Good Disruption: The Virtual Workplace

The Disruption, a lively discussion between UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka Cocaine and Mike Lennox on cutting edge technologies and practices that are challenging the status quo.

Hey Mike.

Hey, good to see you.

Excited about today's topic.

So what's, what are we talking about today?

Well, ironically, we're both in the studio, but we are talking about the virtual workplace, um, one that I'm super excited, not only because my team, um, is comprised of hybrid and virtual workers, but also because I've just seen a lot happening in this space over the past few years.

This isn't like a hot topic.

Anything here, it is a hot topic.

I arguably the whole world has experienced this to some extent given, uh, the COVID, COVID pandemic.

But maybe that's a great place to start, which is define what we're talking about here.

Like what, what exactly are we thinking about when we say the virtual workplace?

Yeah, great.

So a great place to start, you know, if you think pre-pandemic, so our world has really changed, so we're gonna be talking.

A lot today about pre and post pandemic to help give context, but, uh, before the pandemic, you know, 5 to 6% of employees worked from home or worked remotely, meaning they did not go into an office building that was presumably either owned or rented by the company that they worked for.

They didn't meet with other employees, but they worked someplace that was remote, meaning they had to rely on other ways to communicate with employees in their firm.

Um, you know, during COVID that went up 70%, OK, so like that shot up, uh, everybody was forced to in some ways work from home.

And what we're seeing now is that the world has changed because post pandemic, many still want to do that.

They've realized that they can and that they do a pretty good job and so now 80% of workers are expected to be at home, um, you know, somewhere around 2 to 3 days.

So like we're really talking about different modes of operation, hybrid models people like to call them, where you're in a few days, you're home a few days, and so you no longer have one single place that you have.

To get up, commute into every single day.

Now, always on this podcast, we want to debate kind of good or bad disruption, but we also always have the option of no disruption.

So let me just push on the idea, is this just temporary?

Are we just in the long tail of COVID and going kind of still working our way back to normal, or is the thinking like something's fundamentally changed here?

Well, my sense is that habits are changing and forming in new and productive ways.

And the next generation of employees, the new hires that people are bringing in, you know, 97, 97%, 97%, that's almost all of them, uh, are, are claiming that they want some form of flexibility, and so this is becoming the new normal.

Uh, I can be flexible.

I can work from home.

Maybe it's not as strict as which days of the week, but I have the option to choose, and maybe some periods in my life I wanna work from home more. and other periods I want to work from homeless.

That is where we're headed.

Uh, technology has caught up.

Investments have been paying off.

Companies have been proving all of their capabilities to the point where now it's not as big of a deal if people want to work from a different location.

I, I want to push on the technology piece, but before I do that, I'm gonna put on my, my Gen X cynicism here and say, all right, 97% of people want to work from home in some capacity or another.

Is that really measuring 97% of people just want to work less, you know, is this, is this a form of the quiet quitting we've seen here and that working at home allows people to just simply not work as intensely as they normally do.

There are estimates that companies lose $600 billion to distractions in the workplace.

So it is not without cost coming into the office.

We like to think that we're more productive, but we waste.

A lot of time, even, you know, not to say not to talk about commute and the time that we waste on the road or coming in or finding parking spots, um, uh, getting ready for work, transitioning in and out, there is a lot of other distractions that occur going out for lunch, speaking with colleagues, water cooler conversations, but aren't, but aren't those like really important?

Like I mean, are those distractions or is that part of being an effective worker?

So we will talk about what is. of those interactions that we would like to capture and maintain even if people work remotely or dispersedly in some way, shape or form.

So if you want the connectivity, there's a lot of ways to go about it, but there are pure distractions in the workplace where people are not as productive as they should, and we tend to think that people don't work as hard at home, but actually they may be working harder.

We've heard of folks that work longer hours, they start earlier, they work later, they find their way around.

And, and at the end it could translate into a huge boost of productivity as opposed to taking away productivity.

So let's get to that technology question now.

We, we tend to, to like technology, both of us, and so many of our topics really have a strong technology man on this particular one.

How important is the evolution in technology to get us to the point that we're at today that allows us to have virtual workplaces be a viable option for a lot of businesses?

Well, I think it's huge.

We talked about it in a previous episode when we talked about, um, like higher education, the transformation of higher education, and how that's becoming online and, and more, uh, uh, distributed.

I think we're seeing.

Similar effect here uh in terms of technology's impact on the ability to have a virtual workplace.

Um, more and more houses have, uh, you know, high speed reliable internet and access, uh, more powerful computers buying multiple screens and high quality mics and cameras is not as expensive as it used to be.

Um, uh, those are tech, you know, tools and, and technology that people can invest in.

