Welcome. My name is Shelly Reed. I am the manager of the Legal Services National Technology Assistance Project. And today we're here to learn about remote work remote work management. And I'm going to turn it over to our speaker, John Griner, who's going to give us an introduction to his team. Thank you, Shelly. So thanks everyone for joining today. Oh, sorry. I'm, sorry, this was. I'm John Griner and my colleague Jay Greco and I are joining from Just Tech, and we're going to help moderate a great panel today. Jay and I both have background working in legal services community and working remotely for sure. And I think in putting this panel together and this webinar together. I think we've learned a lot. We've recognized sort of some of the pitfalls and some of the successes with remote management. And I'm really excited to engage in some conversation today. We have some opportunities for some interaction, including a breakout session or two breakout sessions. One that's sort of more tech focused and one that's more managerial focused. Mona, can I hand it over to you? Yes, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mona. I am a supervising attorney of legal aid Chicago. I'm very excited to be a part of this panel. And I can just share that, you know, remote work has had a big impact on what I do and how I do it. I was a staff attorney in legal aid for about eight years and I made the transition as a supervisor about two years ago. And so I got to experience kind of both ends of what that was like working remotely during COVID. And so we've got a lot of great tips to share and ideas and I hope you benefit from this presentation. And I'll hand it off to Elinia. Thanks, Mona. I'm Egania Santos-Pryson. I'm the chief program and innovation officer at legal services of Greater Miami. And just like everybody, we had to pivot quickly to being remote. But in that process, I also changed roles I took, I oversaw intake during the beginning of the pandemic. But since then I've taken over a brand new team that we had to create from the ground up for our grants department. And so it was interesting to sort of have to build something new with new people onboarding being remote. And that's taught me a lot about how to sort of work in this space. And I'll hand it over to Satish. Hi, everyone. I'm Satish Nori. It's real pleasure to be here. I've been a legal aid attorney and manager for 20 years throughout New York City. And I spent a year and a half running a A2J tech company. And to me, I think this topic really represents the future of our work, how we do it, how we reach clients, how we survive, how we retain staff, how we allow people to grow into their roles and so on. So I'm really motivated to be here and to learn as much as I can and hopefully share some tidbits as well. Thank you, Satish. So, again, our webinar today is broken down into some other, you know, kind of the basics and for some folks, hopefully again this is, sorry. This is, you know, so the technologies you already have in place for others, there may be some pieces that still need some work. So there's going to be a bit of a tech focus. Then we're going to be spending some time talking about some of the real challenges in building and supporting and managing a remote team while maintaining quality services. And then spend a little bit of time talking about some of the policies and some of the enforcement mechanisms perhaps for, you know, supportive remote work. And as I mentioned, there are going to be two breakout groups. So as we go through this session, if you wouldn't mind sort of thinking about which direction you want to go. And that's going to be facilitated around table. We're going to have about 15, maybe a few more minutes for those breakouts. And then we'll, again, we'll sort of report back and I'm asking the panelists to reflect on sort of what they think some of the next steps are for the community. So our first ask of everybody joining is to share a little bit about your role in legal services. I'm not sure if the poll has been opened, but yes, there it is. So as that's wrapping up, you know, one of the, sorry, this poll is in the way. Actually, why don't we just share that out now. And so actually, so we, so we have about a quarter of the folks who are it staff, which is great. A quarter executive directors, a quarter managerial and then other professional staff so it's, it's, it's a good mix of folks which is wonderful. And I think sort of in the discussions that will really be helpful and in chat. So, please, feel free to, you know, comment add your questions thoughts as we sort of go through this webinar. And, and Jay is going to also be looking at that and trying to sort of bring that into into our discussion. Sorry, this slide is not advancing. Yeah.  I'm sorry, why is this. And I'm on pause so we've all been doing remote access in some fashion or another and, and we've had, you know, obviously some success with the pandemic we, you know, we pivoted hard and and maybe painfully for, you know, for quite a few organizations, in addition to all the, the, the personal sort of challenges that we had as individuals as as family members. But we want to spend a little bit of time on sort of the, the, the, you know, sort of the tech in terms of how we got here and, and sort of where we're going. And, but one of the, you know, a couple of the sort of other points here that I wanted to sort of hand over the, the, the, the mic to Mona on is, you know, the value of remote access what we've learned. And then, Alania to talk a little bit more about the challenges and satish, you know, moving, moving beyond the 1.0 version. So I'm on if you wouldn't mind taking us off. Thanks, John. So we know that there are so many, you know, values I think that go even beyond what we expected when people started working remotely, just to illustrate some, some of those values, the ability to allow hybrid work structure that allowed both the benefits and of being on site and working remotely to continue to continue to do so. More access to community partners and events that may have been previously hard to attend because we physically was the only way we knew how to kind of attend different events. And it allowed us to continue doing our work without the geographic kind of limitations that we used to kind of only work to deal with fire to COVID business continuity, where, you know, we got to continue focusing on doing the work we did, whether we were geographically in the same place or not. Those were not limitations that we were able to find ways to work around even the reality of not feeling great and being able to still work at least work a partial day. Those were all, you know, great values that we learned from that obviously have to be balanced with the challenges as well. And then opening up jobs to more people, which was another value that I know that we didn't kind of think about that did come from the reality of, you know, finding qualified people to do the work you do and you may not be limited to the physical location of where your office is. Great. Thank you. And, you know, I think with any great sort of new step forward, we have to keep in mind that things have to sometimes shift and we have to address challenges in a different way. I think some of the challenges with remote work is that some of that informal communication is easy to get lost, you know, the water cooler talk that people just knocking on each other's office door and popping in for a quick question. And so I think one of the challenges is making sure that you're being intentional with your communication, communicating more often and probably more frequently than you even did when you were in person. So you have to really think about the way that you're communicating how frequently you're communicating and what information you're getting from people when you communicate because it can also be hard to spot when someone is struggling, thought when someone is isolated or not really understanding the company or the program's culture or values or mission. So I think all of, you know, there's obviously tech challenges, which we're going to dig more into, but I think the big picture challenges are like, how do you maintain that connection with the people that you're working with? How do you maintain open lines of communication and still have an environment where maybe they're not knocking on your door but they're, you know, sending you a quick hey on teams or on, you know, to get on a quick meeting because they need to reach out. So I think those are the challenges you have to sort of grapple with. Thank you. Satish, you want to talk about next next version of remote work? Yeah, I think what I want to highlight here is that many of us were hoping this would go away. And that once we got further away from the heart of a pandemic, everyone would come back in person, and we wouldn't have to think about this. And so I think in many orgs, management, IT services, they had one foot in, one foot out into thinking and investing and committing to these types of conversations. And so moving beyond that, I think we have to now accept it's well past accepting that this is the future of the way we work. We have to bake this in. We have to think about this. And fortunately, plenty of people have done the homework. We just have to tap in to those resources and think about what's next and be intentional and commit to it because it's not going away. This is what people want. This is the way offices are going to function. And so we need to make sure that we do it the right way. Thank you. So, you know, I know that there's conflicting meeting today that's that's that's taken, you know, sort of it's tall I guess on on the number of folks are able to attend but want to quickly ask folks to share in chat, you know, one to three words maybe if it's four or five that's okay your top priority is, you know, when it comes to remote work, hopefully we've sort of given you a few thoughts already in terms of where, you know, where we're sort of either struggling or where we're just sort of making progress. So if you wouldn't mind sharing your, your thoughts in chat and and Jay is going to synthesize that a bit and in just a few minutes we'll come back to, to your, your priorities and that will help focus our discussion. Jay anything else you want to add before we move to it so as so keep keep working in chat but anything you want to add before you move on. Yeah, I think john, you pretty much got it covered. Any concerns, things you enjoy, you know, one to three words will get a pretty cool word called gone get a representation of what everybody thoughts are in a little bit. Thank you. So, the, you know, again, like remote access tech so this this can be, you know, some of some of the challenges we saw early on and hopefully everybody as satish is saying, I apologize for the weirdness with PowerPoint. There were issues early on with, you know, terminal servers or Citrix servers not having enough capacity, making, you know, making sure that you're providing enough resources, either centrally located in the cloud, or, or really sort of remotely with with folks who have laptops, internet. But we saw certainly organizations not get their VPN, sort of set up well. A lot of staff had and continue to have some challenges with with the VPN, disconnecting a lot of frustration. So making sure that you get that that basic tech right and making sure that that what you offer is fast and accessible. You know, generally speaking, I we've seen this the trend, you know, just accelerate further to cloud services and away from data and systems hosted in the offices and you know to the extent you can move away entirely from the local office infrastructure and also provides a little bit more resilience if there's, I don't know, a hurricane or, or some other disruption a strike. And, and then, you know, we, you know, continue to see this tension between the, the provider equipment and, and the privately owned equipment and typically at this point it's mostly mobile devices like cell phones and tablets that maybe privately owned, most providers have gotten the laptops out to staff, they were able to finally source them. And, and I think that, you know, we've, we've had other webinars with LSN tap and there have