What Owners Need to Know About a Remote Workforce

Subscribe: RSS

Working with a remote team has both challenges and opportunities for growing businesses. Chris Clegg of Portland Marketing Analytics has been working with a remote team for years, long before it became fashionable or required. Because of that, he knows the tools, tactics, and apps to keep a remote team engaged and productive.

Rich: Our next guest is a sociologist who ended up understanding statistics that evolved into a fascination with marketing, and before he knew it, two decades of agency employment came and went. These days, he spends his time thinking about and studying why marketing works. He does that with a team of smart people at Portland Marketing Analytics or PortMA where he’s president and founder.

Together they work hard for marketers and brands who want to make sure their marketing doesn’t suck. He uses statistical models to tell the future his superpowers, uncovering the common threads that bind us. He uses that to develop and evaluate consumer targeting and messaging strategies.

However, today we’re not talking about marketing or statistics. We’re talking about working with remote teams, which couldn’t be more timely as we’re in the midst of the Coronavirus as we record this today. We’re looking forward to talking remote teams with Chris Clegg. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris: Thanks so much for having me. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here.

Yury: Thank you for coming. Chris, before we jump in could you tell us a little bit more about PortMA and what kind of work you and your remote team does?

Chris: Yeah, sure. So we’re a marketing analytics marketing research group. And as such, we’re well-schooled and all the qualitative and quantitative aspects of market research. But we found this niche in the experiential marketing world and events and meetings, and helping those folks take what is otherwise a very abstract idea and narrow it down into real financial return on investment models. And so we work with experiential agencies, we work with brands that are doing large mobile tours. It’s Geico at NASCAR and it’s grandma handing out cheese at Hannaford, and looking at really what is that all about, how does it serve as a marketing channel and what’s it delivering, and is that what it’s delivering competitive. So we help them think about that and help them model that through.

Yury: Do you work with any local businesses?

Chris: We do. We do. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yury: Are we allowed to discuss their successful initiatives that you helped to execute, or?

Chris: I don’t know for sure. So I got keep my mouth shut.

Yury: Alright. Well anyway, if anyone wants to learn more, please, hit Chris Craig on LinkedIn. Anyway, Rich?

Rich: Alright. So tell us a little bit more about the makeup of your team. How many people are in an office and how many of them are remote?

Chris: We have an office, but at any given time there is there none of us there. We there to, to get together when we need to. We’re there to meet in person. We’ve got a certain initiative or something that needs a brainstorming that we’re going to put a half a day against or we’re meeting with a client or meeting with a vendor. But for the most part, we don’t use it as our home base. Our home base are our homes, where we’re dispersed throughout Southern Maine. And we have an employee down in Virginia and we have a full time contractor that’s actually in Mexico.

Rich: So everybody’s literally working out of their home, they could also maybe go to a Starbucks, I don’t know. Or local Maine coffee shop, I should say. But it’s not like you have remote offices in different places, correct?

Chris: No, we’re working out of home offices for the most part. We have, we have agreements with Think Tank and with remote working shared space facilities. But those are used more when the kids are driving you crazy or you need to get out of the house for other reasons. And for the most part, our home base is our homes.

Rich: And how long have you been doing this? Did you incubate the company as a remote company or did you at one point just say it’s time to move into everybody’s home?

Chris: We started with beautiful office space down here in the Old Port above Gritty’s. We were up on the third floor overlooking the Bay and grew in that space. And then we started to evolve and as we started to get better at setting up our systems, it became less important for us to be there in person. And we started getting looser about when we were working. So maybe the day didn’t have to start at 8:30, maybe it would start at 9:30 or 10, and then you would go till 6:30 or 7 that evening.

Really depending on what you’re working on. If you’re working on a report, if you’re crunching on an analysis, sometimes the later parts of the day you’re more productive. And so as I got more casual with that, the rest of the team got more casual with it. And then I was sitting back one day in the office after being there for about three years and I was the only one in there. My wife called it the most expensive man-cave that I’ve ever had. And I realized we could take that money we were spending on the rent, I can put it back into the company, open up a profit sharing plan and really beef up the 401k and get some shared space and some of the local groups. And so we had a place to go if we had to, but we could take that money and make better use of it. So we took about a year and we transitioned out of having a permanent space. Everyone showed up to every night, every morning at nine.

Yury: So how can you build a remote team that has this same connectivity is in the office team? How do you ensure this cohesion and the understanding that the shared vision and marching in the same direction?