Video conferencing, I mean, you and I recall a few years ago, even just a decade ago when there were new Cisco systems and all of the different technologies used to be, uh, uh, uh, was first introduced that it was all super expensive to have and now every one of our conference rooms here, even at the business school, has the capability to zoom people in for them to see what's going on in the room and to really connect with what's going on so technology plays a huge role.

Both in terms of the hardware and in terms of the internet and and the speed in which it gets distributed.

So let's keep on the the benefit side, right?

So you've talked about how um it's not necessarily should be assumed that people are less productive, uh, by working at home.

The technology has evolved to allow us to have face to face, you know, uh, interactions in a, in a powerful way where you can see people's emotions and.

Uh, and the like, uh, what other benefits?

What other benefits do we get from remote work?

Well, there's a huge benefit, um, from an, uh, inclusiveness perspective.

So, um, Sedal Neely, who's a professor at Harvard Business School, often talks about, you know, workplace. 11 side effect that we don't talk about or we do talk about, but we just don't think about it as much in the context of virtual workplace, the physical.

Workplace hasn't always been welcoming for everybody.

Black and brown workers haven't always felt included in certain environments and, uh, to some degree, not forcing people to physically be in the same room, eat the same food, go and hang out in the same way and spend their time in, in the same, uh, quarters, but having people give, you know, spend their time in, in their natural environments where they feel, you know, more comfortable kind of empowers them to participate in a different way and so it kind of.

To some degree allows us to set some equal playing field to all employees to access in the same way.

Um, I have folks that are that live more remote on my team, so some of them live in other cities and states even and you know I don't have to require them to necessarily pick up and move and actually relocate, but I can invite them to join in the workforce and be equal and contribute massively.

From wherever they are.

So it's opened the door in an inclusive manner that I think previously we were prevented.

You know, it comes to mind, you know, both of our spouses work, both of them have careers, uh, uh, and mine works from home 100%.

There you go.

And, and that opportunity when people have like a two body problem of, of working couples to be able to, to deal with the geography problems that so many people tend to have, um, seems like a really powerful upside to this.

I've been really Uh, interested to see how many of our students graduating from Darden in recent years are being given these opportunities to basically choose where they live, you know, and if you wanna live in an idyllic college town like Charlottesville, Virginia, where we have the opportunity to live, um, you can do that and still work for maybe a major corporation located in a, uh, a, a bigger urban area, though it begs the question of what does even located mean in some of these really.

Uh, hybrid environments where, uh, the groups are coming together and, uh, dispersing, uh, and you don't even need a corporate headquarters.

Uh, and you think about everything to do with cost of living and how calculations related to cost of living may affect salaries that different employees for the same firm in a similar role may have just because of where they live.

Some of those, um, inequalities are basically being removed because you can live and, and, and work wherever.

You want to, and it's up to the employee to decide based on other factors such as their social, uh, uh, you know, social circle or family or needs for support, where they want to be located, and they shouldn't really feel the hit as much in terms of their salary.

Well, let's, let's pivot a little bit to some of the negatives.

So we've talked about like the ability here to help with diversity and inclusion, the ability to help with even equity issues and inclusion across geographies.

But at the end of the day, is this kind of a rich person's problem?

And what I'm thinking of, I grew up in a steel mill town, and I'm pretty sure you're not gonna outsource the steel mill jobs to virtual work here.

There might be obviously pieces of it that could be done virtually.

Um, is this really a, a trend that's, you know, for college educated people who have jobs that are white collar that allow for this type of work, and does that create inequities in, in other ways?

I think that's fair.

I think to begin with the type of work that lends itself to work remote might not be in every sector, and we're gonna see sectors, um, which we've already been noticing some sectors benefit from it more than other sectors.

I do think that the.

Idea of it and the resilience that comes with it or the opportunity to provide resilience to the employees will find its way into other other industries as well.

So while we're realizing that maybe you know computer jobs or the tech industry or or or or even uh more of a, you know, uh, some of our, our education type roles are easier done remotely, the benefit of giving people freedom of choice, the benefit of giving them.

Uh, varying modes to connect to the firm, uh, are, are inspiring for all industries and so there'll be rotations and there'll be more opportunity for folks to take parts of their job and to kind of find ways to deliver it, but you're right, there are definitely industries that will benefit immediately and there's some industries that might have more long term implications, you know, on the business side, um, are we looking at significant cost reductions, you know, maybe I don't need to have the physical infrastructure.

I don't need to have the office.

Building that I had, um, maybe I can pay people less if they're working in, uh, maybe not like New York City versus again like Charlottesville here, um, and is that a good thing or a bad thing?

So there's definitely reduction even just from saving commuting time alone, whether the employees are the ones bearing those costs or the companies are bearing those costs.

Travel in general has changed substantially, so we can focus on when travel is needed and use those funds more.

