Adapting to Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Danyelle] Hello everybody. Welcome to Comets Discuss, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network, where we give you mini episodes on big, trending topics. For this series we’re talking about COVID-19. With nearly every aspect of life now affected by this global pandemic, we’re interviewing UT Dallas experts — while practicing social distancing — to provide you various perspectives during this evolving situation. I’m Danyelle. Today we’re talking about working remotely with Dr. Doug Kiel.

Dr. Kiel is a professor of public and nonprofit management in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He teaches PhD level classes and leadership change management and decision making. Dr. Kiel’s research interests include mental health in the workplace and the neuroscience of leadership and management. Welcome on the show, Doug. Thank you so much for taking time away from teaching to join us today.

[Dr. Kiel] My pleasure, thank you.

[Danyelle] Are you able to incorporate anything from the COVID-19 crisis in any of your lessons?

[Dr. Kiel] Yes, I am. Our public and nonprofit management program has a city hall program in which we actually go — this semester to the city hall of Plano — and teach relatively high-level managers in both the city of Richardson and the city of Plano. And they’re dealing with many of the issues related to COVID-19. Their police officers, even parks and recreation has been very much affected by all of this. They’re having to rethink many of their summer programs, for example. Well one of the things we’ve discussed in class are human factors in decision-making. So if you think about factors such as stress or lack of sleep, those all affect our abilities to make decisions and in my conversations with students we’ve really talked about our own well-being and what we can do to make sure that we’re engaging in proper self-care, to make sure that we’re making good decisions and aren’t overly distracted or aren’t tired and worn out and therefore thinking improperly in making decisions that are not effective.

You know, I think I might want to add this too, that I think it’s important to realize that if you’re a healthy human being you’re aware of your surroundings and that means that if you’re not cognizant of the fact that there’s this pandemic outside of all of our doors, something’s kind of wrong with you. So you know it’s going to be distracting for all of us. I think there’s a lot of talk about all of us — we’re supposed to be really productive now that we’re at home and we’re gonna write the great American novel but I think the reality is, is that you’re not cognizant of the fact that there’s this pandemic outside of our doors, that you’re not being attentive to the world. So I think all of us are going to be a bit distracted during this time. It’ probably too much to ask people to be really productive under these circumstances.

[Danyelle] On that note of productivity, let’s talk a little bit about the workplace and how the workplace is now really in the home space, which hasn’t always been the case from the majority of us. What changes do you think are gonna come about after this crisis and as far as work is related?

[Dr. Kiel] I did want to make one comment though I think it’s important understand the real bifurcation in our society between those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to work in knowledge-based environments where we can work at home versus the people who are supporting us in our work at home and those are the people that don’t have the luxury of being able to engage in a Zoom meeting or a Microsoft Teams meeting. And so I think we all really need to be cognizant of the fact that it’s really those people out along the streets right now are supporting all of us.

In terms of what I expect to change, of course it’s really difficult to make that prognostication. I really think how long this happens and how much we can endure will affect how much change accrues. Generally I think if our state of working alters during the summer and we can kind of go back to some normal existence then I don’t think things will change that much. I think people probably fall back in our normal equilibrium. You know change is difficult for human beings. I think if it goes on a little bit longer and people find that they can be more comfortable working at home then I expect it will probably see quite a bit more of that. I mean there’s a real incentive for business to actually have their workers work at home. They can reduce their cost for having the house and office people. I think we also have to think about the fact that a lot of time in our country is wasted in commuting. If you look at that literature there’s hundreds of billions of dollars lost every year to our society, to individuals, wear on your car. Just imagine how much time you really lose every day from being effective by simply commuting to work. I think it will force all of us to really think through it. Whether that results in big change or not is really contingent upon whether people think companies really need that. I think increasingly what we’re finding, regardless of the pandemic, is that what leaders want from their people are results and so it really doesn’t matter if you’re creating results at two o’clock in the morning and finishing your report at four o’clock in the morning as long as it’s on the desk of the responsible authority at the right point in time. The longer this goes on the more changes I expect we’ll see.

And again I think we have to be appreciative of other realities, too. Some people are just not very effective working at home. They’re relatively easily distracted and that makes things tough. It requires a real serious level of discipline to be effective at home as far as I can tell. I know at the university I have faculty members who I never see; they work at home and they’re extremely productive faculty members. I have other faculty members who every time you walk by their office door there’s always a light on. They just really seem to need the kind of organized structure working in their office on a regular basis. So people have different personality attributes and mindsets that they contribute to whether they’re going to be effective working at home or not. And I’ll just add after all that and now we have to factor in the reality of children at home. I was interviewed yesterday from a gentleman from a local newspaper and while he was interviewing me he said he was keeping an eye on his three boys in the backyard. So these kind of distractions are challenging. It’s hard to find the right place where we can really be effective.

[Danyelle] Once the pandemic is over and children would be back in school and so some of the additional distractions might be gone, do you think that any sectors of the industry would start leaning in the remote working direction?