Chris: Yeah. You know the idea of isolation and loneliness can be very real if you aren’t doing things to address it proactively in how you set up the way a team engages. And we’ve found that there are certain things that we have to hold to.

So one thing, all internal discussions are done with video conferencing and that’s mandated. And there was one time where one team member was not turning on the video because that person said they hadn’t taken a shower yet and weren’t ready to be there. And we kind of shut things down and said, okay, well you’re going to go take a shower, get ready for work, and when you’re dressed and ready for work, then come back and join us. And that was the attitude that we had to adopt because you have to see each other, you have to see those facial expressions.

You got to know if someone’s having a bad day or having a good day, how you relate to each other. Those are all, I’m very visual. And if we take that for granted, then the team starts to erode a little bit. So having that as a mandate worked really well. And there’s other tools too that we started to implement. There’s a piece of software called sneak.io and it feels really creepy when you first hear about it.

Yury: I mean, the name itself.

Chris: It does, it does. And they don’t play around with what they’re trying to do. But what it is it’s something that sits on your computer and it has almost a Brady bunch kind of show of talking heads of all the people that are on the team that are in the office. And so when you’re “in the office” at PortMA and I put that in quotes, you’ve got sneak active. And what it’s doing is every minute it’s taking a picture of you sitting in front of your computer and it’s putting that on a screen with the whole team. And it’s very simple in its functionality.

If I wanted to reach out to somebody, if I wanted to connect with you, Rich, I would see your face. I would see that you’re “at the office” in quotes because your face is there. And I would click on you and without you having to do anything, it opens a live video chat between the two of us. So that happens without you having to respond or react. So I can click on your head on the screen and I can say, “Hey Richard, you got a second?” And it’s trying to mimic the idea that I’m knocking on your office door. That I can like lean up into the queue into the cubicle, see across the office that Rich is in his office, the door is open and he’s in there and I can holler out, “Hey Rich, do you have a second?” And then you come back and say, “Yeah, no problem”. And we can have that two seconds, that two minute dialogue around something and then easily end the conversation and go back to our respective workspaces and the work that we’re doing.

Yury: Did you have to cultivate this kind of like acceptance of this type of tools amongst your team members, or were they like willing to buy into it?

Chris: I think we all recognized that we needed stuff. We needed to do things to make sure that we were working well as a team. And this was one thing that I had read quite a bit about. Everyone was a little apprehensive cause it has this kind of big brother feeling to it and the boss watching me. And I’m like, do I have to be now accountable if I’m taking the dog for a walk or not? And that certainly was a part of the process of us getting used to it, but we agreed to use it for 30 days. And at the end of those 30 days we had a talk conversation about it. And as the manager of the team, I agreed, “Hey, if you guys don’t like it, we’ll dump it and try something different.” But after 30 days, everyone pretty much appreciated it and it’s been a core part of how we organize our day and how we stay connected and it’s been around for a couple of years now for us.

Yury: Do you use any other tools besides that? I mean, we’re going to dive into it. I don’t want to hijack this question, but I was thinking about a solution called Toggl that basically allows you to keep track of the time that you spend on specific tasks. Not necessarily like face to face and be present, but actually keep track of how productive you are on certain days.

Chris: That’s an automated tool, right? It automatically looks at your keystrokes and which applications are live and what you’re working on. I’ve seen that, I’m familiar with it. That’s a little too much for me.

Rich: A little too granular?

Chris: It’s a little too granular, but it also sets an attitude of, like, trust is so big. Trust is a big deal. And while I want to do things that bring the teams together, I don’t want to do things that imply that we have to have checks and balances for the trust of how hard we’re working and what we’re doing. And that’s the line that I think is important to me as a manager.

Rich: I would also argue that that is measuring busy work and not productivity. I would think when you are working with a remote team that it’s the deliverables and not every single minute of the day that’s most important. I understand you’re trying to replicate some of the in-office vibe there. But you always got to think about what you’re rewarding and what you’re measuring.

Chris: Yeah. And there might be teams and knowledge work with that’s very applicable like right now if you’re coding scenario, like if you’re a writer or something. Or maybe as a personal tool to kind of look back on your day as a journal. But as a tool to manage a team that’s dispersed, it seemed like too much.

Rich: And the other thing is that there’s a certain, with that sneak.io, there’s a certain amount of built in accountability. And I was doing this segment on 207 the other night where we talked about something called Focusmate and it’s for remote workers that are worried about accountability. We kind of partner and there’s a video screen going on so you can make sure that you’re both working at the same time and you’re just automatically paired with someone.

