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social media hybrid work

How social media can build trust and productivity in hybrid teams

  • min read
    • Offices may be re-opening, but professionals aren't racing back to their desks. A recent survey by professional services firm PwC survey found more than half of employees want to keep working remotely for at least three days a week. 37 percent of workers surveyed for Kaspersky's Securing the Future of Work report said they wanted to work mostly from home with regular office time. This part in-office, part at-home workstyle is known as hybrid working. To get all the benefits, employees need ways to stay connected with colleagues while working remotely. Colleague connection is important for job satisfaction, company culture and effective collaboration. I believe social media has a lot to offer in building colleague connections and unlocking greater productivity. Social media can add the crucial 'trust factor' When a research team looked at 52 studies of trust and teamwork, they found trust is even more important for remote-working teams to function well. If organizations work harder to build trust among employees spending most of their time apart, the potential gains are large. Collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom and project tools to manage tech projects are a valuable part of keeping team members connected. But because they're also where much of your work gets done, employees need other ways to connect too. That's where social media comes in. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and others can be great ways to improve trust and camaraderie in your team, but they can also undermine the relationships you hope to foster. With the right strategy and guidelines for using social media, you can help employees benefit from interactions while reducing risk. Here are some of the keys to social media success I've seen successful workplaces use to good effect. 1.     Reframe leadership views of social media use Many leaders have developed the view that using social media during work hours is time wasted. I've already mentioned how social media can help build the trust that's important to productivity. Research also suggests workplace behavior seen as 'slacking off' could, in fact, boost productivity and creativity. A recent review of studies found both positive and negative impacts from 'cyberloafing,' with researchers concluding "a little cyberloafing is important for healthy communication, innovation and productivity." Trusting employees to manage their focus helps them function at their best. 2.     Openly endorse connecting on social media The best way to get employees connecting on social media is easy: Explicitly encourage them to do just that. There's much to recommend it. When I ran my own social media agency, all our employees (voluntarily) connected on Facebook and Twitter. While it's been ten years since we last worked together, we're in regular social media contact, exchanging recipes, parenting stories and work opportunities. 3.     Have written social media guidelines Ideally, your organization's HR team should develop social media guidelines with advice from your legal and social media teams. If you don't have organization-wide policies, you can still send a thoughtful email to direct reports outlining your perspective. Start by looking at other organizations' smart, effective social media policies. Your policy should make clear that invitations to connect with colleagues are optional and colleagues may have different preferences about connecting online. Take the opportunity to remind people to follow security best practices on networks like Twitter and LinkedIn. 4.     Model friendly connection Your social media habits will cue the rest of your team. Think about how you'd like team members to connect, then model that behavior. If you want them to follow one another on Twitter and amplify or engage with each other's posts, follow your direct reports and put them on a Twitter list you review regularly, so you see all their updates. Once employees see you responding to their and their colleagues' tweets, they'll see this as an extension of workplace relationships and another way to bring interesting ideas or information to your attention. Don't intrude on employees' privacy by commenting on their high school reunion photos or latest parenting rant. If you're hoping they'll start to connect with you more personally, share posts that represent the kind of thing you hope they'll share: Photos from your latest hike, novel recommendations or recipes. If team members comment, reply – it establishes a connection without intruding. 5.     Recognize different boundaries In the same way some people are up for after-work drinks and others like to (or have to) go straight home, some employees like to keep their online interactions strictly professional while others don't mind mixing business and personal. Employees who prefer to keep relationships professional may wish to confine colleague connections to business-first platforms like LinkedIn. Advise employees of features that make it easier to draw a line between work and personal lives. For example, Twitter profiles can be made private so only people you explicitly allow can see posts. On Facebook, they could put colleagues on their 'restricted' list so they only see posts you make public. Kaspersky's privacy checker gives platform-specific tips for protecting your privacy on apps like TikTok and WhatsApp too. 6.     What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook That lesson has stayed with me: Not everyone wants their online life to follow them to the office. While it's appropriate to pick up the thread of a LinkedIn conversation where you and a colleague discussed industry news, it's best to avoid asking your coworker about her new kitchen in the boardroom. 7.     Designate one work-free zone Even if you're encouraging employees to connect on social media, make clear and model that it's ok to keep at least one social media presence work-free. It's healthy to have parts of life private from colleagues, even though employees must understand anything they post online could become public or known to coworkers and clients. Preserving one colleague-free zone means social media enthusiasts have a place to share kid photos or other personal interests without feeling like everything is on the record at the office. 8.     Talk openly about risk Online relationships are fraught with risk. If your coworker posts a picture of their new boat, you may wonder if they got a big raise or feel envious in a way that undermines the work relationship. Colleagues friendly in the office may find themselves suspicious if online interactions reveal political differences. If one employee spots a coworker posting misleading, offensive or ill-judged content, she may find herself caught between respecting her colleague's privacy and compromising her employer's reputation. Avert these risks by encouraging team members to think about the face they show to colleagues – and the world. Posts that would undermine coworker connection are posts that can pose reputation risks for your firm. You're not just helping your team build stronger relationships, you're helping them become more thoughtful, effective social media users. The other kind of risk is online security. Ensure your team knows and practices basic cyber hygiene, including using secure passwords and being aware of the many ways secret information may become exposed at work. A new frontier for colleague connection By avoiding the pitfalls of social media and harnessing its potential for conversation and connection, you can establish a new frontier for building relationships among your workforce. Many have already turned to social media to replace the sociability they've missed from the office: A third of us miss face-to-face interaction more than anything else we miss about our workplace. Including our colleagues in that circle of sociability is a great way to reinforce connections frayed during time apart. Social media can be a valuable part of company culture if used well. The sense of connection it fosters lets colleagues trust each other and work effectively as a team, making them happier in their hybrid working lives.
collaboration tool intrusion focus