been other discussions, certainly around the risks of privately owned devices and it's not just direct security sort of exploitation where someone hacks into the device and gets access to the data but it's the risk of losing data as you know people, you know, change jobs or change roles. So, I think, you know, these are still topics that that most firms are grappling with at least one or more of them. I do want to suggest we're not getting in depth into security today but I really want to urge everybody to, if you haven't looked at it recently to look back to the security toolkit on LSN tap. Most everything in that toolkit is applicable today. And, and I will also ask that if you have questions, when you're going into the toolkit that you do reach out to LSN tap with those questions and we will see whatever you know what we can do to help address them. So that's sort of a little bit more of the basics and in to extent you have questions about any of this. Please, you know, feel free to chat we're going to have a bit more of a tech focus breakout as one of them, and we can talk more about about the challenges and some solutions. Elenia anything to add on on this slide. I think, aside from, you know, whichever route you choose whether it's VPN or remote desktop, and it may even look different for different users in your organization I think the biggest challenge that that we see with any of these technologies is consistency with how people are using them, consistency with your application of security measures so for example, you know people, not updating their passwords you're not using secure passwords or sharing passwords when they shouldn't. And I think you have to put in procedures and policies in place and continue to remind people that these are in place because it doesn't matter how good your technology is people are your biggest weakness. And at least a lot I know a lot of legally programs are growing. So I think doing just you know, one, one time like this is our policy isn't going to work. It should be part of your processes ongoing. So people know what the expectation is from them.  And I think that's the kind of analysis GMI device they're taking with them. Are they at the airport signing on to the airport Wi Fi are we providing hotspots. Those kind of like human components are still our biggest concern. Yeah. And, and, and again, training, we were going to talk a little bit more about training is probably and coaching and support is probably sort of one of the most critical pieces for security. You know, I didn't, it's mentioned more in the security toolkit but making sure as again more organizations have moved to multi factor authentication or single sign on which is a little bit easier it's a little bit more to get set up but a little easier from the or a lot easier from the user perspective. You know, certainly the mobile device management, you know, doing doing more to support the equipment that isn't living in the office full time. So many do you want to kick off since you started on the training, sort of your, your thoughts on managing remote tech. I think it, the training piece, you know, a lot of if you're an LSE funded program obviously you have to do your one big cybersecurity training every year. But we're getting into the habit of recording that and how you people watch that as part of their onboarding if they're starting after that. And making sure that you're training more frequently than you think you need to, especially with new staff. I have found very helpful with our organization is we do the big annual training, but we've also recorded sort of what I call like micro trainings like little mini videos to remind people of things or, because a lot of times that's much more digestible so if it's like a, you know, best practices with a password, maybe a two minute video on that versus they need to watch a whole one hour cyber security training to find that one piece of password information in there so just being really intentional with the training as well. We use a ticketing system internally to help respond to issues that folks may have outside the office. So we have a, we have a managed it provider, and they have a ticketing system, but what I found, if you're moving that route is that it's really great because it provides us a lot of different services than we would be able to have in house with the size of our team. But I find that we need to also manage the tickets internally because we sometimes need to help them prioritize. So we have a ticketing system, but also it goes through a shared inbox so I also get copied and and my legal solutions designer so everybody sort of on the same page about recurring issues things that need to be addressed, and helping people sort of understand the differences between, you know, our servers going down as much for priority than like your mouse isn't working those types of issues but it's important to have them because people need to feel like they're being responded to because we know what will happen is, if someone's at home with their work laptop and something isn't going away they expected to they're going to get on their personal laptop they're going to sort of get on a different Wi Fi provider and that's when you start to run into security with a good ticketing system, where people know that things are getting processed quickly is really important. I think you're the point you just added which is really a good one is that you know you have a good system but you still need that oversight that management of the tickets, really good point. And I mean for us, mobile device management has become a big sort of one of our biggest concerns going forward now because we have devices that are issued from the company but but people still access their phones and we're still grappling with that. We're probably going to be moving to a new provider but it's it's a concern of how much of people's personal data can also get wiped out if we buy that else GMI data, and that line of like, you know, people are people going to not want to use their cell phone do we want to limit that. So I think it's something people have to be concerned about but you need to come up with like what's your policy, how are you going to address this and does it work for your organization because cell phones are not going anywhere smartphones are not going anywhere and you need to have some level of control over over the security that is tied to those devices. Look at point and I think yeah we've seen a lot of folks do some limited deployments of mobile device management but, and then certainly the monitoring and remote monitoring and management software is maybe a little less problematic in some ways because it's just really helping you manage those devices and make sure that they're getting updated and patch. I think as you get into some of these topics and then again I think going back to sort of our point that this is now the, the, the, the sort of paradigm that we're going to be living with for the foreseeable future of this hybrid or remote work. Where it may have been reasonable for the pandemic to not necessarily address these mobile devices that are personally owned or maybe not configured or controlled by the organization. It's a big question I think that we ought to grapple with and maybe, you know, again, we're going to make some steps forward and find that it works or it doesn't work but I think as a community it's something we can't ignore. And then I don't know if, you know, again this sort of notion of the, you know, cloud based access and security and one of the things that that you know really is critical is that whatever applications you're using for managing and securing your devices that it doesn't. It shouldn't matter where the device lives. It's got to work, it's got to be managed. You know, anywhere in the world, certainly outside the office. And so that you don't have to worry about, oh, this device hasn't been in the office for a while and so it hasn't got the security patches because that's, yeah, well, maybe you can talk to that but that is a, that doesn't work. It's too hard, especially if you don't have a big staff of people just waiting to swoop in when a laptop comes into the office once once a week or something. And sometimes these things take time and if you have people who are limited time in the office they don't want to be handing over their device and now having downtime in the office or I think that's really important. Also for how people, you know, how valuable people think their time in the office is, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit later in the presentation but sort of making sure people are maximizing their time in the office. And I will say one of the things that comes up too is this sort of forces to look at all the different technologies all our different departments were using, because some of things, some of the programs were available in the cloud we just hadn't had them pre pandemic in the cloud, and making the move to making sure that all of them to the extent possible are in the cloud. For example, our finance department had a lot of older software that was very like, you had to go into the office to work on the on it and at the end of the pandemic we had VPNs but when we moved everyone over to laptops, there wasn't really or I'm sorry remote desktop and there wasn't anything for them to really remote into. So then we had to make sure that those programs were getting moved into the cloud so that they could work effectively from anywhere. And for us in South Florida that I mean I think this is becoming a problem nationwide but that's even in response to a storm you don't want your finance department to not be able to work because they can't access the server that's in your office so I think it's important to look at what you don't have in the cloud and if it's possible to move it there. Thank you. So, Jay, would you share. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, thank you everyone for putting your answers in the chat we're seeing you know some of those big concerns that everybody has with security and team building I know we all know that that kind of constant access can really be a double forward so balancing you know the availability of everybody being able to reach everyone but also you know having your own time to yourself feeling like you have a good work life balance zoom fatigue I think it's a really important one. Employee success that's tied into these, you know thoughts on team building, making sure that we're collaborating effectively. Yeah, it's not the most expensive word cloud, but I think we got we got some really good ideas here. Thanks everyone. Thank you. So the road tech issues. I think we touched on some of these but Elena do you want to, I don't know my, I have my PowerPoint is possessed apparently I would you want to kick us off on on this. Sure. You know I think the, the support issue is really important because, especially as people are home you want, you want people to be consistent with the way they're using your technology, and they have to feel like they're being supported by your program. If not they will go rogue, and they will start doing things that they're not supposed to be doing. So I think that African and inconsistent training for us was really important because I think this can all be really confusing, especially in our organization with people who did one thing one way for a very long time. And if people don't understand where they're supposed to be saving or where their SharePoint is or what's the one driver that can all also lead to. I mean we had somebody who did not know they weren't saving in the cloud, and then their computer died and they lost 18 months worth of work. So this is, you know, you want to make sure that people are understanding the technology they're using and that you're supporting them and training them properly to be able to to work at home successfully. And going back to Mona's point at the beginning, this is so valuable for so many of our employees and has helped us expand the pool of people that we hire. But we need to make sure that they're being supported in this so that they're successful, and it's not the technology getting in the way of the work. And Mona and Steve, I want to invite you in as well on