05 Mai Successfully working in confined mode
It has been a while since I wanted to write an article about « remote work ». We can say that the news has been the fastest and, that it has also created a totally new context: containment. So, in such a situation, how can we work effectively?
First of all, the context of work in confinement includes specificities that clearly increase the difficulty of teleworking, which is useful to recall in a few words.
Remote work as such, includes known problems: change of habits, work and organizational modalities; perceived isolation for some personalities, intensification of concentration; accentuated temptations not to work or… to overwork, to show that one is there… In short, at the beginning for some, and more durably for others, this type of distancing can very easily generate stress.
With containment, a multitude of factors will interfere with your usual day work and complicate everything! Indeed, the situation requires you to divide up your working time to combine with your life partner and possibly children present, each one demanding time and attention from you, in turn or at the same time, with a very variable intensity of demand! A significant number of people gathered in the same space – which may suddenly appear tiny, are forced to deliver results – professional or academic – in the same location and at the same time, each one feeling potentially a priority; this feeling of priority can itself be accentuated by external people: managers, teachers or schoolteachers, who are potentially pressurized, sensitive themselves to the pressure of their management as well as to the pressure of… confinement.
As a result, the computer equipment is taken over, and with it the more isolated, quieter places within the home… when possible! Let us add to this the need to accompany children who are sometimes insufficiently autonomous in their homework when it is not in the follow-up of the courses; or to accomplish the unavoidable household tasks, whose frequency is even more important because of the situation of the moment, the whole family being gathered together for days during each meal of the day!
In short, the context is particularly demanding in terms of mental load, and to avoid adding crisis to the crisis, everyone will have to do his/her part. Okay, but professionally, what does that mean, exactly, to do its bit??
A daily time to be divided differently
Clearly, the situation requires that time be shared: work/family, partner 1/partner 2, household tasks, accompanying children work, etc. As a result, it would be totally inappropriate to currently require exactly the same availability from employees as usual. Clearly, it is inevitable that everyone will have to reduce the daily part of their day devoted to work, which everyone has to accept, from the most demanding managers to the most zealous employees. Like walls, time is not extensible! This time of confinement will therefore have to be managed and a schedule drawn up that respects everyone’s imperatives.
It is not a simple matter, as this planning depends upon each person in the family unit, but also on external needs, especially those of your professional partners. For instance, your boss requires you to be present at a specific time for a videoconference: « I can’t do otherwise » you’ll probably tell and explain to your family. If everyone in the family does the same, it’s a long shot! Then what to do?? Negotiate. With your boss, for instance: is your presence really necessary? Can you communicate him the elements he may need in advance of the meeting and then not participate yourself? If your presence is absolutely vital, is it possible to postpone the meeting? You can also negotiate with your partner to take care of the children during this time, or you may also have to negotiate with the children directly?
This is something interesting in these curious times we are living in: we will have to make the most of the time spent on this or that subject, and also prioritize and negotiate. Employees must dare to present alternative solutions to deliver their contributions; managers must accept negotiation and adapt; the same goes for the life partner and even the… children! That’s how everyone will do its bit.
Negotiate, is to expose its context, be ready to hear the impact your difficulties might have on the other, and propose alternative solutions to agree together on a way of working that is optimized and degraded. Optimized and degraded? What the hell is this?
Yes, working time is in fact degraded by a necessary sharing of time, which requires adaptation and the use of new resources. Among these resources, we obviously find the necessary optimization of the time spent. However, in this case, the sharing of time linked to containment is extremely demanding and requires professionalism as well as a strong sense of priorities and their affirmation. Being professional does not mean accepting just anything at the risk of damaging everything else. Being professional means optimizing through a fine prioritization with all the stakeholders, who, it must be repeated, must understand your context as well as possible; for that, you must invest time to explain and empower.
On the manager’s side, it is obviously essential to respect all these specific constraints. Pretend to ignore the context would be, as always, counterproductive, anti-professional and problematic in terms of psychosocial impact. Taking into account this reduced professional time – we recommend that relationships should be kept to a minimum – in order to weigh as little as possible on the daily workload. On the other hand, the confinement situation can prove to be potentially productive for substantive issues, which require time and reflection; it may then be beneficial to agree on a time to share these thematic reflections.
