Productivity

Lessons from Lockdown – Remote Working & Productivity

by Productivity and Attention
Remote working productivity

There is a lot of debate around remote working productivity. Some suggest that working from home (WFH) reduces productivity levels. In contrast, quite a lot of research showcases that although everyone is very different regarding focus and efficiency, on average productivity is higher amongst remote and hybrid workers than amongst office workers. 

But, this general narrative of lower productivity levels amongst remote workers does exacerbate worker productivity signalling, including emails and messaging communications, that remote workers feel they need to do in order to showcase they are being productive. 

Working through traditional commute times

There are many reasons why productivity can vary amongst remote workers.

One potential reason for lower productivity comes from working during traditional commute times. Research shows that doing so doesn’t actually increase productivity or output as it is more cognitively draining to work longer hours and more likely to lead to self-distracting behaviour and lower hourly productivity. 

It is instead more productive to either start work at the same time as you would in the office, or break up your day to allow your body and brain time to recover from the energy drain that results from cognitive work. 

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Admin Work

Hybrid work may discriminate against those constantly given lower-value and non-promotable work

by Hybrid, Remote & Flexible Work

Do you seem to take on more of the ‘office housework’ than others in your team? An interesting article in the Guardian highlighting a few points from the book ‘The No Club’, showcases how women tend to take on more admin type work within a team. They find it hard to say ‘no’ because they are expected to work on low-value assignments & non-promotable work.

This seems to be exacerbated by hybrid working where women are no longer seen at their desks. If asked to do less meaningful work, they may not produce as much value-added work as others within their team (regardless of gender).

The solution offered by one of the authors is to systematically distribute necessary but non-promotable work across all team members, have a random or rota-system or delegate these tasks across the team.

If productivity in hybrid working is about output, rather than hours in the office, then leaders need to make sure that all team members share an equal level of productive and non-productive work.

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Creative Thinking

How can individual or group creativity and collaboration be enhanced by hybrid working?

by Creative & Divergent Thinking

Our individualistic personalities and characters means we have our very own best-practice in being productive and creative.

In his short article titled ‘no, you don’t have to meet in person‘, Adam Grant showcases that even though Zoom session can limit group creativity and divergent thinking, in-person creativity sessions can reduce the number of great ideas that may otherwise come from time spent thinking alone. 

My favourite quote from the article is: ‘The best of both worlds is intermittent collaboration: alternating between individual idea generation and group idea evaluation. The most creative virtual teams aren’t in touch every hour or even every day. They divide and conquer on deep work and then come together for periods of burstiness, with messages flying back and forth’.

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zoom fatigue

Lessons from Lockdown – Zoom Fatigue

by Individual Differences and Impact
Zoom fatigue

One of the terms that was bandied about a lot during Lockdown 1 was Zoom Fatigue. This was because many of us were experiencing higher levels of emotional and cognitive exhaustion after spending large portions of the day on Zoom calls. 

In his research on this topic, Nick Bloom of Stanford University found a few reasons why we experience video meeting tiredness: 

  1. The Mirror Effect – with the camera on, our peripheral vision catches our movement, our facial expressions, the way we’re sitting, the fall of our clothes, etc, and we are constantly adjusting and readjusting our appearance, which subconsciously weighing up how we see ourselves and how others see us. It is tiring having to constantly self-adjust both posture and facial features – especially when we are spending most of the day on video calls
  2. We all have Personal Boundaries – our brain doesn’t differentiate between physical and virtual distance. Faces on a laptop that feel too close to us, infringe on the personal boundary space normally reserved for close friends and family. It can subconsciously feel like those on the screen are invading our perceived personal space. The psychological desire to counteract the physical boundary infringement takes its mental toll
  3. We physically move less – unlike actual meetings where we generally move more and tend to walk to a meeting room. In physical meetings we are often also looking around the room, subtly engaging with others close to us and sometimes getting up to get something to drink etc. In video conferencing, we sit still, staring at the screen. If we move, others notice it and we feel too self-conscious to do so in order to avoid attracting too much attention, so we try to minimise all movement during the call. Then we switch to another meeting, sometimes without even getting up to stretch, refill a glass or take a natural break. 
  4. We often only see the faces of meeting participants. This means we cannot read other body language cues, requiring greater mental energy to process and interpret the conversation by filling in the gaps of information otherwise given through non-verbal behaviour.

‘Zoom fatigue’ played, and continues to play, a large part in why we feel exhausted at the end of the day – especially if we spend too much time on video calls. 

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UK Lockdown Lessons

Lessons from Lockdown – Automatic Behaviour

by Automatic Behaviour
Automating day-to-day behaviour

By creating subconscious habits (i.e. automated behaviour), we are able to conserve cognitive energy which allows us to focus on more important, strategic tasks. Because every time we change our routines and habits, we must rethink basic processes. This is what happened when we went into the first lockdown, we had to completely readjust our working behaviour. 

