How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace: Simple and Effective Tips for Successful, Productive and Empowered Remote Work

by Robert Glazer

Remote work is here to stay, and the companies that do it well will have a clear competitive advantage in the future. As founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a 100 percent remote organization with 170 employees who work from home, Robert Glazer has discovered that with the right principles, tactics and tools for managing remote employees, many businesses can excel in a virtual world. In this highly actionable book, Glazer shares how he and his team built a remote organization that has been recognized with dozens of awards for its industry performance and company culture. The remote work revolution is here—the leaders who will build the future are the ones who can lead top performing virtual teams. Learn how to build a world-class organization—office no longer required.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Self Help, Leadership, Professional Development, Productivity, Management

175 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 21, 2021

About the author

Robert Glazer is a globally recognized thought leader on leadership, core values, and capacity building. He helps individuals and organizations clarify what matters most, align their actions with their values, and reach their full potential.

Bob is the founder and chairman of Acceleration Partners, a global marketing agency known for its award-winning culture and leadership. During his time as CEO, he was twice named a Top CEO on Glassdoor.

He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Compass Within: A Little Story About the Values That Guide Us, Elevate, and Elevate Your Team. His weekly newsletter, Friday Forward, is one of the top business publications on Substack and reaches hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. Bob also hosts The Elevate Podcast, ranked in the top one percent of all podcasts globally.

A sought-after global keynote speaker, Bob shares actionable frameworks for building capacity, discovering core values, and leading with authenticity in today’s complex world. In addition to his writing and speaking, he serves as an advisor, board member, and coach to high-growth companies and leaders who want to build stronger cultures and scale with purpose.


Learn more about Bob at https://www.robertglazer.com.

Reviews

[Nopadol Rompho · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you need to work online or have a company that wants to implement the virtual workplace, this book will be useful for you.

[Kathrynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading "How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace" and recommend it to all employees that are or contemplating this type of work environment.

The author presents tips to prevent "meeting fatigue," establishing core values (no more than 3), setting clear expectations for employee productivity and not micromanaging staff because they are no longer in the office within a manager's line of vision. Also included are tips on setting goals and metrics for company productivity and using that information to measure success.

Also included are:

* Bonding tips

* Onboarding staff

* Being mindful of working with people from multiple time zones

* Meetings! (Too many is not good!)
** If one person is talking throughout 80% of a meeting, it should have been an email.

** Most update meetings should be an email with the exception of a large all employee (not department) meeting where the top person(s) speak.

** In order to get more participation in a meeting, provide an agenda and allow participants time to formulate and research their responses, then have a meeting which is a discussion not listening to one person speak.

** The importance of NOT filling up a work day with meetings in order to allow staff to have focused work time.

* How to deal with staff not meeting their goals.

* Firing staff in a virtual environment.

There was a lot of various technology to use, too.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it and learned a few tips.

[Michelle]

No rating, crushed this book within a day. Decided to give this author a try because it is my boyfriend’s company’s CEOs mentor. Always feel the need to support someone’s book.

Feel like this book would have been beneficial to me a few years ago around COVID, but it was a nice refresher on how to be successful with remote work.

[Jen Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though it uses the word "empowered" in the subtitle (use of that word should be a hanging offence) this is a good little book. It's written in an informal, almost conversational style, that makes it an easy and relaxing read. You can curl up with this (even though it's essentially a management book!) and read it in the evening.

It is written in two parts: the first part aimed at the employee, and the second at the manager/CEO. It's useful for everyone to read both, to see both sides of the remote-working coin.

If you've read a few online articles about working remotely, there probably won't be a great deal that is new in the employee-directed part, although various concepts are expanded upon. However, what is probably more useful (even to the employee) is the part directed at managers.

Working from home, you have absolute control over your environment, and a reasonable amount of control over how you structure your day (so the employee part contains useful advice on how best to do this) but you have very little control over how your employer structures and manages teams, and how they manage communications. This book outlines best practices, which will allow you to think about what your employer is doing, and which parts they do well and which they do badly - which may allow you to pinpoint any reasons for as-yet-formless dissatisfaction, and to separate a dislike of remote working from a dislike of how your employer has implemented it.

As with many of this type of books, it's a good and useful read not because it contains information that is not available elsewhere, or that is particularly groundbreaking, but because it provides a great deal of information and advice in an easy-to-access format.

Recommended for anyone who is either newly home/remote-working, or having to manage people who are. Or possible, for people who have been in those situations for a while but are dissatisfied with how it's going and can't work out why.

[muhamad sahir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book to read during this pandemic. I agree on the idea of remote or virtual working environment.

I believe future are stepping towards that in the new working norm. In the future working in the office maybe become not normal anymore where the new way of working is remotely or virtually.

All companies now looking into this as permanent even after the pandemic Covid19 may resolve or start to decreasing of cases. In previous year, the term Working From Home (WFH) might be too isolate to certain of people or even in the society.

But in nowadays environment, I do believe the new norm of working is toward virtually and remotely. We will not working anymore in typical ways of working in the office and there are a lot of benefit from working remotely or virtually.

With the world stepping to IR 4.0 and Artificial intelligence, I do believe the world is toward that. Good book to give you idea and insight of the good things about this concept or idea where some company actually done it.