Generally speaking, in a situation as complex as containment, it is highly recommended to establish rules for collective work with anyone who might expect something from you. Quite frankly, if you don’t do that now, in such a crisis and injunction situation, the risks of misunderstanding are great and the potential damage considerable. To put it plainly: under which conditions will you give the best of yourself in this collective game? On this point, let us clarify that it is certainly not a question of being psycho-rigid, just as, much, once again, as not accepting everything. It is therefore useful to define what is negotiable – and to explain why – and what is not – and to explain why too!
For example, you will have to say “no” to a manager who wants to force you to sign up for excessive and/or non-optimized professional time. For this, once again, it is essential to explain your situation calmly and in a determined way. I repeat it: your managers must take into account the context and the mental load this imposes. In the same way, you must also use the “no” in a firm way with your children, on the same basis: “negotiable-not negotiable + meaning”. On this point, this period can even be seen as a moment of choice for children to take more responsibility and participate in the family effort.
Once again, rules of the game – the meaning of which will be carefully explained – must be put into place. Children – with the obvious exception of the very young – must also learn to work at a distance, be disciplined in following lessons and group work; and if they have not understood that it is in their own interests to do so, they should do it for you. In any case, the further they will progress in their studies, the more frequent these working arrangements will be. On the other hand, it would be an illusion to think that you must or can replace their teacher.
The confinement and the need for all to telework can therefore be both a time of positive family effort and an opportunity for children to play an active role in family solidarity, particularly in respect of « parenting time »; they too must learn to be alone and to manage their time. For this purpose, adults need to be the guardians of a certain discipline and remind people that “no” is also part of the range of potential answers. Otherwise, it will prove impossible to work peacefully and efficiently. The rules of feed-back remain, and when things progress, it is right to say so, to say why one is satisfied and to thank. One should be proud of what one achieves in a positive way, and that this contributes to building self-confidence and the desire to make oneself useful.
The confinement, an opportunity to optimize your working time and the relationship quality
All of the above indicates that every professional minute will have to be made worth every professional minute. In this sense, every remote meeting must be skilfully led to be as efficient as possible in a minimum of time. In other words, within the framework of the imperatives and operating rules mentioned above, it is necessary to consider what makes it possible to increase « relational productivity » to some extent. So, what levers should be used, what skills should be developed, so that the distance relationship is both as useful as pleasant as possible?
To start with, we recommend that you enjoy the best you can! Well yes, let’s remember that every little cloud has got a silver lining. Yes, you are at home, you can do whatever you want, nobody is watching you: relaxing with your family, sport, reading, starting out cool, you must allow yourself all this without feeling guilty! After all, how much time do you usually waste in the traffic jams or travelling of all kinds? How much time could be saved if meetings were optimized? So, yes, if for you, by chance, the containment situation is not all-bad luck, take advantage of it! You will be more efficient during your professional slots, and everyone’s life will be better!
When you are a manager, do the same, let go and respect each other’s rhythm as much as possible; once again, the times are not easy. On the other hand, you will have to be demanding and insist that everyone is as efficient and focused as possible during the professional moments. For if the objectives are to be impacted as little as possible by the situation, the means to achieve them will probably have to evolve to comply to the contextual requirements. But please, be attentive and take an authentic interest in the lives of your professional partners: for some of them, the morale will be put to the test for any number of reasons, starting with health issues, anxiety, and in the worst case, grief. So, managers, please listen up, you can be useful!
Some ways to work remotely in collective intelligence
All the behaviours that we usually recommend to promote the development of collective intelligence take, because of the distance and the less possible reactivity, an essential dimension that requires to professionalize its professional approach, and more generally to control oneself.
Therefore, which behaviours to adopt? Avoid? For which dangers? Which opportunities?
