WLP299 What’s Going On: Assumptions and Challenges in the New Workplace
In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the mental health challenges in returning to the office space, the evolution of communication in the workplace and the reasons why many people do not want to work remotely – in Spain and other places.
The set up of a hybrid workplace continues with its challenges. In episode 106 of My Pocket Psych, guest Dr. Hayley Lewis talked about how she was working with a government organisation whose chief exec wanted to reduce the office space in order to cut down on public spending.
However, when she looked into the living conditions of some of the employees, it was clear that asking (or offering) people to work from home would end up with some individuals working in difficult conditions.
While we’re making sure we can have the conversation so that people can work flexibly, there’s also a need to help people speak out when they feel they can’t use their homes for work.
In any case, saving money by reducing the office space might not be as straight-forward as it looks. According to a set of yet to be released data that Maya’s had access to, to make remote work permanent in some organisations, they will have to invest heavily in IT and cybersecurity, etc. Something they maybe didn’t do during the pandemic.
09.45 MINS
The return to the office is bringing some unexpected challenges and this article covers a few of them: Everyone Is Not OK, but Back at Work Anyway.
For example, the dynamics of a team that used to be colocated might have changed when it went suddenly remote. And now that they have to return to their previous workspace… it might not be easy. Many people have changed, and had different experiences of working remotely during the pandemic.
We need to continue talking about how we’re doing, we’re still in transition. What medium people prefer for being open about how they’re feeling might vary. For some, the best medium might be face to face, others might prefer to tell you how they are on Slack, there’s great diversity in this.
DIfferent people and different teams will figure it out as they go along. What’s common is that there is still a lot of uncertainty around what the future of the workplace will look like, and still around the pandemic. (And have you heard of “Schrodinger’s Covid”?)
19.00 MINS
On a lighter note, Slack has published this article about how written communication at work is changing and becoming more informal: From jargon to emoji, the evolution of workplace communication styles.
Instead of business jargon, people prefer to adopt more informal ways of talking to colleagues, using GIFs and emojis. Is this a hangover from the way we were taught to write “properly” at school? Or is it that we communicate much more in writing with colleagues and therefore can adopt more informal and playful ways of doing so? However, we can’t let informality bring a lack of clarity (Maya’s words!) and we still need to adopt formal ways of writing when needed.
Pilar doesn’t like emojis that duplicate a message, like the article with a smiley face followed by “enjoying” in the text. Sometimes it feels like information overload. But some of these emojis have a lot of energy behind them, and they have their place.
Different teams will evolve their own ways of communicating, even how you react to messages, or even having their own designs.
(Let us know what you think of this!)
29.20 MINS
We move on to a recent article about how telework is being adopted now in Spain, post-lockdown, “Dos años después del confinamiento, ¿qué pasa con el teletrabajo en España?”(It’s been two years after lockdown. What’s going on with telework in Spain?). It’s been written by regular guest on the show Eva Rimbau-Gilabert.
(You can hear her talk about the state of remote work in Spain pre-pandemic in episode 214 The View from South Europe.)
“The most prominent reason why there is not as much teleworking as possible is that a large part of the people who could telework prefer not to do so (58.5%). The reasons for wanting to work face-to-face include disadvantages of teleworking such as lack of social contact with colleagues, difficulties disconnecting from work or work overload. Added to this is the fact that the private home may not be suitable for teleworking.”
This reflects much of what we were talking about earlier and we’re sure this is not the case only in Spain. It’s still difficult to disconnect from work, this sometimes has to do with culture, sometimes with individuals, and mobile phones don’t make it any easier!
This research says 58.5% people don’t want to continue teleworking, which is similar to what we heard from previous guest Laurel in episode 298, that the number of people in the US asking to work remotely hasn’t increased, it’s just their negotiation power has changed.
“The majority of people who have ever teleworked indicate that, once the pandemic is over, they would like to telework every day (23.5% without ever going to the workplace, and 24.7% going occasionally), with an average preference of 3.8 days of telecommuting per week.”
Even though we hear that the main reason for going back to using the office is to see our colleagues, it looks like a decent percentage of people don’t have a need to go back to the workplace. It’s a minority, but it’s there. (Maybe it was always there, but we didn’t know about it…)
Finally, the article talks about complex vs simple communication, and how they benefit from different spaces. It helps to define “communication” and “collaboration” when we’re talking about how to best do it.
Some people might prefer the office for complex communication, while others might prefer to do that kind of communication away from each other, taking their time. (Thanks to listener Pedro for this latter point of view, the conversation on LinkedIn is here.)
Different spaces are more suited to different kinds of interactions, and these will vary between teams, and even at different stages of the work. Coworking spaces don’t seem to have gone mainstream yet in Spain, even though they can provide a good alternative to working from home.
To talk about all these different things takes time, so it’s worth thinking about moving some of our more transactional, simple team communication to the asynchronous space so that we can use our time together to talk through the next iteration of how we work.
Finally, a shout out to Omnipresent and Oyster for their April Fool’s memos! They almost got us!
