The Productivity Paradox: Why Remote Work Works with Shane Spraggs

Remote work isn't a pandemic experiment—it's a workplace revolution that's been brewing for decades. Shane Spraggs, CEO of Vertura and author of "The Power of Remote," takes us on a fascinating journey from IBM's 1970s telecommuting programs to today's fully distributed global teams.

What makes this conversation especially relevant for podcasters and content creators is how perfectly our industry aligns with remote work principles. As Shane points out, the resistance to remote arrangements often comes from companies lacking proper management training and systems—not from any true productivity disadvantage. The most successful remote-first companies have mastered intentionality in their processes, something creative professionals inherently understand.

The benefits extend far beyond convenience. Remote workers save an average of $55 daily on commuting expenses, reclaim hours previously lost to travel time, and enjoy improved work-life balance. Perhaps most compelling is Shane's observation that "the next Google and Microsoft are being created quite literally in someone's garage right now"—not physically, but virtually, as entrepreneurs build global teams without geographic limitations.

This shift impacts everything from real estate (homes now needing dedicated office spaces) to management practices (focusing on outcomes rather than hours worked). For content creators specifically, these changes represent massive opportunities to collaborate with global talent and build businesses unbound by traditional constraints.

Whether you're a seasoned remote worker or considering the transition, this episode provides valuable insights into building intentional systems for remote success. Shane's practical advice on leadership, management, and culture-building will help you navigate the evolving landscape of work. Ready to embrace the remote revolution? Tune in now and discover how to harness the power of working from anywhere.

Chapters

• 0:04 Introducing the Podcaster's Podcast
• 0:34 Shane Spraggs: Remote Work Expert
• 1:38 History of Remote Work
• 3:23 Why Companies Resist Remote Work
• 7:11 The Power of Remote Book
• 13:16 Future of Remote Work
• 21:37 Closing Thoughts and Contact Info

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. For over 25 years, Shane Spraggs has been driving successful projects for a variety of notable media and software startups and some of the world's largest brands, including Disney. As CEO of Vertura, Shane's focus on productivity has generated immense value for our Fortune 100 clients and he plays a vital role in developing and implementing cutting-edge systems and strategies that consistently boost the performance of the remote-based teams. The reason why I want to talk about remote work today is because not only is Shane an expert in it, but you know what? There are so many people in the podcasting space. They're working remotely already. We're coming out of a pandemic that remote work becomes very relevant in our world today. Shane, welcome to the podcast.

Shane: 1:21

Thank you so much for having me.

Carl: 1:22

It is a thrill, my friend, to have you here today. Let's talk about remote work. This isn't a new concept. This is something that's been around for generations. We just maybe didn't think about it as remote work, but how long has this been a thing, for that matter?

Shane: 1:38

Well, actually back in the IBM, actually had a program for telecommuting, looking at ways to reduce the commute for their team members in California, and they've been. They were doing for many years and it was actually picking up a lot of steam for a while. I don't get into the nitty gritty, but around CEO, of Yahoo came in and she decried that everybody has to be back in the office, can't have anyone working from home, because we need to be together to be productive and to be creative. And that put a bit of a kibosh on the concept of remote work for a period of time, which was only really brought back by the pandemic. Up until then we had smatterings of people working remote, very few remote-only companies.

Shane: 2:24

A lot of you know anyone who was working remote. They were one-off in a business or they were, you know, a satellite office. Then, of course, the pandemic really pushed it all the way home and what people learned during the pandemic is that it's less about productivity and more about well-being. People learned that, hey, I didn't have to spend an hour and a half driving today to get to my job. We call the job a nine to five, but it's really eight to seven. A lot of people. I'm not spending, on average, $55 a day to be at the office. I get to be there when my kids come home from school, I get to be able to work with focus on the things I'm working on, I feel more productive, and so on and so forth, and that went well for a couple of years and around the start of 2023, there was a bit of a push back to the office, and that return to the office happened for a lot of large companies and, I feel, for good reason as well.