If you are afraid not to get used to the demands of teleworking, try to recreate the usual conditions: wake-up time, dress code, a few rituals that allow you to return to “work mode”, etc. At the risk of overdoing a bit, these “essentials” will be for you as many tags to hold on to.
Be careful not to be obsessed with proving you are working, be careful of overrepresentation to be visible, to prove you are doing the job. The good thing about this period is that you have no choice but to focus on the results. It is much less time to put in the hours than it is to produce efficiency.
Care should be taken to ensure that all possible material concerns are dealt with, in the best possible way. This will help to reduce stress, and it will avoid great moments of loneliness!
Beware of the fact that working at a distance is particularly incompatible with the fact of interrupting each other or intervening ultimately or at the same time as someone else is speaking. Beware of remote meetings; provide a chat tool for questions to come up. Spontaneous, untimely interventions create confusion. Avoiding this, we might have the impression that we are wasting time. This is not the case; you will see that by respecting an orderly speech, you will save time.
This is a good thing, because the time spent in videoconferencing should be minimized: more tiring – more concentration – effect of the screen, work modality requiring more self-control… In case of long teleworking time, make the necessary breaks. It is unthinkable to spend long hours behind the screen without moving. Once again, everyone must take into account that remote work requires a lot of attention and focus, and is therefore tiring. Yes, multiply the breaks.
Beware of interpretations even more than usual, because of the distance and virtuality. If you think that what the other person says is “stupid”, dig deeper to try to understand their reasoning by asking questions! The person is not stupid, so the important thing is to know how he or she manages to get to the results that surprise you. Be patient, and do not interrupt him/her with the next question!
In teleworking, knowing how to synchronize with the other person is even more important than in a face-to-face meeting. It is therefore necessary to take the other person into account: his or her rhythm, needs for recognition, morale … Pay a minimum of attention, all the more so as the period is particular. Do not try to impose your knowledge as the truth; and more generally, do not try to impose yourself…
Be solution oriented. There is no point “bugging out” on a problem! Once again, it is a question of optimizing time.
Control your emotions while being as authentic as possible. Of course, a professional relationship at a distance is obviously not the most suitable way to expunge one’s emotions. It is up to each person to stick to the agenda and be rational. Well, that said, sometimes the cup is full! So, say it, quickly but above all in a non-emotional way. Otherwise everybody will be embarrassed, including you: “I say quickly what affects me, why it impacts me”, and be as good as you can at saying it. Your merit will only be greater, including between you and yourself! And even more than usual – especially in a tense situation – beware of your survival behaviours! I am referring here to the behaviours that everyone adopts when we have the perception to be back in the corner, when we find ourselves in the ropes; aggressiveness, avoidance, self-effacement … These behaviours rarely constitute solutions, even less in context of remote work. Thus, beware of aggressiveness, or omnipresence. Distance contributes to diminish the awareness of the impact as much as the elements that allow us to check this impact. This sometimes leads to excessive, invasive, interrupting presence, etc. The opposite is also obviously possible, through excessive erasure. Hence the “chat” tool or the possibility of doing quizzes, polls, voting, so that, quietly, we can have everyone’s input and take the pulse of the room continuously.
In conclusion, of course, in this context of confinement even more than usual, there are only specific situations that are never quite the same and have their share of specific difficulties. In the same way, one should always be aware that nothing is ever completely simple and obvious, and that the “we have to or we must do” attitude is absolutely to be avoided. However, these specific difficulties make it even more crucial to give oneself all the means to function in collective intelligence – at the professional and family level – and that a good part of the recipes for doing so are known.
This crisis will, without any doubt, finally demonstrate that telework, when mastered in its intrinsic difficulties, can be adapted to many situations. On the other hand, perhaps we will realize – at last – that the hours of work done in person count for less than the result? In other words, that good results can be achieved by working at a distance, or by working on more fragmented days, and that well being in the workplace also depends on the ability of each individual to mix more, within the same day, professional and personal life. Frankly, in terms of efficiency and collective intelligence, the objective seems quite achievable. It is perhaps through these new processes that tomorrow’s world will begin.