Remote Work

Being a semifinalist at CELP I have the opportunity to attend live interaction sessions with Prof. Tsedal recently. It was the most engaging webinar I have been part of in recent times. The topic of discussion was remote work.

The two most important element of the remote work is Productivity and Trust. She quizzed us on our productivity level in the pandemic world whether it has increased or decreased or remained the same. There was a mixed response from the audience.

My productivity shot up initially and then decreased. She pointed out the conditions required for productivity to shoot up like good infrastructure and conducive working space. When do you think remote work happened for the first time in the corporate world?

It was in 1993. Cisco experimented with remote work and then Sunmicrosystem. The productivity level for these companies shoots up. Sunmicrosystem was able to save millions of dollars on real estate by allowing workers to work remotely. We are talking about the late ’90s.

On trust, she explained the trusting curve – the swift trust and the emotional trust. The leaders need to have the emotional trust that’s when others will open up their views too. Thereafter the discussion moved to Zoom fatigue.

Being on video most of the time consumes lots of energy. There are other mediums like email; skype IM; slack and more where we can communicate more effectively the complex stuff.

Then we discussed the five conundrums on remote work:
•Mutual Knowledge Problem
•Social Presence
•Rich Vs Lean Media
•Synchronous vs Asynchronous
•Geographical-cultural differences

Lastly, we discussed the rise of cyber-attacks. She gave exapmple of Saudi’s @aramco which controls world’s 10% of oil consumption. It was the target of a phishing email recently. We need to be more careful of cyber attacks as we grow more in the digital world.

Thanks, Tsedal for such a wonderful webinar.
Look forward to reading your book Remote Work Resolution.
P.S. She has got a beautiful smile 🙂