[Dr. Kiel] At the highest level of analysis we know that when there’s a great economic disruption it eventuates a change. Alright. The change may come rather dramatically, quickly. It may be relatively slow and incremental. But I think we will see change. As I said there’s a great incentive from a business perspective to reduce your cost of paying for the physical plant that houses your people. If you’re a business executive and you realize, gosh, 25% of my people really don’t need to be coming in on a regular basis and I can reduce my leasing cost for my physical plant by 25%, that’s just a pretty pure rational economic decision that has to be made. We also really need to factor in, you know, the quality of people’s work life. It’s important to be cognizant the fact of our relationships at work for many people are the most important relationships they have. If you’re a relatively new worker, just got out of college — perhaps you even move to a new town, don’t have a lot of connections — those connections at work are really critical to your well-being. So we really have to be thoughtful about how we can maintain those connections, ensure that people aren’t isolated and ensure that we’re communicating in a way with everyone that allows them to feel like they’re really in on what’s happening in the workplace.

[Danyelle] What do you think are some ways that employers can better prepare their workers to overcome the challenges of productivity and also the social challenges you just mentioned?

[Dr. Kiel] Well I’ll mention something — it may sound a little bit odd but I really think it has a lot to do with what I’ll just call human factors in the workplace. The reality is is that our cognitive abilities wax and wane during the day. We all need to be much more cognizant of when our best time periods are. There’s something called the Stanford Sleepiness Scale. It’s kind of an interesting scale. You can take it — you identify when you’re most alert, when you’re most sleepy during days for about a seven day period and it gives you a good mapping of when you think you’re at your best. So what I think we really need to do is be much smarter about saying, okay, if I know I’m really at my best from three to five o’clock in the afternoon or from ten to twelve in the morning that’s what I’m really going to focus on those cognitively intensive tasks — if I’m writing a report, it really needs to be succinct and precise and correct, I’m going to do that during those windows. And then I need to be thoughtful about how I’m using my other points in time. If I just need to read a report or do something that’s not so cognitively intensive I can do that then but I think it really forces us, if we’re smart, to really think about how we work and when we’re most effective and how to use that time most efficiently and effectively.

[Danyelle] What are some things that people should keep in mind regarding their environment and productivity while they’re working from home?

[Dr. Kiel] Okay, all right, so that’s a very good question. There’s really kind of a spectrum of how we think about work environment. You could imagine a cubicle where the person had no sense of human being there at all, it was just a computer in the chair. So we call this kind of sparse work environments. And then that spectrum moves all the way to what we might call enriched environment. And in those enriched environments people have pictures that, maybe of their family just things that make them feel comfortable ideally they have plants. And the most well-enriched environments people have a window that they can gaze out. There’s a great deal of literature that suggests that when you do have these enriched environments you’re going to be more productive. So people do need to think about creating a cozy space around themselves that makes them feel comfortable and relaxed. There are even issues about music. Some people are perfectly comfortable playing kind of light melodic music in the background. Other people would find that extremely distracting. People really need to be cognizant and attentive to the fact that we’re all kind of unique in that sense and we need to build environments that really make us feel comfortable. I worried a little bit, you know, some people probably, you know, are overly concerned about making sure that they look good when they’re on a Zoom meeting or something to that effect. I think the main thing is to make sure that you’re comfortable in the space that you’re in and it’s a space that gives you the relative amount of you know background noise that you might find helpful or the lack of background noise if you find distracting.

[Danyelle] With that awareness do you think there’s anything employers can do to change any expectations they normally have on what level of productivity people are going to be able to output, especially since everything is really uncertain and unknown right now?

[Dr. Kiel] I think what leaders need to do is really make sure that the expectations for people are very clear. If it were me I would probably drop back the normal expectations for most of my high-performing employees maybe even 10%, but I think you need to make it very clear what the deliverables are for people on a regular basis. At least then people have the certainty of knowing report X needs to be in on Thursday and report Y needs to be produced on Friday. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that it’s really important to ensure that people aren’t isolated and I think younger workers really probably are most concerned about this. You know not being there gives people the opportunity to imagine that they’re missing something, that there are critical conversations going on that they’re not attuned to and therefore they’re missing out on opportunities at work.

I think what leaders really need to do is have scheduled meetings on a regular basis and it may just need to be short — a couple times a day where people can check in. If it were me I might schedule a meeting about 11:30 in the morning and if I was a leader I would let people know I’m gonna be available to you for 30 minutes if you have any questions at all. I’m there for you and I might do that again at the end of the work day. So it allows people some sense of commonality, that there’s certainty in the work day, that if I really need to ask critical questions I know that my leader is going to be there for me.

[Danyelle] Are there any other things that you think people in leadership roles can do to keep the line of communication open?