And I know my kids actually, will just set up a FaceTime and just do their homework while they’re talking to one or other kids in their class. And I don’t know if it’s about accountability or just chattiness, but whatever. But there is that sort of feeling like, I know you’re working, I don’t have to watch everything that you’re doing. But now I’m also accountable because I know that other people on the team care about our overall success.

Chris: Yeah. And it’s an interesting dynamic. I mean we’re social animals and when we isolate ourselves into these dispersed teams, there’s anxiety that will come up around that. And whether that anxiety is expressed in terms of you’re not being accountable or whether it’s changing blame or whether we’re losing this assumption that everybody has the best intention from a starting place. You know what I mean?

But there’s things that can come up that make the social dynamics difficult when we start to eliminate the things that allow us to be social in the way we’re used to. And so the use of technology is really geared towards bringing those things back into the game in a different setting as opposed to trying to layer in additional levels of control or observation.

Yury: Gotcha. Thank you.

Rich: So I’m curious about the onboarding process. You know, as you’ve grown over the years, how do you introduce a remote lifestyle for a new employee? Does it require a certain type of worker or can anyone learn how to work at PortMA and other remote based companies?

Chris: Yeah, we, we just have a gentleman join the team two weeks ago, so it would be interesting to see what he would say about this so far. You have to put a lot more attention into that. And I think I would add Slack is a big part of our team. We use Slack pretty regularly. And so introducing somebody into Slack as a tool or they used to the idea of chatting or they used the idea of having that open. Those are things that are, they’ve got to have a very close relationship to technology and it’s got to be easily integrated as a part of the way they work. And with Slack, we’ll be very careful to every morning say ‘good morning’ and those critical points in the day when you connect with people, you know what I mean? You say ‘good morning’ when you greet them in the morning, you say, “Hey, I’m heading out. Have a great night”, when you’re departing. You tell people in your office, “Hey, I’m going to lunch. I’ll be back in an hour.”

There are these very casual things that we do that are addressing a lot of needs to help define and institutionalize a team. And so replicating those with something like Slack is an important part of communication. So if somebody comes into the team, we have to by example, but also encourage them that these are the kinds of things that we do. And stuff that you wouldn’t have to tell somebody otherwise because they’re social cues. Do you know what I mean?

Rich: You have to make sure they’re tapping into when it comes to how we engage the technology and for people who aren’t familiar with Slack, this is an instant messaging tool that’s used by a lot of businesses. You can set it up for the whole company, but you can also set up Slack channels for individual groups or project sort of the case may be.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s something that we brought on board recently in the larger scheme of things. And we’ve been doing this for about 10 years, but we brought that on board in the last 18 to 24 months. And it’s been a huge game changer for us in how it decreases email first of all, by significantly internal email becomes much less. And it also radically increases kind of this, this casual communication. And also the fun. I mean we’ve, we’ve got a random channel that we definitely use to share things personally, whether it’s pictures of your kids on Halloween or whether it’s a beautiful sunset you saw last night. There there’s a level to which that helps bring a lot of stuff together.

Rich: Interesting. Yeah. You’re definitely finding digital ways to replicate in office behavior for sure.

Yury: Have you considered utilization of kind of more or less enterprise social media networks? For example, Facebook has a workplace solution or you know, Microsoft has, something similar to it. Have you looked at the utilization of that because you get your channels, you get your different groups depending on the interest and stuff like that, or it’s purely work driven?

Chris: Yeah. I, I mean, I think it’s important that there are that the tools we use with work are not necessarily the same tools or same channels we’re using personally. I think it helps compartmentalize the different aspects of our life. I’ve kind of in a passive way looked at Facebook’s tools or Microsoft’s tools and I haven’t dove into them directly or really tried to vet them. And I think that’s because we don’t really have the need right now.

Yury: You have the right balance that works for you.

Chris: Right. Seems to be going pretty well right now. Yeah. We, there doesn’t seem to be anything about the way we’re positioned or where we’re located that doesn’t seem to be inhibiting our productivity or our ability to get work done in any way. And that took us a while to get there. It took years on all kinds of different levels. So I wouldn’t yeah, we don’t have a need, so I haven’t really dove into it, but those things fascinate me and I’m, and I’m would be very interested in looking at it at the time.