This meant that on every single task, we had to rethink how to accomplish what we needed to get the job done. Part of this was considering what knowledge and privacy security issues were involved, how we kept teams functioning, how we communicated with each other, how to use new apps and learn new skillsets, etc. 

All these new learnings required brain capacity to master basic behaviour in this new environment. A large part of our brain capacity was therefore used up in basic functioning – until the basic behaviours became familiar and automatic. This left less brain capacity to allocate to more strategic or productive tasks. 

However, since the first lockdown in March 2020, we’ve gone from the ‘old normal’ to remote work, then back to work, to remote work and now to hybrid work. During this time and because of these constantly shifting work situations, we’ve learnt to become more digitally flexible, and more confident to take on a number of remote and hybrid scenarios in order to get the job done, wherever that geographically may be.

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Googles Bias

Merely being able to see the bias, doesn’t protect you from the bias

by AI's Echo Chamber

The title of this post is a direct quote taken from an interview with Dr. Robert Epstein, a Senior Research Psychologist on The Epoch Times TV channel.  

If you were ever wondering how much our opinions are being influenced by ‘Big Tech’, this is worth watching. Dr Epstein has spent the last decade conducting scientific research on the effects of bias in search engines (particularly Google). An interesting quote at 1:04:12 ‘merely being able to see the bias, doesn’t necessarily protect you from the bias’.

We can make changes to our own tech habits and behaviour, but we do need to do something about changing regulations around how tech influences our behaviour. If they can change our behaviour for our good, that is one thing, but changing our behaviour in a socially and personally detrimental way, we need to do something about it.

We are all at risk, no matter our age.

If you are interested, you can read more about the work done by Dr. Epstein here. 

For ease of reference, links copied directly from the Epoch TV interview page are included below:  

Below are some links Dr. Epstein mentions in the interview:
Dr. Robert Epstein’s Privacy Tips
Report on Google’s Triple Threat
Taming Big Tech: The Case for Monitoring
More information on Dr. Epstein’s Google research
The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology

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Evolution of Work

How We ‘Do Work’ Evolves with Digital Innovations

by Hybrid, Remote & Flexible WorkResearch
'Three Generations of Telework: New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office'.
Extracts and summary of the research by: Jon. C Messenger and Lutz Gschwind (2016)

Summary of the research: 

Remote working has evolved through three main stages since the 1970’s.

Stage 1: Home Office (1970’s to early 1990’s)

This first stage involved performing office-based tasks at a stationary (often home-based) location using information-based technology (i.e. relatively immobile desktop computer) alongside landline-based, fixed communication technology. 

Stage 2: Mobile Office (early 1990’s to early 2000’s)

The more mobile laptop computer, was used alongside mobile phone-based communication technology to transform static work into mobile work either at home or on the move.  

These first 2 stages are often referred to as “Old ICT” (Information & Communication Technology).  Most research to date around ICT use at work has been focused on these first two evolutionary stages.  

Stage 3: Virtual Office (later 2000’s to 2020)

The third stage, which includes the “New ICT” revolution, started with the launch of smartphones and tablets in the second half of the 2000’s and refers to the merging of both information access and communication into one device.  

It also coincided with the advent of powerful technology that connects any mobile device instantaneously to work via cloud-based systems and does not require work-based information to be physically stored on the device itself in order for work to be completed or to communicate with others.

The effectiveness of remote work increases when managers shift their perspective from work monitoring to information sharing. 

Research Conclusion

‘On the one hand, [digital technology has enabled] us to constantly connect with friends and family as well as with work colleagues and supervisors; on the other hand, paid work becomes increasingly intrusive into the times and spaces normally reserved for personal life. Crucial to this development is the detachment of work activities from traditional office spaces.

Today’s office work is largely supported by Internet connections, and can thus be undertaken from basically anywhere at any time. This new spatial independence dramatically changes the role of technology in the work environment offering both new opportunities and new challenges.

Scholars are increasingly concerned with the advantages and the disadvantages of new ICTs for aspects such as working time, WLB and OSH, as well as individual and organizational performance. 

Notes:
  • As digital technology continues to evolve, how we incorporate this technology into our working lives will change and adapt how we both view our work in addition to how we engage with our work. The development of Extended Realities and The Metaverse will take us into Stage 4…
A reminder of what the acronyms mean:

ICT: Information and Communication Technologies – i.e. digital technology that provides access to electronic information through portals such as wireless networks, mobile phones, tablets and other electronic devices. It includes the use of electronic communication tools such as email, social media and the Internet, for both work and home life. 

WLB: Work-Life Balance

OSH: Occupational Safety and Health.

Read the original article here

This is not an open-source document and will need purchasing to read the full original article.

Return to the main Research Page
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2040 Work

How will technology change the jobs of the future?

by Futuristic Work

A recent Telegraph article on a book written by Nikolas Badminton called ‘Facing our Futures’ due to be published later in 2022 by Bloomberg, has highlighted a number of potential jobs that may be key for children to consider over the next few decades.

