Digital Tsunami. Time to change the work template

Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true. Many wished they could avoid the daily commute and work from home. Who would have thought that they would pine to relive the experience of being with colleagues?

Ivy League classes anyone?

If you did not get a chance to attend an Ivy League college, you could do it right now for free. Several colleges are offering hundreds of courses for free. People are quick to sign up, but a much smaller percentage actually complete a course. Nevertheless, getting Ivy League education has never been easier. You can get the content but not the experience of going to that college. Is that a compromise?

Aditya (not his real name) had secured admission to Harvard Business School and was all set to join classes in August 2020. Then he learned that Harvard had advised students not to return to campus after spring break in mid-March 2020. “I don’t want to pay $200,000 to learn through videos,” says Aditya.

Students worldwide are coping with abrupt loss of campus life, animated debates in classes, extracurricular activities, traditions like convocations — all the things that make up the college experience. Educational institutions are struggling with loss of revenue and funds to invest in salaries and research. Keeping the lights on for a smaller group of students makes it financially unviable.

Business as usual

The lockdown has forced organisations to let their employees work from home. Many businesses have been caught unprepared for this digital transformation on steroids. Many roles were not designed for being effective outside of the office. Lack of high net speed connections and software that keep transactions secure were the first set of problems businesses had to solve. The bigger problem was that work was shifted lock stock and barrel to the home.

Team managers had never been skilled in managing project delivery when the teams were remote. Video conferencing became the new toy that everyone discovered. The result was fatigue. Let us go for virtual cocktails or coffee, said the managers. The employees groaned silently. When there was no meeting to attend, HR is worried that employees would be slacking off. It was their turn to plan “employee engagement activities”. ‘This is just business as usual’ was the corporate line that managers parroted. If it was business as usual, leaders would not be spending sleepless night worrying about bankruptcy.

Reimagine work and learning

Kavi Arasu, an expert in organisational effectiveness and learning design, says, “Instead of re-imagining work in this new setting, we simply assume that the same work is happening in a different location — the home.”

“Speaking to a zoom camera does not turn it into a webinar. Familiarity with PowerPoint is not the same as facilitating learning. Dumping endless hours of meaningless webinars onto the employee is not going to get them up skilled. Learning has to be re-imagined for this new medium. The classroom has moved”, says Kavi.

1. The learner has millions of choices : An employee attending an online course at home is not the same as the employee attending a training programme in the office. Binge-watching slickly-produced serials and movies has refined our standards. Sandhya, employee of an audit firm, says, “The office meeting or online course has to be better than the Netflix movie I could watch instead.”

Employees are anxious about their future. That needs to be addressed by the head of the business. Learning is a social experience. Online courses must provide that.

2. Communicating through video – a new competency: Most online classes are excruciatingly boring because they have the speaker continue for long stretches without involving participants. This can be done through polls, parallel chats, drawings, videos, quizzes, built in every few minutes. It is hard for the speaker to see the facial expressions of the learner. That is essential to build engagement.

If the video experience is not at par with a TED talk, the participants will switch off faster than you think. Learning & Development teams must teach managers how to conduct reviews and give feedback on video, teaching online class and even tell them how long a virtual meeting can go before fatigue sets in. It will help people learn that every meeting does not have to be done through video.

Learning by being there

In colleges, heated debates, informal interactions with alumni and faculty is as much a part of the learning experience as the lecture. The lockdown forced a lot of people to continue behaving exactly the same way even when work was no longer being done from the office. People will need to reflect and re-imagine work, learning and socialising in the new setting. We have not had time to think it through. It is a new world of work.

Abhijit Bhaduri is a leadership and talent coach to organisations

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