The Missing Links of Pandemic Working Patterns
Surprisingly, compared to six months ago, no one needs to argue about the benefits of home-working, or whether it is possible, it has become normal. We have become more relaxed about disruptions that didn’t even arise when we were office workers — cats on Zoom, children joining in with news interviews. But, did we lose anything along the way? It would be strange to think that we hadn’t when we all hastily left our office buildings almost four months ago.
No more casual bumping into colleagues, sitting on the edge of their desk and catching up, or eating lots of homemade cake. This is equally as important as actual work. How else do you get to know your colleagues, support each other at times of stress or find out what is going on more widely? We need it, though perhaps we don’t know it. How else will we build relationships? We will be glad we did when we find ourselves dealing with business frustrations, at least we’ll know that we’re on the same side.
In the last few years, while working on my own productivity, fitting work processes together, learning new work areas — I have worked in both editing and grant-giving in the last five years — I have also developed the social side of work. One aspect of this is the eclectic house band which I organise, we will literally play anything, on a combination of recorders, guitars and keyboard, with some great singers. I also set up a Bible study group, and then invited a rabbi to join us. Some of my colleagues are surprised that I know so many people and work areas in our building.
How do we continue this when we are isolated from each other over the great dissipated radius, or radii, of commuterland? I know from experience that polyphonic music doesn’t work on Zoom, though it is possible to play and listen sequentially. I haven’t convened an online Bible discussion, though I could do [I have now, since February 2021]. It might help to have encouragement from employers to set up work-based social networks — WhatsApp and Facebook groups for example. It’s a problem that might benefit from some intervention, e.g. creating daily and weekly spaces in the diary for social time.
For me the biggest challenge, unresolved so far, is knowing whether any piece of communication is intrusive or just adding to the volume and digital noise of electronic interaction. This is easy when you can see how absorbed colleagues are in their work at their office desk. Of course writing crystallises the problem and begins to activate both thought and energy to do something about it. Perhaps this is the more important challenge, to do something about it …
