Climbing the TREE: The Remote Employee Experience (TREE) with Kaleem Clarkson | TNN34

The popularity of remote work has skyrocketed over the past decade or so. People from all over the world are finding remote work opportunities. Remote work does come with its own challenges and it rests on the shoulders of employers: how to maintain employee satisfaction. With no to little in person communication, remote work can seem isolating. People like Kaleem Clarkson, COO of Blend Me, help employers and employees be happy campers and stay that way in the remote work world.

In this episode of The New Nomad, our hosts Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski, together with Kaleem, talk about the remote work environment, its ups and downs, and how to overcome difficulties when it comes to the laptop lifestyle. As remote workers and digital nomads themselves, they discussed TREE or The Remote Employee Experience and its importance to thriving in the remote work world. It truly is a topic worth your while. So grab your notebook and jot down valuable information as you listen to this episode.

[10:31] Building the TREE

[18:13] Time vs Value

[20:26] The world needs more trust and kindness to be better

[28:19] Getting together to build connections, not the other way around

[29:32] The value of communication

[33:37] The power of EQ

GUEST BIO:

Kaleem is a husband, father, remote work advocate, people operations professional, and speaker. As the Chief Operating Officer, Kaleem ensures all of Blend Me’s services and programs follow the strategic plan and the vision of the CEO.

With nearly 20 years of strategic operations and event planning experience, he helps leadership implement people operations solutions that increase productivity and engagement for both internal and external stakeholders. He is passionate about work-life integration and maximizing The Remote Employee Experience (TREE). 

Kaleem currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his family. When he is not working, you can find him mountain biking on the trails of Georgia with his headphones, blasting a little hard rock music.

Kaleem Clarkson Links:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kaleemclarkson
Twitter: kaleemclarkson
Website: remotelyone.com


Follow Insured Nomads at:

Instagram: @insurednomads

www.insurednomads.com

Transcript

Allen  

Welcome to The New Nomad Podcast, the podcast that focuses on the location independent worker, or first person who wants to see the world. We have a great guest today, Kaleem Clarkson is joining. Kaleem Clarkson's from Blend Me, he's a remote work advocate, it's going to have some really interesting ideas for us on assessing the employee experience, the remote employee experience. Also, that's a very interesting thoughts about different employers have brought people back to work. And then they've decided with the variant that nevermind, we can head back to remote work status, etc. Andrew brings up a thought. I'm gonna bring in my co host, Andrew Jernigan that, you know, we've seen a lot of folks recently, only kind of look at the negative side of the remote work experience, which is strange given that there's a negative side of actually working in the office. IE, if you're in the office, and people are sick, the spread, you know, a lot of walking around, and maybe not necessarily working quite as hard. The tax issues of travelling into a high tax area where you might have city wage tax, after sitting on a bus, or a train for an hour to kind of interesting how that's played out, you know, what's your thoughts on kind of people putting their fingers on the scale, so to speak on remote work?

Andrew  

Yeah, this is interesting, because people that are new to it, now that the pandemic is hits there. They're talking about something that many others have done for a decade, or many more this, you know, remote working hybrid is not new to many companies. But while it is to others. This is you know, I know you've been in it for years, in a very remote system of work. And I have in various environments it say, but yet others are caught going to their Zumba their yoga class in the middle of a day, and the employer is thinking what why but yet, they're also getting 1214 hours out of folks that previously would have just stopped at a certain time and gone home. So it's the pendulum is swinging. So I'm really excited to have Kaleem today and to give us some perspectives that I think some people are asking, and looking forward to hearing his take on this.

Allen  

Well, you know, Andrew, one other thing before we bring Kaleem in is just think about this too, with the child care issues, etc. There, there are some food folks during the pandemic, that you just can't take your children to daycare, drop them off. And if you make so many come into work, the issues that that you may have. So there's also social issues, family issues, etc. And I'm not saying folks should head back to work, I think we're seeing a lot of hybrid opportunities. And a lot of people I speak to are very happy about that going in a day or two. But I also know, many folks that are now with with variants out there and some of the other issues saying, you know, I don't necessarily want to put myself in that environment. So why don't we bring Kaleem  into the conversation? Kaleem, welcome aboard? Why don't you give a quick overview of folks of, of how you became passionate about supporting the remote worker, and some of your perspectives.