this slide because I think you, you both have perspectives on a lot of this but I, you know, I appreciate, you know, one of the, you know, one of the items in the cloud was about sort of happiness and burnout and I think that's something that we were grappling with and developing this session. And to some extent, you know, technology can be a morale buster, right, or certainly a morale lower. And I guess is, you know, to me that's sort of the one of the most important reasons to get it right and to invest properly in training and in the equipment and services that that there's so many other challenges in delivering legal services and working with, you know, opposing council and building a good relationship with your clients. The technology getting in the way is like the last thing that you want but what are your thoughts on on some of these issues. Yeah, I mean I think there are easy wins, but they become hard. For example, 90% of your office uses iPhones, but your it and upper management decide everyone's going to start using Android for work. You know, that just creates an unnecessary obstacle. And often there's no explanation given. And if people can be convinced while Android is half the cost. Maybe they'll accept it. Similarly, you know, we all use to zoom for a long time during the pandemic. And then my prior organization decided we're going to use teams starting tomorrow. And it just seemed like another arbitrary decision that wasn't properly explained. And it required a lot of people to struggle with the new technology. When they had learned for 18 months how to use the prior one. And so, you know, from from our perspective if we're making these decisions, I think we should take into account where people already are, rather than forcing them to be resentful because of the change that seems arbitrary. Especially where there is a viable alternative right I mean like, yes, sometimes like MFA, maybe there is no viable alternative to helping secure that front door but your point about like sort of the, you know, different technologies that do the same thing. I will just share again a few anecdotes but, you know, of, well, they're not anecdotes really but just we've worked with some firms that really have, you know, for instance, okay, our staff, you know, they're, they're feeling really sort of up against the wall very stressed and one of the things they've asked for is to get max and get rid of the windows laptops and so they this one organization paid for like half the staff to move to Mac OS machines. And functionally, there wasn't really much of a difference but they were, they're meeting people where they were and it was, you know, a little bit more expense but frankly the support, you know, needs have gone down a bit for that staff because they were really, you know, motivated to work with and we've but we've seen other, you know, situations like that where, you know, like the iOS where it's just what they're familiar with don't make me learn something I really don't have to learn because I'm already learning, you know, a million things as it is. Just to underscore I think the really important points that have been highlighted already by everyone is that support doesn't always mean that you have to wait for people to ask for help I know so I'm someone that has no tech knowledge at all. And so I feel a little bit like I don't know if I'm qualified to be on this panel, but what I can share is I know what matters and I know the kind of things that I wish were there when I was a staff attorney, and the things that I know I need as a supervisor. And so I would just say and highlight, you want to have the kind of opportunities to help people whether it's switching to something new that they had no say in and they're not a fan of, or just knowing that they're having an it breakdown that they can't get over that you can kind of proactively talk to people and not that you have to wait for something to go wrong, and check on them and make sure they're familiar with the new things, and how they're working. I know for me when I was in office there were people that could come and check and say like, Oh, I think you're doing that wrong I think there's a better way to do that. Let me show you how to do that. The reality is we don't have that kind of opportunities coming. So you even need a higher level of like people involved and aware of kind of did that change go well was it worth it, to ensure that people aren't going to feel isolated, because when you're isolated by yourself at home doing something versus in an office where other people can chime in and help you. It's so much more demoralizing. Thank you. Anything else anyone wants to add. So, you know, we talked a bit about sort of the volunteers and I know satish actually on some prior presentations that he's made is talked about some law students that that he worked with during the pandemic that he never met in person and they and a client that they never met in person. It's like, there, there are sort of all these opportunities as Mona was saying to that, you know, that, you know, how we can sort of increase the sort of the pool of colleagues and and lost, lost students and whatnot that who we work with. But making sure that we understand and I think that this is sort of again but an issue it touches on security, you know, how volunteers are going to access your technology, how they're going to make sure that that data that they generate while working with you stays on your systems. What are the particular risks of their using for instance maybe their own laptops because that's where we again we still see providers not, you know, not so much providing new laptops or even use laptops to volunteers or they're expecting volunteers to sort of promote and access to what you know what what access you give them as volunteers are you giving them just enough so they can do their job or you may be giving them more than they need because you don't you haven't really sort of dealt with sort of the security implications of a volunteer versus a staff member and attorney or other. Okay, so we'll move on to the kind of a. Again, I've made the trickier subject this, you know, the whole sort of challenge moving, you know, moving forward to improve morale and happiness and and maintaining connections with each other. So I'll, I'll hand it over so onboarding and offboarding I think this was a really important part. You know, one of the things I think we grappled with with onboarding was part of our onboarding was not just the initial like documents and all that but sort of making sure that they everyone met all the right people that they knew who they needed to go to for all these different issues. And one of the ways that we decided to do that is, you know, making sure that when people start even though we're remote they're going to start in the office to sort of get immersed in all that and have a chance to learn all of that. But it didn't really work initially because we weren't making anybody else be in the office. So there wasn't a lot for them so the onboarding was sort of not succeeding in the way that we thought it would. And so I think we've changed our intention around that and maybe condensed used to take over maybe a couple of months now happens over a period of a week everybody's on hands in the office and making sure that somebody is feeling sort of like they're being brought into into a team versus they're sort of just hired, given a laptop and either sent into an empty office or sent home and not really immersed in that process but we also had to update our onboarding process to make sure that things that were like very paper heavy are now also like DocuSigns or web documents that you can access so that it is easier onboard especially because we have onboarded interns and volunteers from all over the country. So it's not always possible for people to come into our office. So we've had to think through each of those steps in the process like what can be done online and what do we really need people in the office for or intentional meetings. Any thoughts on the offboarding too while you're at it? I think offboarding has been an opportunity for us to learn about and improve our processes because we had people who were really hired for a one year position. So I think that when they're leaving there, they can be very honest, but they talked about the challenges of being onboarded and what they were comfortable sort of sharing so we can improve that process of like it wasn't, I didn't feel like I was really brought into the fold and I think making sure that you're collecting that feedback from people so that you continue to improve your system and and making sure that when they're meeting with anybody about offboarding and leaving. First of all, I think one piece that goes back to the inventory which is making sure you're gathering everything they got while they were there because a lot of people got things piecemeal as we've sort of adjusted, but also making sure that you're really getting from them. Everything that any roadblocks that they hit and any suggestions they have because people leave for a lot of reasons but they usually have thoughts on what works and what didn't work while they were in your organization. And this is something that you, I think it's important to not just be like oh did you like the work and not like the work but like, were you supported in doing the work did you feel like the communication existed the technology was supported that all needs to be part of your offboarding process. And who'd like to take the lead on the communication responses I know that this was sort of topic I think we're all very interested in. I can start with just kind of highlighting how it becomes so much more important when you're not on the same space because space because you don't see where people are at, how they felt about what you sent them or what you asked them. The need is even higher to be, you know, responsive and in a timely way right, especially as a supervisor, when you're trying to get a hold of an employee and you don't you can't look out your window to see are they in the office are they typed in something are they busy with something having lunch, you need to know so I think setting expectations is very important in this role so that staff can meet those expectations and not kind of be surprised because the reality is people have very different expectations about what is responsive. What is, you know, worthy of communicating. So I know for myself I said it very clearly what I want to know if you're not in the office I wanted on my calendar, so I'm staring at my calendar all day long. I want to know from this time to this time you're an appointment, you're unavailable you're in a hearing. Because the reality that we have to make up for just the reality that we can't know right because we're not in the same space anymore, and people as much as it might feel like oh that's more work to do. They appreciate being more aware of kind of where people are at when to expect responses and how to communicate. What is the best way to communicate is such an important thing to know, because we can't assume it's email it's chat. Some people might say really it's phone or video so I think those discussions need to be had so expectations can be set, and then it's not so difficult for people to meet be able to meet those expectations. You want to add anything on on the responsiveness or. I just want to say I think it also a piece of that also goes back to work life balance, which is. I think again, people taking leave was it clear like they weren't there didn't matter, but I think it can start to feel people start to feel burned out if they're like, but I took today off I have three people called me on teams. My phone keeps pinging because people aren't aware of where people are in their day and I think it is really important for people to set those expectations like I am out today I'm not responding today. So I think managers and managers, we need to be respectful of that, because I have heard and certain occasions where it's like, there was just a quick teams call like what does it matter and it's a. If a person's taking a random Tuesday off, you have no idea if it's because they're dealing with a family illness if they're dealing