Shane: 3:21

From my perspective, to work as a remote company, it requires new management techniques and new leadership approaches, and the HR department really needs to know how to run remote business, and a lot of the companies just didn't learn that over the course of the pandemic and it was going to be easier for them to bring people back to the office than it would have been to retrain their entire staff Now, that being said, around October, September of last year, that flipped People started realizing that maybe returning the office is not what it was going to be. Instead of people going full-time remote, we saw a lot of companies meeting in the middle of the way hybrid work, working two to three days a week at home.

Carl: 4:01

What's interesting is there are companies who do nothing but hire workers remotely. I have a client in Germany, for example, and most of the individuals who work for that company, they're not in Germany, they're in US, they're in Australia, they're in the UK, they're in various parts of the world. Completely so it can work. It's a matter of, as you said, it's training, it's understanding that people have better quality of life when they aren't spending, as you said, three hours travel time. And that's if traffic's good. And even though I mean, when I worked in radio, my commute was 30 minutes, yeah, but if ever there was an accident, that 30 minutes could easily be three hours, yeah, one way or the other.

Shane: 4:53

Or weather. You know there's lots of reasons why that would make your life miserable.

Carl: 4:57

Yeah, absolutely. What is it about companies, then, who are resistant to embracing remote work more? You said it's training, or that's one aspect. Is it the thought that maybe they're not getting the productivity out of their employees?

Shane: 5:13

I think the productivity argument has been quashed by companies that are fully remote and demonstrating that they're able to be productive. One that comes to mind recently is the company that built Monopoly Go. It's an online app, very successful game, and it was built by a remote-only business. There's another company that I'm familiar with out of Vancouver called the Jane App, which they're fully remote as well, and they have people all over North America working for them, and these organizations may not have started remote, but they've adopted some of the remote best practices, and along with that is training the managers on how to work with remote teams is really the key bit to it. It's an obvious reason that this is not really picked up, and the reason is simple.

Shane: 5:57

We had bad managers before the pandemic. Right, we have this culture of taking someone who's a really good individual contributor and saying, hey, you're good at your job, let's see if you can manage. And oftentimes they can't, because management's a different skill, it requires different muscles and a lot of different training, and so now we make things worse. We are now taking these people who don't know how to manage people and telling them they can't see their team or walk up to their desks or gather in a room together and it just adds to the challenge of someone becoming a good manager.

Shane: 6:31

It's not just a matter of trust. Trust comes from the best practices they follow. So they do a better job of delegating the work, assigning responsibility and accountability, getting their team members to say when they'll get things done, following up with them to see if they got it done and if they don't, dealing with that appropriately and creating a psychologically safe environment for people to be productive and creative and innovative. So all that, from that trust is built because they deliver value to the company as opposed to clocking hours they deliver value to the company as opposed to clocking hours.

Carl: 7:06

Wow, I run a company that is totally remote All of my team are and, again, I'm a very small company I'm not a large corporation that relies on brick and mortar and such but and my company is virtual. Podcasting is a very virtual thing. Who knew? So maybe that's a difference too is I have a virtual company, my business.

Carl: 7:26

I don't need to go to a physical location. Even the way we work today, with all of the tools and technology, you don't need to be in a physical studio to record. We have microphones, we have all of those things that could connect to a computer that we didn't have to the same way that we do today, say even five years ago or 10 years ago. So, for us to do the work for myself and my teammates, we don't need to be sitting in a room together. We can easily be sitting on a Zoom call. That also didn't exist. Well, it existed, but it was very rudimentary. I think before we had Zoom, we had Skype, right, and that was a thing. Remember Skype? Well, skype is still there, but it's now part of a larger it's now Teams.

Shane: 8:08

The Teams right.

Carl: 8:10

Right, but the point is is that you still had more physical meetings and physical connections. Now that we're in this virtual space and I think the pandemic proved to this we can be equally productive. We can be even more productive. We can in some cases and again I speak frankly as a business owner, I can grow a global company and do it with remote teammates and probably more effectively, more expeditiously, versus the old way of doing it, which was clocking in a time, going to an office doing it like this. Am I the only person? I know I'm not the only person.