Collaborative tools need your control to prevent employee overload

  • min read
    • In centuries past, scholars at England's older universities had a foolproof system to make sure they could work in peace. Offices had two sets of doors. If only the inner door was closed, visitors were welcome to knock, but shutting the outer oak door (known as sporting the oak) meant do not disturb – and everyone, no matter how senior, was expected to observe. In 2021 many remote workers would welcome the digital equivalent of that sturdy oak door. Conferencing and workflow platforms like Slack, Zoom and Teams have revolutionized remote working – without these, the COVID-19 pandemic may have seen knowledge-based businesses struggle. But now, some employees find themselves on a carousel of virtual meetings, instant messages and urgent emails with little time for unbroken concentration. It's called 'collaborative overload,' 'tyranny of the inbox' or 'the collaboration curse.' Among its most influential commentators is bestselling business author and Georgetown University Professor Cal Newport. He popularized the term 'deep work:' Giving a single task undivided attention for an extended time. The power of deep attention In Professor Newport's words, "Deep work makes you better at what you do and provides the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craft, yet most spend their days in a frantic blur of email and social media." Emma Birchall is co-managing director of HSM, a future of work research consultancy. She told us, "We all thought the move to remote working would give us time to reflect, and that not sitting next to colleagues would give us space for deep work. But we've found most diaries are back-to-back with online meetings and notifications go off all day." It's an issue unlikely to go away as the pandemic recedes. Research commissioned by Kaspersky suggests some remote working will be a permanent fact of life for many, and "hybrid working" will become the new normal. Most (74 percent) don't want to return to some pre-COVID work practices, with 37 percent hoping for a flexible mix of working at home and in the office. What collaboration is meant to be like To get a handle on the problem, it's useful to identify what collaboration is meant to achieve. Alison Coward founded Bracket, an agency that helps teams work together more effectively. She champions 'purposeful collaboration:' Bringing diverse minds and skillsets together to solve complex challenges, but with each person's contribution developed through deep work. The most productive teams have periods of individual work alternating with collaborative sessions. Just being on Slack or Zoom doesn't equal collaboration but can give the illusion of it. It's a misconception that the tools can solve communication problems. One task at a time Sophie Leroy, Associate Professor of Management at University of Washington studies how technology can foster unhelpful work habits. Central to her work is 'attention residue:' When you break off a task to see to something else, your thought process can't disengage immediately from the old task. It means employees constantly hijacked by online interactions will always work at reduced effectiveness. She told Secure Futures, "I study different types of interruptions. There are intrusions, like people requesting my attention and making me switch tasks even though I may not want to. Then there are distractions – things more in the background. An email may pop up, for example, and you wonder what's in it. It starts bothering you. "Since the pandemic changed how we work, I've seen a huge increase in intrusions and distractions, and – perhaps worst of all – in multitasking. You may be in a meeting with many other windows open on your screen and be tempted to check emails and search chats. These things would've been rude in face-to-face meetings, but now no one knows you're doing it. "Because communication is so much more informal using online platforms, you get into the habit of doing this all the time. It's a problem because multitasking harms productivity." It's not just a matter of workers being interrupted, but also interrupting others. Leroy says, "Let's assume you're working on something