RWL071 How to Use Data to Enhance Team Collaboration and Mental Health in Remote Work w/ Shiran Yaroslavsky

Speaker 2

0:07

want me to record this okay, well, let's get cracking then, okay. So, hi everybody, it's alex again from the Worker Live podcast, and I have a wonderful guest with me today. As I said I've said it in previous podcasts we only have the best guests on the Remote Worker Live podcast, and today I've got Shiran Yaroslavsky with me. She is the CEO and one of the founders of Cassiopeia.

Speaker 2

0:40

Now, cassiopeia is a very interesting product because, whether you are accustomed to working remotely or if, in this whole new age of remote work being forced upon certain people, you're still getting used to the whole aspect of working remotely, you know that if you're managing a team, a remote team, you know what the challenges are like, the challenges that you face at the best of times. So Cassiopeia is a really interesting product that helps start. It's a startup, essentially, that empowers managers of both fully and partially remote teams to maximize workplace experience. So, shiran, I just really wanted to thank you. Workplace experience. So, shiran, I just really wanted to thank you. We need these kinds of conversations and we need you, people like yourself, to help to empower and really drive remote teams. So I really wanted to say thank you for joining me today on the Remote Work Life podcast.

Speaker 1

1:38

Thank you. Thank you, Alex, for having me here.

Speaker 2

1:41

Pleasure and I just really gave a little snippet, a little taste as to what Cassiopeia really is. But why I really want to start by doing is really finding out about you first and foremost, Shiran, and then telling me a little bit more about what Cassiopeia does before we actually get into the, I suppose, the nuts and bolts of how it can really help remote managers out there.

Speaker 1

2:08

Yeah, so definitely so. At CACIPIO. What we do, as you mentioned, we help managers remote managers to get the insights they need to improve collaboration and belonging mental health within remote teams. What we do? We analyze metadata, so data like who sent to whom and when. We're not analyzing any text or any content and just provide weekly email reports to managers with the insights they need the most. So, yeah, and I would love to share a bit from what we learned in the past few months of you know, just the shift to remote work and how it affects companies these days and, yeah, really looking forward to share from our experience.

Speaker 2

2:59

I'm really looking forward to learning more as well, and I want to find out about you as well, because you have an interesting path as well. You have, you know, you have obviously have your experience of working remotely yourself. Um, right now you're you know, cassiopeia is fully remote, but tell us about your journey. I'm I'm always interested to hear from people like yourself, because you've had a really kind of so. You've done obviously law and again from there you've moved from law into product and then into becoming a founder yourself. So tell me in your own words how your journey sort of originated or evolved to where you are now.

Speaker 1

3:41

Yeah, so I'm very passionate about how to use technology to empower remote leaders. I'm speaking a lot of occasions about how to use data to empower leaders these days, but before that and before KCPA, my background is in product management. I led product teams also remotely in different countries, very distributed teams, and before that, as you mentioned in a different life, I was a lawyer. I'm still a lawyer. I'm a lawyer by training. I hold a bachelor and master's degree in law and I kind of shifted to tech. So this was my own unique path, definitely.

Speaker 2

4:27

That's great, a regular one. So it's a. I don't know. Is it a usual combination that law and tech? What kind of encouraged you to make that transition and how did you do that?

Speaker 1

4:43

How did you go about that? Yeah, so while I was studying law, I was also an analyst and I always was curious about, I think, the combination of tech and science with legal, and this is why I was majoring in intellectual property. So I always loved this, you know, the combination of the two. And I think when I finally realized that, you know, being a lawyer is not really for me, it's not a good fit, and also I lived in Tel Aviv. We have so many tech companies and I just decided that I want to do, I want to try tech, I want to try also to build things. I was missing. You know, being a lawyer, you usually advising more and I really want to build something. So this is how I decided that I wanted to become a product manager and I had the opportunities and, you know, in the right time, in the right place to do that.

Speaker 2

5:48

So, yeah, it's a good combination, though, isn't it? Because when you're working in product, you you know, I suppose, that the people, many people who work in products or in tech probably I don't want to sort of um, uh, sort of generalize too much, but I think if you have a combination of being able to advise people the softer skills, the softer side of things and you combine that with the tech side of things, that that kind of that combination makes for somebody who can really have that empathy to understand how to understand people first and foremost, and then you've got that tech, where you can understand how to use tech to help people. So, essentially, that's what Cassiopeia does for remote managers, isn't it really?

Speaker 1

6:39

Exactly, exactly, definitely.

Speaker 2

6:44

You put it really accurately so tell me then, a bit more about the, the Cassiope team, because you're, you know you're fully remote. You right now you're working, you tell you, tell me you're working in California. Where is the rest of the team? How is it all sort of set up?

