COVID-19 and digital work: Be patient, be kind, and experiment
Professor Alexander Richter, an expert in digital work and transformation, shares his tips on working remotely during the lockdown.
About a week ago, many of our lives were abruptly changed. Working from home brings a lot of change to our daily routines and many of us are still making sense of it. But every crisis brings changes and opportunities. This is also true for digital work. One out of many memes we currently see around COVID19 makes fun about “digital transformation”.
There is some truth in it—including for New Zealand where we are maybe not at the forefront of the digital movement.
However, now that many of us have moved most of our work life into the digital space, we realise: It is not so bad after all. In fact, many of us might not want to lose the flexibility and autonomy working from home brings when we are finally are allowed to leave our homes again.
Digital work is not a completely new topic and there are a lot of insights around that can help individuals still making sense of it. Here are some hints:
Give yourself some time and experiment
Digital work platforms are malleable—they do not prescribe what to do with them. It takes time to embrace the potential of the tools and to incorporate them in our day-to-day work routines. Take your time to settle in and try to use the tool in a new way that suits your personality.
Communicate expectations and strategies
He waka eke noa! Being confined to our homes is a new situation for all of us. Nobody has all the perfect answers. It helps to discuss with others how they cope and what they expect from you. Studies show that individuals often overestimate what others expect from them, for example, how often they respond to messages. Talking about expectations helps to avoid misunderstandings and to reduce pressure.
If you are a manager, think about creating social guidelines. How do we communicate? How often? Which channels do we use?
Choose your channels
Digital does not equal digital. Some channels are very rich (typically synchronous media like video calls) and helpful to work on complex matters. But they are also time killers and often we do not need that sort of rich communication to make progress. It helps to keep an overview of the channels you can use and to use them strategically. Many will converge on using email but realise later that there are better tools when it’s about collaborating, such as social networks that create transparency and awareness.
Establish routines
Digital work can make us more productive and for many it means more flexibility. But it can also reduce our ability to focus and ultimately reduce our wellbeing if we are not careful. It helps trying to keep some routine. Most importantly, dedicate time for a digital detox. If you can, block focus time in your calendar where you don’t check emails and only take urgent calls.
Be kind
All of us know how a written message can be misperceived, because there are no social cues. For example, irony can easily create hurt if there is no hint of the irony. There is no harm in writing kind and social emails. In studies, when asked what they would do different, many executives replied: I would take more time to be kind.
Working by distance needs strategies for maintaining trust
Trust is a very important component of effective collaboration. Working by distance means that we need to think about how we can replace offline practices of building and maintaining trust online. There are various ways to build trust, most importantly, being able to relate to each other (which ultimately makes us human), but there is no perfect approach: some prefer virtual coffee meetings, others have virtual team retreats where they play online games. Ultimately, we are all social beings and therefore staying social is important.
Professor Alexander Richter is Professor of Information Systems at the Wellington School of Business and Government and is also the Academic Programme Leader for the Executive MBA.