Beam Me Up, Scotty

 

The year 2020 ushered in the #WFH (work from home) frenzy as offices closed during the pandemic. Zoom became the normal mode of communicating, meeting and collaborating. As employers contemplate the future and vaccinations allow people to slowly head back to work, it is certain that the workplace has changed forever. Hybrid workplace will undoubtedly be the new normal with employers rotating between working remotely and coming into physical office.

What will this do for collaboration? One thing we learned during the pandemic is that the lack of social interaction and in-person professional contact certainly put a strain on teams. If all team members are not in the same place at the same time, will that strain worsen? 

A colleague who consults with a client in another city shared that during the pandemic, Zoom meetings were a welcome change for her. In the past, she called into team meetings and was a lone voice on a speaker phone in the conference room. She felt more engaged in Zoom meetings when everyone was a square on the screen. Indeed, Zoom is working on a model where people who are present for a meeting in a conference room will have their own video boxes thereby allowing remote workers the same experience. Great start, but Zoom, a 2-D video call platform, does have its limitations.

Enter virtual reality and 3-D holograms. Dalvin Brown reported in The Washington Post on February 9, 2021, that a number of companies are launching 3-D display systems. One beams presenters into meetings and conferences, another enables hologram collaboration within virtual meeting rooms, and yet another enabled holographic-style virtual meetings on their platform. A number of other companies are racing to develop similar Web conferencing capabilities. 

The notion that is driving this innovation is that holograms are more engaging to work with than tiles of faces on a computer screen. Holograms provide the ability to read body language and other physical reactions in cyberspace, and they foster greater collaboration and communication among colleagues who are not or cannot be present in the same place. Not quite in-person professional contact, but certainly closer.

What about the expense of all of this? Traditionally, setting up high-definition holograms required expensive projection hardware and technicians. Software advancements, however, are unlocking ways to use laptops, computers, smartphones and other devices to engage with and stream holograms emitted elsewhere. 3-D display systems are also being developed and start-ups in the 3-D space are positioning their offerings.

It might not be much longer until we can all say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” or beam me into meetings and conferences we might otherwise be prohibited from attending. 

Cornelia Gamlem

How Are They Doing?

While a good manager always pays attention to their staff, right now is a critical time to lean closer to hear how they’re doing.

With so much uncertainty still facing us, and with the personal pressures your staff may be experiencing because of virtual learning, anxiety of getting vaccinated, and who knows what else, you should be paying close attention to just how people are feeling.

Here’s a simple idea to try—ask, “How are you feeling today or this week or right now?” Of course, you must sincerely want to know how that person is feeling, and you must listen carefully to the response you get. Be sure to ask all the employees on your team.

Don’t be surprised if you get a casual response at first because they aren’t sure you really want to know the truth. How can you convince them to open up? By sharing how you’re feeling and that may not be easy for some of you.

We’ve shared tips in previous blogs about the power of showing vulnerability, but this is even more personal. What if you shared how stressed you are and what you’re doing to move through the stress? Your team will see an entirely different side of you and that you are just as vulnerable to the stresses of our current work environment as they are.

You should have the “how are you doing” conversation privately, but you can share your own stressors with your team at your weekly meeting—whether it is virtual or in person. 

If you hear things from your team in your one-on-one conversations that you can change or impact in some practical way, move as quickly as possible. Maybe it’s a change in their schedule that could make their day a lot simpler to navigate. Maybe it’s a deadline that could be adjusted. Maybe it’s a report that they think has outlived its usefulness and if they could stop doing it, the time they saved could make all the difference in their productivity or in their personal life.

So, show your human side and don’t worry—they will respect you even more than they already do, and you could make a real difference in a life. That difference might save an employee from resigning due to competing schedules and wouldn’t that be worth it all?

Barbara Mitchell

Remarkable American Women

In March we celebrate Women’s History, so I set out to write a blog spotlighting some—women who were leaders, advocates and activists. 

Dorothy Height. In 1929, Ms. Height was admitted to Barnard College but was not allowed to attend because the school had apparently met its yearly quota African American students. Instead, she went on to graduate from New York University. She eventually went on to work for the YMCA and joined the National Council of Negro Women beginning a career of fighting for civil rights and equality for black Americans and women. In 1957, she became NCNW’s fourth president, serving in the role for 40 years, and focused on ending the lynching of African Americans, restructuring the criminal justice system, and supporting voter registration in the South. Her prominence in the Civil Rights Movement and unmatched knowledge of organizing were noticed by several presidents who sought her advice.

In her memoir, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, she said, “I am the product of many whose lives have touch mine…” I had the pleasure of hearing Ms. Height speak at a luncheon in Washington DC in the late 1990s. She touched the lives of everyone present in the room that day. Ms. Height died in 2010 at the age of 98.

Ida B. Wells. Celebrating the 100^th Anniversary of the 19^th Amendment and Women’s Right to Vote in 2020, it’s only fitting to honor a suffragist. Ida B. Wells was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher who battled sexism, racism, and violence. During the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade, a group of Black women marched in the back at the request of the parade’s organizers—who tried to discourage them from marching at all over concern of alienating Southern politicians. Ms. Wells was having none of this. On the day of the parade, she and her group, the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, marched with the rest of the Illinois delegation near the front.