with their own illness mental health issues, like it may not seem like a lot to you but you need to be aware of like where people are and why they're taking that time off. And so I think managing those expectations to as a supervisor like I can expect somebody unless there's an emergency which I always tell my team like that that's different but I'm not going to reach out to you for something unless I absolutely have to have a response because I'm going to respect those boundaries. I would just add two points. One is, there is this great bargain that we're making, which is number one, people can work remotely. And I think management, in many cases, expects the return of that bargain to be okay but you can be available all the time, because you're not coming in. And those expectations are mismatched. And I think that there is, you know, an argument to be made on both sides on one side it's just because I'm working remotely doesn't mean I'm going to answer every ping 24 hours a day. On the other hand, it has to be okay you're working remotely at the minimum you've got to be available working hours. And then the second point is, you know, we are doing client service work, for the most part. And if there's no benchmark for how, what's our minimum level of service for clients, and should our clients hear the excuse, Oh, but they're working remotely. So I'm going to get less. You know, that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable to our funders. It's unacceptable to our mission. And so I think these expectations have to be made clear upfront. Otherwise, client services are going to suffer, and morale is going to suffer, and you know people are going to leave, and we're not going to be able to accomplish our missions. And I think, you know, in discussing this this idea of having different measurements of performance, you know, depending on the role so you know thinking about each each role, and maybe even each configuration, or, you know, there may be some case handlers who are in the time versus remote or hybrid, or, you know, on intake, or reception. You know, I think that that, again, from our discussions that you know being very intentional also about sort of how we're going to measure that you know performance is important and getting agreement with the employee about that that they understand. You know, their, their, well, key performance indicator, if people are used to that term but sort of how, how focused our, you know, sort of evaluations going to be instead of evaluating them on a million, you know, different criteria and that's that's next to impossible. And I guess the, you know, again, because of the word cloud we did I mean I think the employee happiness piece so that who'd like to maybe talk about the balancing employee needs and we already sort of touched on sort of high quality client service that we've got to maintain that but so how do we how do we allow for that balance without losing our, I don't know about mission but losing sort of that quality. I mean, I think we can be flexible and creative in making sure that all the hours in a workday are covered. So not everyone can work remotely on the same days. I think in too many orgs, it's just the Wild West, like, oh, no one works on Fridays. Too bad. And that's unacceptable if we're going to deliver client services because people still get evicted on Fridays people still have court appointments on Fridays and hearings. And for some clients Fridays their day off so we have to be available so they can meet with us.  This is not going to work. So we have to balance that out just like with vacation schedules in the pre pandemic era. Everyone can't go on vacation the same week. We have to have coverage. And maybe that's one way to balance these two, you know, competing interests is, okay you can take that time, but there's going to be a balancing which is that someone else can't take that time we have to work it out as a team. Is there is there any, I guess from your experience from all of you I guess any sort of risk that maybe one or two members on a team are sort of getting more of their needs met than others who may not be as vocal about about it. I mean, I, you know, because if, you know, I completely agree that the idea is that you really have to do some of that balancing on a team basis that you know that we have to have coverage we have to, you know, again be thinking about how and when clients need us, but any any concerns about sort of the employees that may not be asking for, for, you know, more of what they need.  No, no, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, in a legal context, I think it's an HR issue, like frontline managers should not be making calls on whether one person versus another gets time off because of some issue illness need, you know, you've got to have a process so that these calls are made, and they shouldn't be made by the other person directly supervising them because it's too fraught too many things go wrong. And if you're big enough, you know your org is big enough, you should have a decent HR person or team who can just field those kinds of requests, and then at the kind of work supervision level no one should have to make those calls. It's too difficult. I completely agree with what Satish just said, I think the only nuance that I would add to it is that, and maybe it's because of the position I was put in recently which is I was supervising somebody who'd been with the program over 20 years, and somebody that been with the program for less than 20 months. So, when you have a team of those kinds of people the person who's been here 20 years has sort of the capital and the program to be like I need like an accommodation or I need some additional support. I need to work from home on certain days. And I think that's where this all loops back I think I'm in my world for communication because that's why it's important to keep those lines of communication open because even if the employee who's only been here 18 months doesn't want to ask for something because they're afraid it's going to come off as though they're, you know, not doing their job or they're just scared they don't understand the culture. You're hearing when they're saying, you know, I'm going to make this such a bit like my son's been sick for two weeks and I don't know what's wrong with him and then and then you're like, well, I can't approve it but is there something I could do to support this and then if the person says, well if I could change my work from home days because it coordinates better with my partner or my spouse or my parent somebody who can help me. Then I think what HR and say like is this the kind of request we can approve but it's keeping those lines so that even though you're not just I don't just really nearly approve things for my team but hearing when they have needs and then helping when people don't feel maybe as empowered to go up the ladder and say like what can we do to accommodate this person. Yeah, the only thing I would just add to this great discussion is that it does come down to transparency to right as much as you can legally share is. People don't know why you decide what you decide but if you can give a rationale and explanation as to why this person is remote and this person is not. You know better about the decision, even if they may not like it. I mean at the end of the day, when it is high quality client service that is the goal it you know the supervisor supervisors got to make the call and hopefully people will support it because you know you were transparent about what you could share and why it had to be the way it was. Mona you're I mean again to the extent that we established some measures of whether what sorts of accommodations will will be approved and and maybe where you are in your on like I've been onboarded and I'm working well, six months in or something like that or is I mean so that they're they're more objective they're less seemingly arbitrary. Right, right. And I think just I find as a help is just talking through the rationale of why a decision just has to be what it is. So people can understand what they wouldn't understand on their own because people will always assume until you tell them kind of some basis to to why that is. And a lot of it sometimes will be out of your hands right it might just be HR decisions and, you know, sometimes that's the transparent that's what you just have to share is that this was a decision beyond my control, and it is what it is I said what I said. And just, you know, doing the best that you can. I mean it's ideal to say that everyone will always be satisfied 100%. That's not reality. It's the best that you can to kind of, you know, hit the moving target so that people feel heard people understand, because in my experience, not knowing why certain things happened was kind of like 70% of the battle and why people were unhappy with something or why it was, whether it's accommodations or, you know, just demands of when to be in office when not things like that. I think and you mentioned actually sort of like the extent for an office to teach that, you know, like the extent you can share certain things you can't share as a supervisor or management can't share and so that there is that sort of tricky balance but that that that existed long before COVID. But it sounds like communication, communication, communication and sharing what can having articulated, hopefully ahead of time some of the criteria for allowing certain accommodations will help at least increase understanding if not acceptance. Tish, could you just sort of share with folks what you because I think you sort of brought up this this sort of concept of the lowest common denominator what what your thoughts thoughts were that I think resonated with all of us. Yeah, one quick point on accommodations, I think you know, there's this misapprehension of what an accommodation is.  An accommodation is, you're going to do 100% of your job. What can we do to allow you to do that. Right. And so I've got an accommodation request before like I only want to work three days a week. That's not an accommodation. Right. I don't want to work a different job. I don't want to show up on any zooms, like I've literally received these kinds of requests, and it's like that's not an accommodation. Like we literally have to show up on zoom to work together. But is there something that helps you do you need a bigger monitor so that the zoom time isn't as tiring. And so I just wanted to make that point, like in terms of what we expect and making clear what accommodations are really about because a lot of people I think, understand what an accommodation at work is, you still got to do 100% of the job. And especially mission driven work like ours it's critically important, everyone shows up. So the lowest common denominator trap I think is the tendency to just say okay, this is the least tech savvy person on my team. So everyone's going to work at that level. And that's really difficult to maintain and to grow and to progress and to deliver, you know, client services at a high quality level. And also I think I would add that the lowest common denominator that the least tech savvy person often takes up the most time for everybody else for IT for managers for HR, for various reasons there could be a resource issue. And, and so another way to look at this is to say, okay, the lowest common denominator the least performing person the least tech savvy person is going to be in a category of their own. There's very little we can do to invest, or we don't have the resources to really bring them up to speed. Everyone else shouldn't be at that level. Instead let's aim for the middle where most people at and we aim for the middle the high you know tech savvy people the high achievers they're going to be okay. The vast middle will be able to have time to learn and to grow into these kinds of models and tools. And then you know we don't waste time and energy to the same degree that you know we're tempted to do to focus all our energy on that one person who can't get their laptop on. So we have to send people to their house, or, you know, maybe there's a, you know, another fix but we've got to move away from that model and I think the trap is that you know, this is how we see our clients we want