What should leaders do with Microsoft’s latest work trends research?
At a basic, visceral level, we all understand that working remotely is different from in-person, in-office working. With the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve all been at home, from the most junior to the most senior members of businesses.
Talking with employees, however, a more complex picture emerges. Some speak of increased productivity now that they’ve been freed from constant (and often needless) meetings. These workers often report that they appreciate the greater flexibility in working practices, and the time saved by no longer having to commute.
Other employees, however, talk of a greater sense of isolation that comes from a lack of face-to-face interactions. Many employees also mention that they find days of video chatting to be tiring, much more than the traditional meetings they’re replacing.
With the 2020 State of Remote Work survey finding that 98% of remote workers want to continue working from home to some degree for the rest of their careers, these differences in experience need to be better understood and addressed.
Recent Work Trends research from Microsoft sheds interesting light on the real consequences of remote working. It highlights findings that should be understood by business leaders, so that steps can be taken to help all employees have productive and enjoyable working days.
Video meetings really are tiring
You’re not imagining it, video meetings really are more tiring than face-to-face equivalents, and it’s not just a case of older minds struggling compared to newer generations of workers.
In a fascinating study, Microsoft used EEG devices to measure brainwaves, as participants across 13 teams were asked to complete similar activities, some in-person and others remotely.
What the graph above shows is that much greater concentration is demanded during online workshops, leading to greater fatigue.
As reported by the Economist, the reason for this so-called ‘Zoom fatigue’ may be the way that varying delays in audio arriving conflict with the ‘no gap, no overlap’ way in which we talk with others. Even with high-quality audio, these lag times make our brains work harder when conducting conversations.
Finding balance is still hard
As lockdowns are extending from weeks into months, many in the workforce are still finding it hard to get a good balance between work and personal time. In a Harris Poll commissioned by Microsoft, younger generations of workers are struggling more than older generations (see the chart above).
Not surprisingly, 54% of parents reported difficulties balancing household demands while working from home. Alongside this, statistics on the use Microsoft’s Teams collaboration tool show that employees are working more frequently in the morning and evening hours, but also on the weekends.
More encouragingly, 62% surveyed said they feel more empathetic toward their colleagues now that they have a better view of life at home.
What leaders should do with these insights
With the new normal emerging, the active engagement of senior leaders in these issues and needs will be crucial, if businesses and their employees are to find sustainable and productive new practices.
Remote working is no longer just a consideration of IT and HR teams, it’s a fundamental part of business strategies for the coming decade, as organisations find themselves shifting to new business models and ways of working.
In practice there are three tightly-related aspects that leaders should be addressing right now:
- Addressing the digital employee experience (DEX) of platforms and tools that are provided to the whole workforce, and for remote workers in particular.
- Improving the digital literacy of all employees, and then modelling new behaviours to signal their importance.
- Embedding new ways of working into organisational strategies, and making them a key part of digital transformation activities.
Improving digital employee experience
Digital employee experience (DEX) is a key part of the broader employee experience of the workforce. It considers not just what is delivered in terms of tools and features, but how they operate in practice.
For too long, there has been little consideration for the quality of the experience when new tools are rolled out. Frontline staff in particular have suffered heavily from poor DEX, which has a wider impact on business services and outcomes.
With remote working now a fundamental part of the new normal, business leaders should demand more of product vendors (and internal IT teams).
To Microsoft’s credit, they are constantly striving to deliver a better experience for users. The diagram above shows, for example, the positive impact from delivering a new ‘together mode’ for Teams chats.
Other vendors are also not sitting idly by, with rapid releases from most product providers. As senior leaders, better outcomes can be obtained by communicating clearly to vendors (and IT teams) that the digital experience of products is just as important as basic functionality. Pressure should be kept on these key players to deliver ongoing improvements to DEX, in sync with the changing nature of today’s workforce and workplaces.
Finding new digital behaviours
The Microsoft research outlined earlier in this piece show that working remotely is not the same as in-person, and that there are consequences to communicating and collaborating digitally.
What will be needed are new ways of working that are suited to the current conditions, supported by broader and deeper digital literacy for all employees.
As leaders, expectations can be set that old ways of working need to be re-evaluated, and new practices put in place, not as short-term adjustments to Covid-19, but as ongoing norms. Business leaders should also be openly acknowledging that in the short term at least, working digitally really is harder for many and that consideration must be given for this.
Digital literacy should also be a topic for discussion, moving away from the bland assumption that new generations of workers are automatically skilled in their use of modern digital tools. These discussions should bring together HR, IT and business leaders, acknowledging the multidisciplinary approach that will be required.
Finally, leaders must model new behaviours, to send a strong signal that change must be a reality at all levels of the business. Where needed, leaders should take the time to grow their own digital literacy (getting help where needed), so they can ‘walk the talk’.
Setting new strategies
Digital transformation has been a strategic consideration for many firms, predating the current Covid-19 crisis. The pandemic has thrown a bright light on the importance of these changes, and the pace of transformation must now be redoubled.
Digital employee experience must also become part of top-line business strategies, alongside desired financial goals and customer outcomes. This new focus on DEX must encompass not just staff engagement and productivity, but also its role in business operations and customer service.
Together, digital transformation and DEX strategy can help set overall directions for businesses, as well as shaping individual technology projects and a myriad of technology design decisions.
In the coming months and years, we’ll all learn more about working remotely, from research such as Microsoft’s and from our direct personal experiences. While we need to respond to these findings, there is an opportunity (and necessity) to proactively shape the working environment, and the digital tools that sit within it, to deliver a great digital employee experience.
In all of this, leaders must pick up these challenges, acknowledge the difficulties that employees face, and set expectations that better outcomes must be sought. This ensures that strategic approaches shape the decision of HR, IT and business teams, enabling them to work together to deliver great outcomes for employees and the wider business.
