right manager in place who will facilitate remote working. But why are more successful entrepreneurs starting to operate their sales teams remotely? This article is going to explain some of the reasons why.

Better Managers

Sometimes the easiest way to pivot your company towards remote working is to employ better managers in the first place. You need managers who are open-minded enough to make changes in the workplace. Many companies are stuck in their ways because of the people in positions of responsibility.

Good managers are able to build relationships, manage projects, and be accountable. This applies doubly so when working with remote workers. Their responsibilities have increased and so it’s even more important that these attributes are in place.

The fact that you need all these new skills is naturally going to lead to better managers.

Better Retention Rates

More and more companies say to retain the best talent they have to invest in remote working. People want to be in control of their own destinies. If they can work in a place that provides them with the most comfort, you are going to get more out of them.

The more motivated your sales team is the more likely they are going to stay with you. Furthermore, if they ever have to stay home or move for personal reasons they can continue to work for your company.

By constantly having positions filled, you are going to retain industry knowledge and save money. It’s twice as costly to train a new salesperson than it is to retain an existing salesperson.

A Bigger Pool of Employees

To generate leads not inquiries in the selling world you need to have the very best candidates on your team. One of the biggest problems companies experience is that they are constantly fighting with their competitors to get the right talent. Finding qualified people is harder than ever before because employees know their worth. They are going to make demands of you.

Finding the best talent means you need to cater to them. One of the ways to do this is through offering remote working options. Some of the best talents in the world don’t enjoy the office environment or they have commitments at home.

Meeting them half way through remote working could convince them that you’re a company to work for. Remote working allows you to hire the best talent regardless of location.

Preparing for an Emergency

Emergencies happen all the time. Things like natural disasters and snow days are creating the next generation of remote workers. Accidents can and do happen, and they are not always within your control.

In the event that your headquarters is closed, you have to do something about this. Every working day lost represents a lot of money lost. In the globalized world and the globally competitive landscape, you cannot afford to close your doors. You can prepare for an emergency by promoting the idea of remote working.

Collaborating in the virtual environment gives teams the skills needed to operate even when they have to work from home. You are more vulnerable than you think, so it makes sense to prepare for the worst case scenario now.

It Can Be Cheaper

Some of the most attention-grabbing Tweets have come from companies without physical offices. There’s an increasing trend where companies are not renting out office space at all. They are working in the virtual environment using online chat rooms. There are employees across the world who have never met each other in person, and that is increasingly becoming a viable option.

Even if you are not ready to completely trade in your office, you can take steps to incorporate remote working into.

Conclusion – The Future is Coming

Telecommuting has gone up by over 100% since 2005. It’s clear that this exponential growth is not going to go away anytime soon. The future is coming and it’s closer than you might think. Organizations are increasingly looking to remote working options to run their businesses.

What is your experience with remote working?

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If you’ve ever walked down a NYC block it is likely that you’ve heard “Hey yo, ma, can I holler at you for a sec?” or ” Damn, ma, you’re fine,” or “God bless you, ma,” or “But why aren’t you smiling?” as if women walk around all day smiling for no reason at all. If you haven’t been the victim of catcalling, then consider yourself lucky, but the reality for many women is that they’ve experienced some form of street harassment.

We are disrespected almost every day by men who feel they have a right to talk to us, approach us, or even go so far as to touch us without permission. Men, who believe we should feel flattered because they’ve noticed us or given us a compliment. From the time a woman walks out the door of her home in the morning, be it walking to the corner bodega or to school, she is forced to dodge the unsolicited advances from men just to keep herself safe and we are taught do so from a very early age.

By the time a young girl hits puberty she is faced with having to deal with unwanted sexual attention and harassment by her peers and older men alike. As she gets older and enters womanhood the harassment continues, and instead of educating boys and men on how to treat women, women are taught to accept and deal with it. It’s the reason we cross to the other side of the street when we see a group of men together. It’s the reason why we’ll speed walk like we’re preparing for an event at the next Olympic Games when a man approaches and begins walking alongside us. We’ve been taught to ignore it while our male counterparts haven’t been taught anything at all.

Women are not afforded the opportunity to express their feelings when confronted with harassment. Why? Because a woman who defends herself or vocalizes her discomfort risks the chance of the incident escalating by either being verbally abused by the harasser or even experiencing a possible physical threat. Because you know, “You wasn’t all that anyway, b*tch.” The thing is, women have a right to defend themselves and express when they feel disrespected or harassed. They have to push back against these types of men and let them know it’s unacceptable, because if we don’t the behavior will continue. Men have a responsibility to stop this behavior too.

