How to build and grow a company during a global pandemic

Working in a hybrid or fully remote setup comes with many positive opportunities, but can also be challenging, especially when transitioning into a new work environment.  That is why the mental health startup Likeminded is dedicated to providing mental health and wellbeing support to people in remote and hybrid setups, and provide support for leaders and their employees. Our host Sandra is talking to Likeminded Co-CEO Kimberley Breuer to hear about their mission statement, what well-being looks like in a remote or hybrid workspace, and what skills the workforce of tomorrow will need to thrive in our new world of work. 

The way we work has changed tremendously over the last couple of years, and so has the way companies and their workforce interact. Heather McGowan is a keynote speaker and adviser who helps organisations and their people to get ready for the future of work. She joins from the East  Coast of the US to share her insights on what companies need to do to enter the next stage of work, and make sure they are leading with compassion and authenticity, rather than pressure and punishment. Heather has worked with some of the biggest players and is doing her very best to help prepare these companies for the future of work, so we are very excited to have her on and to get to pick her brain on what needs to change for us all to succeed now, and in the future. _____________________________________ About Heather McGowan Digitization, automation, and the reduction in hand-powered creation transformed the way we work almost overnight. As we enter this new era of the future of work, referred to by keynote speaker Heather E McGowan and others as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we can let technology do what it does best and liberate humans to unleash their potential, with a focus on empowerment, ultimately creating the Organizations of Tomorrow. This liberation will make work more human, empowering people everywhere through diversity, equity and inclusion to bring their unique selves to the task of solving global challenges, innovating new ways of thinking, and transforming the way we relate to our businesses, our work, and the world. That is, if we’re ready to learn and adapt to this transition. Future-of-work expert, female keynote speaker and leading strategist Heather E McGowan has helped organizations everywhere, from start-ups to publicly traded Fortune 100 companies, in their mission to navigate this ongoing revolution. Leveraging her background in industrial design, business strategy and academia, Heather helps audiences shift the way they think about the world around them. Everywhere she goes, clients and audiences are amazed by the way she communicates incredibly complex topics in straightforward, authentic, powerful “light-bulb” moments that are both breathtaking and simple to execute. In short, in a one hour keynote, Heather helps you shift the context around which you navigate— she makes you think differently.

Rowena Hennigan is the embodiment of remote work. Having moved from her native Ireland to Zaragoza in Spain to help with her daughter’s asthma, she has since built a remote business that aims to highlight the positive opportunities remote work can bring to communities. We want to talk to her about exactly these opportunities, and how especially rural areas can benefit from the economic power behind remote work. I am also interested to hear what her essentials are for setting up a successful remote work hub, and our host Sandra most definitely wants to know what she would say to CEOs who want to move their employees back into the office and away from remote work. About Rowena Rowena Hennigan is a speaker, professor, and founder of RoRemote. Rowena is passionate about the flexibility and well-being that digital nomadism can offer individuals and families. Even before the pandemic accelerated the growth of remote work, Rowena recognized the market need for training on remote work skills. She started RoRemote, a remote skills training and consultancy company, back in 2018 and coauthored academic courses at TU Dublin on remote work skills. And in 2022, LinkedIn News named her one of the 10 Top Voices in Remote Work. Rowena currently lives in Spain with her location-independent family.

The last couple of years have been tough for many companies. The global pandemic has caused a recession and these uncertain times meant that many businesses had to have huge layoffs.  But not Localyze. And in this episode, we are speaking with co-founder and CEO Hanna Marie Asmussen about how she managed to build and grow her business over the past couple of years.  We are getting candid and ask her if she had any difficulties finding investors, if she is scared of failing and if in her opinion, it is more challenging for female founders to succeed.    About Hanna Asmussen She is the CEO & Co-Founder of Localyze, a global mobility platform for companies and employees. With a passion for living abroad, having been an expat for 10 years and speaking 6 languages, Hanna co-founded Localyze after seeing the pain points associated with moving internationally for work. With a mission to build a borderless world, Localyze recently closed a $35 million Series B round and is expanding into the US.   Listen to all our podcasts at https://www.lano.io/podcast

Matt Alder is a talent acquisition and innovation consultant, the host of the recruiting future podcast and author of 2 books on how to recruit the right talent. So who better to talk with about digitising the recruitment process? Matt shares some actionable steps you can take to set up a digital recruitment strategy and shares his thoughts on what the current technology trends are in the space. We also discuss the importance of using different digital channels such as social media or career pages to support the hiring process, and take a look at the future developments that are likely to shape the digital hiring process.

Today’s episode is all about payroll, and we have a proper expert with us to speak about this super important topic: Anita Lettink has helped thousands of HR professionals and people leaders around the world to get ready for the future of work - and that includes advising them on global payroll processes to pay an increasingly remote workforce. We are talking about how companies can choose a payroll solution that works for them, and what factors could and should influence that decision. Anita also shares how important data and data transparency especially is when it comes to payroll, and explains how to integrate such a solution into existing HR technologies.

In this episode, we are chatting to Alex van Klaveren, who is the co-founder and the CEO of Kandidate. Kandidate is an embedded recruiting company that does things a little bit differently. They send their talent partners to work as internal recruiters in their clients' businesses, to help increase the speed and the quality of the hiring process. Alex talks us through the reasons behind this unique approach and gives some very good insights into how to find out if not only a candidate, but also the hiring company is remote ready. He also shares some tips for a successful interview process and what questions are best to avoid when trying to find the right candidate.

What will life in the city centres of the world look like in the future with an increasing remote workforce? That is exactly what host Sandra is talking about with Arnaud Devigne, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Jobgether. Arnaud has some very interesting thoughts and ideas about how remote and hybrid work will affect the downtowns and CBDs around the globe, and what companies and governments can do to reinvent these spaces. They also talk about the change in company cultures and that throwing a pizza party is no longer enough to make employees come to the office.

Iwo Szapar has been working remotely pretty much for his entire professional life - and has turned his passion for new work concepts into a career. As the founder of Remote-How, he advises and trains thousands of companies on how to make remote and hybrid work work. And as the co-founder of the Remote-First Institute, he is actively working on setting global standards for remote work. He has a fascinating conversation with our host Sandra about his journey to remote work, why he believes we need global standards and what he would say to Elon Musk to convince him to go remote. We also take a look at what is next and how far remote work could go in the future.

Work environments have changed tremendously in the past couple of years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has done a fair bit to kickstart a new remote work movement. Today, employers have to rethink their benefit packages to match the new needs of employees - and that’s exactly what Lona Alia, Head of Revenue at Safetywing, is here to talk about today. She joins host Sandra from a family friendly co-working space in Portugal to discuss how Safetywing chooses which benefits to offer, how to find the right benefit strategy for globally distributed teams, and what companies can do to identify the right and the wrong types of benefits.