work remotely: lessons learned

design ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENT/ Ignacio Cristóbal

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, when we heard the words "work in remote or telework", ideas such as "only managers", "employees who travel", "call and contact centers" and sometimes "flexibility" and "conciliation" came to our minds, but these two only in certain organizations in which work was not essential, or in some companies that could be confined to the world of technology and consultancy service.

The pandemic has forced us to work remotely in a fast and disorderly way, we have had to learn by experimenting to collaborate and distribute tasks virtually, and after several months in this status, we are beginning to perceive a certain fatigue about this new way of working. It is becoming more and more common for those who can leave their homes to go to their work center to socialize and put some order in their lives.

We could say that what has happened is not "teleworking". There is a certain frustration because one does not work as one should and does not take care of one's family as one would like. There has been a confusion in priorities (do I have to, do I want to, should I?) making it difficult to reconcile work and family life, as well as coordination and planning. Neither the infrastructure has been prepared, nor the realities of the homes, either for lack of space or technical means. 

But wasn't the remote work the panacea for work-life balance staff and professional life? 

Not in Covid-19's time, it seems. London Business School professor Linda Gratton, Linda Gratton held a webinar in April 2020 webinar focused specifically on the challenges and opportunities of balancing work and family to discover what strategies were working. The executives who joined were from more than 30 companies in Europe, the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and more than 60% of them worked from home with family responsibilities.

The study derived from this meeting sample shows that during this time there has been a dissolution of the boundaries between the two spheres that define people: professional and family (private life). During these months there have been no clear and necessary transitions from one world to the other (leaving home or the office, changing clothes, taking a car or public transport) which psychologically prepare us for a necessary and clear transition from one world to the other.

"These two transitions help separate and preserve our distinct self and provide the means for temporal, cognitive and relational shifts. Maintaining boundaries rather than blurring the line between when you are "on" for one role and "off" for the other means that distraction is minimized. Creativity and flow can happen more quickly.

With entire families confined, the boundaries for workers have been dissolved. Instead of two transitions (home to work, work to home), there have been multiple transitions (work, babysitting, working, preparing lunch, working, playing with the baby, etc). Each transition has negatively affected concentration and productivity and, ultimately written request, creativity."

As solutions, this researcher points to work for blocks of time. The idea is good, but sometimes the meetings are at one hour, if you work on demand it is complicated and the hours that can be left to work with your head are at the extremes: early in the morning or at night. This can be maintained for a while and with a very perfect organization, but over the weeks and the need to be flexible in both spheres (the professional and the staff) is seen to have an end date.   

So what is the future of remote work ?

During these weeks we have experienced and learned a lot, and this is always positive. Some issues that seemed like a panacea, we have realized that they are not. But we have made progress in other areas.

We have learned a lot about ourselves: taking ourselves out of our control zone in an uncertain environment has often put us in front of the mirror. This generates stress that is not bad, if it is controlled and learned from the status.

Virtual meetings are here to stay. The technological means were already good before the pandemic, but in general we lacked that step forward that these past weeks have facilitated.

Flexibility in the two spheres of the person is a topic that those organizations that did not have it solved will have no choice but to implement it. It is a vital necessity and after what we have seen in recent months, after a while with a more buoyant Economics , it will lead to staff turnover and therefore to a loss of talent in those organizations that have not wanted to see it.

It is perhaps in the return to the "usual" normality, when families recover the healthy and desired routines, where the remote work regain its original state and the theory presented by Linda Gratton on the time blocks make sense and be effective. Why not work remotely looking for the peace and quiet that gives us an empty house to gain in productivity and creativity, which perhaps in the office is not possible? Or a necessary family conciliation, which leads us to leave before work, to be able to "telework" from home when the family is already in the night rest (and not in addition to the full workshop in the office) or to care for a sick relative who only requires presence, and so many other cases.

Two more issues. One is the generalized desire to "be able to go to work" and be with colleagues in person, a basic need of the person who is a social being. How many times we have been surprised by attitudes of rejection before an offer of work in which the candidate refused to him "to earn more in unemployment", and the doubt that these attitudes created us to see the little interest towards being able to be part of a team, to relate with others, to go out of house, etc.

The other issue could be defined as the rediscovery of family co-responsibility in which especially some men have had to live more at home, take on position of domestic issues and of their children's Education . Let us hope that in those cases in which it has arrived for the first time, it will be to stay or at least to be more sensitive to these issues if these men are responsible for teams.

Gratton puts it bluntly: "From what I hear, executives are becoming more empathetic to these challenges than ever before. The issues of tensions around work and home have, of course, existed for decades, but what has been lacking is the willpower to do something about it. That is beginning to change as executives experience these stresses firsthand.

Now, thanks to varieties of quarantines, lockouts and work orders from home, executives are experiencing more viscerally the stresses of the work challenge at home. That is creating a sense of understanding and empathy that many executives had previously lacked."

Like summary. With the potential of months of work at home, people will inevitably develop new habits and expectations. Some of these habits will be eliminated as soon as the social distancing is removed, but others will have such obvious virtues that they are destined to be adopted into everyday working life. Perhaps this is the "new normal" and not other things we are told.