Yury: So, what are the other tools that you would recommend our listeners to consider? You mentioned Slack, Sneak.io. Is there anything else that you know if?

Chris: Well we use Google Suite for business and our calendars becomes important. So you got to make sure you’re letting people know when you’re working, when you’re not, what your hours are, those kinds of things. And when you have a team that is a full time employees, part-time, hourly employees, contractors, you can’t obviously as an employer you can’t tell a contractor when they have to be working with you. And so they need to make sure it’s clear that their lifestyle, their plans, their availability for you is clear to the rest of the team regardless of where they’re located. And so we use Google calendar to help define that. So if I’m looking to schedule a meeting with somebody who is a part time member of the team, I can look at their calendar and see if I’m causing them problems or not by scheduling it for this time.

And then you appreciate that on my side. Cause there’s this dynamic of pressure to do what the bosses says and to be there for the manager. But if it’s doing it in a way that’s disrespectful for their other work or their other or their personal life and I’ve got to, we’ve got to get that dynamic taken care of. And so the Google calendar helps with that a lot.

There’s a big piece, too, around project management. And one thing we learned maybe a little later than I wished was that the people that do well with us are people that really enjoy checking boxes on check lists. You know what I mean? And there’s definitely very legitimately two different kinds of people. There’s people that make that list so they can check things off the list. And there’s people that find lists incredibly confining and controlling and they would call it micromanagement. And we found when we were interviewing people that some people say it’s a huge relief that you have something like that cause I know what you intend and what you mean and what you want. Or they say, I don’t like being micromanaged. I need to be free to apply my trade in my art as I know it.

And we do better with people that are in the list category of those two. And that list also is important because you’ve got to have operating procedures, you got to have plans so that when we ask somebody to do something or when it gets to a certain stage in a project and we know somebody is doing this stuff, that we all know what they’re doing. We all know that we can look at our project management tools and look to see where are they in that process. Because I don’t have that ability to see that someone’s been working hard for four hours on that report. You know what I mean? I get a sense that they’re working on something. I get a sense from the hours at the end of the day of what it’s related to. But if I can’t look to see where those hours were, I don’t have that bigger sense of where we are with all the projects we’re running.

Yury: So basically with the flexibility that comes with working remotely, there’s still an acceptance of certain parameters that you have to be very specific about.

Chris: Yeah. The flexibility does not mean you’re not accountable. We have to be more accountable to each other because we’re dispersed.

Rich: I like that. So for those of us who are used to working in an office there’s a certain amount of built-in loyalty that we can expect at least if we’re a good company. I wonder how do you keep people loyal when they’re remote? I mean, obviously right now we’re in like zero unemployment, so it’s tough for any business to keep everybody loyal. But are there any specific tactics that you’re using? Because when people are remote, I don’t care – to me at least -I don’t care how much slack there is, I don’t care how many like pictures you’re sharing. There is a little bit of more remoteness in remote working. So what do you do to bridge that gap or what do you do to build that loyalty in your team?

Chris: Being remote doesn’t mean you don’t have to have a culture that people appreciate. And every person that gets added to the team is adding to that culture, and toxic people have to go, and find people that are smart and dedicated and work hard, and you want them to stay. And so those same things apply if not more when we’re spread out.

And so the way in which we stay connected, those things certainly help making sure that we’re talking about careers and goals and what works well for you, what doesn’t, what are the expectations? Do you want to be somebody that grows in this trade and this direction? Do you want to be in our world as researchers?

There’s really two directions. People tend to go and they tend to go into the kind of rock star world where you’re a consultant and you have more and more people around you that makes you more efficient. So you can do your consulting and with your megaphone it allowed her in latter level or you become more of an analyst and more of a detailed kind of pumping out reports, designing incredible analyses and you’re a statistician, a numbers person, and you’re really into the technical aspects of your trade. And knowing where somebody wants to go, what’s their aspiration. They want to manage people and get into sales and be in front of the room, or do they want to work with more complex and more intense methodologies and more statistical rigor.

And so having an understanding of who’s on the team, what their goals are, what their objectives are, and then letting them play to their strengths as a part of that team and then fairly compensating them and having their contribution be acknowledged. That is what I think we all want. And fostering that in an environment, regardless of how the team is organized, is what I think drives loyalty.

And then you layer on top of that as a value statement the idea that we value our lives. And this idea of work/life balance doesn’t make sense to me because I spend too much time working for that not to be my life. And so I want to be working in a way and in an environment that doesn’t make me feel like I’m working for the weekend or I’m waiting for five o’clock. And being dispersed and working remotely gives us the flexibility to spend extra time walking the dog at two o’clock if you believe based on your responsibilities that day, that’s not going to be a problem.