to help the most vulnerable person. And so we're, we have a tendency to want to help the most vulnerable person on our staff on our teams. And that's not productive. And I think it leads to success for our orgs or for our clients. I agree I mean I think like what's an accommodation for the lowest common or the lowest performing tech wise person might be that they you know here you are here's your office and you know, you know, come on in. Let's get away from the remote work. The other part of it though I think we talked about this is that sometimes we talked a lot about training and actually we're going to move on to this next slide. But the, there's training and there's coaching. And so you might also think about how do you get, get your staff who may be sort of dragging a little bit technologically more comfortable with with the trainings that you're doing because I've certainly had experience and some really unusual unexpected feedback from folks. You know, from some coaching programs that we did in years past to just help people feel confident that they can learn the technology and maybe, you know, teach them how to learn technology. So there's, you know, so maybe to look at that too but there may be people who just start are not really open to that. And I don't know, you know, that that's, that's maybe more of an HR discussion then. But I think, so on this slide, I think we've talked and we're, I want to, I guess need us to sort of accelerate a little bit. We talked a lot about training. So maybe we'll sort of leave that there, but do you want to talk a little bit, you know, it's maybe like a matter or so on the, on sort of the meetings and sort of how you meet on certain topics and so forth. I've been very intentional about setting one on one meetings because I do think people are less likely to just pop in and ask you questions. And so I think you have to, you cannot wait for them to just bring you something because usually they'll bring you the thing that's on fire. And while I'm happy to help you with the thing that's on fire. I want to know about all the other things that aren't and really have a handle on on what you're doing. So it, and it helps me, I start off on my meetings with like just a personal check in. And I think that goes to all the things we talked about about them wanting to come to you with questions. But I think also it helps to build trust. And it really is very conversational so I schedule probably 10 more minutes and I think I'm going to need because I want us to make sure we have some time to just like talk about what's going on with them what they do for the weekend what are those kinds of things. And I think when we're really busy and I know in legal aid we all are, it can feel like oh my God I don't have these 10 minutes to give, but those 10 minutes are the foundation for all the other communication. And if you're just doing that every week you're really establishing a rapport with the people you work with. And that's what helps me figure out sort of like where people are. I also use one on one meetings to track deliverables. I think one of the things that some people in our program are hung up on it's like, we have teams so sometimes you have people like, well they were on yellow and red and I don't know if they're available and then because you know on teams you can see who's available and who's away and who. And I think that's important I think if you have somebody who's always unavailable and never around that's a problem, but I also think it in the office people get up from their desk and go make themselves a cup of coffee. And they're not, nobody was checking yellow, red or green and figuring out where they were. So they can do the same thing at home and step away for 10 minutes to go make coffee and fill up their water bottle. So if you focus on outputs I think that's where you can really track performance. And that's what those meetings are it's, here's the things that we said last week or last month or whenever you're going to meet that you were going to do where are we on those what's going forward what are the roadblocks where do you need support. And that's literally how we structure the agenda what are you working on what are upcoming deadlines, where roadblocks that you need support for me. So we keep those we use one note so we keep track of those in one note. And then there's a record of all of our meetings and I can, it helps me put their evaluation together it helps me stop like, we've been dragging this one issue through for one on one meetings maybe this is something we need to escalator or come up with a different plan on. So just being really intentional with that communication. And I think that sort of helps build the long term rapport and communication. Other thoughts on one on one meetings and also sort of those difficult conversations. I was just going to add that one on one meetings are like the highlight of my work week, because it is the chance for me to like see the people that I don't get to see if I'm working remote. And I want to believe my staff feels the same way but I felt this way even when I was a staff attorney that you just we just don't have the chances to check in and talk to people. And one thing I would just add is that like, having a one on one, like you need to be on video, you can't be talking to a book screen, which I know I had happened with some people. They were just always off video that was the expectation and I was like, we got I got to see you like I want to see you I want you to see me I get that there's exceptions to that that happen. You know, you're not feeling well, but the expectation starts at, we see each other because that's how we would work together that's how we build a relationship.  So just kind of highlighting those realities. And I think just kind of talking about like, well, I'll stop there because I don't want to keep going and I know we have a lot to cover. Thank you. And, you know, on, I think we've talked a little bit about boundaries and burnout and sort of like the responsiveness issues, you know, we're not 24 seven right like how, but any, any, you know, sort of quick comments on on boundaries and burnout. So do you want to share. I think the one on ones are a great chance to even see where people are at I know that I will use those opportunities to check in and make sure people are, how's your week, what's your workload like. What is it like so just, and having boundaries is important and making sure that things are not 24 seven and explaining to people. If I'm emailing you at 9pm it's only because that's when I had a chance to do it. Do not respond. I don't expect you to respond. So making it very clear that work time is work time, non work time is non work time. And you have to kind of follow what you say, right. So, Well, it's interesting because as we were talking about sort of accommodations you have to do 100% of the job but it may be that, you know, I do take a three hour break in the middle for some childcare responsibilities and I come back and so 9 o'clock is part of my normal day, whereas you might work straight through to, you know, five or six, and that's it, you know, and so it's. Yeah, I mean I think maybe it's the diversity of our of what our normal work patterns are. And maybe making sure that everybody understands when we are normally available, you know, when we're normally working so that we have a sense of, you know, this, you know, this person's maybe stressed out there's something to stop at nine o'clock like no they're actually just, as you said, just getting to it because they're scheduled. And I, again, I think we talked about measures of success and, and, you know, client making sure that that sort of how how we work with our clients and the outcomes or how are the staff we supervise work with clients and the outcomes they achieve. You know that that can't be negatively impacted but any any thoughts you want to share there. I really add that, you know, it kind of starts with where that employees at I feel like to be truly successful in measuring success. You have to know where each person is at and what is going to work for where they're at. Some people there. They're not going to be able to offer the best quality service at home versus in the office. And vice versa. And so I think it just starts with understanding where someone is at what the goal is, and then making sure you can meet that goal and the goal is not being compromised because of where they're at. So, and that's where accommodations come in that's where a team building comes in of, Well, you can't do this is there someone on the team that can do it. Everyone knows collectively, you're not on your own, you have people you can count on and ultimately we want to support each other as we're going through what we're going through. But that's kind of where I've seen it fall short is when you don't take into account where someone is starting from to set some goals of what success looks like that may or may not catch what ultimately we want to do which is assisting our clients wherever they're at. And then it also takes into account. Where's your client at. You may have clients that just need in person contact. If that's what they need, then you have to be able to address that. So it goes both ways. And, you know, it's a compromise and it's constantly reassessing because I will say what I did two years ago when we started in this remote world is different than what I do now, because more of us are coming into the office with hybrid opportunities. So we have to reassess to make sure we're not losing out in what is the best way to do our job. And yeah, I think sort of that really important point about the client and how comfortable are they talking over the phone and doesn't change based also on the nature of their case right and the kind of relationship you need to develop and, and maybe you know, best practices developed there, you know, these are some more likely sort of needs of clients based on, you know, on the on the matter or other indicia so that we aren't assuming that, you know, that we can work with clients initially maybe in the office and then remotely or whatever you know, sort of the variations might be. But yeah, so thank you. So team building and again this was, you know, kind of interesting. We talked a little bit about the, I think already the video sort of elements importance of that. And, but maybe we could talk a little bit about a little bit more if there are other comments on camaraderie and building sort of loyalty to the team to the organization. You know, how do you do that in a hybrid or remote environment. But I think one thing we've done is that we try to have when you're having, you know, people, when the people do come in there in the office, building meetings around everyone being there because there is sort of informal chatter and stuff that can happen. So, again, maximizing your if people are hybrid when they're in the office, making sure that don't assume that it's necessarily going to happen, especially if you have a bunch of new people who've all started, you know, during the pandemic and haven't had that much time to interact in person, scheduling a lunch or, you know, bringing in pastries in the morning and having everybody sit for 20 minutes and have coffee and maybe talk about what projects are working on. And building that sort of, because then once it's built people will sort of I think run with it on their own, but you have to make sure that you're giving the space and the opportunity for that to happen. There's a lot of things. I check ahead. Oh yeah, I was just going to caution that there is nothing worse than a forced social thing on zoom. It's like, you know, in the beginning they were fun the ice breakers and the games. And now I feel personally like I can't do it anymore. I don't want to do another icebreaker on zoom. I don't want to play trivia, you know, it's just getting to mind numbing. And so I guess you have to know your audience like what it what do people want to do. How do people want to interact.  