Shane: 8:52

You're not. No, and that's where business is going. It makes no sense to me that if I'm going to start a new business, I'm going to spend $5,000 to $6,000 a month on an office space and limit myself to the people in my geographic location when there's people all over the world who can do the work I want, at various rates. And if you think about where businesses are going to go from here, the next Google and Microsoft are being created quite literally in someone's garage right now, not in the same way Apple was built in a garage, but more of the. You know this is the office spaces. You know people are working out of their basements and if you just play it forward, I don't see this time when someone's going to say, well, hey, we're up to 50 people, now let's pick a place to open an office, right, and so we're in a transition period.

Shane: 9:43

We're in this position where, yes, a lot of large businesses are not really in a position to move full time, remote. A lot of companies, a lot of organizations, let's say your local, municipal government, your town hall. There are people there who don't need to be at the town hall working on a daily basis, so they can work hybrid, but it's municipal. They are probably going to draw people to those jobs that are living there. It's municipal. They are probably going to draw people to those jobs that are living there. So there's a variety of businesses, but for businesses like yourself, that is fully remote, fully digital, and so much of the businesses that are happening these days are a lot of software development, a lot of data management, a lot of enterprise work, that there's no physical product anymore and it doesn't need to be built in person.

Carl: 10:23

Yeah, there are so many good examples too, even in government, and again, not to go on a political rampage here, but there are some examples in government where it worked during the pandemic. Everyone worked remotely during the pandemic. What's the push to come back to the office? Is it because we still have brick and mortar and, oh my goodness, if people aren't in those buildings, then we're basically paying for empty buildings. Is that one of the challenges, too, that some companies or even governments are struggling with?

Shane: 10:54

It's one of the aspects of it. We certainly do see cities struggling with their downtown core. There's a story recently about Seattle that has not recovered since the pandemic, where it used to be pretty vibrant downtown. People would come to the office in the tall buildings and over lunch all the restaurants and pubs down there would be flushed with customers and that just hasn't recovered. Because people are staying home and even though the company is maybe holding on to those office buildings to do hybrid work, we're seeing a fraction of the people actually making the trip down to work.

Shane: 11:28

But there's other reasons as well.

Shane: 11:30

The ability to run the company is important and leaders and HR and managers they need to think a little bit differently.

Shane: 11:38

And so, again, from a management standpoint, it just isn't feasible to provide training and move that behemoth into a new way of thinking across a large 10,000-person company that may have multiple layers of middle management. And even then we've seen to draw an example from my experience, the rollout of Agile in some of these businesses has been very textbook and they missed the point that some of the flexibility of the concepts around agile. They just deliver various levels the green belt, the white, red belt and black belt of agile. And then companies come in, they apply that to a business, they leave and the business just doesn't know what to do with it anymore. Moving people, change management is a real tough thing and be forced to do it over the pandemic and we have to see the results of it. And some companies stood back afterwards and said, yep, this is for us, this is working, and there's a number of those in my town, there's a number all across North America and, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to see more companies join that crowd, I believe, as the progress here.

Carl: 12:46

There's certainly been an evolution and we can certainly see the pandemic probably moved the pendulum a little bit more in that direction or certainly pushed us a little further there. You've written a book about this called the Power of Remote.

Shane: 13:01

I've got it right here. There's my prop.

Carl: 13:08

There's the book. You cover some key points here that help organizations implement and thrive in the modern workplace. What are some of these key messages that you want to share with people?

Shane: 13:17

So from my perspective, there's a few important foundational aspects to running a business. The first is being intentional. What you hear quite a bit with an in-office business is that things happen organically. And if you really start to look at the word organically in this context, it really means by luck. You're not going to have any plans in place, but someone's fortunately going to meet a proverbial water cooler and come up with a great plan and go implement it.

Shane: 13:46

With remote work, you just don't have that. So you have to be more intentional with everything you do, and it's not necessarily about process. It's more about habits and culture establishing the right ways of communicating, hiring the right people. So, for example, not everyone's cut out for remote work, and that's the other thing. People found as well that, hey, you do like to go in the office occasionally and see people and that maybe remote work isn't for you.