Kaleem  

Thank you. Thank you so much on Allen, Andrew, for having me on the podcast, I really, really appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to just talk about remote work with other other colleagues. I don't know that. I guess the story I'll try to give this the shortened version because I've told the story a lot. But I would say in 2010 or so my partner graduated from the University of Connecticut with her master's degree in Human Resources and organizational development. She was having challenges finding a job, everything was based around bait, you know, benefits and HR generalist although her degree was more on employee engagement, strategic HR side. And there were no VP of people back then. You know, they weren't director of people, VP of people CHRO was I mean, maybe they existed, but they weren't as prevalent as they are today. Which is kind of amazing. If you think about that's only 11 years ago, right? 

Kaleem  

Um, so you know, with that in mind, I was teaching myself to become a Drupal web developer shout out to the Drupal community. And I was at a Drupal Drupal Con Denver in 2012. And, you know, it was a talk from from a company called Lullabot who does you know, the Grammys' website or did at the time and Martha Stewart big sites and he was giving a talk talk on how his company was a virtual or fully remote company. I'm sorry, he called it a fully distributed company. Sorry, that's the have to be specific. And when he said fully distributed, I'd never heard that term. And, and he shown pictures of all his family and, and all his colleagues who are working all over the country, and really was the retreat the picture of the retreat in Florida. And geez, I just, I just found that fascinating. On the plane back, I started looking at books that what books I could read started with Rework: Jason Fried & DHH. Base Camp, and then read The Year Without Pants for our workweek remote. And then in 2013, I just approached my partner and said, Hey, I think we should start a employee engagement consultancy only for remote companies. And that's where we are today.

Allen  

So you were really ahead of the curve, on that. I mean, it because there really was not a movement to remote work. There were remote workers and his attitude I was, and was, but I keep I keep thinking. Yeah, when you were at that beginning, it may not even been the the comment remote workers, just people working from home or people on that. And I noticed that as time has gone on, you've done a great job building out what is really an assessment tool for I think it's remote employee experience assessment that you that you've built out for folks that I think people should check out on your website. Talk a little bit about that, and how you built that, because I thought that was really impressive.

Kaleem  

Yeah, so, um, March of 2020, basically, I, you know, started thinking about whether I should be doing this full time, we kind of did blend, you know, as a side gig, and we were very, very specific as to who we'd work with, you know, we had people approach us and they weren't remote, we would only work with remote companies. So hindsight, you know, at the time, were, you know, are like, are we doing the right thing, because there's not that many, you know, we're consulting with a few people here and there, but it wasn't a lot, but I guess, um, as soon as the pandemic hit, start receiving phone calls from high school friends, you know, college, college friends, and even some of our clients saying, hey, the whole world is gonna be remote. Now, you are ahead of the curve, as you say, but I can't take all the credit. I've learned so much from everybody, the Drupal community, all these other organisations, like like Andrew said, earlier, people have been doing this since the 70s. Actually, and we use the term telework originally, as its government term, international term, that was something that we've kind of always used. But, you know, we were looking at where our lane should be when, you know, when I decided to do this full time in June of 20. And, really, it's about the employee experience. So the employee experience in general, it's been researched by Gallup and all the big fours and all the top consultancies.

Kaleem  

So, you know, pretty much the the employee experience is, is, it's the complete lifecycle. It's from the day that an employee reads your job ad to the day that they retire or leave your company. And when we were sitting there, Jennifer, you know, see the CEO, and I'm the CEO. And we were trying to figure out what what's different because the employee experience works for everyone. And yes, doesn't matter if you're, you know, remote hybrid, on co located whatever. And what we kept, like fallen back on was trust, and responsibility. And, of course, again, trust and responsibility is critical in any setting, but especially in the remote setting. We felt that the two foundational principles, that the remote that the employee experience should rest on is trust. So the employer has to assume trust, not trust is earned. Right? has to assume trust because you're starting off with not being able to see anyone so the employer has to assume trust with the employee. Vice versa, the employee has to trust the employer that they're going to follow through on everything that they said. So it's a reciprocal relationship there. But then, after that, this responsibility, you know, the organisation has to take on the responsibility of ensuring that all the tools, all the policies, all the procedures, everything is set up all the learning materials, engagement, development, all All of those things are set up so that the employee can be successful. And then the employee has to be responsible has to take on the responsibility of completing the task, getting the job done, but also taking on the responsibility of, hey, I need help, hey, I need to, to work on these objectives. So it was kind of we were looking at it, and we're looking at the letters, Trust Responsibility Employee Experience, and we're like, why don't we call this TREE and we came up with our cheesy little analogy, it's, you know, you got to do the marketing thing, you got to do the marketing thing. And we came up with this, you know, short questionnaire, the TREE assessment, the remote employee experience assessment, and it's short, and it's just some, you know, some questions to kind of give you an idea, you fill it out, it's free, and then you get an email, with your score, kinda like with the happy and sad faces to determine what the employee experiences like, like at your organisation. So that's what we did.