Strategically, uh, uh, so definitely huge amounts of savings there.

Also, what we need in terms of office space is changing.

So do we need more of a, of a commuter type desk where people can come in and use and share desk space as opposed to giving everybody the same kind of office space?

Those are the types of change, so smaller footprint for organizations that they can save on, um, by allowing people to work remote.

And this is not only the types of jobs like even.

Call centers and and and and and those types of facilities that typically would be huge, you know, huge in physically demanding spaces can now actually leverage folks working, uh, remotely, you know, I think a lot about like the tech sector, uh, which we both again think a lot about, and, and we've all both had the opportunities to, you know, visit the, the Facebooks or now the Metas and the, the Google slash alphabets of the world, and, you know, back in the day, and, and by back in the day I mean like 5 years ago, uh, their whole.

The model was to build literally like college-like campuses that had everything you needed your dry cleaning, your food, your froyo, you know, all of that located in your workspace with the idea that you would almost live on these, uh, these campuses that they've created.

Is, is that, is that gone now?

Is that going away?

Or again, is there, is there a reason that that co-location.

Uh, is so important.

It may be in certain sectors versus others.

Yeah, it's a great question.

Um, it will definitely change, it's definitely changing because people are utilizing those services less and less, but also companies can really invest in where it matters.

So maybe you don't need 5 different types of restaurants and 5 different types of, you know, uh, uh, um, hairdressers on site, but you can be more strategic in your investments and your choices.

You do still, companies still want to lure their employees in and.

Mostly because of one of the challenges with with virtual workplace is the cross collaboration.

So working together is better.

It's definitely easier than it used to be.

We can work on Google Docs.

We can, you know, even Dropbox now syncs much, much in a seamless manner, but it's still not the same as getting into a room together under some conditions and co-creating and collaborating, especially with new employees.

And so that collaboration aspect, while it's being invested in.

It still benefits for sporadically at least coming and convening together and so when we do come and convene together, the workplace wants to be ready, but they can do it in a more strategic way really invest in what those things are gonna be that will lure us into the office we we're not gonna live and breathe and and do everything that we do at home from the office anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, other downsides, where, where, where, what, what haven't we talked about yet that you think like, wait, we need to have this on our radar here?

You mentioned earlier productivity and really can people really be expected to sit at their desk at home and be as productive?

Are they just not like slacking that concern that people are just at home and and watching TV or doing their house chores?

So there is this notion of monitoring, uh, how much does an an employer who is providing that flexibility for folks to work at home.

Um, several days a week or even full time remote, how much do they need to monitor that the work is getting done and what kind of tools and techniques are they gonna use in order to monitor their, their employees and so the whole big brother-esque concern, am I being monitored?

Are my emails being looked at?

Is somebody watching my browser?

Those are that those have always been there even on premise, to be honest, um, but they're definitely there in terms of what can companies do to. you know, inspire their employees to work hard, to not doubt their desire, you know, their, their commitment from home, but still have some notion that people are working as hard as they should.

You know, I, I have a, a relative who works remotely who has exactly that like the employer sees when they log in, sees what they're doing, uh, and then.

Um, you know, is monitoring and, and one question I would have about that is, I think you make a great point that like that happens, it could happen at least in the physical workplace as well, especially if you're, you know, dealing with computers or working on computers.

Um, but what seems to be different is what's the workday, right?

And what I'm thinking here is now one of the beauties of remote work is I don't have to work 9 to 5.

I can choose to work, you know, sleep in and start working at 1 p.m. and, you know, work through the evening.

If you have young kids, you can take them to school and then you can come home and deal with that afterwards, but from a monitoring standpoint, do we then allow ourselves to be monitored 24/7 and so like, oh, it's the Saturday morning and I decide to send a few emails.

I want my employer to know I'm working hard on a Saturday morning and.

Um, I can imagine that having a whole bunch of potential downsides, uh, in terms of how we separate work from the rest of our life.

We talk a lot in this day and age about work-life balance.

What does that even mean if the barriers between them are, are gone.

Uh, my father was a, a high school teacher and then eventually a high school principal, and, you know, this is back in the dark ages before, before the Internet as we know it, you know, was around and.

I don't know that your dad would like you saying Dark ages.

Yeah, I think he would agree, but I just remember, you know, the only time he had any connectivity with work is if he got a phone call, and if he got a phone call as a high school principal, it means something really bad happened.

So he really kind of left the work at home or he left the, uh, the work at the workplace, and when he was home, there was almost no way for him to engage in the world and There are definitely days where I feel like, wow, I would have loved to have that opportunity because I feel like I'm, I'm plugged in 24/7 and work is just intertwined with my life.

So it's definitely a choice and it's on both the managers and the employees to make those decisions and to define very clearly.