A couple of months ago, poet and friend, Elisabet Velasquez penned an essay about feeling unsafe in public spaces after being sexually harassed by another poet at a poetry event. In her essay she says,

It is almost impossible to call out a behavior without calling out a perpetrator. People who exhibit dangerous behaviors need to know that their actions are perceived as dangerous in the general community. They need to be made aware that their behavior is not okay. If they do not know, how can we expect them to change?

Harassment of any kind is never cool. We must be firm in our stance against predatory behaviors. We must be clear when we say that harassment and misogyny will not be tolerated; that we must by example eliminate the patriarchal system that has allowed this type of abuse to exist for years. We must teach our sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, cousins that it is never OK to impart their sexual desire for a woman when it is unsolicited. We don’t want your compliments. It’s not flattering or pleasing. All women want is to no longer fear for their safety in public spaces, or have to worry that what we wear, or what we say, or how we look is an invitation to be disrespected, harassed, and violated. All we want is to walk down the street and feel safe.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

After college, I was struck by a drunk driver and left unable to walk for nearly a year. Living a life in bed, pre-Internet, afforded two things: a lot of writing and reading. A friend gave me a copy of The Alchemist with the vivid purple cover and intriguing third eye pyramid. A titanium plate and screws were fusing my femur, but this book mobilized me–inspiring me to go for my biggest dream and become a writer.

Knowing the impact that one perfect novel had on my life, I set out with my colleagues, Paul Stiff and Josh Conviser, to understand America’s relationship with books–research we were doing for a grant from the National Science Foundation for our company’s innovation in book discovery. Over the course of six weeks, we sat down and interviewed 100 readers from various backgrounds and of all ages, mostly living in the Bay Area.

We started with the simple task of learning more about how readers find books–and ended with stories of how people fell in love with reading, stories about their earliest reading memories, how books helped them get through tough times in their lives, and how books literally saved them.

Crazy intimate stories. About books.

Books Keep Us Connected

Ask a reader about the books they love and something magical happens. When people discuss books that matter to them, they end up talking about far more than just the book. They speak of experience, life, trauma, love, and echo how Anna Quindlen captured the power of the reading experience, “In books, I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream . . . “

While readers might comment on language and how much they loved the writing, or vividly recall a scene that struck them, the connection goes far deeper. In talking about such a novel, one reader told us she’d “pay a million bucks to read that book again.” She loved the writing, loved the story, but far more important in those pages, she learned something about her dad. Those insights allowed her to appreciate him more, to see his complexities and understand him better. Books became the cord kept them connected throughout his life.

We heard more stories, detailed descriptions, the pulpy, musky smells of favorite libraries and the sounds of cracked leather reading chairs that had stayed in families for generations. In the space of an hour, some shared things they had never told anyone. As a result, most of them hugged us at the end. We felt like fast friends with a relationship rooted in something that matters. Something that’s real and lasting.

Books Are A Portal

What we realized is that by asking readers why books mattered to them, we were allowing these people to tell us why they matter as individuals. Talking about a book that really resonated with you is a great way to share who you really are–what matters to your head and your heart. Books become a portal into the core of a person. What readers shared was so unscripted, so real and so raw, that we were left euphoric afterward. One reader said, “I feel like I’m talking to my shrink,” then laughed and thanked us for not charging her.

Most unexpected, the readers we interviewed left in a happier place and raised our spirits along the way. Magic? Possibly, but some measurable shift happens when people speak about the books that matter to them.

Reading The Alchemist urged me to understand, and see, the unseen world. To believe in magic, faith, possibilities. The inherent wisdom in this one book became the foundation for my healing and launched a new journey to help people find the right book at the right time. As one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, says in this Booxby video, “I wouldn’t have had a shot at a great life if I hadn’t been a person of the book.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

New Horizons may be millions of miles beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt
right now, but that hasn’t stopped the spacecraft from continuing to beam back glorious imagery of its encounter with our solar system’s weirdest little ice world. A new NASA video reveals the most detailed images of Pluto’s surface yet—and they’re spellbinding.

Read more…

This Memorial Day, Mars will be closer to Earth than it’s been at any point in the past 11 years. Back in 2005, Mars got up close and personal with our Earth – we didn’t even really have smartphones back then. Now, here on Memorial Day, Mars will be appearing low in the east-southeast sky just after darkness. When you … Continue reading