Shane: 14:12

Setting up intentional systems and processes and habits is very important and having those conversations with the people on your team how does innovation happen? Right, what are we doing to encourage innovation? And interesting thing for me is that this actually becomes a bit of a superpower because you can have those conversations in the office as well. How does innovation happen here, and those businesses that do that tend to succeed and thrive, whereas the businesses that just focus on the day-to-day and look at, you know, their next product launch and they don't consider you know all the aspects of running a business learning, development, training, mentorship, innovation, project management. All these things need to have a consider, you know, have intentional approach to them in order for you to be successful.

Carl: 15:04

Do you think that, with this evolution of understanding that there are some people who love to work remotely can do it independently they're already doing that anyways, even if they're in an office and there are people who need to physically go into the office space to feel productive? Can you sense, or can you predict, that in future, maybe even the near future we'll see more hybrid models of work?

Shane: 15:26

I think we're already there. I think the majority of the companies that I talk to are already allowing. Either they have a prescribed strategy where there's two or three days a week you have to be at the office, or they have some sort of flexible understanding that if you want to work a day a month at home, that's fine. What I worry is that people see these as alternatives to sick days or vacations, that hey, you can go work from home if you're not feeling well, but it's not really a sick day, it's a paid day you have to do your work. That's concerning. I think this is one of those areas where maybe down the road we might see some government regulation around what it means to work from home and how that's treated. But generally, most businesses these days have a greater flexibility for where you work and that gives people more options. I'm truly interested in what this next generation is going to want to do. So we look at this as a where do I want to work? And yes, there's a good percentage of.

Shane: 16:22

If you look at the numbers right now, majority of the people who are comfortable working from home are actually older than you'd expect the older cohort. You know they've gone to the office. They've made their, you know, had their chance to have built relationships. A lot of them are just tired of it. They don't want to go back to the office and they're happy just to get their work done and starting to live life. They're seeing their kids get older, they're seeing their days maybe get numbered and they want to put more emphasis on the life that they're living.

Shane: 16:47

However, the younger group coming up, the proverbial Gen Z or Gen Zed they are a lot more finely tuned with technology and all you have to do is go to a school and I've got a daughter who's in grade 10. And they will text to each other while they're standing in front of each other. They are far more comfortable dealing with technology than other people and I think we're going to see that the concept of remote work is going to really appeal to them. But there's going to have to be some challenges there, because my personal feeling is anyone who's coming out of school should spend the next five years working in an office. There's lessons you learn there about the culture of working that are hard to learn when you're sitting in a house in your basement by yourself at the end of a computer. And that is dominantly, because there's no concerted effort to train people on how to work remotely or how to even be good workers at schools, and it's going to take a long time for that to catch up.

Carl: 17:41

I was just going to say is there an education piece here where colleges, universities, higher learning institutions that they're going to see and not that we want to see them boarded up or anything but are we going to see even more remote learning or learning about remote working that, let's face it, when you and I went to school, there wasn't really a course on here's how you work remotely. Do you see that that's potentially going to open things up a little bit?

Shane: 18:13

I'd like to think it would. But back to your point. I didn't get a course on how to do time management either. I didn't get a course on how to be a manager. I didn't really get a course on how to manage my money back in the day, and those courses are starting to trickle in, but they're being offered as optional courses and electives next to foods. What's someone going to choose, right? I think that there's been lots of calls over the years for people to put more emphasis on the life skills that you need to use to be a good employee, to be a good budgeter, to run your household, and we just haven't seen those materialize in a meaningful way. My expectation is that school, the way it is now, will probably remain the way it is for quite some time. We may see more people doing more remote learning, as it does support the learning from home option that's popular among some groups.

Carl: 19:07

What's interesting is in the business world certainly the world that I work in and we work with a number of coaches and consultants and other subject matter experts and they're seeing a shift in even the work that they do. So folks who would think nothing of running an eight-week or a 12-week program, hey, let's meet every Wednesday at 10 am. That's when the course is being held. A lot of those are not remote, but remote in the sense that it's going evergreen. You know what you sign up for the program. Here it is. It's a learn at your own pace, and then we meet once a week. If you have questions, your questions are answered that once a week, or that's twice a month or whatever it is, versus the sitting in the classroom, sitting in the office. So it seems like in business depending on the business, of course, it's shifting that way. The education piece not to wave a flag or anything but education needs to get caught up with where the world is going.