The, the norms of work, um, uh, we have to be deliberate about it we as managers, this goes both to the monitoring question but also to the, to the, to the notion of separation between you know, life and, and, you know, more recreational time in our lives versus work time in our lives in terms of.

As a manager, I need to communicate.

I need to make the job inspiring and exciting and something that is fulfilling so employees will want to work hard and I wouldn't have to worry about monitoring them, whether it's from home, on the bus, on the train, or in the office.

In a similar way, I need to respect their privacy and their ability to step away and so when they're on the, on vacation, uh, me as a manager, while I can send them a text and send them an instant messaging or an.

Email the ability to delay those things or to be strategic and send them Monday morning or to not expect responses, um, those are things that were always true and it's just on us to continue to reinforce the fact that we are on 24/7 that is partly our own doing and I'm talking to you, Mike specifically and me as an academic, we have very little boundaries in terms of what is, you know, out of office time.

My husband, who's been working from home for over, you know, almost 1415 years now, um, he, when he works, he's working.

We cannot disrupt him.

He's not home to accept deliveries or entertain, you know, somebody coming at the door, and he makes that very clear.

He is at work and when he's finished at 6 p.m. he closes his office door and he is at home, and that is very noticeable to me and, and our kids, and that is just his working habit.

Yeah, I, I, I, it's funny.

Thing about academics, you know, a little bit about our lifestyle, you know, uh, the dirty secrets of academia that maybe people don't realize is that most professors don't have, you know, things like vacation days, right?

Um, we don't punch the clock.

It, it really is up to you to manage your schedule in time.

And so if you choose, uh, you know, on a Friday to work at home, you know, that's your choice.

You know, the one thing we always have is like you gotta show up in the classroom, right?

That, that's important, though in a virtual world that could be changing as well, but, um.

What we do have is we have these very discrete measures of productivity and success and especially when it comes to publications and research, uh, so it's very output driven and however you work to generate those outputs that are then measured and there are clearly other fields of study, other professions that have similar types of discrete metrics, but there's a lot that don't, especially a lot that have kind of more team-based work and the like, um.

Are are are they losing that losing something by not having again that little bit more oversight that you, you get in, you know, at least a lot of traditional workplaces.

So in one way, it might inspire them to think about those measures of productivity in terms of objectively, what does the firm need?

Do I need this employee to be at their desk from 9 in the morning to 5 p.m.?

Is that really what I'm paying them for?

Or really what am I hoping that they accomplish with their time in the office?

And thinking more about that, what are those outputs?

What are those?

What is the result of this busy work?

Is it not just hours spent, but there's something else, and that reflection on those, those products, those outputs, those deliverables, so to speak, that might actually be a good exercise, but don't take my word for it.

I'm gonna bring in an expert.

Is that OK?

Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call a friend as we do, um, an expert really in this field of virtual workplace and really just in general, um, uh, Roshni, are you here?

Roshni, uh, Ravinderan, um, our colleague here at Darden.

Yes, hi Yael and Mike, thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

I'm very thrilled to be here.

We're so excited to have you.

Um, uh, so a little bit about Rajni.

She's an assistant professor here at Darden, and she's part of our leadership and organizational behavior, uh, area.

Um, and she really studies for her, for her career, and she's very, very successful, and she publishes a lot in this field, really how technological advancements and innovations influence organizational actors, workplace practices.

You can see how it's gonna be related to our conversation and really the management of talent and employees, so we couldn't be more fortunate to have somebody who.

Really know something about.

Thank goodness we got some real expertise on this uh podcast.

This is good.

Um, so Rajni are too kind.

I'm sure that you've been just overwhelmed or or bombarded with questions, uh, uh, during the pandemic, but even since about like these changes around us.

What are some biggest trends that you've kind of been, been monitoring and been excited about?

Yeah, great question.

So, you know, during the pandemic and even in the last couple of months, um, you know, very easily once or twice a month, I would have a company calling or some big media outlet calling to ask, um, what are your thoughts on virtual work?

Are we at this uh juncture where this is going to be a permanent fixture.

Or is this going to just be one of those uh fads where after a few years we're all going to go back into the office and I think that's the question that a lot of companies are grappling with today because the idea of how should we adapt to this new normal is something that managers are thinking, organizational leaders are thinking, employees are thinking.

And there are lots of trends that are, uh, sort of developing along those lines that we are talking about, you know, quiet quitting and the great resignation and all of these things and one common thread that you'll see is employees want the autonomy.

So one of the biggest trends is the hybrid workplace.

What is that going to look like?

What does it truly mean to have a hybrid workplace?

Does it mean forcing your employees to come into the office Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or does it mean Empowering employees to feel like they have the autonomy to make decisions about how they work, where they work, and have the judgment to come into the office when everybody needs to be in the office.