Speaker 1

7:05

yeah, so I'm originally from Israel. I moved to the States last November. My two partners are in, located in Israel, and marketing and development also spread around the Middle East and the States, so we are fully remote. Definitely, it's more challenging for me because when I used to manage remote teams, we were kind of working maybe in the same kind of time zone not a lot of difference and now we are much more apart and this is like asynchronous communication. It's much more challenging and you need to find a solution for that.

Speaker 2

7:52

Um sure, yeah, and I think that's a something that, um, it comes up a lot, that that's the theme of um. You know that asynchronous communication and how best to to, um, I guess, stay productive but at the same time, take into account and have that empathy for people who may be in a different time zone or work to a different schedule to to you. And how are you, um, how is the team? How, how are you going about doing that? Is it that you've sort of you set your own individual agendas and then you get together? Because, again, another thing that I've been noticing especially about this, you know, the situation that we're in now is that people are just being, I guess I suppose those who are not as experienced with remote work managers in particular, I suppose those who are not as experienced with remote work managers in particular, are sort of having four, five hours worth of meetings per day to, you know, not really getting much done. How are you going about staying as productive as possible in your team?

Speaker 1

8:55

Yeah, yeah, um, so definitely, um, I think, like every, every person, um, it's about knowing your um, how you work best and how you can, you know, prepare yourself for success. So I can say that for me, my schedule is and in the morning hours I'm usually taking meetings with Europe and Israel, and then I'm leaving to myself, just blocking in my calendar a few hours of focus time, and then in the afternoon hours I'm taking some more meetings. So for me, it's about structuring the day so I will be as productive as possible. And also, we just decided on some communication methods for us as a team that works for us, for example, how we update just sending our daily updates in the right way, and how we communicate with each other sending our daily updates in the right way and how we communicate with each other, how we communicate with each other during work hours and after work hours.

Speaker 2

10:07

So, yeah, I'm assuming that you're using Cassiopeia to kind of keep tabs of things and people within your team. How is that helping you to just to keep on track?

Speaker 1

10:23

yeah, so part of KCPA, um, is that what we do? We? We allow managers to get the insights that they need to improve collaboration, belonging mental health. So for us as a team, it really helps us to understand how we can balance better our work day and also our collaboration within our team. So definitely that. And also how we can improve our communication with each other. What kind of channels works best for us. But every company is using it differently because every company has got some different kind of challenges as and and.

Speaker 2

11:06

The beauty in kcpa is that you also can customize your report so you basically can decide what kind of insights interest you most and just get only this insight what's relevant most for you yeah, we, we, when we were um discussing what to talk about because, like we said before, um, even the I suppose the most experienced remote managers can have challenges when, when it comes to be having the pulse of their team um, I mean, I've experienced that my myself. Um, I have colleagues or friends who experience that as well. You've kindly come up with a few suggestions for us as managers remote managers, probably those who these suggestions probably are, I guess, applicable to not just experienced remote managers, but those who are still adjusting and acclimatizing to the world of remote work. So you've come up with a few ideas as to how to use data to make better data-driven decisions as a remote manager. Do you want to just share some of your insights that you've come across with Cassiopeia and from your experience of speaking with the managers of the remote teams?

Speaker 1

12:31

Sure, so definitely, I can share that. Something that we hear a lot these days is that working as a remote manager, you're basically working with a smaller data set. You don't have all these small data points you used to have while working in the office, so you don't see how people engage, with whom they're drinking coffee, who's taking lunchtime together, and actually it's really harder. It's really harder. You don't get all these data points. So there is a new gap that is created about the shift to remote work, and the question is how can we close that gap?

Speaker 1

13:14

And this is what KCPA is doing helping managers to close that gap, get the insights they need about team dynamics, and I think one of the things that's really important for leaders is to be aware of this gap, of these challenges. So, according to our data, more than 77% of managers indicate it's harder for them to manage their team remotely, and a big part of it is because of that gap that I just mentioned. So be aware of the challenges you have as a remote manager, because managing a remote team is not, like you know, managing your team from the office. Only, with Zoom, it's a different playground, right, alex? I know you will agree.

Speaker 2

13:59

So, yes, first of all, it's uh being aware for this kind of uh challenges, um and um, yeah, and I think like this is the first step and so and I think it's you're right, um, and I should have pointed out before we started this, there's five, I suppose there's five key areas and that that whole idea of the workplace uh experience gap that shiran is talking about is is really the the part where you, you kind of you can't just accept that just because you're you know work is not going to be the same now that you're you're working remotely.

Speaker 2

14:38

You have to have that in your mind. I suppose that's a wherewithal to adapt to the different circumstances. And I'd also say I mean, just try to maybe even talk to or listen to how other remote teams, how other remote managers, are dealing with or dealt with those early stages, to kind of understand where the gaps occur, wouldn't you say, shiran? So the work experience gap is one thing, and then you talk about, as well, identifying what the main challenges are for the company as well. So can you tell us a bit more about that?