Andrew  

What's the link for that? If someone says, Okay, I want to see the score, you know, we'll share it in the show notes. But, you know, how can somebody find that that particular tree,

Kaleem  

you can just go straight to our website, there's a button right on the right on the homepage, and you can click Take The Experience, and our website is blendmeinc.com.

Andrew  

Okay, be right, that'll be in the show notes as well. But that's blendmeinc.com. And you can take that that's, that's really interesting. I know, you've you've had your, your let's say you've had your pulse on the the feelings from the Human Resources perspective, and, you know, on the perceptions of people going to remote work, and how this, how employers have communicated it, but also how people have received it, can you give us your take on that?

Kaleem  

Well, there's a lot of good takes, and there's a lot of bad takes. If you're so, right now, I think I saw a recent article or a post that something like 68% of organizations still have no plan of how to handle hybrid remote or have not even made a decision yet. That's a lot. That's a lot of organizations that have not communicated what it is that they're going to do. And I just feel like right now we're going through this huge, this major friction between employer and employee. And it appears to me that this friction is caused, basically, because of the control of time. And let me just kind of explain, briefly, a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, we controlled our own time, as humans, we decided when to gather, I'm going way back, we decided when to gather, we decided when to hunt, and we were still tribal, you know, we're still community. Fast forward a little bit more, you know, you got to, you know, the, the person making boots, you got the person mate, you know, and a lot of times that was out of their home office, you know. 

Kaleem  

But it wasn't really until later on where, you know, railroads and other type of industries where they started, you know, providing where the office was created, and then started providing housing for some of these other industries, like the coaling industry, in the mining industries and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden, you start seeing this progression of corporations determining when you're supposed to work. So then all of a sudden, from then until, and I have all messed up in the timeline here, but at some point, it just kept going. It just kept going. You had, you know, you have the office in Great Britain years and years and years and years ago, and then it progresses and then now you're talking about another, you know, in the late 70s, early 80s, the cubicle was invented, then, so, all this time was about control of when you can work and now that that control of when and how you can work has been, you know, forced on the employee, not the employer because of COVID. There seems to be this. This lack of control of time It just seems to me that organisations, they're not quite sure how to handle this change. And it's not this philosophical change is not going back people have realised that they want control over their time when they can get that task done. Not necessarily, if I'm going to get the task on, because that's still getting the job, you know, you stopped to do the job. So it just seems to me that right now, this this, this fear, maybe there's a fear, there's a lack of trust. I mean, change is hard, we all know, is hard. So I just I just feel like that that is what we're seeing right now we're seeing a lot of organisations A: not even have a plan, not even communicate what their plan is. And then, you know, employee saying, Well, hey, we've been doing this for 18 months, I've been hitting my numbers, you're not giving me any real reasons as to why I need to come back to the office. So well 

Allen  

Kaleem, you you hit upon something that ties into the people we've had on this podcast, actually, we've had a lot of guests that have worked in a corporate environment, who said these folks own my time, yes, I'm now going to go out and be a consultant, I'm going to be a remote worker, I'm going to work for myself, I'm a tax person, I'm a consultant, I'm this, I'm that. And if I go to Mexico, and today, the waves are good, I will surf. And tomorrow when it rains, I'll do those tax returns that I'm doing for my customers. And what I'm finding is, I think what you're talking about, I think is fantastic. It's really a form of time shifting. You know, it happens a lot, you know, in this remote work environment, you know, you're about trust, we had a conversation, one of our podcasts recently, about Big Brother trying to chase keystrokes, you know, and overlooking and that and that creates problems. Well, when people are getting things done, and actually the employees are coming back and saying you shouldn't chase my keystrokes, you should see what I'm getting done. And yeah, if today is sunny, and you chase keystrokes, and you see I did nothing, I might be down here surfing. But then tomorrow, I'm going to work 14,15,16 hours and get everything cleared off my plate. And in the old world, you know, it would have been different. So I'd love your comments on a couple things, I hid there. Big brother, people leaving to do their own things when the COPE, the corporate environment is too onerous. And last but not least, I think you touched upon in one of your when I was reading your LinkedIn posts is the culture of either just let's just get things done, as opposed to we need you eight hours, sitting methodically at a desk as opposed to getting things completed.

