TAGS:

Lost Connections In The Connected Workplace

Bob Wildauer

This post originally appeared in the Human Infrastructure newsletter, a free weekly publication from the Packet Pushers. See back issues and sign up at packetpushers.net/newsletter.


As months of work-from-home policies became years, I noticed a pattern in some coworkers and friends (and myself): The longer folks worked from their domestic silos, the more mistrust and resentment arose at work. Certainly, this could be caused by worsening mental health outcomes afflicting folks during the pandemic.

However, I’ve noticed declining workplace cohesion even among otherwise happy and healthy professionals. While remote work lets us carry on with our jobs, we’ve lost personal connections in a world mediated by screens and IM chats.

I believe the lack of personal contact deprives us of essential context about our coworkers’ lives. Besides friendly chats or team meetings, much of our information about our colleagues is passively absorbed in the office: The frazzled-looking HR staffer with a photo of his newborn on his desk, the project manager working a modified shift to hammer out the purchase of her first home, the over-stressed engineer caring for a sick parent. Without these cues, we lack a very important, and human, element to understanding our coworkers and maintaining our teams.

Consider an example: yet another project is added to your workload. You feel aggrieved because the past three projects have been assigned to you rather than a colleague in a similar role. But because you’re isolated at home, you don’t see the stacks of network gear towering over your colleague’s desk as she toils against a tight project deadline. The home office is a black box, whereas in-person work can give us context about how work is divvied up.

Where the office offers clues us to the mental and emotional states of our colleagues, remote work often omits them entirely. We send email and instant message into the void, then bristle at delayed, testy, or non-existent responses from virtual humans living real lives.

Moving Forward With Open Eyes

With the worst of the COVID lockdowns behind us, a clearer picture of our future work experience has materialized. Remote work has become the norm for many of us during the pandemic years. While many of us would enjoy continuing to work from our home offices, our stutter-step toward normalcy also has brought us back to working in the office.

Announcements about returning to the office can be met with eyerolls.  Certainly, remote work carries many advantages: lack of commute, dedicated space to maintain uninterrupted focus, better work-life balance, etc.

On the other hand, not all recalls to the office are cynical power-plays by upper management (though some may be). Replacing in-person interaction with video calls and IM is probably not possible and definitely not desirable. “Zoom fatigue” and distracted working hours affect many remote workers, even those who prefer their homes to the office. In the past two years, I have not heard a single demand for more teleconferencing or chat notifications.

You may not find this account of in-person work persuasive – I intend it to be merely a data point in multivariate consideration of two competing models of work. As the majority of us return to the office for at least part of the work week, consider keeping your eyes and mind open to glimpse the humanity of those who resided only in our screens for the past two years.

About Bob Wildauer: Bob Wildauer is a network technician and staff supervisor for an MSP in central Pennsylvania. He has worked in the IT industry for over 12 years with a focus in Cisco networking.