Speaker 1

15:19

Yeah. So I think the next stage is to just assess what your main challenge is as a company. As I mentioned before, every company experiences different challenges. Everyone is working differently and what we do at KCPA we use KCPA to assess what kind of challenges you have Basically, if it's about communication, and optimize your communication.

Speaker 1

15:47

If it's about collaboration, if it's about maybe onboarding new employees, I can share that. They have a few companies these days that are growing really fast remotely for the first time and it's really challenging for them. Onboarding new employees remotely is challenging. So how you do that? So we're helping them also to optimize and maximize the onboarding of new employees experience.

Speaker 1

16:14

So, basically, the second stage is to use data to identify your challenges. The next stage, I would say, is to find the right data layers and metrics that can help you to measure and assess you know, your challenges and your progress. So, for example, I can share one of the customers we work with we identify that there is a drop in communication between two teams. So we saw that there was a lot of communication going through these two teams and over time it just decreases by almost 40% and we highlighted to the VP the relevant VP and we managed to really detect it in early stages, before things started to fall apart, and we also part of the CPS report. We identified these signals, but also we recommend what to do with them. So we just recommended more activities that can improve synchronization and communication between the two teams and we saw this matrix going up and, you know, just recover. So it's about finding also the right data layers and metrics that can help you to assess these challenges and your progress during the way.

Speaker 2

17:37

Sounds good. Can I just ask, shiran, before we move on to the next point? I want to actually jump back a point, because you talked about previously identifying the main challenges for your company. Are there any? I mean, through the data that you've experienced with Casio, are there any sort of typical challenges that any of your customers, your clients, face? Yeah, yeah, Definitely.

Speaker 1

18:04

One of the things we saw is, with the shift to remote work, there is significant increase in meeting time. A lot of companies are trying to close that gap that we mentioned by over communication calls and um. The downside of it is that a lot of employees just feel they're they don't have any time left to to work on their personal tasks. Um, it's just created a lot of stress and work overload for many teams. So the question is how can you balance right, how you can communicate in the right way and make people also feel belong you know, having these zoom calls and feel connected to each other, but also make sure we have enough time to to work on our personal task and not, you know, jumping from one meeting to another all day. So how we can really balance a workday.

Speaker 1

19:02

So what we do, we use that. We use kcp to help team leaders to just create this balance. So, for example, if we see that the meeting time increases in a specific team significantly, we highlight that. If there is a decrease in focus time in the department level or team level, we help to identify that and find solutions. So, yeah, this is something we see quite a lot these days.

Speaker 1

19:31

I think, uh, it's, it's very natural, the struggle about you know how to create the right workday balance for remote teams, so this is one thing I can share yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

19:43

I. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

19:43

I mean a friend of mine who he's a middle manager, and I mean before he used to have a lot of meetings, but he said to me now he's having five or six meetings per day and that has an impact.

Speaker 2

20:05

If you do that for a length of time, that's bound to have an impact. If you do that for a length of time, that's bound to have an impact. It's bound to start to burn you out and that's going to mean that you're going to be probably working more than you did before, because your time is taking literally your whole day has been taken up with a meeting and then between the meetings you're preparing for the next meeting and then doing work as well at the same time. So it's yeah, it's it's, it's it's good because it's good to have something that that you can point to, I, you can see up here, and then you can see where those those pain points are and then adjust just accordingly. And then, in point three, you mentioned some of the, again, some of your case studies in a sense, where you, they were having activities. You mentioned something about activities. Are there any kinds of activities? I don't know, either yourself or people who other remote teams do, in order to sort of alleviate that whole sort of burden of work.

Speaker 1

21:11

Yeah, so it really depends what we do at KCPA. We work with the leading experts in the space of remote work and we met between the signals and the right recommendations. So if I'm going back to the previous use case I mentioned about decreasing collaboration, what we can recommend, for example, is more activities that can improve synchronization and collaboration, such as maybe pair calls between the two teams, or just invite other two teams or just invite other managers to the team daily just to improve synchronization between the two. So there is different activities, different recommendations, but it really depends on the signal and the challenge that we are addressing.

Measuring Remote Team Performance With Data

Speaker 2

22:02

No, that's great, that's great. And so we were on point three, where you said finding the right data layers and metrics to measure and assess, and I guess each team is going to probably look at different metrics and prioritize different things. Yeah, is that the case?

Speaker 1

22:20

Yeah, definitely and it's. You know there is no one size fits all. It's about understanding what your company's main challenges and address it accordingly and also according to the culture you have and what's important for you. And then I would say that the next stage will be to set up the right processes to track the changes within your company culture. So, you know, using CACP is one way to do it. It just set up reports and understand, you know, help you to track these changes. We provide the weekly reports and the monthly reports. You can see it very clearly and you know the trends and how we managed to improve the metrics that we chose. But even without using Kasiupia, you can set up the right processes if it's a monthly check, if it's, you know. Also, companies can for sure analyze their own data or get feedback from employees. So find the right processes that can help you really to track and see the changes within these data layers that we discuss.