Looking for the transcript? You can find it further down…
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Transcript for WLP299 What’s Going On: Assumptions and Challenges in the New Workplace
Pilar Orti 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the 21st Century Work Life podcast where we talk about leading remote teams, online collaboration, and working in distributed organisations. This podcast is brought to you by Virtual not Distant, where we help managers and teams transition to an office optional approach. Find out everything we do over at virtual not distant.com. And check out our show notes and pictures of our lovely guests over on the podcast page. It's great to have you here, listeners. Let's get on with the show. Hello, and welcome to episode 299 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast. I can't believe I'm saying that number. And I'm delighted for this episode to have with me co host Maya Middlemiss. Hello, Maya.
Maya Middlemiss 0:58
Hello, Pilar and everybody. Wow. 299. That's… I can't believe we've got to that. Well, I wasn't in all of them. But fairplay, that's a decent amount of episodes going on there and a huge milestone coming up.
Pilar Orti 1:11
Yeah, that's a lot of talking. That's great. And listeners, if we haven't met before, my name is Pilar Orti. I'm the director of Virtual not Distant, which is the company behind this show. And this is another What's Going On episode. These are the monthly episodes that sometimes are What's Going On, sometimes they're about a specific topic, it depends on what's going on in the world. And we are recording this on the 5th of April 2022. We've got a couple of articles, posts, just points of conversation to go through including, what's going on after two years of lockdown in Spain with telework still called ‘teletrabajo’ there, which is a great reflection of what's going on in a lot of Europe. So it’s worth looking at. And then the other pieces that we've got to talk about are about the return to the office and how that links in with remote work and just the future of work and the world of work. So Maya shall we start?
Maya Middlemiss 2:16
Yeah, let's go for it. There is plenty to get through. As always.
Pilar Orti 2:19
The first one is a bit wishy washy from my point of view. So I'm involved with My Pocket Psych, which is a podcast all about the psychology of the workplace. And in one of the episodes that I wasn't in, the host Dr. Richard MacKinnon, he interviewed Dr. Hayley Lewis, who's another psychologist, and they were talking actually, they weren't really talking about remote work or working from home or anything. But at some point, she did share that she had been working with a government organisation in the UK. And she was supporting the leadership who, in opposition to a lot of the headlines that we're hearing at the moment, actually wanted to save the public money by allowing people to work from home as much as possible. So in this way, they would reduce office space, etc. And the issue here was that they hadn't realised the conditions that some people would be working on, if they will be working from home. And I just have this image, because she shared a specific interview that she was doing with someone in the organisation of this woman, who was sitting in the staircase of her shared house because her and her boyfriend live in one room in a shared house with a shared lounge, etc. Her boyfriend was working and having a meeting in that room. So she had to take the interview, in a staircase, in the hallway. The point from her was that there's still some disconnect in how leadership is perceiving the conditions in which people would work in working from home and even when it's coming from a really good place, like, “Okay, I want to save the public money”, there's still that disconnect. So I'll just refer listeners to Episode 106 called Being Your Own Boss of My Pocket Psych. But I just wanted to start with that Maya.
Maya Middlemiss 4:15
Yeah, I think it's a really important reminder that a lot of the people involved in the decision making might be in quite senior roles within an organisation and have the kind of salaries and disposable income that means you can set up an office comfortably from home, whereas often in the public sector, wages aren't high. And it's perfectly possible that people are working in conditions which aren't at all ideal. And we know this happened a lot during lockdown, but this isn't a sustainable strategy going forward. So if you want to save money by closing your office, you really need to have some honest conversations with people about what they need, what they've got, and maybe you need something like coworking budget for people who simply don't have anywhere at home, or you need a policy where it's fine over the longer term for them to move miles away from your expensive town centre location if they never, or rarely have to come in, or something. But we can't expect people to keep working like that. It's really not a good way to save money.
Pilar Orti 5:17
And I think it's really interesting that the conversation we're hearing is that, and when I say we're hearing, I mean, maybe that I am looking at it, because I'm looking at the articles that are being shared, online and on social media, the stories that I'm hearing about some even newspaper articles in the main media also, that… There's a lot of… we need to have the conversation with people, because you shouldn't be expecting them to come back to the office. And I am wondering whether that is also making it more difficult for people to have the conversation and be able to say, “I cannot work from home”. So you're giving me all this flexibility, you are maybe closing down the offices, in the name of many things, I'm sure that flexibility also came into this. However, for me, it's very difficult to say, “I do not have a home from which I can work”. Because that might mean I'm saying no to flexibility, that might mean that the plans don't seem as popular to have all this remote work included and stuff. So I think we have to be explicit about this. And make sure that people can bring up these kinds of issues.
Maya Middlemiss 6:25
Yeah, it's really personal, it's not easy to say, “Well, my home just isn't right for this”, because that's nobody's business, at work in normal conversations. So there has to be a certain amount of psychological safety, to be able to have this conversation where it needs to be had, whether that's within the team or directly with a manager, or so on, and figure out a solution. And also just being respectful of everything people learned about themselves. During the full lockdowns about how they work best and where they work best, they might have plenty of space at home, and they just don't get on with working there for whatever reason. So people have different needs. Also, it's not necessarily a straightforward cost saving, I'm sure there's going to be a ton more number crunching on this. Over the years, people try to work out where the savings have come from and what models of work we're going to use going forward. But I was looking at some research from a big collaboration brand recently, it's not even quite published yet. But they've certainly found that organisations, which are going forward with either a remote first, or a hybrid setup, are budgeting way more for IT. Simply to support that distributed working is going to cost a great deal more in terms of keeping people supplied with the right hardware, and software supporting, and when it goes wrong dealing with cybersecurity breaches and connection problems, and things like that. So yes, it might be a lot less than renting a big office block, but it's not a simple case of “we'll save this rent, everybody will go home and we'll save that money”, I think there will be a lot of costs that people maybe haven't figured out yet that will need to be carefully offset against each other in future to see whether it even solves that initial intention.
