O
ON TOPIC
an Price is a performance
p s yc h o l o g i s t w i t h
expertise in workplace
psychology. Recently, he
heard of a sales director who didn’t
trust his employees: were they really
working remotely, or bunking off at
the golf course? To prove his
suspicions, he used tracking software
on his employees’ phones to check
where they were at all times, firing
one of them as a result.
Surveillance at work is not a new
phenomenon; what has changed
in recent years is the proliferation
of digital workplace tools, and the
ever-increasing number of platforms
on which employees are readily
available. Because these are so easy
to use, is there a risk that bosses
expect employees to be always
available, responding to messages
at a moment’s notice?
As the workforce becomes
increasingly remote, businesses are
having to adapt. A 2018 survey by
IWG found that 70% of people work
remotely at least once a week. Some
companies, for example Yahoo and
IBM, are attempting to resist this
trend, by asking their employees
to remain at their desks as much
as possible. Where organisations
can afford to offer trimmings
that undermine the appeal of
remote working, they often do. For
instance, Facebook’s Menlo Park
headquarters in California is replete
with table tennis, gym, hairdressing
and multiple restaurant facilities.
Why would you ever want to leave?
But this set-up is anomalous.
Remote workers rate themselves
more productive than desk workers,
and the inherent flexibility suits
a workforce tailored to the gig
economy. Most pertinently for
employers, in a FlexJobs 2015
survey, 82% of participants said
that they would be more loyal to
their employer if they offered flexible
working arrangements.
I
or internal office use and
for disparate groups of
team members, digital
collaboration tools have
become something of a necessity.
With Slack, Facebook Workplace,
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36 //
Future Talent
If you treat
people like
children, you
tend to get
a childlike
response
Trello, Microsoft tools such as
Yammer and Teams; even WhatsApp
– it has never been easier to
communicate with colleagues.
Especially with Slack – the king in
this panoply of options – the cheery,
casual interaction it encourages
makes work communication
increasingly indistinguishable from
social communication.
Or, as Molly Fischer put it in her
New York Magazine piece on Slack,
“it’s definitely possible to get work
done on Slack; it’s also possible
to make yourself feel like you’re
wo r k i n g w i t h o u t a c t u a l l y
accomplishing anything.”
However, it can reduce the “clutter
and noise” surrounding emails,
potentially boosting productivity.
“I first used Slack when I got a
short-term contract to do content
production for a small tech start-
up,” explains one worker. “It
was so efficient as a method of
communication that I received
only four work emails in the four
months I was there. I now work for
a huge company where it takes 40
emails before you can even have a
conversation with someone. I’d love
Slack to be introduced here, but it
does require wholesale conversion
from everyone in the workspace to
make it work.”
Another employee echoes
this view of the email culture, but
although he says he doesn’t explicitly
link his almost-24-hour availability to
his rise through the ranks to sales
director, he does imply causation. For
him, this degree of responsiveness
simply comes with his role – “during
an evening I might have to answer
a question and I’m fine with that,
it’s my own choosing”. However, it
is emblematic of the near-invisible
boundary between private time and
work time.
ormer Microsoft chief
envisioning officer Dave
Coplin, founder of The
E nv i s i o n e r s , h e l p s
businesses to engage with the
potential of new technologies. He
points out that digital collaboration
tools can create an unhealthy work-
life balance. Since they are “as much
fun as using social media tools in
your personal life”, people get into
the habit of using them, “whenever
or whatever they are doing”.
Employers must help people to
develop different habits.
In his book Rise of the Humans,
Coplin explains that, at any moment
of the day, we need to ask ourselves
whether what we are doing can be
aided by technology. “If the answer’s
no, turn it off,” he advised.
This, of course, is easier said
than done. In her aforementioned
piece, Fischer wrote of Slack that
it “has made work, like the rest of
the internet, a passive addiction”.
And as Price says, “one of the big
problems with productivity in the
21st century workplace is that people
are constantly distracted.”
This problem can be exacerbated
when multiple collaboration
platforms compete for attention.
W h e n wo r k i n g o n c ro s s -
departmental projects it’s easy for
workers to be receiving notifications
from Trello, Slack, WhatsApp and
Teams all at the same time. Given
that these platforms are not
compatible with one another, it can
no doubt feel a little like working
inside the Tower of Babel.
Ceaseless ‘notifications’, received
from a range of platforms, bombard
the brain with dopamine hits. “It’s
well established now that if you
have too much dopamine flooding
into the pre-frontal cortex, it sends
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