Throughout her career she called out white suffragists and politicians for their racism and exclusionist views, fought for equal education for Black children and young people, a free press, women’s rights, civil rights, and against lynching. She helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Dolores Huerta. Labor leader, organizer, feminist, and activists for women’s rights, civil rights, and environmental justice, Ms. Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20^th century. After receiving an associate teaching degree, she briefly taught school in the 1950s. She soon discovered that she “couldn’t tolerate seeing kids coming to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”  She cofounded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez in 1962 to help the laborers who planted, tended and picked the vegetables and fruits grown on American farms.

On June 5, 1968, she was on the platform beside Sen. Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he delivered his victory speech following his win of the California presidential primary. Only minutes later, Kennedy and five other people were shot walking through the hotel’s kitchen.

These passages just touch on the lives of these amazing women, and there are so many more to learn about. Take some time this month, this year, to learn about these and other remarkable American women. 

Cornelia Gamlem

Zooming Around the House

 

Zoooomm! I used that word to describe how my very young kitten raced around the house. Her legs were short and stubby, but they didn’t lack for speed nor agility. Approach her when she didn’t want you near, and zoooomm, she was running off. 

That was over 20 years ago. What a difference two decades makes. Zoom has taken on a whole new meaning in our everyday lives and given us a whole new vocabulary. Zoom became a verb and spawned words such as Zoomcast and Zoominar. 

I listened to a podcast sponsored by Washington Post Live about “The Future of Work” that featured Zoom’s COO, Aparna Bawa. She joked that people suddenly understood what the company did since their solution was now embedded into everyone’s daily life. On a more serious note, she explained how their explosive growth during 2020 was unplanned, and she lauded her fellow Zoomies for their speed and agility in coming together to meet these new demands as they grew from one million to 300 million daily meeting participants in three months. These employees, she reminded listeners, were also impacted by the pandemic, with the majority of them working from home and sharing the same concerns as Zoom meeting participants. 

Zoom has enjoyed success because of their focus on their customers – responding to their feedback as quickly and as appropriately as possible – and their focus on their employees – addressing their concerns, thereby addressing their customers’ concerns. The result is the company’s focus on delivering innovation and value. 

The second reason for their success is the nature of their technology, which Bawa described as a testament to the technology team. Zoom has a highly scalable, cloud-native architecture with a distributed backend infrastructure. Nineteen co-located data centers working along with public cloud storage allows them to leverage so they can increase capacity and meet demand. What a great example of human resources (Zoom employees) and technology working to serve the customer.

Zoom, like all organizations, is wondering what will be the impact in a post-pandemic world on their business model. Since it appears that remote work does not negatively impact productivity, hybrid models and flexibility are likely to be the norm. Does this mean there will be less demand for Zoom? Bawa acknowledges this may be the case, and if so, that they will, once again, adjust their business model.

This opens up new possibilities for Zoom. They are working on a smart-gallery model where people who are present for a meeting in a conference room will have their own video boxes, thereby allowing remote workers the same participating experience. Another development being explored is a noise-suppression feature to eliminate background noise. No more apologizing for sirens, garbage trucks, or barking dogs. I could name a few people who will welcome this change.

In the meantime, as you are Zooming around with your Zoommates (hey, another new word), consider the possibilities for positive change we can embrace when we get to the other side of the pandemic. We all have the opportunity to contribute to defining what the new normal will be.

Cornelia and Barbara

Employee Appreciation

Employee appreciation often brings to mind those tangible things that employers and managers give out as tokens of gratitude. Beyond rewards and recognition bestowed on employees, organizations show their employees that they value them through intangible means.

March 5, this coming Friday, is Employee Appreciation Day, and we talked about it this week on Thank God for Monday. We discussed the intangible ways that employers show employees they are, indeed, valued. No surprise, it starts with a positive culture, and leaders live that culture through their actions.

Our latest book, They Did What? is filled with tales of mischief and misbehavior. One of the lessons in that book is turning a negative situation into a positive one. The HR executive and her leadership team are quick to act on employee misdeeds, and they are committed to resolving issues, no matter how disruptive the situation. The mere fact that they waste no time and are visible to the employees sends a huge message about how much they value their employees. They recognize that good people want to work with other good people in a positive environment. Their actions also help avert even bigger problems from occurring. 

How leaders approach and solve issues also sends powerful messages regarding employee appreciation. HR leaders often confront situations where people just use bad judgment without meaning any harm. Nevertheless, there are repercussions that affect coworkers. Taking the time to get all the facts and listening to the employee rather than jumping to conclusions lets the employee know they are respected. It can also allow the employee to be a part of the solution. 

Not all misbehavior is deliberate, but it can be disruptive. These are often situations where there are underlying causes for the behavior, such as illness or personal issues. Exercising diplomacy and preserving the employee’s dignity is critical in these situations. There is a fine line between helping the employee and getting involved in their personal lives. Having an outside resource, such as an Employee Assistance Program with trained therapists, can be a lifeline for the employee and the organization. 

Addressing employee behavioral issues as soon as possible, getting an employee on the right path, and offering the right resource for an underlying issues are all powerful ways to let employees know they are valued, appreciated and respected for the individuals they are. Other team members take notice as well. They see support being provided to coworkers who need it.

When the behavior may be deliberate, workplace harassment for example, immediate action sends the message to everyone that the behavior is taken seriously, and the leadership is committed to a positive workplace environment. 

They Did What? Unbelievable Tales from the Workplace is filled with many examples of how HR Executives and organization leaders address a multitude of issues involving misbehavior at work all while preserving the employees’ dignity and respect.

Cornelia Gamlem