And then you may spend an extra hour after dinner wrapping something up and all your tools and everything you need to be as efficient as you were during the day is at your fingertips. And letting people have that choice and letting them have that freedom in an environment like southern Maine is awesome and it becomes a pretty good deal for everybody involved. So I think, I mean, I can’t say we’ve had perfect loyalty, but I can say that we try to offer one of the best games in town and we’ve got some pretty long-term team members.

Yury: You know, we talked a lot about good things and technology and the culture and loyalty. But over the years, what were the biggest challenges that you had to deal with or you wish you knew how to deal with at the time when you were faced with those?

Chris: Yeah. I think the biggest learning over the last decade, I mean there’s just so many. But if we were to focus in on just managing a dispersed team I think the biggest learning really had to do with not taking for granted all the things that are important in how a business organizes and runs itself. So having those standard operating procedures documented and having that translated into a project management system. And then having that project management system, something that everybody was comfortable with and using daily, and then letting and having people record their time against the tasks they’re working on. And then using that information to then feed it back to the team about where we are with stuff.

We had a person who through other experiences made some suggestions around how our meeting schedule works on a week to week basis. And so we changed the way we meet as a team where we have a routine now that works really well and that’s solved a lot of issues around just understanding where things are at.

We do a lot of handoffs on the team. So we’re moving, we’re getting a certain part of the project done, it’s going over to somebody else, they’re working on it, it’s going to someone else, they’re checking the quality assurance. It kind of passes along. So knowing when it’s coming to you and when it’s due is really important.

And so those processes and getting good at it took time, and it took things not going well. And then collectively looking back on that and say, okay, what worked and what didn’t work here and how do we fix it?

Yury: Well, you’re still hear, it sounds like you resolved all those issues.

Chris: I won’t say that we are where we will be 10 years from now. I think there’s still room to grow and get better at it, but I think we’re in a good place.

Rich: Well by then we’ll all have holograms anyway. I’m curious to know about how you meet with clients and if you’ve ever run into clients who are not comfortable with your remote lifestyle that they want to be able to go visit your office.

Chris: Yeah. Well if that is the case, we have an office, it’s just we’re not there very often. And I go there once a month to check mail and to make sure the plants are been watered. So we have a space to certainly entertain clients and talk. And it’s a beautiful space too. So that’s nice.

A lot of times we’re going to the clients, we’re going to their offices or we’re traveling with our agency partners to go to the brand team. And also, I mean, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the work that we do, you always flew to the client’s location. So there was a launch meeting that you had in person. And then there was a delivery meeting that you had in person. And sometimes you would deliver to your core team, they would provide feedback, you would make modifications, and then you would go back a third time and deliver to the senior team. And that happened, you know, whether the client was in England or in California or in Boston or in Lewiston.

And now to a large degree over the last – especially the last, I guess 5-8 years – that expense of travel has been seen I think is a little more of a luxury. And we find clients are less interested in meeting in person. Sometimes when we’re still delivering, it’s still important. And some of our larger clients like the Samsungs, the Verizons, the big clients, the big entities, they still expect those in person meetings and we’re certainly there and happy to do it. But we’re going to them. We’re flying to them so it’s not really an issue.

Rich: Gotcha. This may seem granular, but I’m just kind of curious as a business owner who may be looking to expand into some remote workers, what do you pay for and what is the employee responsible for paying for?

Chris: Yeah, well the IRS makes that easy. There’s a set of rules.

Rich: That’s a strange sentence to take out of context.

Chris: I agree, and I can see that. So they have some very clear rules on what is the definition between an employee and a contractor. So we start there. And so basically the expectation is the employer to employees provides the tools they need to do the work. And so we provide those tools. And so whether it’s workstations or whether it’s computers or the like, we pay a fixed amount for internet and we pay a fixed amount for cell phones. And we spread that out and it becomes a part of every paycheck. It’s included in there as an expense reimbursement. And we let people know, hey, if you think that this amount, if your actual expenses for your share of internet or share cell phone with the business is more than this, then let us know and we’ll reevaluate what our amount is or we’ll kind of take a look at that month’s statement and figure out if there was something unique going on.

