Workflow and Communication in the Workplace
Trouble getting your employees back in the office? You’re not alone -- a number of surveys have shown that there is a lot of reluctance on the part of workers to return to the office environment.
Our take on why? Work is broken.
Leadership and management have relied on face-to-face interaction to judge productivity which has now been proven by the pandemic to be an obsolete practice. Work, especially for the knowledge worker, has gotten more chaotic throughout the pandemic as a result of an abuse of asynchronous communication. The problem and why workers are reluctant to come back to the office is that leaders haven’t given adequate thought and planning to how work gets done. Read on for the fix.
The Three Types of Workers
Let’s first consider different types of workstyles and how they best communicate. According to Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at UPenn, there are three different types of workers:
The individual athlete (the gymnast) – This person needs to be off on their own practicing and improving their solo routine.
The relay team – This is the team that routinely hands things off to keep the race moving forward. The teammates line up to receive the baton as efficiently as possible.
The sports team (soccer, basketball, etc.) – This is the team where each member is contributing at the same time, ready for the ball to come their way any moment within executing the plays.
So where does communication (both asynchronous and synchronous) fit in this framework, and how can the workflow be structured best for each type of worker? How can work best be done between these three?
The gymnast is the asynchronous and independent worker. We’re all the gymnast when we’re doing work that doesn’t rely on anyone else. They need to have time to focus on “deep work,” as author and professor Cal Newport refers to it, and spending too much task switching and checking and responding to email are detrimental to productivity. What type of communication works best for the gymnast? Generally asynchronous, non-time-dependent, non-urgent messages or information, such as status update messages or just-in-time operating procedures; they can wait to be read whenever they are relevant.
The relay team exemplifies asynchronous yet collaborative work. The team is collaborating, but the work isn’t happening at the same time. There are handoffs and interdependencies with the work with each member contributing their piece to the project. The relay team will interact in several ways, but much of it can (and should) take place in asynchronous communication, where two-way exchange is expected but not necessarily at the same time. Examples are sections of a report being written (asynchronous) with (synchronous) check-in meetings to discuss how the sections will flow or reference each other. In other words, individual work done independently with status updates sent prior to a coordination meeting. Then, the synchronous time is spent on problem solving. Collaboration tools such as Monday, Asana, Basecamp or others work great for this type of work and are FAR superior to tracking numerous project-related email strings in your inbox!
The soccer team engages in synchronous and collaborative work. Real-time engagement is critical – they’re solving problems, having discussions, and conducting strategic planning. This is the kind of work that happens in groups in real time, including trust building, decision making, brainstorming, discussion, celebration, and so on. This is where we mostly have it figured out. The trick, though, is to leverage the asynchronous, collaborative communications mentioned above as much as possible so you can better allocate time to activities that depend solely on synchronous communication. Again, collaboration tools work great for this purpose, and excel over email.
Now let's see where asynchronous and synchronous communications fit in with regards to the remote work debate.
Remote Work: Love It or Hate It?
Remote work offers a lot of advantages - those in favor of remote work love this environment because they can integrate work into their lives, get uninterrupted focus time when they need to accomplish deep work, and skip the commute. This is a near-perfect work situation for the gymnast. The bedrock of remote work is asynchronous communication. The strengths of that type of communication are that everyone can participate, the discussion is not dominated by one or two individuals, it allows everyone a chance to reflect and think prior to responding, and it keeps the wheels of productivity turning across time zones.
However, remote work is lonely, and can be slower and inefficient - downsides that make some people dislike working outside of the office environment. Extroverts need hugs and high fives and people for energy, while some people like having clear-cut boundaries between work and home.
Besides, we do ourselves a disservice by not having synchronous communications and encounters such as those that occur at the office. We need to interact with each other and connect. We also miss out on all the non-verbal aspects of communication that are so important for context if we’re limited to asynchronous interaction. The relationships and sense of belonging that define culture in an office often have a physical component, and it’s understandable that employers would be concerned with losing that if no one comes to the office.
Many leaders don’t like remote work because they don’t know how they’d manage their remote employees. But, what this really means is they don’t have clear, defined processes for how work gets done, how workers interact, or the tools to support efficient communication and workflow. When there are no expectations or workflow processes because the leaders haven’t defined any, it’s quite easy for leaders to confuse that with a lack of trust in their employees and resort to micromanagement or bringing everyone back in the office. That’s a top-down management problem and a chaotic work environment problem – NOT a remote work problem. And employees shouldn’t be the ones to suffer for lazy leadership or judged on productivity by how long they sit at their desk. And you know what? Employees know it.
In Summary
So where does that leave us? Remote or in office – this is not an either-or scenario. Both types of communication and work environments have their strengths and weaknesses. But, no matter where your workers are located, the pandemic has shone a spotlight on how work has changed and requires a commitment to both synchronous and asynchronous communication as part of your culture. Or, you face drowning in email and continuation of The Great Resignation if you lack the necessary processes and tools to make survival and efficiency feasible for you and your team.
Keeping your email inbox from overflowing is reason enough to address the type, flow, and process of work getting accomplished within your team. Considering when and how it’s important for your team to interact in-person or asynchronously based on actual criteria is now critical as we ease into the New Normal with a workforce that has new demands. To quote Brene Brown, “Clear is kind.” Clear processes, clear intentions, clear expectations.