Building a Homeforce in law and beyond with Jo Alilovic, 3D HR Legal (ep 95)
After many years spent working at a traditional law firm, Jo established 3D HR Legal, a specialist employment law firm that operates in a completely virtual working environment. Jo quickly realised that the concept of being family friendly and flexible was a point of difference and the firm grew rapidly. When COVID hit in 2020, Jo realised that her unique experience of managing her own remote team combined with her employment law expertise put her in the perfect position to support other businesses through the transition to remote work. Now it’s time to embrace flexible and remote work arrangements for the long term, Jo has written a book, Homeforce to help employers build a connected, engaged home-based team. In this episode, Jo and I talk about the benefits of working remotely, but also about boundaries, being able to “switch off” and keep home and work life separate when there is no physical office. Jo also introduces us to her 6-step ‘REMOTE’ framework to build a thriving, distributed team who work from home (at least some of the time). This episode is brought to you by The Prepared Company. About Jo Alilovic Jo Alilovic is the Director and founder of 3D HR Legal, an employment lawyer with 20 years’ experience, author and flexible work advocate who leads by example. Jo was an early adopter of the remote first and hybrid workforce, managing her own fully distributed team for the last five years. After over a decade working for the largest law firm in Western Australia, Jo’s own business started as a bit of an accident – as so many good things do – when she decided to move down to Donnybrook with her family. At the time working remotely wasn’t the done thing. She quickly saw the opportunity to build a new style of law firm, one which would not only allow for location freedom and flexible work hours, but would also enable her to live out her dream to have both a successful career and a fulfilling family life. 3D HR Legal is a specialist employment who work with professional services businesses to help them avoid legal claims, learn what they don’t know, and create thriving workplace cultures that help business prosper. Jo Alilovic quotes * “I felt that I had flexibility because they knew me and because I had been there so for long. The difference with the business that I run is that you’ve got the flexibility from the moment you walk in the door. It’s starting from a point of trust, there’s no need to earn the right to it, it is a right that you have.” * “I like to encourage people to think of it like you are in an office, I worked in an office with four floors, we would always just pick up the phone and call someone, we wouldn’t worry about always walking up and down the stairs…that concept is the same no matter where you go people have this block that just because you aren’t in the vicinity of each other you can’t do it.” * “[A Homeforce] is working so well for me I just wanted to be able to help other people create the same thing in a way that worked, that’s why it very much became a how-to book. If you’re going to create a remote or hybrid team then you need a plan.” Links to Jo and Homeforce Get your copy of Homeforce on Amazon, Booktopia, Barnes and Noble,