So we pay cell phones, we pay for what we think is our sheriff cell phone and internet. We want employees to be working on our hardware so we buy the computers and the laptops and the screens and all that kind of stuff. For the ergonomics of the workstation and for the comfort, we need to make sure that’s all being adhered to and that they’re being provided with both the training to have a workstation that’s going to keep them healthy and also the tools to have that workstation and that space. And so we work with them and what they have already. And if they don’t have the tools needed, whether it’s a chair or a desk or something or what they have isn’t going to allow them to sit responsibly for 6 to 10 hours, then we need to provide that furniture. So it’s just doing anything you would do in an office just doing it in a different setting.

Yury: What about flying your employees to different conferences or paying for additional upscaling certifications or trainings and stuff like that? Do you still offer that as well?

Chris: We would love to when it fits in the budget. Absolutely. Yeah. And there’s been years that we’ve been flush and we’ve had everybody come in a couple of times a year and had a blast. And there’s been times when we haven’t. And so, I mean, that’s the ebbs and flows of any business, how much excess capital can be used for that versus the other things that we want to spend our profits on.

But that is I think a very valuable thing and having the team together in person at least a couple times a year is great. And it helps foster that. There’s a different level of awkwardness, too. You see people every day. But then you’re there in person and it’s different, and you’re kind of giving them a hug, but you haven’t really known them, and it’s a weird, it’s a different dynamic.

Yury: Or a fist bump right now.

Rich: Yeah. I know that Yury has a question that he loves to ask all our guests. So I’m going to ask one more question just so we can let him do that one. Just, what’s the number one thing that you miss, Chris, about a traditional workspace that you no longer have?

Chris: Gosh, what do I miss the most? I don’t want to say nothing. Because it is, it is like the great secret that I feel like the rest of the world hasn’t fully appreciated, because it is so nice to have that freedom of going into your own kitchen and getting a glass of water out of a cup and just, it’s your world. It’s fantastic.

But I think you know, and I was going to say there’s a routine that I used to have with work where I would, let’s say I was going to be at the office at eight, I would get to the parking garage or wherever I was going at like 7:15, 7:30 And I would sit at a coffee shop and I’d read the paper and I would kind of have that 30, 45 minutes to myself before I went into the office for 8-10 hours. And I’ve been able to replicate that. You know, I dropped the kids off at school and I have a place I sit and read the paper for 30 minutes and then I’m back at my desk. And when I’m back at my desk at 8:30 or 8:15 or 9:00, no one’s really too worried about that and I’m able to get the work done.

Rich: It sounds like you’ve really done a good job of replicating what we’re used to having as a traditional workspace office space in your remote life.

Chris: That’s the goal. That’s the goal. Yeah.

Rich: That’s awesome.

Yury: Well, Chris, phenomenal insights. Really appreciate you coming to the show. So this is the part of the show where I get to ask my favorite question. And the question is, if you could change one thing to improve the business ecosystem in the state of Maine, what would it be?

Chris: One thing to improve the business ecosystem in the state of Maine. So there is an enormous amount of logistical red tape and paperwork to be a business in Maine. I think it’s probably true of any state, but they don’t make it easy. There’s seven or eight taxes, there’s a half a dozen insurances. There’s compliance, there’s paperwork and there’s so much involved in doing that. And it starts when you have that first employee and it just seems to get bigger and more every year.

And I am a big fan of, mean I’m a business owner who likes process. Obviously. I like bureaucracy and I appreciate the role of bureaucracy and keeping things straight. But it could be easier. It could be more coordinated, it could be simpler. And if I was to choose between talking to the Department of Labor in the state of Maine versus the Department Labor in the state of Georgia or Texas or Virginia, I’ll choose Maine.

And every day we’ve got our act together a little bit more than what I’ve seen from some other States. Some bigger States you think they would be more organized at that because they’re bigger. But there seems to be, there needs to be a way that is streamlined. There needs to be like a single checklist or a single way in which employers, especially new employers, can simplify that process of compliance. It’s lawyers and accountants and advisors and bookkeepers and everybody in between trying to help us keep it straight. So that seems more than it needs to be.

Rich: Chris, this has been fantastic. If people want to learn more about you or about PortMA, where can we send them?

Chris: Portma.com, P O R T M A.com is our website. And we are on Twitter @PortMA and you can look us up at Portland Marketing Analytics or myself, Christopher Clegg on LinkedIn.

News

Fast Forward Maine Podcast

What Owners Need to Know About a Remote Workforce – Chris Clegg

Recent Podcasts