I admire anyone who takes a punt at predicting the future. We are individually racked by biases, worldviews and limited insights of world dynamics. But, I also wonder if we, as humans, are so enamoured by progress and technology that we place all our bets on universal acceptance of all upcoming technology and the complete integration of it into our daily lives. Although the use of new technology changes us as individuals and as a society, there are some fundamental elements of who we are, as humans, that will not change.

We need community. We need physical engagement with others. Some need more than others, but we need physical presence, we need physical touch, we need physical support. Machines can be a substitute, but they are just that, a temporary substitute.

We solve complex, nuanced, problems every day. Knowing how to reach and teach each individual child in a classroom is something AI cannot do. Fixing a burst water pipe behind the toilet under the stairs isn’t something a machine can easily sort. Emotionally supporting and counselling a returning veteran is not the realm of a therapy bot. There may be some very well-paid technology-based roles in the future, but that isn’t much different from similar well-paid technology-based roles now. There will be very few who either have the aptitude, desire or ability to fill those roles.

As for the metaverse and mixed reality. Facebook (or Meta, as MZ prefers to call it), Microsoft and Google are investing epic amounts of cash into this mixed reality environment. Their investment doesn’t mean that the majority of the population will actually engage with it to become ‘the way we do life’. It just means they currently speculate that it will make them a lot of money in the future. There are plenty of very clever people betting on this future semi-reality. But I suspect that there is a general growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the emptiness of technology. There seem to be more and more people who are stepping back from their constant interactions with tech and stepping into better connections with physical others. I suspect that the vast majority will use the metaverse for what they can personally get from it – for work and home – and then switch themselves off from it, go outside and meet with real people.

I think that, in general, we need to take a little bit more of a human-centred approach to how we view the workplace of 18 years hence. Will it change very much from the workplace of now for the general population? I would suggest not. We may be using different tools and apps to achieve the same or better levels of productivity, but the majority of our roles will just evolve to accommodate these better apps and these other ways of doing things, rather than us radically shifting to a whole new dimension of job availability and skillsets. As a case in point: when the motor vehicle became popular and the carriage less so, we may have ‘lost’ some key jobs and companies within the carriage-related industries, but the general gamut of jobs remained the same. We still had butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers; the mechanisation of transport just changed what those roles looked like. There is unlikely to be any greater revolution in the general workforce even with new technology being invented and engaged with.

I guess we can only wait and see what happens. However, I have a much more optimistic view of our place in the future world with technology. I cannot buy into the more pessimistic view of technology taking over all our jobs. But, we will have to just wait and see.

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CyberSecurity and CyberPsych

When Cyber Security meets CyberPsychology

by Cyber Security

Cyber Security is not the same as CyberPsychology. It is similar to comparing someone who helps you physically set up home security and someone who seeks to understand why you don’t turn that security on when you leave the house. 

In a recent webinar, one of our Cyber Experts Dr John Blythe joins three of the collaborators of the latest whitepaper on Human Factors in Cyber Security. The video is a playback of the webinar.

If you want to access a copy of the white paper to read, you can find it on the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors website.

The webinar playback showcases a recorded video summary of the white paper and also contains a Q&A session with the three panellists. It provides a value insight, for those involved in Cyber Security within organisations, as to the human factors that have been and continue to affect companies in a remote and hybrid working environment. 

 

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AI Recruitment

Is the Future of Recruitment in AI and Algorithms?

by Futuristic Work

On the 23rd March it will have been 2 years since Boris Johnson ushered UK knowledge workers into a new era of doing businesses when he asked the UK public to stay home to ‘flatten the curve’. Much has changed since then, including how we recruit and onboard new staff. In July 2020 Dr Linda Kaye (a senior lecturer in CyberPsychology) wrote an interesting article about how future AI may help HR with new staff recruitment, using psychometric competency profiling, based on our online activities and purchasing behaviour.

This is a futuristic piece, with a focus on the recruitment process. Dr Kaye makes some really good points around the direction and potential positives of future recruitment using online behaviour as a psychometric tool to evaluate a candidate’s potential for the role. However, there are a number of concerns I have around using AI & Algorithms to select potential candidates:

* AI doesn’t pick up the subtle nuances that make us human.

* Big Tech have agendas and profit models that go outside of our individual and business interests

* A number of people either don’t have social media accounts or choose to not engage on social media and tend to do all their shopping locally

* Those pulling together job profiles competencies have their own set of biases around what type of person they would like in the role – and potentially reducing diversity and ability

Personally, I’m not sure I want an AI bot or the algorithms of Big Tech to skew my chances of landing my dream job. But, saying that, we do need to consider how dramatically work has shifted over the past 24 months, and how we are going to need to continually (physically and psychologically) adapt to a more tech-driven workplace and recruitment process.

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