How are you going to build a team if half the people have their cameras off so another challenge that we first have to overcome before we can build teams is like, do people even want to engage in this way. Other other ways like a weekly lunch might be better than five check ins a week on zoom. So, you know, people we just have to be open and know our audience, who are we working with. I was going to say the teach hit the nail on the head because I was going to also share, you have to have your team buy into what it is that is going to make them feel like they work together and they do it well. And if it is very top down like we're going to have an event or even a social in person event. And you should come, but no one kind of had to say in what that event how it got planned what it is how much it's going to cost. You're going to miss your goal. So I think you really have to get buy in from the team like what are the things that we want to do. And from there, there's so many examples of things that can work well, you know, be an in person lunch. And I do think that these things sometimes only work if they're in person sometimes they work well remote. But the reality is that we all recognize that being in person has a value that we did lose being remote. And it was great to not have to be in person and talk to people. We still enjoy it and I know I had staff that were starting out remote who never met in person were like jumping at the opportunities and we said, we are now going to have a mandatory semi mandatory monthly lunch of our team and it just opened up the door to create more social events and opportunities. And people started to go out for coffee together the days that they were in the office. They started to plan their days together when they'd be in the office. So I think a combination of what your where your team is at like can you meet physically, take opportunities to do so during lunch hour if you think no one's going to stay after work because people have childcare issues people have other commitments, make it because it's that important for the team to feel like they are part of a team, like that people care about what's happening to you in your life outside of your work. And then obviously remote trying to create informal ways, you know whether they're the one on ones or just, I know that you know the zoom games are also to me are just like I don't know how to make that a good opportunity. But just being creative to find what way are people going to feel like they're connecting with their team is ultimately how you know if you have a good idea or not. That will hopefully work and sometimes it's your team that will tell you that you might not have those answers as a supervisor so you just need to hear what they have to say. And just just because I'm looking at time on kind of move us through it but like again office days planning them out to make making sure that they're that they make sense that you know that you know and that you with real estate limitations that you don't have, you know three teams if you don't have enough space to have all the teams in the office three teams can you know competing for that limited space on a given day so you know we've probably all seen that but we need to sort of be more thoughtful of it we I think we hit on sort of orienting new staff in the office well if most of the folks aren't there what's what's the value is that maybe even demoralizing. And then I think the hybrid sort of team issues that we were talking about was just, I think doing more to make sure that the tech in the office is fully supportive of those who are in the office on a given day working with those who are remote. It's, it's really sort of making sure that these sort of maybe demoralizing like I can't even join this meeting issue is, is, you know, is addressed and and when I'm in the office I feel like I both get the benefit of being in the office and I can work well with my colleagues who aren't. Again, unfortunately, I think I mean well done if we've had a really great conversation so I'm just going to kind of go through this slide. We were we were thinking about, again, sort of some of the top policies. Certainly, you know remote user policy a lot of organizations have developed some of these policies Shelly and LSN top has, has collected quite a few there. Certainly a lot of universities publish their policies as as drafts that you can you can access. Certainly having a remote use policy so that that might include a lot of your basic security and and and even sort of how you access CMS for instance if if you're allowed to do reports when you're outside the office or not. The data storage policy that we were sort of talking about that throughout that you know these personally on devices making sure that we know where and how data is stored and so you reduce natural policy and probably a practice training around all this. You know, we, we, this is not strictly just whether you're hybrid or remote but certainly that this did destruction policy, thinking about those, those devices out there that are maybe personally owned. How do we make sure that that data is is destroyed when it when it should be or uploaded and destroyed. So something, you know, addressing sort of our remote, all the devices that are sort of in your ecosystem whether they're owned by the organization or by people personally but that you have something methodically work through in terms of what those, what those devices are going to manage whether it's it whether it's a user, some organizations have just sort of given sort of, you know, form to staff to sign this is what I'm going to do I, I kind of think we want to make management of devices as easy as possible for for users that they don't get into the it business but but certainly spending some time to work that through so you know. Also maybe where your gaps are and what you need to work toward. Again, on a lot of these policies I would recommend going to the security toolkit on L center. So breakout groups, and I apologize because I think we're going to have to keep this to like 10 minutes instead of. Sorry, 15 but so if you could. Yeah, choose sort of which breakout group you're going to get into actually Jay, I'm not sure if I'm stepping on your time right here but will then will then send you to your breakout groups which will be very intimate. So the poll is sending people, so we do have the breakout rooms available, and you may select which room that you want to go to the sea room one and room two. Yes, we lost our options so room one will be supervision room to will be software I apologize I'm not sure what happened there. But everyone can go to break out rooms there's a. If you click the there's four little window grid down at the bottom bar of your zoom window, and you can select which room you would like to participate in. If anyone has trouble please message me in chat and I will certainly assist. I need you want to do the report back. And your next thoughts, you know, next steps. Thank you. Folks another minute. Yeah. And I guess I should reshare my screen so we've got folks are coming back. Would you like me to send a bump to them to. Yeah, would you. Thank you. Okay. And hopefully you can see my screen. Yes. Okay, great. By the way, the, the issue you're having with the. The advancing slides. Yeah. Shelly, do you remember that was happening to more than one of the other people that have been presenting I don't it's happened like at least once or twice before. It has, it has, and I have not been able to find any solution. I haven't seen anything. No, it's not you at all, but I have no idea what it is. Fair desire. Okay, well I feel better. Because it looks like it's boss. Oh, it's so we had some very intimate conversations. So would you sort of share share your sort of report out and just and thoughts on sort of next steps. Sure, so we had a great conversation, Mary. It was just a John and I and Mary, but I thought it was really interesting because Mary shared, you know, VPN and remote desktop experiences in the recent past and sort of the pros and cons of both. So that is actually a discussion of like, what, what you sort of sacrifice in terms of when you say people should be doing something but if you're it's hard for them, or if the system is set up so like it's logging people out, are people actually going to be following those, those protocols that you've put into place and making sure that your it is really working in a way that supports the people that are working and in a way that it can be productive and do their job so it really underscored the things we talked about today and in a real use case. And I think just my, my final thoughts on this are. I think we've talked about it remote work isn't going away but also when you when you see studies on remote work and who it benefits I mean this is really crucial for women really crucial for minorities, people with disabilities. People able to work in places where they may not be able to afford to live. So there's so much value to it and it could bring so many valuable candidates that there's so there's concerns there's issues to work through there's things we have to be intentional about, but it's worth doing because of the value that it brings to the people we employ, and then ultimately the clients we serve. Thank you. Mona and Satish. I think Catherine volunteered to report back. Oh, great. Catherine. Thank you. Yes. So, in our group, we just some of the challenges with supervising people who are working hybrid schedules, as well as just totally from home. One of the main challenges we all concur on was the fact of whether or not they really are working. How do you do that and a manner in which you don't cause them to want to quit or to get yourself in a situation with a union issue. And so we talked a little bit about some of the ways that we can go about handling that and one of the things that we pointed out was that we utilize timekeeping. And then matching up the work product with the timekeeping records. I also mentioned that I utilize two factor authentication logins as a way to know when they start and stop work, as well as teams and slack, just knowing when a person is about, you know, the little button that we talked about earlier in the day, whether they're available or not. You can see that other things that we discussed are just the challenges of younger people coming into the workforce and having to work remotely is a challenge for them because often they just don't know how to navigate. And so to do that, I suggested we utilize planner Microsoft planner is a great way to issue tasks. And they can go in and give you updates on, you know, where they are in the process and whether they're completed an assignment, which also in turn helps the first problem which is, are they really working. So, just really interesting conversation I think, but the one takeaway that I don't really have that everyone seemed to have is just working with unions and the challenges of working with unions in the states that include those. Yeah. Thank you Catherine so much. And I just want to share out. Sorry, my, the, our email addresses very asked about that so please feel free to to contact any of us really appreciate the folks are able to join today and and certainly folks who may watch the recording of this if you have questions. Feel free to reach out to us to certainly to visit Ellis and tap.org and reach out to the team there if you have any sort of additional thoughts or suggestions for how we might extend our work in this regard and helping the community please please share those two. Thank you very much Shelly anything you want to say to sort of wrap up. Well, I just wanted to say thank you to all of our speakers and all to all of the attendees I know there were other meetings that were taking people's attention today so thank you for taking the time for our meeting. If you want to know what events we have coming up of course you can always go to our website ellison tap.org click on the events link and you'll see all of the upcoming webinars for the rest of the year. And of course we always throw in a few at the last minute, you know when we find about that we have a need for an office hours. So, thank you so much appreciate your time and I hope you have a great afternoon. Bye bye everyone.