[Dr. Keil] Well, I would just say to reinforce what you just said, Danyelle, is communicate as much as possible. I think that’s really critical. Of course it’s a bit of a challenge — we don’t want to overwhelm people. If you communicate too much then everything becomes an automatic delete. Right? Leaders really need to be strategic, they need to be cognizant of the challenges of remote work. But in my mind communicating with people — and it doesn’t even have to be strategic, it may just be, I’m here for you, let me know if there’s anything I can do, let’s not miss out on opportunities and let’s make sure we continue to produce good work. By reinforcing everyone’s ability to communicate and avoid isolation.

[Danyelle] What do you think has been the biggest learning curve of remote working, be it for workers or people in leadership?

[Dr. Kiel] Well I think the most important thing for people to understand is just how easy it is to be distracted. Now you can be distracted at work, too, in the normal workplace, but at home it’s really easy to be distracted. I mean if you read some of the things that people post on the web, you know, people end up thinking they can work, do their laundry and be cooking on their slow cooker all at the same time. That just doesn’t work. That’s too much multitasking. Not going to be focused and we know from the research literature the more time you get up away from whatever you’re doing, the more distractions you have, the less effective you’re going to be. So we have to be really disciplined. Work by task as much as that’s possible and try to complete tasks and then move on to the next one. It’s a challenge and it takes a high level of conscientiousness and I think it does take practice.

Another one of the challenges of working from home is, you never get away from it. So it’s always there. One thing the university professors will say occasionally is, I wish I was a plumber, because if you’re a plumber you’re only worrying about plumbing when you’re there doing it. But when you’re a university professor, a knowledge worker, you’re always thinking about your next project. You’re always thinking about the next paper. How can I make my next class better? So you never get away from it and when you’re working at home you have to be able to say, okay I’m gonna be in front of that computer for X number of hours and when I’m finished, I’m finished. I turn it off, I go about my life and I do other things. So you have to have clear starting and stopping points. I think people will be happier that way.

[Danylle] I have one follow-up question to that. What do you think leaders can do to make those expectations about work hours clearer?

[Dr. Kiel] So leaders have a responsibility to set the tone. So we do not want our leaders sending us emails at 10 p.m. at night or at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. They need to set the tone and if they need to email us they can start at 8 o’clock in the morning and they should stop at 5 o’clock in the evening. It’s quite simple.

[Danyelle] I wanted to ask about effectiveness of meetings in a remote or virtual situation. Do you think that meetings still have the ability to be productive and effective in the virtual space or is there anything that employees or employers can do to make meetings more effective?

[Dr. Kiel] Yes and that suggests then that we have to be even more orderly and conscientious about how we’re holding meetings. I’m sure all of you or where you’ve seen these Zoom meetings, for example on the internet, where some people are not appropriately dressed, they’re laying in their beds with their feet visible, so we all need to have some sense of proper decorum and we need to be attentive, too. So we really need to decide when we have meetings like this that we’re not going to be distracted because it’s very easy, whether in the Zoom meeting, to kind of turn your head to your computer, work on that document and that only be partially listening to what’s going on. So we really do need to set rules for the road of the people. One thing to do is just to keep meetings short. I think that’s really critical.

The other thing we need to do is fight the natural tendency for these kind of meetings for people just to fade away. Right? You can kind of turn off the audio, turn off the video, and you’re just listening, head somewhere off in cyberspace. So I really do think the rules of the road need to be, we’re all present, we’re all actually looking at the speaker or at least looking into our own visual equipment. I think that really becomes critical. But this as I see him something’s kind of lackadaisical approach some people have — you’re not paying attention. So the rules of the road do need to be changed and it probably needs to be a critical conversation with people about how we’re going to attend these meetings. We have a responsibility to be alert we’re being paid. We know we should be present, than we should be aware of what we’re doing.

[Danyelle] So Doug do you have any last thoughts or words of wisdom for our listeners?

[Dr. Kiel] Sigmund Freud, near the end of his life, was asked what’s most important to a human being and Sigmund Freud said love and work. We pay a lot of attention to work in this society — it’s the way we identify our status. We use organizations as a means to climb social hierarchies and we use that to dictate our relative importance as a human being. But I think Freud was probably closer on the love thing. So during all this pandemic let’s see if we can’t reinforce some of these more important values. Work is critical because it does give us status, it gives us meaning in our lives, but maybe we could get smart and really think about having more well-rounded existences where work is, work is something that we do, it’s important to us, but it’s not the most critical thing in our lives.

[Danyelle] That was a great wisdom piece there. Wow.

[Dr. Kiel] Thank you.

[Danyelle] I really like the emphasis on finding work/life balance, especially when work is seemingly more ever-present in our homes and in our regular everyday life. Thank you so much for joining us today, Doug. We really appreciate you talking to us. You’ve given us a lot of wisdom and a lot of really interesting things to think about as far as working from home is concerned.

[Dr. Kiel] My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.

[Danyelle] Thanks again to Dr. Kiel. We’ll include website and social media links to the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences in the show notes. Thanks for joining us.

Comets Discuss is brought to you by the UT Dallas Office of Communications. A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to check out our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. For the most up-to-date news at UT Dallas visit the university’s official COVID-19 information web page. Take care and stay healthy.

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