Kaleem  

Yeah, and Allen, Yeah, and the other thing that I missed as you're talking, it came to me. Um, we've been so obsessed with time. We've been obsessed with time. And I And we, of course, I understand that. Like, it's a measurement, so it's easy for people to understand. But you know, we've lost as we've lost the value. And, but just back to control of time, we're talking about the control of my personal time. If I do a task, web developers deal with this all the time, and other other professions, lawyers, right, like, I've spent thousands of hours to become an expert of something, or whatever I've spent all this time learning this thing. If it takes me two minutes to do this task, and there are no other tap task for me, just because it takes me two minutes doesn't reduce the value of that task that I'm providing for your organization in your company. So now, what companies have done all these years is okay, you're a data analyst you have to do you know, you have to do these data analysts. Oh, well, you know, I wrote a script to write all do all those, all those, you know, calculations and it's going to take five minutes, whereas somebody else doing the same job might take 40 hours to do it. You don't congratulate the person and say, Great job, enjoy the rest of your week off. You pile more work on that person. Again, controlling the time, squeezing more value now. Is that why companies in the United States are where we are today because of that mentality? Possibly. But I feel like we've we've had a big shift, you can still make a million dollars. you can make a billion, you don't need to make 100 billion. And I feel like that there's a, there's a sense of, there's a lot of greed out there. And if people are finally realizing I'm, I'm done with this, I'm going to do my job, it's going to be good. But you're not going to tell me, you're not going to give me more and more and more and more and more where yeah, there's no reward for people to do their job more efficiently. So

Andrew  

I think that trust and kindness, yeah, that's what I'm hearing is that, you know, treating people with respect, trust, kindness, valuing, valuing humans versus exploiting, there's so much exploitation of labor that's taking place around the world, just so that we can have so much profit in our devices, our iPhones or whatever, that labour is exploited. And we've got to got to change that. And you've brought up some great points in that regard that, you know, the trust factor of, you know, is, uh, how long is the workday? versus how much can you get done. And do your personal

Kaleem  

if you get in, if you get that done, respect that that task is done, you don't have to add more tasks, you don't have to fill up the plate just because they completed the thing, like respect that person that wrote that script, you know what, let that person, you know, that's great. You're really, really, really efficient. And you did that. And you maybe you shared it with the rest of the team. And now we're all more efficient, why don't you Why don't you enjoy some more time off and maybe after time, you know, we'll figure out a way to add something else. But like just continuously adding up, people just fed up, you know,

Allen  

when you hit upon, and we've seen it, there's a for instance, France, as put in some laws, I guess, or directives, that after certain hours, the servers should be turned off at some corporations. So people don't work. They're not forced to work extra hours. There's been a lot of conversation about a four day workweek. There's been conversations about studies that indicate most people only work about four hours and 22 minutes at work in an eight hour workday

Kaleem  

Thank you, Allen. I think that's critical. That's like, let's not just go over that point right there. I think I think that's a very important and critical point. When we're talking about culture, when we're talking about the employee experience, and you're hearing these CEOs say, you know, you're not doing as well, managers talking about, I'm spending more time managing. When you were in the office, it wasn't like you were getting eight hours of work from everyone. Don't lie to yourself and don't lie to everybody else. The other thing is, when you act like when you talk about the watercooler and our culture is eroding. Well, were you evaluating your culture before this? Like don't just give me these empty statements? Were you evaluating the culture? What were your scores, like? Evaluate your culture? Now? What are the scores, like why you work remotely give me an A B test, because there's a lot of empty statements about the in office, like four hours, you're working four hours, so why can I work from six to 10 in the morning, remotely, and then go to the beach.

Allen  

Spot on. I mean, as everyone get it biggest, the biggest positive I've seen about going into work was a Gallup study that seemed to indicate that people will like their job or stay with their employer longer if they have a friend at work. Now, that at work could mean in a remote environment. Well, if I work at home, my, my wife is my best friend, she's here, or I've got my dogs, or I've got my neighbour, or because the work environment is so good, I can spend more time with my friends. But one of the big arguments have always had back about why folks should come into work is, well, you if you have a friend at work, it's there, people are going to be stickier, so to speak, there's gonna be less folks leaving. But actually, I'm beginning to see people are developing relationships, or they're allowed to have their family relationships be stronger when they're home, but also there's more ability to you know, using my example earlier, hey, I'm gonna work from six to 10 in the morning, and I'll see you at the beach because I finished all the tax returns I'm supposed to do so so calm I'd love your conversation on on that but about maybe some of the relationships that you could still build in a virtual environment or maybe someone's it just gets stronger because you're not gone for 12 hours a day into an office.