Shane: 20:01

So much can be done from a computer from anywhere in the world and you have all your equipment. It's been shrunk down over the last while to fit in a room in your house or put in a bag, and that gives you more options, and so what we're seeing is this flexibility is driving innovation. In some respects, People are seeing this opportunity to. I don't have to be stuck in this physical location to do my job or run a business. What options does that give me? We're going to see some great innovation from that over the next while.

Shane: 20:34

I'm also very interested to see what happens with real estate. In a sense, where are new houses going to be built with remote work in mind? It used to be the den, but now the den is really the office and it's going to be more of a necessity. And what if you have two people working remotely from home? Well, do you need two dens? Is that now becoming a, you know, or maybe a third bedroom? But is this now going to start driving how people purchase homes or what they look for in a home or a dwelling?

Carl: 21:04

Wow, things that you don't even think about. You know, you'd think that three bedroom homes are the norm right now. Maybe we now need a fourth bedroom, because two of those bedrooms, or the bedroom and maybe a room in the basement are going to be dedicated to, as you said, not just the den, but an office, where before it wasn't necessarily a dedicated office. Wow, shane, so much great insights. Today I want to give you the opportunity to pump the tires on the book, though We've already talked about some of the aspects of the book, but for individuals who are looking for their copy, where can they find it? Give us a little bit more info about it.

Shane: 21:37

Sure, yeah, this was published February 2023, probably the worst time book in history. It came out around the same time as the return to office mandates, but fortunately it's. Since the hybrid work and remote work has become, far more people realize the benefits of it, it's becoming a bit more popular. I worked with Cynthia Watson on this. It's chock full of techniques and strategies to work remotely. It's predominantly focused towards the business owners who want to run a business remotely and those three key categories leadership, management and HR. We do have some of the outlooks in the back of the book for project management and sales as well Two other groups that are seeing lots of work remotely. It's available on Amazon, published through Forbes, and we've received. I'm a pretty humble person, but we've received a lot of really good praise about it. I'm pretty happy with how well it's been received and I'd love to hear from anybody who either purchases the book or wants to learn more.

Carl: 22:36

And we'll make sure we put the link to the book in the show notes, as well as your social links as well. Shane, it's been an amazing conversation. I'm excited for where work is going, although I'm already working remotely, so maybe there's a remote, remote work. I don't know.

Shane: 22:51

It's doing what you're doing from a beach.

Carl: 22:54

Oh, I like that, I like the way you think, my friend, and not a Canadian beach in January? No, not quite the same experience, Shane Spraggs. Before I let you go, I'll give you the final thought.

Shane: 23:08

Yeah, I think we've had a lot of good conversation today. The key one for me is looking at where it's going in the future. And employers take note that people are asking for remote work. People like the flexibility. People recognize the well-being that it brings, and just the simple ability of being able to pick your kids up at three o'clock in the afternoon when they come home from school is a game changer for many adults. It's a perk that you can offer for low cost. In fact, it saves you money in the long run if you decide to close an office or two. Plus done right, it has been proven to be more productive and it sort of supports your bottom line as well. Business owners take note it's time to consider moving remote if you haven't.

Carl: 23:52

All right, that's a great place to leave it. Shane Spraggs, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Shane: 23:57

Thank you, Carl, pleasure to be here.

Carl: 23:59

And, hey, thank you for being a part of the show today.

Carl: 24:01

So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So, thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Dom Carillo, our sonic branding genius, Kenton Dolborowski, and the person who works the arms all of our arms, actually our project manager and my trusty assistant, Julovell Tiongco, known to us here simply as July, if you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or a review, or even send us a voice note, and if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues.

Carl: 24:31

If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share it with your enemies, and if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes, where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, Linkedin and Facebook as well, and if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it, because, after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. Catch you again next time.