And I think that's what a lot of companies today are thinking about and then relatedly, how are cultural norms and social connections going to be shaped if.

We all suddenly start working virtually.

How are people going to relate to each other?

So that's another question that organizations are grappling with.

And then the third trend that I'm seeing and very closely related to a lot of my research is employee monitoring and how should we think about employee monitoring, especially when people are working from home.

Do we trust.

Employees to do their job, or do we put applications on their computers that would specifically monitor when they're turning their computers on or what applications are they on or how much do they contribute to a shared Google Doc.

These are like some of the questions that leaders and organizations are thinking about, all of which have direct and very serious implications.

For employees in the workplace, it's beautiful and uh you've mentioned kind of this uh this big kind of umbrella topic around hybrid workplace uh from your experience and uh you don't have to call specific companies out but like what makes for a successful hybrid environment?

What are some pre are there any preconditions that firms need to leaders have to think about in order to be successful at pulling off like a hybrid workplace?

Great question.

Um, one thing that I constantly see both in my own research, but also in other top publications that have come out is intentionality about how to implement hybrid workplace.

So, a hybrid workplace is not going to be one that is a one size fits all solution.

As I was mentioning earlier, it's not just telling your employees you get to work from home two days a week, so you have to be in the office Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

What it is, is being able to understand that there is a large body of literature that says employees work very, very differently from each other.

For example, Yaya, you were talking about, um, us as academics and how we have this big blurring of work and life, and Mike, you were.

Talking about how you know you would love to be able to turn off like your dad was able to do and Gael, your spouse knows like this is work hours and this is non-work hours.

So what this is in academic terms is people who like to integrate work and life and people who like to segment work and life and what companies need to be doing and be intentional about is understand which.

Employees are integrators and which employees are segmenters because when you institute a hybrid workplace, it's not one size fits all and it's not going to give you the results that you would like to see if you just say everybody is going to have to do this.

Now, if you understand that some employees are more integrators, they are the ones that wouldn't mind being on a phone call at 7 at night.

Because they're able to sleep in or or like take their kids to school or whatever it is in the morning, but are able to have that flexibility, appreciate that flexibility, and then come into the workplace and work later into the day.

But if there are people who are segmenters and if that's a preference that they have, they would actually be very, very upset if you said, Well, we're all working from home, so I'm going to send you an instant message at 9 p.m. and expect that you respond back.

So it's important for.

Leaders in the organization to really understand where the organization is and managers of teams understanding who in their teams are integrators and who in their teams are segmenters and how should communication and work happen when you have a team that has a mixture of these different types of people.

That's it's fascinating.

Mostly it speaks a lot to, to me.

My team is, as I mentioned, mixed, and I can already think about exactly.

Who are those integrators in those segments?

Well, and I think it, it really resonates with me, but I think of two, I'm gonna give you two maybe problematic pieces that I'd be curious, Roshni, how you, how you resolve.

So one, I'm gonna call the collective action problem, and I'm gonna give you a, an old anecdote.

So when I was on the faculty at Duke, I got, uh, selected as a fellow for this interdisciplinary research center that they had, and they created this incredible space in an old tobacco building, exposed brick.

It was really cool, um, and the idea was we would go from all of our different discipline.

Dips and magic would happen.

So I show up and no one's there.

And so I go back again and no one's there, and so I stopped going and I suspect there were others who showed up and I wasn't there, and others weren't there.

And, and we look, we sometimes we have this in the faculty office building, right?

Like, you know, who's in and who's out and you don't have that collective sense.

So that creates an issue for, you know, those of us who are, I think we're, you're an extrovert as well, like I am, like we'd like to engage socially, and then I show up in the office and no one's there.

And then on the, the flip side, I worry about like, uh, maybe call this the incentive compatibility problem that you say as a business, as an organization, we want to uh celebrate those differences and allow people to have different modes of work.

But at the end of the day, my boss is the one who's like, you better be in the office at 8:00 a.m. and be here for those 8 hours or 10 hours, um, even though we're trying to celebrate that.

So how do you, how do you, I guess the first question is how do you solve the collective action problem and the second question is, how do you align the incentives of the organizations to deal with what could be a pretty complex, complex management challenge.

Yeah, this is a really sticky and thorny problem that a lot of companies have to think about and leaders have to think about for their own teams and really one of the things that you know is is a broader theme is how can we make this a more inclusive work environment whether that is the virtual workplace or if we want people in the office and the idea here and in terms of, you know what we've been talking about with segmenters and integrators, the idea is people.

People understand that there are things that you need to be present in person and it's not a big ask when those are um spaced in a cadence that works for generally most people.

