Dr Wenjie Cai, senior lecturer in tourism and hospitality at the University of Greenwich, has shared his views.
Sputnik: How have new technologies such as Zoom and remote working changed the dynamic of offices?
Wenjie Cai: It is quite different from before the lockdown, because before the lockdown, people who work from home, were taking it on a volunteer basis. So basically, people who have plenty of time to prepare, and they also have a complete change of mindset in terms of facilities, but when the COVID-19 or lockdown really happened, everyone was forced to work from home overnight. Which means we really had very little time to prepare and we had to adjust ourselves accordingly to use this new way of communication.
What really happened is, in our research we found in our research a lot of colleagues who we never see in our meetings, or a lot of colleagues who used to work from home and now could attend any social events, such as Friday afternoon drinks, and they could attend our meeting. They could attend our virtual drink. It really changed the power dynamic in the office, because finally those colleagues considered marginalised remote workers are really on board and really included in our events. So, it's kind of positive. We see a lot of negative reports about how working from home could be quite negative towards wellbeing. I agree with that, but there is some positivity there for those remote workers as well.
Sputnik: How have workers and teams of workers responded to these changes?
Wenjie Cai: Because it happened at very short notice, organisations are not ready for that, organisations do not provide proper training before going into lockdown because lockdown is not planned. It all happened in a very short period of time. But I'm quite surprised to see our participants, in their response, they are quite positive about this and everything has been organised in quite an effective way and there's a lot of training being provided online. We can see a lot of team leaders who do this regular check-in with their colleagues, to make sure they're okay and they don't feel isolated. We see a lot of quick responses towards these changes and I think a lot of teams are now adapting it as a new norm of communicating and working together.
Sputnik: What lessons have we learnt from using Zoom that we can apply going forwards?
Wenjie Cai: I'm quite positive about this. I hope we can have a vaccine very soon so we can really go back to normal so that hopefully everyone can go back to the office. But I hope this way of communicating tends to carry on, because we really see this opportunity which can include those remote workers, those people who felt isolated before, who lost opportunities for social engagement before. Why don't we in the future, when we go back to the office, why don't we try having Zoom on at the same time when we have face-to-face meetings? Why don't we try to reach out to our remote workers more frequently using these platforms? I think it might sound a bit weird having Zoom when you're having social drinks, but I think it's just the organisations that need to change the mindset of including those remote workers and to create a more inclusive environment to engage them. I think this is something that organisations can take away from this experience of lockdown.