Speaker 2

23:36

And again I mean, yeah, I guess tracking is important. I mean and I suppose some does this, does Cassiopeia, I guess, suit, I suppose, a larger team or a smaller team, or is it there's no particular preference, because I know some people that I've spoken to, some managers I've spoken to, they might have a smaller team of, let's say, 10 or 15 people and each of those people really I guess are seasoned, they know what they're doing, they know where they're going, really I guess are seasoned, they know what they're doing, they know where they're going. They don't necessarily see the need to track what they're doing. Is it more suited to teams that are bigger and perhaps working more asynchronously?

Speaker 1

24:22

So I would say the smallest team that we work with are, you know, a bit more than five employees. But it depends on the team, on the challenges, on, as you mentioned, the communication, and so basically we can work with also small teams, but definitely as there is more challenges, the team is more distributed or larger different teams in one department, so the blind spots are just larger. So it really depends on the case.

Speaker 2

24:59

Excellent, and that leads us nicely onto point five. Obviously, I think again, the best remote teams, the best teams full stop, regardless of whether they're remote or not, but especially if they're remote, the leaders within those teams, the managers within those teams, are the, I suppose, the catalyst for any sort of transformation or improvement. So, shiran, you mentioned that 0.5 being making sure that leaders are committed to act based on the metrics and the results. Can you tell us a bit more about what you were meaning there?

Speaker 1

25:35

Yeah. So before we start even to measure and to assess the processes that can help you to do that regularly, that can help you to do that regularly, we need to make sure that the leaders are really committed to act based on our metrics and data. So it won't help if we're going to measure and assess all this information without being able to act on it. So, basically, we need to make sure everyone's aligned, everyone knows what we are leaders, the relevant managers, know what we are measuring and really are committed to act on it based on this data and these insights. So I think this is one of the most crucial components of the process for sure, definitely.

Speaker 2

26:27

yeah, it's all about you know, having people on board, because if you kind of try and use it as a stick to be to beat people with it, that's when you're going to get pushback.

Speaker 1

26:37

but no, it's been very interesting, shiran, and tell us, um, you know, because um syrupy's gone through some, some changes, and what are the plans in the future, and you know what, what's, uh, the future looking like for you as well yeah, so, um, we're working with a lot of tech companies these days in the uk and the us, um, um, and I think our plan is really to expand and help more companies in more regions to just improve the way they work remotely. This is our plan and this is how we would like to see it grow and also grow our impact as a company. For sure, and yeah, definitely I can share that from my personal experience. I I, or from personal perspective, I, I um moved to the, to to the us, uh, only the end of last year.

Speaker 2

27:42

So also, um, my plan is also to, to be able also to maybe to uh live in the us, not in covid time, so I can see it some more yeah, I'm sure, and you're in a nice part of the, a nice sunny part of the world where you've got beaches, but I guess right now there's not many people going to the beach at this time no, not that much oh, it's a shame, but yeah, eventually things will return to some semblance of normality, if not sort of a different kind of uh way of of living it up.

Speaker 2

28:15

You picked a nice part of the world to be in and what we want to do is we want to keep track, we want to keep up to date with uh you and with cassiopeia. I wanted to thank you as well for your time today and, as I said, let's keep in touch to see what Cassiopeia is doing and, yeah, just stay safe. In fact, one more question do you I mean other than because you said you're in California at the moment right Any other sort of places that you're going to travel around the US at all, or are you just going to stick to California?

Speaker 1

28:54

Yeah, so I can share that. California is well not all California, but the Bay Area where I live is in shutdown for many months now. So I'm waiting for my hairdresser appointment for you know, more than four, four months now. Um, and what we decided a few weeks ago, me and my my husband, is to pack our things and just travel and work for a bit. So I traveled in Salt Lake City and Yellowstone and it was amazing because you know it's people that are walking very hard for so many hours a day just seeing only your house and you know nothing else beside. That can be depressing. So I think it was one of my best decisions just to travel and work a bit. So highly recommended for our listeners.

Speaker 2

29:45

No, definitely. There's a few digital nomads listening as well, which, who I'm sure are going to you know, be hopefully be connecting with you on LinkedIn to see how you're doing as well. I'll leave a link in the show notes Cassiopeia and also your LinkedIn profile, but I just wanted to say again thank you for your time, sharan, and we'll be keeping an eye on you and Cassiopeia at the Remote Work Life podcast. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1

30:10

Thank you. Thank you so much, Alex.

Speaker 2

30:12

Speak to you soon.