Pilar Orti 8:07
Talking of It and equipment, etc. There's probably a lot that people have put up with during the emergency of the last lockdown years, and even the transition period. But even that might not be sustainable. So there might be that extra investment as well.
Maya Middlemiss 8:24
And it's one of the biggest reasons that's been showing up in research for the last year or so of why people are quitting their jobs. People will tolerate things during an emergency, but you can't have an emergency after two years. You really need to have fixed it and got people stuff that works.
Pilar Orti 8:40
So it's a really interesting time, from an external point of view that you're seeing the whole spectrum of from, yes, we really want to embrace working from anywhere in an organisation and the challenges that that brings, right to we want everyone back in the office, and the challenges that that brings. So it’s a big spectrum.
Maya Middlemiss 9:01
Yes, and we are not in any kind of stable new normal yet. Sorry, everybody who was chucking that phrase around 18 months ago. I think the only certainty is that a lot of uncertainty still exists. Even if a lot of the legal mandates for being locked down have now gone. It's not as simple as going back to where we were. People want different things. The situation is completely different. So it's still very much a moving target. And I'm sure we'll still be talking about it for a long time.
Pilar Orti 9:32
Yeah, we will. It's so much more complex. So shout out to My Pocket Psych, Richard MacKinnon, and Dr. Hayley Lewis for prompting this initial thought and what you were saying about uncertainty etc. Maya, I think that takes us very nicely to an article I came across recently. I think it was shared by… I think their name is Noble. I'm subscribed to their newsletter and it's in the new york times.com and you need a free account to access the full article. But basically, the headline is “Everyone is not okay. But back at work anyway”. It's quite a swift read actually, because sometimes some of these articles are very long, but this one is relatively short. But it really explains so succinctly all the things that might be going on that I don't think I'd really thought of so much like, we know that people might be afraid of the virus still being around and stuff like that. But there are certain things and you're going to excuse me, because I'm not signed in on my…
Maya Middlemiss 10:39
I'm going through exactly the same thing. The New York Times has chucked me out. I've managed to get back in there, but I've had to make another free account even though I've got a subscription on my phone.
Pilar Orti 10:49
Anyway, the perils, the perils, so sorry. In case you went AWOL. “Everyone is not okay. But back at work anyway”. And one of the things that I found most interesting about this was the mention of how people might not be looking forward to going back to the little cliques that are formed around work and all those dynamics that some people are really looking forward to, but other people might not. And the thing that it got me thinking about that I haven't thought much about yet, was the dynamics of a team, even one that has been formed already. The dynamics of a team when they're working in the same space and have a certain ongoing visibility to each other and communication is, in most cases, going to be different, even when that team is online, because everything changes, and those dynamics might have been disrupted, for better or worse or equal. And now you're suddenly going to a context and environment that is a historical environment from a couple of years ago. And yet, everything's changed. You have this connection of how it was.
Maya Middlemiss 12:05
Yeah, you've changed and you haven't changed in lockstep with all of your colleagues, because you've all had unique experiences of the pandemic and lockdown time. For some people. It's been quite nice not to commute, and they've been very comfortable working at home. Other people have been bereaved and sick. Other people have had nightmares, trying to homeschool and been through that hole, all the memes about the same storm, different boats, you take all that back with you into the workspace. And some people will feel like, “well, we're just picking up where we just left off”, because nothing major has changed in their life experience. For others. It's as though you've been away from each other for 10 years, or you're a completely different person and how you might then struggle to relate and pick up those threads of face-to-face connection that you once had. Or maybe you were really nostalgic for going back. But you felt somehow it would be like going back to 2019. And you go back and you find that everybody else has changed even if you haven't. Yeah, I think that the potential upheaval here is huge.
Pilar Orti 13:10
So many people are talking about the fact that these conversations have been opened up during lockdown and to be brave enough to then bring them back. Because I think that the flip side of that is that for a couple of years, we've concentrated so much not just on the work, but also on taking care of each other at all these levels that actually some people might just want to go back to just being at work. And that can also be if you've got a team, as you say where people are at different levels there that can also be difficult.
Maya Middlemiss 13:43
And maybe, hopefully, one of the things we can take back with us is a little bit more openness, about talking about how we are emotionally about sharing that stuff. Maybe it was easy when we just tapped out a quick Slack message rather than looking someone in the eye and asking how they are or talking about our own emotions. But if we've learned anything about how we need to support each other, I would love to think that could be one positive legacy, that we have a better understanding of wellbeing and mental health needs and how to look after each other.
Pilar Orti 14:17
And lots of those asynchronous practices, and the thought came when you said about sending a quick Slack message, I think it's worth seeing how many of those practices we want to hang on to because it could be that I am very happy to be open about how I'm feeling on Slack message. And when I'm looking you in the face or when we're next to each other. I'd rather not. For whatever reason that doesn't matter.