Kaleem  

Hmm Yeah, so connections is a really important piece of, you know, remote work. And as much as I love remote work. And as much as I'm an advocate, you can't be blissed to the fact that we are a tribal species. We've always been tribal. You know, we've always, you know, rolled in a group. And those connections are, have been researched and are valid. One of the things that we talk a lot about at Blend is the idea of work life integration, versus work life balance. And the reason why I'm kind of bringing that up now is like, Yes, I have my friends. My family, that's one connection. But in order to really, you know, connect with your, your employees, I do believe that there's something that you can't match without being in person. And, to me, it's funny that I'm Bumble, all these dating apps, right? All these dating apps. During the pandemic, we're like, oh, my gosh, what are we gonna do? You have Bumble, you have Tinder, you have all these dating apps, relationship apps, even launch club, for example. And they all pin it. And you know what they all did? What did they all do? Immediately? Can you guys take a guess?

Andrew  

Did they go to virtual dating?

Kaleem  

Bingo, they went to video, they went to video. 

Andrew  

I did not know that. Wow. Okay, 

Kaleem  

Bumble implemented video, all the dating apps have into implemented video during, during the pandemic? And do you know what Whitney Wolfe from Bumble said after because they were really hesitant to do this, because I mean, the whole point of dating is dating and meeting someone sitting down and, and trying to build a relationship, Whitney Wolfe you will said that people have felt more connected by first having a discussion on video, building that relationship in blocks, right, and then getting in person, it became a stronger connection. So back to remote work and connections and my thoughts in question. Now, I had to give those examples. But the idea is, when you are going into the office, those connections weren't happening the way people are imagining them. You know, you went in, you talked about the game, maybe or you talked about what was on TV, then you went into your office, most likely, even if you were in an open office, either put your headphones on, you got to work and you started jamming, then maybe you went out to lunch. So there was a little bit of connections. But guess what those connections were not intentional. 

Kaleem  

When you are in a remote setting, in your building some sort of relationship through doing your work remotely. And then the company has a retreat. And that retreat is done well with more opportunities for connections. That is when they are really powerful. And that is because now you have, when you get together, the purpose of getting together is to build the connection. So it's more meaningful, it's way more meaningful, to be intentional about like, let's get here together to do this. versus maybe we'll do this. Kind of like, you know, if you ever done business travel, what was it like when you left your family, and then you came back your significant other your daughter or your dog came running up to you, they were excited. So um, I do believe connections are very critical, eye, and even maybe even more critical in the remote workspace. But the difference is that, yes, you're correct. You can't build those exact same relationships that you could if you were literally hanging out with someone every single day. But what you could do the vat, the value of those interactions can be much, much, much much higher, because you're not, you're not mixing all of these different things, yknow, for this day. You're going to this retreat. And the purpose of this retreat is to connect with your team to brainstorm to meet other people. There's way more value when you're when you're when your communications and your things have intention.

Andrew  

So good spot on. This is good commentary. You know, just you know you've you've done this and in relation to some of the things that you've seen over the over the last years consulting folks in this practice what's one overlooked person place experience or book that you think that our viewers or those who are watching or listening on the different platforms need to know about?

Kaleem  

Hmm, that's a good question. Okay, so for all the nomads out there, the travellers, let's let's start with with fun. I like that I like to kick it off with fun. The place that I've been that I think is just underrated is Nashville. I can't, I mean, to me, I don't like country music. I can't really that's not my thing. That's not my jam. I don't like country music. But I just felt like Nashville was really cool man, like, like, it was just a cool place. And it was it was nothing that I expected. You know, and I enjoy a beverage and I just thought that Nashville was way cooler than I thought it wasn't all country. I mean, of course there's plenty of boots and cowboy hats and stuff like that. But it was just, it was just a much cooler place than I anticipated. So Nashville is my my overlooked city. 

Allen  

Awesome. Awesome. As far as both one quick thing I want to mention about Nashville. You bought music. You're right, because it's not just country music. The I don't know if you know a book called Los Straitjackets. But they're the number one surf band in the United States. You think they're from California? But no, they're from Nashville.

Kaleem  

And he's a singer songwriters. Yeah, yeah,

Allen  

there's so many folks there. That's a great call on I just want to back to you but I just wanted to say very good on Nashville overlooked and different. 