What's problematic is if people's preferences are not heard or if people feel like they are being told and not being empowered to exercise the autonomy that they've been used to for the last 2.5 years or so in the pandemic.

And one of the ideas in the literature that, um, you know, really highlights this, um, collective action problem is, can you create workplaces around three principles, right?

Like inclusion, inclusion in all forms, um, inclusion in terms of, um, integrator segmenters, but also in terms of gender, in terms of, um, you know, people's preferences.

To uh be reached at certain times or through certain technologies rather than other types of technologies and then things like co-presence can we create a norm around co-presence?

Can we say this is some time where all of us have to be present and can we figure out a time where it would work for most people and what is that overlap?

It is a lot of work on the.

Side of the leader, it is intentionality and effort on the side of, um, you know, organizations to kind of say, OK, we wanna create these norms around co-presence whether that is through technology or whether that's that is in the same room, but how should we create these norms of co-presence and not think of it as a given, not think of it as everybody's gonna be in the office 9 to 5 or 8 to 6 or.

Whatever that is, because that's not going to happen moving forward.

So how do we intentionally create norms around co-presence to be inclusive?

And then the last thing is vitality.

How do we energize people in these virtual environments?

Do we let people feel like they have to be in Zoom meetings 8 to 6 and experience Zoom fatigue throughout the day?

Or do we say, well.

You know, you have to be in the office 8 to 6 and make people feel like they don't have the autonomy to exercise their freedom to spend time with their kids or go do drop-offs or sleep in or work later at night and be more productive at night if that's what it is, so.

Really being able to create organizations and virtual workplaces around these three principles inclusion, co-presence, and vitality is going to be really critical to ensuring that people in the workplace feel empowered, and we, uh, sort of circumvent this collective action problem and people feeling like they don't have a voice in this new process creation as we think about the future of work.

Um, Rashni, you do a lot of work, um, uh, related to technology.

Um, Mike asked me before around the role that technology plays in this whole, uh, virtual workspace, um, and workplace, uh, um, uh, revolution, if you will.

Um, what is your perspective in terms of the role of technology?

Uh, a lot of our disruptions in this, on this podcast have been technology driven for sure.

Is that the same thing in this case?

Absolutely, and I think once again the theme that I will highlight is can we be very, very intentional about which types of technologies do we want to choose as we engage with our colleagues and friends in a virtual workspace.

There is significant research on it.

I have my own research on it that talks about how can we use different types of um technologies.

For example, if we were to compare two forms of written communication, one being email and another.

Being instant messaging, how should we think about this when we're in a virtual workplace?

And my research, um, along with, uh, my friend and colleague here, Tammy Kim, we find across a number of different experimental studies that if people engage with each other through instant messaging, it kind of acts like a double-edged sword.

There is a positive side and a negative side, and the negative side is probably pretty obvious.

People feeling like.

They have to constantly stay on and constantly respond to the buzzing of their phones, but there is actually a positive side to it.

Also, our research shows that if people engage through instant messaging, just because of the norms of communicating over instant messaging, which is basically like chatting with a friend or using emojis and other types of things that are much less uh formal and much less transactional, people end up feeling a lot closer to their colleagues.

So engaging with uh colleagues through instant messaging makes you experience greater interpersonal closeness, greater social connection with your colleagues.

Now, when companies know about this type of thing, they can make a conscious decision about when and how to implement this type of technology, which would be instant messaging for these purposes to enhance social connection, for example, rather than communicating via email.

Now, there is some other research that came out that talks about when should you use email over other richer communication media.

For example, things like a Zoom call where you're on camera.

And that research shows that if you want to present yourself as emotionally authentic, you want to be able to do that through a visual medium, and that happens through, uh, you know, Zoom call where you're able to show your facial expressions.

However, if You would like to engage in a way where, you know, you, you expect that there is going to be some emotional leakage, and you would rather prevent it, then you engage through these less rich media like email or instant messaging, for example.

Similarly, like, it's, it's, it's very critical to think about how text-based processes are really not ideal for resolving ambiguity or conflicts.

And so really like using different forms of technology is going to enhance or deteriorate the quality of our virtual relationships.

How do you, how do you deal?

It's fascinating really comes to mind is generational differences, right?

Oh, it's just my interaction with my mom.

I was thinking, right.

Well, so yeah, that's right.

So you have like, I'm gonna, you know, grossly, uh, characterize people.

You have like the boomers and like pick up the phone and call somebody, which I hate to do, right?

No, my mom wants me to be on video so she can see that I'm concentrating on the call.

Well, there you have it, but I was gonna say like then you have, you know, you and I, Gen X, right?

And so like we are email natives, texting natives.

Uh, I mean I'm not like great.