Maya Middlemiss 14:45
Well I've got teenagers so I mean, I know about that. They can't talk to me about anything face-to-face, but we can WhatsApp each other within the same house. Sometimes that's where we get to the really important stuff that is going on for them, which they would find very difficult to talk to their parents face-to-face or in the same room. So I think that's definitely something important. And I'm sure we'll carry on with our communication and collaboration practises a little bit more asynchronously as well, even when we are sitting next to each other again.
Pilar Orti 15:19
Yeah, and it's all about diversity as well, we're talking all the time about diversity in the workplace. And I mean, we're really honing down to being really, really looking at a micro part of the person around this, which is… yeah, I want to show up at work in a certain way, as some of that might be that there's a kind of communication that I am only comfortable doing in a certain way. And again, in the same way, a lot of differences became very visible when we were forced to work apart from each other. I wonder if a lot of these differences are also now going to be very visible when we start negotiating to different environments.
Maya Middlemiss 16:01
Yeah, I'm sure you're right. And people will figure it out as they go along, different teams will come up with different balances, some of them will have an explicit conversation about it, others will muddle through. But I think everybody will find their way in time. And it will be interesting to look at how things have changed, if we ever get to that point where we're finished with this transition.
Pilar Orti 16:24
And then another point, the article made is around, you mentioned uncertainty before, uncertainty, which is the fact that things are still uncertain. I mean, the setup is still uncertain, and that's fine. Organisations need to do this carefully and slowly. And there's uncertainty around the disease as well. Because it's all very well saying, “well, we've got to live with it”, as they're seeing in the UK. Yeah, but what does that even mean? And I don't know whether living within means that I have to every two months stay home ill? Or that it means that I'm not going to get out? What does it ever mean?
Maya Middlemiss 16:57
We're not counting and measuring and testing anymore. So we'll never know. But it does definitely create that that little bit of uncertainty definitely raises the kind of background anxiety level, just a little notch more, I think nevermind thinking about what might happen next winter, and so on. It seems like so many people I know at the moment have symptoms of one thing or another, somebody told me the other day, they had a shred of COVID that they couldn't manage to get a positive test, but they were sure they had it. They couldn't afford to keep testing now you've got to buy their own. So, there's no requirement to avoid people anyway. So we're all living with that, that uncertainty about now and about what the future might hold.
Pilar Orti 17:45
Yeah, so very cheery. My concern, as always, is that for us from the outside, it's very easy to say we need to give space to people, we need to have these conversations. And my concern is the workload… The workload, nobody seems to be ready to compromise on the workload and say, “Look, yeah, we could, we need to be doing this and this and this. But actually, if we just pull back a little bit, we'll still be great. But our people will have a little bit of breathing space”, because I think that's still missing.
Maya Middlemiss 18:19
Yes, I'm sure it is in a lot of workplaces in others, they've already been affected by the consequences of that, and people saying, “You know what, I'm not going to take this anymore. I've burned out. I've had enough. I'm moving on”. And I think, hopefully, there will be some learning from that eventually, as well. There are so many environments and industries now where it really is a job seekers market. And remote work has opened up so many more opportunities. So I think people deserve to ask to be treated a little bit better, and have their needs respected, including the workload that's expected of them.
Pilar Orti 18:55
And it's not easy. We're not saying it's easy but it wouldn't be great. So let's continue along, like changing things and stuff. It was a lighter note. There is an article I think you shared…
Maya Middlemiss 19:12
The Slack one, yeah.
Pilar Orti 19:15
So it's called “From Jargon to Emoji: The Evolution of Workplace Communication Styles”. And it is from slack.com on the 16th of February 2022. And tell us what this article is about Maya.
Maya Middlemiss 19:29
It's really just about how language is evolving, if you like in terms of the written space and the way we communicate professionally now, the instant messaging world has its come into business communications in a way that it was already there a couple of years ago, but now it's so much more of a thing and so much more of our proportion of communications has moved into that space. So people are starting to use it much more creatively. And interestingly, I love their finding that people are talking more like humans instead of business jargon. People are employing emojis in obvious and non obvious ways. There's a lot more use of gifs and reactions, where you don't even have to find a word to show what you mean about how you feel about something, you can just do very, very quickly and frictionlessly with a little image, and people like it. I think it's making people happy. And it's making them feel connected. And they'd much rather have that than business jargon in the workplace.
Pilar Orti 20:31
Yeah, I thought it was a fascinating article also, because I felt no connection, which is great. And I think what is great for me is that, that the business jargon is like, look, we don't need to sound important. We don't need to sound in a certain way. And my husband was telling me of a colleague who goes really posh when she talks about running stuff and about managing. She just, and I actually, had a boyfriend who did that sometimes on the phone who to go really posh because maybe he was talking to someone really important. So I need to sound like this when I'm doing business week.
Maya Middlemiss 21:11
I've never heard you speak like that Pilar. Wonderful, I forgot your professional voice over. Turn this on when you need it. It's not your podcasting voice. Is it?
Pilar Orti 21:22
Oh, my God, no. So but I think that using a jargon and… okay, I'm going to go into something that I feel very strongly about is, especially because a lot of the written I mean, this is this is about a lot about the written word is that the traditional education system, at least the one I went to, tells you that a well written piece of work, reads like this and is usually stale, full of jargon, sounding very highbrow, not direct, not simple. And we grow up. Well, I was thinking that a written piece of text is like this. And actually it isn't. And I think that this is also hopefully part of the discovery that when we are, like everything, we talk differently to different people. So we write differently to different people. But like everything, if we're talking to our colleagues, to our teammates, even to other people in the organisation, we can be a bit more playful with the language. And that's okay.
