When the pandemic blended our professional and
personal lives by forcing many of us to work from home, we learned a valuable
lesson about
tech. It can be an incredibly useful tool for communicating with
colleagues. But when used without care, it can hurt our productivity and our
relationships.
اضافة اعلان
Now as some white-collar professionals prepare to return to
the office, many businesses are planning a so-called hybrid model, in which
workers split their hours between the office and home. And therein lies a new
tech challenge.
Instead of one work environment, many of us will have two.
We’ll be constantly switching between them, collaborating with some colleagues
in the office while others are at home. It may feel chaotic to figure out which
tools to use — from email to video calls — for working together in each situation.
“What I’m seeing in the literature is more and more evidence
of how important it is to be intentional and deliberate about the way we’re
using technology,” said Emiliana Simon-Thomas, a neuroscientist who teaches
courses about the science of happiness at work for the University of
California, Berkeley. “How is it supporting what I really want to do rather
than pulling me in 15 different directions?”
I consulted experts on workplace well-being for their advice
on how to deal with this new hybrid setup. Using tech (or unplugging from it)
to establish boundaries will be of paramount importance to our new
home-and-office lifestyles, they said.
Despite the popularity of remote-work apps like Zoom and
Slack during the pandemic, studies have found that the most effective
communication tools are still the most low tech. That means that in the office
we’ll probably thrive with more face-to-face interaction, and that at home the
phone is usually best.
Here’s a guide to how that might play out.
To text, call or Zoom
During the pandemic, the number of phone calls doubled,
according to data provided by phone carriers. The phone proved to be a superior
method for feeling closer to people and enjoying conversations more, according
to a study last year by the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Another study found that as the use of video-calling
exploded in the last year, “Zoom fatigue” became a real concern. Maintaining
close-up eye contact and seeing yourself in real time during a video chat can
be exhausting, according to Stanford researchers. Plus, sitting stiffly in
front of a webcam limits our mobility.
So how do we apply these lessons to a hybrid environment?
When working with colleagues in the office, we can resist
the temptation to converse via email or Slack. To make the best use of being
near one another, consider a face-to-face conversation or, if you work on
separate floors, a phone call.
When working with colleagues from a remote setting, a text
or an email is probably fine for quick conversations, like setting up a
meeting. But for more serious discussions, a phone or video call is probably
better.
Video calls can get tedious, so they should be used
sparingly and mainly when there is a clear purpose for video, Simon-Thomas
said. That could be a meeting with visual aids in a presentation. Or a
first-time introduction to a colleague, when it’s nice to see a face.
Whether in the office or at home, if you’re going to write
to your colleagues, be thoughtful, Simon-Thomas added. Avoid terse notes, and
add nuance and context to your message. Whenever possible, show curiosity when
discussing solutions to problems to avoid coming off as a harsh critic.
“We don’t have the intonation, the facial expression and the
postural cues that we normally rely on,” she said. “The most mundane response
can mean a universe of things to a person that receives it.”
Respect boundaries
Regardless of our rank in an organization, our time is
precious. When our work is interrupted by a digital distraction like a message,
it takes 23 minutes on average to return to the original task, according to one
study. So in a hybrid work situation, respecting boundaries will be crucial,
said Tiffany Shlain, a documentary maker who wrote “24/6,” a book about the
importance of unplugging from tech.
There are powerful tools, like scheduling emails and setting
a status message, that you can use to let others know you are busy and to set
boundaries.
Let’s say that you work a 9-to-5 job and that at 7 p.m. you
have an idea to share with a colleague, so you jot it down in an email. If you
shoot off the email, two things happen. One, you have removed your own boundary
by letting others know that you work during supper time. Two, you have
potentially interrupted a colleague during his or her downtime.
Scheduled emails are a convenient solution. Gmail, the most
popular email service, has an arrow next to the Send button to let you schedule
an email for a specific date and time; Microsoft’s Outlook app has a similar
tool. Scheduling the memo to be sent at 9am tomorrow would probably make
everyone happier.
On the flip side, when you are busy or clocked out, there
are methods to prevent others from bothering you.
In Slack, you can set your status to “away” and write a
description like “On deadline.” For email, the out-of-office responder can be
turned on to let others know you are in meetings.
Most smartphones also have a “do not disturb” option to
silence all notifications. In the next version of
Apple’s iOS, set for release
this fall, iPhone owners will be able to set a status message in iMessage to
show others when they are busy. It will also include tools to allow
notifications to appear only from specific groups of people, like family.
There are also methods that do not rely on tools. Shlain
makes a social media post letting people know that she is unplugging for the
weekend so they can expect to hear from her later.
“It’s a great thing to communicate but also to let people
know that they can do it, too,” she said.
Know when to sign off
On days when you are working from home with no physical
separation between your work and personal lives, you will need to make a more
deliberate effort to sign off. Sometimes the best way to set a boundary is to
have no tech at all.
One method for turning off work mode at home is to create
physical distance, said Adam Alter, a marketing professor at New York
University’s Stern School of Business and author of the book “Irresistible: The
Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.” For
example, you could set an alarm to go off in a bedroom at 5 p.m., forcing you
to leave your office space to clock out both physically and mentally.
Shlain has a more extreme approach. For the last 11 years,
she has practiced a tech version of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Every
Friday evening, she and her family power down their devices, and for 24 hours
they do all the things that energize them, like hanging out with friends,
painting and taking the dog on a long walk.
“For one day there’s no expectation for me to respond,” she
said. “You clear the noise and the space to think bigger picture about your
life.”
Then when she’s feeling refreshed on Sunday, she writes
emails to her colleagues and schedules them to send Monday morning.
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