Social media, I don't use it that way, you know, Rashni, uh, you're a millennial, like a different set of things, and now we got Gen Z coming along who I guess we should all be making TikTok videos to talk to one another, um, but, but there, but there are real differences over time in terms of your familiarity, but even just the comfort level of engaging with these newer technologies as they emerge and your point about formality.

Because I remember in our generation, Gen X, email and the fact that email by the traditional standards is so informal, but it's not nearly as informal as the Slack channel and the, you know, uh, the instant messaging.

It's, it's so observant.

I mean, uh, Rajni, you really blew my mind now because of things that we do intuitively, right?

Like, um, I communicate with my team.

There are very specific instances where we all communicate via text and that's when we have students on site and we need it like in in the weekends, like we're all on text.

Otherwise we're on email like it's very, and we never talked about it, wasn't as deliberate, which I guess inspired by your thinking, Roshni, we probably should be more deliberate about it, but it's almost intuitive like, oh, I'm going to send a text now versus an email.

Yeah, and your team probably laughs at you because like, yeah, he always wants to use I know exactly.

It's fascinating.

Yeah, it's, it's really fascinating how these effects are very long lasting.

Um, we're, uh, Tammy and I in this research, we call it the slack effect because one of the statistics that came out sort of at the beginning of the pandemic was, um, the use of instant messaging in our workplaces has actually gone up tremendously, um, in a week, I think this was an official report from Slack.

There were 5 billion.

Billion actions, billion with a B billion actions that employees were doing on Slack and actions were anything like sending and responding to messages, opening attachments, you know, basically using Slack to communicate with each other at such a sort of prolific level every single week and then the question was, you know, is it good or bad?

And, um, well, our research would say it's it's a bit of.

Both because people do feel that pressure to constantly stay on they do much more than email feel like they don't have the autonomy to like not respond because it is instant messaging so you're supposed to respond instantly and yet there is this positive benefit where you constantly engage with that sort of uh less formal, more conversational style and the relationship feels less transactional.

You know, we're all parents here on this call and um I, I'm thinking about uh the constant discussion that I have with my kids around, um, screen time and this notion that we're, we already have too many screens, you know, my son was encouraging me to buy a certain car because of the screens that the car had and I was like, I don't want more screens.

I don't want it in the car, um, but, but here we are in a world where work is becoming, uh, screen based and, and of course it is to some degree even.

Here in the office because we're in front of our computers a lot, but, um, is this just not going full in on the screen time, uh, when I try to encourage my son to limit his, his, his phone usage, he looks right back at me and says, well, you're on your phone as well all this time, which is true, um, and I can claim I'm working, but really we know that that's not exactly right.

So how do you think about it in terms of just us interacting with each other in 2D via screens versus, uh, uh, physically in 3D?

This is a real like daily struggle, right?

Like both just as adults, my husband and I were thinking, oh wow, like we're on our phones or computers like literally the entire workday and then if at night after our toddler goes to bed, if we wanna relax, we're turning on the screen again to watch Netflix.

So how do we get ourselves detached from the screen?

That's a very, very, very important question.

Um, I think, you know, when we start thinking about being, you know, careful about using screens in the workplace, the idea is even without virtual work, we were, a lot of us, at least knowledge workers and people who were working in tech and other industries where computer work was more likely were always on our computers, whether we were in the office or not.

What I think goes away with.

Screen time or enhanced screen time is do we actually even you know pick up the phone to call our friends or our coworkers or you know do calls while we're doing a walk or go out in the nature or do something else that is not related to screens and I think this is a real struggle that all of us um on this call and all of us, you know, in society today and actually probably for.

The near and far future are going to have to be very conscious about.

The problem that we're facing right now is when we are on screens, especially when in the context of virtual work, there's a lot of self-presentation going on.

And this probably does happen even in a face to face setting, but a lot of the fatigue that we experience when we're on these screens is primarily because we're in this process where we're feeling like we have to present ourselves in a certain way.

There is the self present, you know, the self view that people keep looking at or um people feel like.

Like they have to, you know, be a certain way because they're on a virtual call and because of that recent research has shown it has led to daily feelings of fatigue and that fatigue has also led to things like lower engagement when people think about the context of virtual work.

So can we actually, you know, think about some practical things that employees can do and leaders can encourage.

In their organizations and um some of the research backed recommendations include, um, you know, turning off microphones when you're not speaking or hiding self view or um establishing group norms around when you should actually be on video and permitting people to not be on video and actually encouraging them to, you know, walk and do other things while they're still on a call and specifically. enhancing perceptions of um belongingness because people should feel like they belong more so they don't have to worry about these types of self-presentation concerns.

I'm, I'm curious, you know, we talked earlier about water cooler talk, and I think sometimes when people talk about the need to be together in the office, it's about, you know, those informal connections that are made and we talk about a subject that may be a work-related subject that we wouldn't plan to be meeting about.