Maya Middlemiss 22:25
And we can be direct and straightforward as well. Because if we were writing those formal business communicates to one another in beautiful Business English, if that was the thing that we typed a letter once a week, and the rest of the time we spoke to people in meetings or on the phone, then maybe there was a place for that kind of very precise, contractual kind of language. But when we're having the majority of our conversations in written form, there's just no place for that. And it's allowed more directness and informality and more of a sense of connection to come into it, which I think is a wonderful thing. If people can get beyond that sort of GCSE business studies. This is how you write a report in English, and actually just say what they mean. Obviously, there are times and places if you are trying to pin down something very precise about deliverables or content, that you might be in a new business situation, or something that's completely different from chatting with your team online. And people ought to be able to manage to embrace both.
Pilar Orti 23:23
That's such an important point that if we want this to work, we also need the other kind of communication to work as well. And that's the danger of it many, many well, not many, many years ago, but maybe 10 years ago, or something I had when I was running the theatre company, I had an intern, and she didn't know how to format a letter she didn't know in the English way in that, the address from the person writings here, that baba bah. And I had to say to her, it's like this. That’s how you do it.
Maya Middlemiss 23:55
Yeah, it is important. And I think the other thing we must remember when we're talking about this is that precision still matters and lack of ambiguity if you're going to work asynchronously. And if you're going to work globally, with people who maybe don't have English as a first language as well, you can't let informality bring a lack of clarity. And this article talks about business jargon and slang and that's one area it can creep in. But the other is simply laziness or not expressing yourself clearly. So we still need people to write well, it's just they're not necessarily after a Pulitzer Prize. They're just after clear communication. And we do need to still emphasise that it can be short, it can be informal, can be straightforward language, but it doesn't need to be accurate and precise and be very clear what it means.
Pilar Orti 24:42
On the flip side, here's my reaction, what I was saying earlier: I have real problems with emojis and text mixing. Sorry, I have problems with duplication of a message. So for example, even this article, which of course is full of emojis, the emojis are being used like bullet points. So there's this one that says, a smiley face enjoying an increase in productivity. You already wrote enjoying it, I don't need you to illustrate. So I think even for me, that is too much information. You're overloading me now. So I think there's the flip side of that, because what I am experiencing is that everyone thinks that it's alright, in every circumstance, to have emojis mixed with text, we lose that. And for me, it's noise. It's like underlining, or bolding, it’s telling me the same thing. However, if they said, an increase in productivity is and then a thumbs up. Yeah, I don't mind that. Because that is just substituting.
Maya Middlemiss 25:53
It is, but it might be partly an accessibility thing as well, for screen readers, that it might be a lot less clear. And I think there are some guidelines about accessibility now coming out about not having emojis in the middle of sentences, for example, because screen readers can really trip up over them. And even if I'm out for a walk, and somebody sends me a text, and Siri reads it out, it's just really weird when it suddenly says, slightly smiley face in the middle of a sentence. And that makes me think, for anybody using a screen reader, to look at this article, they're gonna find it full of these weird interjections, but at least they're not in the middle of a sentence, which would be worse. So it might be because of that. But again, these are evolving norms that there isn't kind of an accepted practice about this, as far as I'm aware.
Pilar Orti 26:40
Yeah. And of course, I wouldn't want it in the article, I'm thinking more of how I've seen it used also in communication. But I think what you're saying is also, it's the norms, it's the diversity is the evolution of it. And it's also not thinking that everyone is the same. Just because we've discovered it's almost like we've discovered this way of making our communication a little bit more informal. And suddenly, it's like, full of it. Yeah. And, so just just think of people like me who are like, why are you smiling at the end of every message or sending me?
Maya Middlemiss 27:17
I'll try not to do that so much anymore.
Pilar Orti 27:21
But, I do love, for example, there is and this is when of course, we all say one thing and then do another, you know that emoji of the flamenco dancer. I think it's a flamenco dance. I use her all the time when I'm happy. And as reactive as re - remoji’s - geez, what are they called? I love those. I love the fact that I don't have to type so that I can put a very quick visual thing that has energy behind it.
Maya Middlemiss 27:45
Yes, because I think it’s a dynamic one.
Pilar Orti 27:459
Yeah, some emojis have an energy behind it, that it's very difficult to achieve with words. So I like that. So anyway…
Maya Middlemiss 27:55
They have their place. I don't know, I suppose it's also fair to say that different teams are going to evolve their own shorthand and their own, whether it's you agree within a team that you'll react to for having read something means you put a checkmark or the eyes, emoji or whatever that, these things might be explicit, or they might be informal, but you different places are going to find their own norms. And it might be perfectly appropriate within that team to sprinkle dancers everywhere, or, as we do now because I like to. There might be other teams that's less appropriate, I don't know who would want to work there.
