Decoding the frazzled WFH
On a Wednesday afternoon, we (Devanshi and Vaibhavi) were catching up over a virtual coffee break. It was a random banter — checking on each other’s on-going projects, family, and the latest “Gram-worthy” food experiments. And the conversation sailed in the direction of how work from home has been a blessing.
- Flexibility and the very many perks of being around your loved ones 24*7.
- Increased efficiency because the tasks and day is planned — not just in our heads but even on our Google calendars and Slack channels.
- Clear segregation of duties and deliverables from each team member.
- Self initiated rigour and urge to learn more, attend more webinars, signing up for courses — to stay relevant in the dynamic environment.
If we are to think about it, seems like we are a pendulum oscillating between Excel sheets and getting rid of the unwashed utensils from the kitchen sink. WFH is something that was practiced by many, but the pandemic has put us all in a situation where we are making history. Being Design Strategist and Innovation Catalyst, we wanted to dig deeper.
Our focus soon moved from looking at the brighter side to finding the problem areas. And this afternoon musing led us to a quick DT Sprint — “WFH — A blessing or a curse camouflaged in the guise of a blessing? ”
Bring on the Mural Board — let’s scratch our brains, delve into the Whys and explore some opportunity areas !
The DT Sprint kicked off with empathizing with the core stakeholders — Employees and Employers. We focused on the evolving fears and pain points of the stakeholders and tried identifying the changing relationships.
EMPLOYEES
What we heard…
“I am constantly juggling with home and work responsibilities, feels like I am burning from both ends.”
“Work is worse than how it would have been at office. Beginnings of the projects are tough and ends even tougher. There is no breathing space — back to back calls, meetings, deliveries!”
“I will be asked to leave if I don’t over perform. Everyone is struggling. And the market is bad. You under perform, and you will be shown a pink slip.”
“The personal stories, office gossips, funny project anecdotes, informal learnings while sipping a cup of chai are no longer part of my work life.”
What we infer…
EMPLOYERS
What we heard…
“This is my first. I am not an expert at managing and driving people and teams in the situation that we are in right now — pandemic, fully remote, heavy reliance on tech, too many tasks and meetings per day etc.”
“I can’t see them work. I don’t know how many hours have been punched in. All I can see and evaluate is the final outcome. Maybe I am missing out on my employees’ physical and mental efforts.”
“There was a time when we had corridor discussions, smoke and tea break conversations. This was a subtle way of giving feedback to my team or planting ideas and opportunities informally to my clients. This is missing now. Everything we say looks very business oriented now.”
“To be relevant in the changing world, we not only need to keep up with the business as usual, but also innovate, up skill and take up pro-bono projects.”
What we infer…
Overall Insights…
We synthesized and prioritized the insights to arrive at the top takeaways from our sprint, that can be further developed into interesting challenge statements:
1. It is difficult to build and maintain cultural decorum, informal norms and emotional connections that are usually imbibed through subconscious observation.
HMW enable employees to subconsciously absorb how the co-workers act and think so that they can align and maintain organization’s ethos?
2. Tangible outcome is becoming the sole measure to assess the performance. The results matter, ways and means don’t.
HMW empower the organization which is becoming more outcome oriented to be able to focus on the human efforts, journey and the approach that went behind achieving the final outcome?
3. The line between office and personal life is blurred. There is no longer a switch on and switch off paradigm.
HMW design a new switch-on and switch-off paradigm to ensure work-life balance?
These are some challenges that the world needs to solve for in the the current and post-pandemic scenarios. We truly enjoyed our afternoon musing turned design sprint. Hope it sparked some thoughts and itched your grey matter too!
P.S. — Our research was limited to connecting with a few of our friends, our clients and candid banter between the two of us.
We are still learning more and would love to know your thoughts around this “history in making”.
Authors:
Vaibhavi Joshi, Business Design Strategist at TinkerLabs
Devanshi Sihare, Design Strategist at TinkerLabs