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 6/6, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet and Stevo's Novel Ideas. Glazer shares insights from the remote employee, manager and leader perspectives, offering a blueprint any person can use to make remote work successful, productive and fulfilling. As a remote worker for more than 15 years, much of what Glazer had to say resonated with my successes as well as major challenges: staying organized and flexible.

Find more Business Books of the week on my Goodreads Listopia page at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9..., and find many more recommended books on my Amazon Influencer page at https://www.amazon.com/shop/stevo4747 or by searching for me on Google.

[Anna-Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! I've been working remotely for about a year now and despite all the benefits that working remotely offers it's not always easy to stay motivated and productive. This book offers valuable tips and examples on how to work more effectively in a remote environment and how to lead a virtual team. After reading it I'm excited to apply the tips I've learned and to enjoy remote working at its fullest. As a non-native speaker I also liked the clear and easy to follow language. Especially for people who recently started to work from home and sometimes struggle with it I highly recommend this book!

[Shawn Skonberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent book for employees and employers. This seems to be geared more towards employers. Most of the concepts are very straight forward. Very average content and pretty easy to read. Not a great book but also not bad.

Interesting how work rapidly shifted to results based vs activity based when everyone went remote. Just activity isnt enough to measure performance of the team.

Also made some good points on how a company that have leadership that micromanages, has bad core values, and has an environment of low trust and accountability will have a very hard time with a remote working envionment.

[Laci · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with many books about remote work, this conflates “remote work” with “flexible schedule.” Much of what is said about flexible scheduling could be true of an in-office job, and much of what he says about remote work is not true for some places. “Just get your work done and the exact time doesn’t matter” doesn’t work when your job is literally to be available to answer customer service calls for 8 scheduled hours. Sure, a more flexible schedule is a good thing on a lot of levels, but this book pretends that working remotely automatically gives you control over your hours. I did take a few notes on ideas about how to engage with remote workers.

[Nicki Kendall · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐ An informative book on how to get the most out of working from home for both yourself and also for any employers. It gives helpful advice on how employers need to change the way things were done in the past in our 9-5 office lives. It also shows people how to maximise the benefits of WFH to do the best work you can whilst remaining connected to your employer and workmates. #robertglazer #howtothriveinavirtualworkplace #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #thestorygraph #bookqueen #bookstagram

[Kristi Herold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book - some really helpful tips and ideas to ensure strong culture for your remote working organization. My HR leader and I both read it and got some great nuggets that we will implement as post pandemic we will be moving to more remote / hybrid style going forward. Helpful informative read!

[Samantha Gould · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good advocate for and primer on remote work. It had solid advice for employees and leaders. There are many best practices in these pages, though, having worked at a 100% remote company for 4 years, not all the best practices are universally applied for every business. But it's still a beneficial read.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please send this novel to the government and any government based jobs because they need to realise WFH produces better results.

This novel was very insightful and goes over all aspects from WFH

Review: https://clife.blog/2023/06/30/book-re...

[Dhvanesh Adhiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most practical book I have read in a long time. This pandemic has forced use working from home. And it is hell challenging for those who have not worked remotely before. And this book has come at the right time. Full of practicality to learn WFH.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not finish this. It was extremely focused on how managers could manage their team. Less was said about individual employees. The last two chapters were focused on how to find employees for a virtual workplace, how to "build teams" and lots of buzzwords that have little meaning day to day. Unless you're a manager, this book doesn't offer a lot for a virtual worker.

[Jessica Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great information that holds true to my experiences. And it shows practical tips and feedback. As we move out of the pandemic, I fear a lot of businesses need to read this book several times because the push to get people back to the office is going to hurt a lot of companies in a tight job market.

[Audrey Gamez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great primer for working virtually. Super thorough, with insights for both managed workers, managers, and business owners. It succeeded in giving insight into the differences in management styles working virtually vs. In person.

[Jesse Hawker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great advice in here. This puts things in perspecive as to what you are getting into or about to get into. As someone working on my own seperate work at home aside from my day job, there are plenty of things here that made me go "Oh, I should take a step back and make these clear"

[Michael Abramson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal read

Helping to lead a company through the pandemic, I wish I had this book at the beginning. Some great insights.

[Ramil Babayev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book to have near to you on these remote working days...

[a. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information on virtual working.

[Lisa Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good data/metrics and cool idea for a 2-3 day all staff summit

[Natalie K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry at times, but really useful for starting your own remote business (which I would love to do someday!).

[Jorge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo que me llamo la atención del libro, que todas las mejores frases y consejos son de otras personas leídos en otros libros, nunca vi algo así. No es un buen libro para nada.

[Ahmed Shaalan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very useful book

[Firdaus Salim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good tips shared in here

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could probably use an update but is still somewhat relevant. There are some personal harsh realities to being fully remote and many of the resource links are still applicable.

[Josie Hall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read for work bc they wanted us to, and tbh was not that impressed. I felt like every single thing in it was a no brainer, but maybe I’ve been lucky? Idk.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent book with some good guidelines for making remote work sustainable. I certainly had some good takeaways and highlighted a lot. It was helpful!

[Eduardo Blandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aceptable…

Hay que destacar que si bien es un libro bien escrito y no falto de de investigación de diferentes empresas y prácticas en la materia tratada, no es un texto demasiado profundo ni revelador. Debe reconocérsele al autor, eso sí, el equilibrio en relación a las virtudes y dificultades de la experiencia referida. Por otro lado, me parece que es un tratado hasta cierto punto pionero lo que lo hace igualmente meritorio.