Hey guys, it's Nate, A.K. The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We are looking forward to one of the biggest, if not the biggest, icon pack yet today in FIFA 23 and that is the 89 plus prime or World Cup icon that was added to the code a couple of days ago and today would be the perfect day for EA to drop it. So we're gonna talk about the potential of that SBC coming today and how of course it will impact the market. SBC fodder prices and also will icons be dropping today? Will there be additional panic selling on the market and maybe more drops on these future stars cards because of this SBC coming out of the game? I think that's probably gonna happen. So we'll talk about that and of course we have to cover yesterday's crazy content for a Saturday, a dual flashback SBC Chris Smalling with Phil Jones inside of it and the very interesting Future Stars Academy upgrade 82 plus player pig that is overpriced. But again, EA's doing EA things and I wanna talk with you guys about that because this is interesting but expensive. So we'll be speaking about a lot today, especially related to the market in the second half of the video as well. But first, let's talk about this 89 plus icon pack coming today. So if you're excited for that pack today, hit the thumbs up and if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button. This is the pack we're talking about just to cover the basics really fast. 89 plus prime or World Cup icon pack. Oftentimes we see this codes added a couple days before and these icon packs have most oftenly been dropping on Sundays for the past like month and a half. Basically since the new year, Sundays have been the day where we either get hero player picks or icon packs. Now this one's big because it's the first icon pack that is only prime or World Cup. We had the 88 plus mid-primer World Cup the past couple of weeks. Now we're graduating up to another one. Now the 89 plus is gonna be a lot of primes in this guys, there's obviously not a lot of World Cup icons. There's just a few, but this is exciting cause it's just primes in those World Cups and it doesn't, you know, the 89 plus aspect this doesn't take out any prime icons, only three of the World Cups. But if you take a look at the price of these primes, there are a lot of cheap prime icons.  A lot of two to 300,000 coin prime icon cards and that's where the question is where is this going to be priced? Because you've of course got the R9, you've got the Pele, you've got the Hullet, these guys that are multiple million coin cards that everybody hopes they're gonna pack today from an icon pack, right? But of course you do have the guys on the other end that are about 100,000 coins like Cliver, Trezagan, Sharer, that a lot of people are gonna be packing instead of the big boys. So we keep thinking about a price for this and really I've come down to the guesstimation of 350,000 coins because of how much those primes are unless EA wanna go out and make this SBC really, really cheap today and really cause some chaos on the market. I think it's gonna be around 300,000 coins. So again, to prepare for that, what might you need? I think you're gonna need some of the middle to high rated fodder. I think you're gonna need some of the 85s up to the 89s, maybe the 90s and 91s. I'm not entirely sure how they're gonna make this SBC be segmented today. If you know what I mean, right? They could go for like four different segments and do like 84, 85, 86, 87, you know, that would end up being a little bit cheaper, right? Or they could maybe have an 88 or maybe even an 89 rated squad requirement. I doubt 89, but an 88 squad requirement would not be out of question today for this SBC. Again, we keep saying today, this SBC could drop tomorrow on Monday as well, but Sundays have been the day most consistently that EA have been dropping packs like this. So we're really gonna assume that it's going to be today. So I'm saying around 300,000 coins and if you take a look at these prices, 85s, 13,000 coins, 86s is at 17K, 84s are at 4.8. They're down just a little bit around the same prices yesterday, but really not that big of a difference. I know a lot of people have been investing in the 87s, 88s, and in that sort of range. So I would be careful with fodder today because there's been a lot of investing in this type of pack for this type of pack. But again, there's so much hype around an icon pack like this. And a lot of people would love to do this pack today to get a chance at an icon. So I do believe fodder will go up unless this pack is uncharacteristically overpriced, which I doubt it's gonna be. And people would then sell their investments then if it's overpriced and there wouldn't be demand for the SBC. But I do believe fodder will still go up today. So watch your 90s and 91s as well. They're not up as much right now. And if there is an 88 or maybe even an 89 rated squad requirement inside of this SBC today, those could be going up more as I feel like they're invested in just a little bit less but it all depends on the requirements what fodder is gonna go up the most. Now that's the fodder side of things. What's gonna happen to some icons, right? Will there be any icons that drop off in price today? Yes, I do believe so. Especially on some of your middle tier icons that are around the price of the SBC. The guides that are gonna get packed the most, right? I think about like a prime balik is around like 300, 400,000 coins, 385. A card like this probably gonna get packed pretty often today from the pack or at least more often than an Etoe would. So maybe some of these cards I would watch out for maybe like a Blanc as well. I don't know, I feel like Blanc pops out a lot from icon upgrade packs and stuff like that. So Blanc is 315K, you know, maybe a card like this drops off some today. I bet there would be a little bit of panic selling today on some icons as people anticipate this SBC but for guys like the Etoe, some of the higher tier cards if they have really big drop offs today this might be an opportunity to trade with them because how many people are actually gonna pack Etoe today that would be selling their tradable version because they pack the untradable, not that many. So just watch the market today. There will be some panic selling on the icons and then we always see this too, right? I mean, this is a common trend that we see so many times now with EA just doing EA things on this game dropping these types of packs that people end up selling cards for, not just icons. People have to sell cards to afford this pack and you know, I would watch out on some of your more meta cards today as well out of packs cards and the whole rest of the market especially cards that are 500,000 coins and less because if this SBC is coming in at about 300,000 coins people are gonna have to sell something maybe from their team to get that SBC done and to afford the fodder they maybe have to buy to complete the SBC. So watch out for meta cards today out of packs cards because there might be opportunities to either buy those cards for a little bit cheaper for your team or you know, if you wanna sell ahead of time some cards could be dropping today because of that. So definitely watch out for that. There is gonna be a lot of movement today on the market in those specific areas because people will sell cards for the SBC and they will be buying cards today. I would expect to see those fodder prices on the 85s all the way up to like the 91s maybe even moving upwards ahead of the content drop today as people go out and invest before the SBC would drop of course hoping to make some profit. So watch out for that today. That's the big piece of content today on Sunday on this game but it's not the only thing and I think there's a couple other things today on Sunday that would make things a bit interesting not just will we be getting SBCs today but Sunday is the mini release day, right? EA have even told us they're nice enough now they just show us on their website what dates and what times they're gonna release these mini release cards. There are three cards that have been leaked that are not out in the game yet. So today's mini release of Future Stars team too is most likely going to be this Melasia card which right now looks like it's gonna be even in more demand after the Phil Jones SBC was dropped yesterday. So a nice Melasia card hopefully dropping today along with another Prem Centerback, Bodya Shill. We're hoping that he's in the mini release today again. A little bit cryptic on this tweet from Footshare of earlier in the week but Bodya Shill potentially in the mini release today as well I would expect it but we'll have to see. And then I think the last card that we have is Burkhardt the German striker Pacy German striker in the Bundesliga but Bodya Shill and Melasia are you know probably not gonna be that expensive but remember Cherokee last week kind of held a higher price day one just because he has less pack supply being released in packs on a Sunday rather than a Friday. So watch out for Melasia Bodya Shill and Burkhardt today and then last week on Sunday we had the flashback SBC for Theo Walcott. Will we get another flashback today? There is a leak for one and it's this guy right here Balotelli has been leaked as a flashback. Now this is not guaranteed to be coming today but Balotelli does not have any special cards yet this year in FIFA and he is in a very interesting league. I believe he's in the Swiss league. If we click on Mario Balotelli's card he has got four star, four star. He is in the Swiss league and he is medium low work rates, high and average body type. We've had a couple Balotelli cards in the past that have been really, really fun to use. We had one last year his Tots card that was a really fun card. It would have flashback in FIFA 20 as well. So hopefully we get a card kinda like this flashback. If only they would maybe boost the skill move with a weak foot up. Did this card in last year in 22? Did he have a five star weak foot last year? He had a five star skills, that's right. Yeah, he had five star skills last year. That was a blast of a card. So watch out for this maybe being today but again we still have some other future stars leaks out there as well. That Taram and the Yovatich. So either of those could all be coming today. I would expect to see a player SBC though as Sundays are pretty consistently like good days for content in FIFA the past couple of weeks. We usually get some sort of hero or icon pack, a player SBC as they usually kind of front load the player SBCs in the promos to the weekends. So I would expect to see some of that today on the game as well. And that'll probably be a wrap for your Sunday content. Maybe another token SBC. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped two tokens today in the game whether it's just via SBC or whether they put one somewhere else because we are on 25 tokens right now. Just to show you guys really quick, I'm using the footband tracker now just because I figured out there's a footband tracker and it's a lot easier and nicer to look at than the other one in my opinion. But yesterday's tokens were in the Future Stars challenge six and the first objective of the Nuno Tavares Academy objective. So 25 tokens we are up to right now. That means we have five to go and the token promo ends this Friday, this coming Friday. So all this goes away then. So hopefully EA will be nice to us and give us two more tokens today to get us to 27. So watch out for that. However they're gonna get it done. I do hope we get two tokens today because we are closing in on the end. So that's kind of a wrap for what to expect today on FIFA 23 in terms of the content. Again, it's all about that icon of SBC, right? That's really what's gonna move the market today. And speaking of move the market, I think today on the market will be a very interesting day. Let's start by talking about this market in general. Yesterday we talked about market crashes, will it, whatever, crash, you know, stuff like that. And we've kept seeing prices drop off. Some prices have continually fallen since yesterday and a lot more prices on the game are just kind of down in general. Afonso Davies last night was what, 330? I saw him at 300K flat earlier today. That was a card we looked at, looked at on the video last night. Harry Kane's team of the honorable mentions card was like 340 last night. I saw him at like 310, 315. Wow, he just had a moment of rarity and popped back up to 340. He was 310 for a while earlier today, at least under 320. So a lot of prices that I'm seeing around this market right now are still kind of slowly dropping. Now of course, we take a look at the gold Mbappe, right? It's kind of our gold standard, 817. So Mbappe is starting to fall off a little bit more as well. Basically what I felt yesterday seems to be kind of confirmed. It feels like we have now left the super high peaks and the super duper, duper high prices on a lot of these cards. And we are now kind of entering not a market crash, but just a market that is losing some steam, if you will. And that's why you're starting to see some prices go down. I would say that's the best way to put it. The game is losing a little bit of steam. The content lately hasn't been spectacular. It's been good, but it hasn't been spectacular. And a lot of prices are kind of just following this trend. So I know there's been a lot, of course, yesterday with the content that we had, there's been a lot of impact to the center backs on the market. So if we avoid looking at those because a lot of those cards are gonna be down extra, I mean, look at Cherokee 540. That's a bit of an undercut right there. But if you look at his price yesterday, you know, he was like 610, 620 at one point and is now down into the low 500s. I might have to take a look at that for a potential quick flip. That's down a lot in a short amount of time and it's a rare card out of packs. But a lot of the market just kind of continues to be, it just seems to have less demand a little bit right now. So as you look at, especially the teams that are in packs, like Future Stars team two, these cards dropped off a lot yesterday.  