Pilar Orti 28:34
That's great. So before we go into the next one listeners, if you have any, and it's funny how these days they evoke such strong reactions, at least, if you have any strong preferences, if you have any strong opinions or even if they're not that strong around this, we'd love to hear from you at virtual not distant.com There's a contact form that you can use. Or you can send a message to the Twitter account which is at virtual teamwork with a zero instead of an o or if you prefer good old fashioned email pilar@virtualnotdistant.com I would love to hear from you. We would love to hear from you. And we would love to share what you have to say with other listeners. But if you want to send us a private message that is fine as well. Yes, it's not all about sharing everything.
Maya Middlemiss 29:12
Send us your favourite emoji and tell us what it means to you.
Pilar Orti 29:16
Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Let's move on then to… it was actually an article that Eva Rimbau-Gilabert shared on LinkedIn. And then I commented a bit and the conversation evolved a little bit which was really interesting as well and ever is. I don't know if she's, she must be a doctor, Doctor Eva. She's definitely an academic in the Open University of Catalonia. She has been in space for ages. I respect her so much and she has been one of those champions in Spain really doing this kind of work that can be worn in a culture, which has always been very removed from for different reasons from remote work. It basically says two years. It's in Spanish, but you can use Google Translate to translate it.
Maya Middlemiss 30:13
Thank you for translating it for me, Pilar. Definitely faster than most Spanish.
Pilar Orti 30:19
It’s only… I didn't translate the whole thing, obviously, but just the bits that I liked. So but the title is two years after locked down what's going on with telework in Spain? And I think it's still called the ‘teletrabajo’. I think it will always be called ‘teletrabajo’ because the other things just sound weird.
Maya Middlemiss 30:37
Remoto is picking up a bit.
Pilar Orti 30:46
So basically, what it's saying is, it was adopted a lot and is not being adopted as much now. And probably it's being adopted less than those of us who think it's a good thing to adopt it we're hoping for, I have to say that. I don't have the number but it's around episode 200 and something “The View From The South of Europe” is a podcast episode where Eva explains why the percentages are lower in Spain, then in other European countries. And it's got to do with all kinds of stuff about the labour market. It's not as simple as, do people like it or not? So I'll start with one of the introductory paragraphs, which I will now translate. So according to data from the IND, which is the Instituto Nacional de playa, which is like the employment Institute, the most prominent reason why there is not as much teleworking as possible, is that a large part of the people who could telework prefer not to do so. And that's 58.5%. The reasons for wanting to work face-to-face include disadvantages of teleworking, such as lack of social contact with colleagues, difficulties disconnecting from work, or work overload, added to this as the fact that the private home may not be suitable for teleworking. This is 10.8 % of employed people who could telework are saying that, percent 10.8%. So that is a very rich paragraph.
Maya Middlemiss 32:11
Yeah, just there's a lot in there. I think it's interesting that people are still talking about difficulties disconnecting, or overload, because we are supposed to have a law now that protects against that, and makes it give people legal rights to switch off and to create those boundaries, which suggests that isn't quite filtering through to what's actually happening yet. Not having anywhere suitable. That is really unsurprising, the amount of Spanish private homes, which are really very comfortable, and valuable, upper middle class family homes, which really don't have a lot of indoor space, because there are people who just don't spend a lot of time at home compared to socialising in the community. And I know a lot of people find it very difficult to lock down because of that.
Pilar Orti 33:03
And also what we were talking about earlier, just right at the beginning of the episode, it's no surprise. I think that the disconnecting issue, I think that the law is a first step, and then beyond that, it's just the individual. I mean, this inability to disconnect from work is nothing new, I think it would have been interesting to have. And there might be data about how difficult that was before the pandemic, and how difficult it is now, and I assume that it has become more difficult because you've got your computer at home. And maybe the expectation, especially if you were in crisis mode that you were available a lot of the time. But I still think that mobile phones are a huge, huge problem. And I remember a friend of mine, who was way, way before the pandemic, with her Blackberry, she would be on holiday, and she'd be checking her email, and there was no expectation. So like we were saying earlier, it's what's expected of your company culture, psychological makeup of the person, the word, it's really complex.
Maya Middlemiss 34:11
It's an overlay that with a national culture of late hours working and socialising, where a lot of people would take a long lunch break, maybe a decade or so ago, they'd actually have had a proper siesta and a rest during that time. But instead, they're probably not going home, but then they're going back and working late into the evening because that's what people always do. And you're not necessarily going to do that differently. Just because you're at home. If your colleagues are working till sort of eight o'clock or something then it's quite difficult to log off and disconnect.
Pilar Orti 34:42
That was really interesting. And you won't have heard this episode yet, but listeners might. So episode 298 with Laurel Farrer, she said that her research in the US actually showed and this is back to the point made here that a large 58 Poor In 5%, of people who could telework have decided to prefer not to. Laurel was saying that what she had found in her research was that there weren't more people requesting remote work now than before the pandemic, it's just that they had a stronger case. I think that's really, it's really interesting from what we are, again, from the feeling that I get from what I'm seeing, hearing, etc, would be that everyone is asking to work remote. And actually, when you start to look into it, it's not that that might not be the case.
