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Organizations with remote work in their DNA are ahead. Among them, Gitlab and Automattic are new role models to support a remote workforce with exceptional values geared towards employees' success and well-being. Meanwhile, other companies are forcing employees to return to the office more or less subtly.

It’s relatively easy for companies to leverage virtual tools that help with instant messaging, emailing, and assigning projects. For the most part, that’s what the majority of interactions in virtual settings have become: the nuts and bolts of tasks and project assignments. That’s because this is what ensures profit is being turned and paychecks are being sent out. It came first in a physical work environment, and it continues to come first in a virtual environment as well.

Abou Kassoum O. is a Marketing & CSR, and Marketing Fundamentals Professor at the International School of Economic & Administrative Sciences (EICEA), University of La Sabana, Colombia. A business and marketing Consultant, Abou is an international speaker, trainer, coach, and author of The Habits of Successful Students. He is also the Global A-Talks & Training Manager at AIESEC Alumni International.

People who have worked globally have long understood the dynamics of working in a remote capacity. They have had the opportunity to practice over time and perfect techniques that have made them effective in working this way. We should remember that becoming proficient at something takes dedicated effort, practice, feedback, commitment, and mindfulness. All of us can raise our EI when working remotely if we take an inventory of our skills and then isolate areas for improvement. It isn’t difficult work but rather disciplined work. What will you do today to improve YOUR emotional intelligence?

Psychological safety has been a popular concept in the business press lately, particularly after the Google internal study of teams highlighted this as a key characteristic of high-performance teams. Many managers ask – how do we foster psychological safety, particularly in a virtual team? Fortunately, I interviewed a team in which psychological safety improved during the pandemic!

On March 11, 2020, The World Health organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. This caused businesses around the world to suddenly move into the virtual office having employees work from home (WFH). It was soon discovered that many companies lacked a continuance plan to keep their business fully operational should they not be able to go back to the office.

I’m not a psychologist, though I do moonlight as an armchair therapist. My bookshelf is stocked with psychology textbooks, my conversations littered with references to Carl Jung. I toyed with the idea of returning to school to get a PhD in psychology, but instead, landed on writing about the future of work and organizational design—with a side of psychoanalyzing.

Over the past few years, the employee engagement market has slowly but steadily shifted towards the Employee Experience. Companies now understand the importance of winning the talent war as their best competitive advantage. The best experience for employees keeps them engaged, productive, and dedicated to their customers’ satisfaction.

Psalm 8 asks, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" The scientist answers, "Man is a product of internal and external forces." Each person is the result of interaction between biological heritage and cultural history. The kind of person you are and what you do depend on both raw material (heredity) and what you do with this raw material (how it is shaped and grown).

For many leaders, the COVID-19 crisis presented a level of adversity that redefined best practices in traditional, face-to-face HR workforce environments. The rise of the global pandemic happened so fast that many HR leaders were forced to make decisions without the ability to accurately predict the magnitude of the consequences that would follow.