But I actually wanted to ask about like true water cooler cooler talk, right?

So, Doug Thomas, one of our colleagues, has his office next to me.

We're both Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Like, we routinely talk about the Philadelphia Eagles football team and nothing to do with work.

I think there's value in that, right?

Am I, am I wrong?

And, and if so, like, how do we, do we replicate that in a digital world, um, or does it just all become professional transactions then and engagements and communications?

This is an excellent question and really like one of my biggest problems with um virtual work, which is we can't have those uh instantaneous, um, almost, you know, just casual opportunistic, like nice conversations that you're able to do just because people are across the hallway from each other, um, and it's like practically become terribly impossible like people actually feel.

Very uncomfortable just calling somebody on Zoom when they don't have a scheduled Zoom call and when things are scheduled, it's, it's crazy.

Like when things are scheduled, there has to be an agenda.

Like I can't just, you know, schedule something on Gaelle's calendar or Mike's calendar because I want to show you my new shoes, right?

Like.

Can you check out my new jacket and tell me how it looks?

That's, that's the kind of thing that we're missing and that's my biggest problem with using these types of technology-mediated interactions for virtual work.

And I think the way to circumvent some of these is creating norms around this co-presence that we talked about, right?

Could we Set up time and I think um you know personally I've experienced some of this uh when we do writing groups on Zoom so the idea behind this is just co-presence, right?

The idea is everyone's going to be present, no one's talking, we could keep our cameras off whatever we're gonna be doing our work for the next 2 hours, but there's gonna be 5 of us, 5 friends on this call.

And you know, 33 hours in, if you're still on the call, and if you feel like you wanna have a conversation, you could like unmute yourself and say something and actually have a conversation.

Is it as um real and casual and um organic as the conversation you would have with Doug, Mike?

Probably not, but.

It is something that at least can tell us yes we can have some of some version of that in the virtual work workspace.

So that's something that organizations would have to really, really be intentional about and think about, uh, setting up where people don't need to be in the office, but can we create co-presence in some other way?

I feel like there was a lot more of that at the beginning of the pandemic.

I remember we had a call with one of my teams about, you know, bring your pet, and everyone, you know, shared, you know, about their pet pet on Zoom, but.

I, I wonder if like I feel like it's that's slipped a little bit we don't, we don't, we don't see that as at least I don't personally see that as much um well Roshni, we learned so much from you not only about our own working habits but also more broadly about the the virtual workspace and and what companies need to be thinking about.

Thank you so much for your expertise.

It is a fascinating area and I can imagine, uh, that there's so much work, uh, to be done, um, and exciting to see where companies are going, um, but thank you for for coming here and joining us in.

Such a fascinating conversation and uh you both are putting together this amazing series of podcasts which I've just thoroughly enjoyed listening to.

So I'm honored to be here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mike.

Do you want me to go first uh in terms of that way I can, I can judge my response because I'm still mulling it here.

Uh, yeah, so my conclusion, Mike, and maybe this is again, uh, a little bit, um, uh, obvious, like I do think that this is a good disruption.

I like flexibility.

I think that.

It really equals the the playing field for for many people to interact and join the workforce in creative new ways and it's not assuming certain age groups or or geographies or or you know, abilities and disabilities like it really opens the door to many different flexible new habits um and intentionality is sometimes a good thing.

How do we wanna converse with each other?

Where is our time spent?

What does productivity.

What do you mean?

And we can still get to a place where, as Roshni says, we can have a co-presence, whether virtual co-presence or physical co-presence.

I, you know, if we force me to choose one, which that's kind of the whole purpose of the podcast, I think I'm, I'm, I'm aligned with you that this is gonna be a, a good disruption or is a good disruption.

My temptation though, is to really answer all of the above.

And the reason I say that is something, you know, I think you hit upon or Rashni hit upon, which is it's gonna depend on the organization.

So I suspect there's gonna be no disruption in some organizations.

They're just gonna be like, nope, we're not gonna do this.

You gotta be back in the office and we're going back to the way things were.

We already see, you know, some of that.

Um, I think poor implementation could be bad disruption, right?

Like this could actually, uh, create less inclusion and, uh, you know, acerbate any number of organizational, um, deficiencies.

Um, but I also agree that, you know, the potential is there, right?

The technology, the opportunity, um, so when applied well and managed well, wow, this could be a really powerful, uh, force for good, uh, in organizations, increased globalization and.

And the like.

Um, well, thank you so much for joining us.

Uh, uh, we benefited from, uh, both in person and remote access here in this during this, uh, this specific episode.

And as always, thank you to Gary, our producer, and to Becky, our, uh, our, our chief researcher.

Good Disruption is a podcast from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.