Maya Middlemiss 35:34
No, I'm sure that's correct. And I'm sure that I think that also speaks to the amount of obstacles that were placed in people's ways before, because it was that chicken and egg thing? Well, we've never done it like that, there's no proof that that's gonna work probably won't work. Whereas now at least everybody's got the business case on their side of look, we've managed the last two years, I would like to go on working this way, it's very difficult for an employer to say that that simply won't work, because it's what you made them do for the last two years. So if you do want to make that business case, at least now you can, whereas before, there may have been no precedent, no evidence, and you were actually asking your organisation to take quite a big risk, and letting you have that flexibility. So yeah, I'm sure we'll reach a point where we know roughly what proportion wants it and get it? And yeah, maybe then we'll approach that new normal, that's still out there one day.
Pilar Orti 36:24
Yeah. So the next piece of data of the people who have ever telework, they say that once the pandemic is over, and I think it's really interesting that people are thinking it is really great, as we were saying before, that people understand and see that there's a now there's a later there's the pandemic. And once the pandemic is over, they would like to telework every day 23.5% without ever going to the workplace and 24.7 going occasionally, with an average preference of 3.8 days of telecommuting per week. So I haven't quite looked at this, it's a bit confusing that they say they would like to telework every day. But yeah, and then it says 3.8 days. But anyway, there's still a huge preference for being away from the workplace at least half of the week.
Maya Middlemiss 37:17
And I think all of these surveys. Regardless of how they present the data, they always seem to indicate a big spread of what people want, and different ways of working, even within the same organisations that often research suggests that there are different models in place and different roles, or people's preferences might be able to be accommodated, especially the H word hybrid, that we're still seeing chapter out anywhere that can describe almost anything, when you've got one person in the office, opening the post, and everybody's working from home, or you've got a couple people allowed to work from home on Thursday, or anything in between. So we need to recognize that people's needs and the practices that are evolving are hugely varying within that. Nobody is going to commute for 3.8 days a week. But if that's, what, what it works out as the average, it'd be quite interesting to see how that shifts and evolves.
Pilar Orti 38:12
I find it very interesting that 23.5% of the people who have telework would be okay, without ever going to the workplace. Proper remote. Yeah. And this to me says that, okay, there's a lot who want to go back to socialising. They're still because there's only 23% of the maybe I don't know, a small percentage that say that they want to continue teleworking. But it's so small. And again, there are people who are okay, not having that kind of lifestyle of going every other day, at least to see their team members or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Again, there are people who actually are happy without that there's always, especially when we're talking about the hybrid model, there's always this thing Oh, hi, everyone, I want to see my colleagues, but not everyone.
Maya Middlemiss 38:57
But I don't necessarily want to see you. But we should, the technology allows us now to embrace that difference of working styles. And people have become so much better in many cases at that self knowledge of how they do their best work, how they best do certain activities within their work that if employers could just listen to that and take this vastly diverse spectrum of preferences on board, then probably everyone will be a lot happier and more productive.
Pilar Orti 39:28
And finally, the last paragraph, which was my favourite, and the beginning, we're gonna do the whole episode around this, but then all these other things happen. So here's what's going on. And this is my favourite bit. Face to face can be reserved precisely for collaboration and complex communication activities for which adequate space is necessary, as we said before, while teleworking can be used for tasks that require greater concentration and simple communications. And big caveat here of course. So, if you're distributed, you need to do all of this distribution. And it is possible. We've seen remote companies and remote teams doing this. However, again, the conversation always says all the physical space is best for collaboration and communicating well. We've got complex, simple communication, I think we also have complex and simple collaboration. And it's good to distinguish between those, if we're making the case for one space or the other.
Maya Middlemiss 40:27
Yeah, definitely. And to really think about what that space is for, it's a bit like going back to the Dropbox virtual first model of, they're not going to give people offices anymore, they're only going to give them this kind of collaboration zones and different ways. And what they don't want people doing is coming into the office to sit and work on their own in a cubicle, or to email people, who aren't in the building, you could do that from home. Whereas the kind of collaboration, which is better served face to face probably needs a completely different setup anyway. And whether it is, I don't know if simple or complex is necessarily the spectrum here. It's, it's different kinds of energies of collaboration. And I think it's also important to realise that different roles, different projects might have these different sorts of collaboration needs changing throughout their lifetime, as well, you might need to be together to kick something off, and then you go and do your thing. And then you touch base, but you can do that remotely in a daily stand up or something. So there's all these different kinds of collaboration. And maybe that was all taken for granted when we've just in the office. And we could just get together without really thinking about it. Now we've just got to be a little bit more conscious about it all. And maybe that will help us all understand our workflows a bit better.
Pilar Orti 41:41
Yeah, Episode 297 listeners, Maya and I discussed the rhythm, different rhythms of communication and in teams. And I think that's quite a good complement to this, because it really is about that. It's about understanding, when we talk about collaboration, when we talk about communication, what we are really talking about, and what is the best way for us to do different things, where, how, when, etc. So I love this. And then I left a message for I don't know, if you've seen this, my or maybe you've only seen the article, I left a message forever. And LinkedIn saying I love that you've mentioned different kinds of collaborative, collaborative communication complex and simple. And my head immediately went to complex collaboration when it's best served by people being together and bouncing ideas off of each other, and being able to have as much context around each other for communication as possible. So basically being in the physical space together. And Barlow, who's also a listener of this podcast said, “yeah, for complex collaboration, I prefer to be on my own away from people. So I have time to think, digest”. And that just for me, that was great.