Kaleem  

Everyone wants to go to Miami, New York, I get it go to those places. But don't don't sleep on Nashville. It's definitely you know, it's got multiple music. There's some hip hop in there somewhere. And then you got lots of singer songwriter, you got all things so anyway, shout out to Nashville. Um, as far as like, like, books right now? Um, geez, I think, Emotional Intelligence by geez Of course. I'm blanking on his name. Well, we'll,

Kaleem  

we'll we'll grab it for the show. No emotional,

Kaleem  

emotional, The Idea of Emotional Intelligence. I'm Daniel

Andrew  

Laramore. 

Kaleem  

No, 

Allen  

I think Daniel. I think it's the Daniel finiman.

Kaleem  

Cosmin

Allen  

it, but I will. I know which book you're talking about. He wrote Daniel Kahneman or something along those lines

Kaleem  

Daniel Goleman.

Andrew  

Thank you. Yeah, it is Daniel, Daniel Goleman.

Kaleem  

That's Daniel Goleman. Emotional talks. Now there's two Daniel Goleman. So just be I personally read the, the, you know, the front, which they both write on Emotional Intelligence. I'm sure both of them are good. But I read the the number one best seller, Emotional Intelligence: Why it matters more than IQ. And basically, the whole book is all about like, as, especially as a leader today, in this remote workspace, you have to be able to have empathy, and be aware of all of your surroundings and how like your actions, how their mental state impacts everybody, and then be able to, to read that stuff. It's just really fascinating. As far as how, how much we've as a society, how much we put on the idea of IQ, like, like how intelligent you are, when in actuality the EQ he calls the EQ is even is more important than IQ because of how you're, you're interacting with society. Like for you to be able to say, hey, Alan is not I can tell Alan feels, you know, some kind of way by the statement, and we're all talking about acceptance, we have, you know, you know, inclusion and diversity issues globally, right now, you know, with Black Lives Matters. And, you know, even with the vaccine and wearing mask and all of that thing, you know, all of that, like just just this and that having emotional intelligence in understanding is more important now than than ever has. So yes. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. The book is great.

Allen  

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thank you for you know, for that, and thank you for joining us today. Where can people find out more about you, obviously, obviously, looking up, Blend Me or going to LinkedIn, but any other locations that you think folks could find out more about yourself? 

Kaleem  

Yeah, I'm Kaleem Clarkson everywhere. So on Twitter, I'm Kaleem Clarkson. That's K-A-L-E-E-M C-L-A-R-K-S-O-N. LinkedIn as well. And you know I don't share too much on Instagram, you'll just see pictures of my kids and my family. And so, but yeah, that's where you can find me. And hey, if you just want to talk you having some challenges, your organization's having some challenges, you know, moving to this workplace flexibility or just want to make a better, feel free to reach out. We're always on the chat.

Allen  

Fantastic. Well, thanks again. And Andrew, as we always wrap up, what what did you learn today that you'd like to share with the audience?

Andrew  

Well, I, I was definitely attracted and must confess, I went to Taipei and look at that assessment, the tree assessment, the remote worker experience, I was hearing what he was saying. And that's the one thing I thought, Okay, I want everybody on our team, since we run a globally distributed team thinking I want to see everybody's results from this, to see what they're experiencing within our environment. But so that's the the biggest thing is really realising to listen to people find ways to, for them to speak, to them for them to express what they're going through in remote work. And haven't, have an open ear. Yeah, in that process, I was I was, it was tough. As I was hearing him say things like, Okay, I want more and, and this is, this is definitely something that needs to be on everyone's radar if it wasn't before. And to keep that radar in tune to, to build that safe environment. Even though it's outside of our walls first, for more and more of our people. My dad was with Liberty Mutual for many years. And was always remote, except for a few years when he was at, you know, the headquarters in Boston. And so I always grew up with my dad's office there and he would be travelling four days out of the week, usually three or four days out of the week, but would only go to the office probably once a quarter. So this is this is not something that's new for some managers, but while the awareness of mental health and trust is probably newer to others.

Allen  

Yeah, I felt the comments on TREE Trust Responsibility Employee Experience, is is an acronym that that people should you know, really looking at. So antastic job today. So we'd love to remind our audience that we feel The New Nomad is not just a podcast, it's a community of people, ideas and spirit, helping you take advantage of that location independent lifestyle. We hope you keep exploring. We'd love to support you in that goal. Please take care and join us next week for another episode of The New Nomad. Cheers. 

Kaleem  

Thanks, Allen. Thanks.