Fred was down a little, this Mohammed Salah is down some. It's not everywhere, but it's on most places on the market we are seeing prices fall and I don't think it's worthy of a crash or something like that. But I feel like people are just starting to sell a little bit. Part of the reason why that's happening too, I think, is because EA is starting to drain a lot of coins out of people's accounts. We've had a lot of small SBCs that have been chipping away, right? We had the 82 times 20 last week. We had the Walcott SBC. Now we have a Chris Smalling that a lot of people are doing with the Phil Jones inside of it. And SBCs like this, guys, this is where I wanna talk about yesterday's content a bit. SBCs like this drain a ton of coins from the market because even though we look at this and we say, nay, this is not a good value and I'm actually gonna do one of these right now to get my swap token. Look at what I'm turning in here. I'm turning in one, two, three, four. I'm turning in four 83 rated cards to get this 82 rated squad done to get a player pick between one of three 82 plus players. It's not good value, but this is the type of SBC that people love to grind because it's a pretty good player pick. The price is just not that great, but people still want to do this because it gives them an opportunity to pack a future stars team two card or just to pack high rated fodder, which maybe if they're trying to craft in Bopay, they're going for that and stuff like that. This would have been great during team of the year. It's a lot of people have mentioned because we had nothing to do with 82s earlier in the year, but when you get an 84 back, you're like, is it really worth it? No, that 84 right there is worth 5,000 coins. Every single time you do this right now, this is coming in, I believe, like 10,000 coins, 12,000 coins according to Footbin right now. That's why you basically have to get an 85 out of each player pick for it to be good value or average an 85 out of each one to make it good value. But this is the type of gamble type of pack that EA know people love in this game. And this is something new, right? We've never had an objective like this where they've dropped a player pick that you have to do, an SBC that you have to do over and over and over to complete a player objective. That's crazy in its own right. So of course, when you compare this player pick to the objective for Nuro Tavares, you're like, Nate, this card is really not worth doing. And I agree with you. Now I know a lot of people are doing this because you do get some fodder along the way. You do get some nice packs in there as well. So I'm 83 doubles, actually 83 doubles, the only pack that you get in there besides the 75 plus and some of the other future stars versus the Nuro Tavares. But 80 defense at this stage of the game. Yeah, his links are pretty interesting, but I just think even though he's got a five star weak foot and some really nice shot power, 96 shot power, you know, this card for me is not worth the, you know, like 500,000 coins from scratch, technically, you know, that it would take to get this entirely done. Now I know there's ways to grind this and you guys that are like, Nate, I'm doing this not to maybe get this done, but I'm doing this 82 plus player pick just to have some opportunity to get some good pack pulls and stuff like that and to risk it and gamble a bit. I completely understand that. And there are a lot of ways where you can get the fodder, get the 82s, get the 83s, get the 81s to get this SPC done cheaper than 12,000 coins. But again, I understand that and it is grindable and it is craftable, but I do believe still this is overpriced, but it's a gamble, right? And what do we know about the gambles? You win some, you lose some and a lot of people do them on this game, but it's just like EA continue to amaze us with how they will integrate the gamble aspect side of things and make you wanna do this player pick because it's a nice player pick at the same time, you're completing an objective, right? And this is the second time we've seen this this year. We still have the 80 plus that is available that was dropped during Centurions, but that's even a bit different, right? That was just an 80 plus upgrade pack. This is a player pick for right now, which I've seen some people get really good pulls out of this. I've seen a lot of people just get 83s and 84s and 82s like I did in mine. So, you know, that's a gamble. I mean, I would love to hear your guys' opinions and your comments down below because I think there are some W comments and some W like outlooks on that. And I also think in the grand scheme of things a lot of people think that it's overvalued. So, that's just a lot to say, it can go both ways. But that was, again, just a really interesting content because we've never seen something quite like that on this game from EA Sports. And then of course, I can't go without shouting out the Chris Smalling and the Phil Jones. Was not expecting the Smalling. Smalling was leaked yesterday after we dropped the video, but this is a nice card. I mean, 88 sprint speed, 80 acceleration. The split is a little bit off there, but good reactions, composure, great stats. And this is a card that is making a lot of center backs drop. Be careful trading with center backs right now in this game. Some center backs from other leagues, like maybe the Prem, maybe the La Liga or Lee Gunn. I would look into a little bit more, but a lot of your center backs from Serie A and just center backs in general. Remember when I sold Kim and Jay yesterday at like 89,000 coins? My guy's in the 50K range now. Like he's down a ton.  Due to the fact that those two were dropped yesterday in the SBCs. That's an SBC that so many people are going to do. Even if it's not 100% meta, it's a fun card and it's pretty cheap to craft up and get done. So, GGs to EA for that content, because that is honestly really, really nice content yesterday. It was a surprisingly W day, besides the objective and stuff. A W day for that SBC yesterday on that game, on the game in my opinion. Now, really quickly. Last thing, Future Stars Team II prices. I made actually, I made a lot of coins yesterday, guys. It was really unexpected how many coins we made yesterday. You know, last time the video I said I bought Musiala for 1.7, sold them for 1.8, bought Timbers at 300 to 3.10, sold one way too early, sold one slightly early, and sold one around the right time. These guys absolutely exploded yesterday way more than I expected them to. And way more than I think they will ever again on this game. And Ketia went from 2.30, where I bought them all the way to 2.70. I'm glad I listed at 2.70 overnight because he ended up selling, it went great. And now he's back down to the 1.74 range. Will these guys have the same bounce today? I doubt it. I really doubt they're gonna have the exact same spike today on this game. But I do think their prices will continue to fluctuate. Like, I just picked up an Arajo at 700,000 coins. He's back up to about 750. I tried out, but I flipped another move. This guy is like my favorite guy to trade right now in this game. Musiala, I bought right here last night. I bought right here, 1.7. I sold him right here. I listed him overnight and sold at 1.87. He went all the way down to 1.59. I bought him at 1.56 on a snipe. Boom, jumps back up to 1.7. I sold him there. Now he's down to 1.4. Hey, we're probably gonna buy him at like 1.40, 1.39. And then I'll list him up at like 1.5 something and he'll sell tomorrow, right? I don't even know if I'm gonna buy him tonight. But these guys are just fluctuating a ton in price. But again, all of them are lower right now than where we were yesterday, right? And that's why I always tell you guys the Saturdays bring drop offs to the in-packs promo cards nine times out of 10. And that happened again with literally every single one of these cards. So today will be a very interesting day to watch these guys. Sundays are usually low point Sunday nights. Depending on the content today with the 89 plus pack, the icon pack, if that drops, these guys might be a really, really good buys for a rise tomorrow. We saw the Future Stars on team one rise really nice from Sunday into Monday last week. I think the same thing could be replicated this week with this team number two. So we'll have to see which cards drop off the most but that's gonna be a very interesting part of the market that we will be keeping an eye on today.  They're semi supplied. So we're seeing some really, really good movements on them. And then again, as we did expect to see, we saw a lot of drops on pro level cards yesterday like this VVD. And I think you're gonna see it a bit more today. Some of your top tier, most expensive cards in this game, some of your icons, some of your really expensive versions of Mbappe. Like I saw this version of Mbappe go down from like six million coins. I think it was like 5.2 at one point. I don't know where he is now. He might be back up a little bit but I would expect to see some of these cards dropping again. Yeah, he's back to, what is this, 5.9. He's gonna drop again today and a lot of your other top tier cards like some of your World Cup icons, some of your, or sorry, your World Cup heroes like the Lucio, the Ayatoure. Some of your guys like Walker, like this Kyle Walker card I was looking at right here was like he was under 800K and now he's back up into the mid to high 800s, probably gonna drop down again today. So if you have any of those cards, be careful and actually look out for potential opportunities to trade in as well. One card that I'm just thinking of right now, one last example, Erling Holland. Team of the year was like 4.4 mil to start the day yesterday. He was all the way down at four million flat and now he's back up to like four, two to four, three. So you're gonna have more fluctuation today as those pro qualifiers are going on and as they sell their teams, a lot of those guys do sell their teams after playing and you see the prices dip down. So watch the market very closely today. It's gonna be a great day. Hopefully that 89 plus pack drops. Again, it could be tomorrow and Monday but I really think it's gonna be today especially since that 87 plus player pick is going away. So if you're excited for that today again, hit drop a thumbs up on the video, comment down below if you have any comments or questions and subscribe if you are new. I will catch you guys on a stream today. Hopefully right around the content drop to catch what happens with everything today in the game. It's been Nate for the Count and catch you guys there. Peace out.