Maya Middlemiss 43:01
Don't take it for granted, the way you do. Complex collaboration might not be the way somebody else does. And I think there's probably some link to the introversion extroversion scale in here as well. And just in terms of how people absorb information and interact with it, and whether other people are a distraction and a drain or whether they stimulate you to collaborate better. So yeah, tons, tons of stuff going on in there.
Pilar Orti 43:28
And the problem is that sometimes we don't have time to do this. But if we can move some of the more transactional bits of communication into an asynchronous space, and really simple and really simplify that, then we can have more time to talk about these kinds of things while we set up because like all change and like all transitions, this is going to take some thinking through and talking through. So hopefully this can start to take you some direction when you're talking about this, or whatever. And also, it wasn't Ballard, it was Pedro. Yeah, who does comment and stuff. He's, uh, he's around. So thank you very much. To both of them. I also mentioned of course, like you mentioned earlier, the role of coworking spaces, so then people don't think that they have to work from home. And really, if coworking. I think in Spain, like many people, they don't know what coworking is. But there are lots of spaces. But I think that that needs to come into the conversation as well.
Maya Middlemiss 44:27
Yeah, it definitely feels like coworkings here is still a real niche and very much like the tech industry. And certain kinds of collaboration and certain certain kinds of people. Intrapreneurs are very much around that or bringing sort of new agile teams together for a tech startup. Whereas traditional employees who didn't want to go back to the office but would prefer to be at a desk, not in their house. I'm not seeing so much of that and I'm not seeing them being marketed to either as potential coworking customers. So hopefully that will continue to shift. Yeah.
Pilar Orti 45:04
Great. So as all of that is shifting listeners, we hope you enjoyed thinking through again. None of these things are really new because they just keep coming back, don't they Maya, but it's interesting to see how they're landing. And, and the kind of things that are really picking up. I mean, the whole bit about returning to the office and the mental health aspect of that is, I don't think we were expecting that at least. I mean, I knew it wouldn't be easy. But this just goes deeper than, and thought of.
Maya Middlemiss 45:35
Yeah, I think a lot of employers weren't thinking about it, either. Maybe? Everybody.
Pilar Orti 45:40
Yeah, well, exactly. And that's okay, because we've got this, like, we've never been in this kind of situation. So for that we are all in the same boat.
Maya Middlemiss 45:49
Yeah, we experienced it differently. It's true. And we're all we've all shared certain common factors like, the geopolitical uncertainty with the war and things like that rising fuel prices, which might affect people's ability to commute, or might affect their ability to get painting on at home as well. So there's so many things here that are going on for people. It's a complicated time to be telling people, you've all got to do this, or we've all got to do that.
Pilar Orti 46:15
So as we said, we are recording on the fifth of April 2022, which means April Fool's Day. First of April was only a few days ago, and I thought we could give a shout out to two companies, Maya. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But Ebola from omnipresence, sent an email out and they really remembered she got me. Basically, they are a distributed team and their product is actually something that helps distributed companies employ people all across the world. And to send this email the saying Omnipress in the remote work employment partner today announced the shocking news that their global team of more than 230 people is being asked to head to the office. And then I just read my favourite bits. My favourite bit was, this includes the mammoth task of relocating employees from more than 40 countries to London, to incentivize staff, many of whom have reservations Omnipress and will provide pizza Tuesday, a ball pit and Friday drinks in the office.
Maya Middlemiss 47:16
That's what we've all been missing, isn't it?
Pilar Orti 47:20
And then, finally, the wrapping up and they say, blah, blah, blah, while companies worldwide have seen a surge in productivity over the past two years through remote work, and 58% of companies are planning to make remote or hybrid work permanent, omnipresent, believes remote work will soon be a thing of the past. We are getting ahead of the curve before remote work goes the way of the dodo bird.
Maya Middlemiss 47:46
Well, I'm glad they called it so we're not even gonna bother with episode 300, then. It's all done. It's all finished.
Pilar Orti 47:55
I loved it. And Oyster had something similar. Yeah.
Maya Middlemiss 47:59
I mean, it was exactly the same gag as it was on LinkedIn. And yeah, it's the kind of thing you look at for a second if it is what? Check the date. Saying exactly the same thing. A company that helps other people go remote, suddenly declaring that it was all a big mistake. And then going back in, mind you I think there are plenty of companies who maybe people weren't sure if they were joking or not. When they suddenly decided, and there has been so much flip flopping going on. And that's the reason these things were able to catch us both, at least even momentarily, because there's been so much backwards and forwards from big employers, making statements about this and that and then changing their mind. So anything could be true.
Pilar Orti 48:42
Well, listeners, we would love to hear if you have any jokes to share around this or any or any announcements that were not made on April Fool's Day. You weren't that happy about it. We'd love to hear from you on virtualnotdistant.com We have a contact form or you can email directly: pilar at virtual not distant dot com. You can find us on LinkedIn, you can sign up to our newsletter over at virtualnotdistant.com. And, we will be here at least for another episode.
Maya Middlemiss 49:13
It’s not quite over yet.
Pilar Orti 49:16
Not quite over yet. So listeners thank you very much for listening. A big thank you for listening to the 21st Century Work Life podcast produced by Virtual not Distant. If you have something to add to the conversation, let us know through the contact form over at virtualnotdistant.com I have been your host Pilar Orti and I'm signing off now. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, enjoy.