and you have a question. Your chat window is open, so it's easy to pipe up with, 'do you have any information on this?' The technology tempts you to do that. "In an office, you might've written down the question for later when you see your colleague, but you don't get that chance for informal contact when working remotely. And these little interruptions help you feel connected to colleagues, which may motivate more interruptions." Taking control of collaboration tech One way to overcome intrusion from collaboration tools and give employees more chance to work deeply is to set ground rules across the organization, says Harriet Molyneaux, co-managing director at HSM. "Have a communications charter that sets expectations about when people will be online and whether they're supposed to be checking various channels." A company communications charter may limit the number of channels, say which digital platforms are appropriate for which kinds of collaboration or recommend 'asynchronous' methods (that can be answered later, like email) be used in place of synchronous ones, like an instant message. It should also include policies for urgent communications. Molyneaux says, "In our organization, outside normal working hours, we're not expected to be on instant messaging channels or answer email. Any messages there are picked up the next day. If you need someone urgently, you must use WhatsApp or call them. "We can all be smart in our use of tools. Most platforms let you set your status. If you're out for an hour or taking some time for deep thinking, make it 'please only contact me if urgent and do so by phone.' It's about getting team members to take control of tech rather than just thinking, 'we can contact everyone all day, every day.'" Sticking to the rules For a communications protocol to work, everyone must follow it. If some managers start arranging interactions outside the agreed framework, a digital presenteeism culture – employees feeling pressure to be always available online – can creep back. Sophie Leroy says, "You may say we're going to limit online meetings to 10 to 11 am and 1 to 2 pm each day, and the rest of the time is for focused work. But people may still think, am I going to be monitored and punished if I'm not visible? Will I be considered non-productive? Will I miss out on information if others are online? The organization must be clear about all this." It can be difficult to wean people off the habit of always checking messages on different channels. Leroy suggests a gradual approach. "You have to retrain your focus. Start with not checking for 10 minutes, then 15, up to an hour. It's hard, but people realize it's good for them and want to do it." Technology can help. Time-management methods like the Pomodoro Technique rely on breaking the working day into short, indivisible intervals, each for a single task. There are apps and browser plug-ins to help with this. "They're useful, but it must be individual choice," says Alison Coward. "Managers shouldn't mandate them. Everyone is different. It's about giving people time and space to find their own productivity techniques." Employees need the chance to give their work deep focus, free from interruptions and distractions that unbridled digital collaboration tools can bring. As these tools are suddenly everywhere thanks to the COVID-19 work-from-home shift, leaders must ensure their organization has policies to support deep work and prevent unnecessary intrusion. Most importantly, everyone must follow the protocols, from the newest intern to the C-suite. When we face high-tech problems, we should step back and remember we'll always need low-tech human values, like establishing and sticking to boundaries based on mutual respect and understanding.
people missing ink productivity

Why your staff aren’t using your amazing productivity tools

  • min read
    • I deal with many kinds of businesses and organizations in my work. They all use different productivity tools. As I get my head around learning that new software for a new project, I've often found those working in the company have no greater knowledge of their tech tools than I do. Many companies find productivity tools don't deliver. I see that, but I think the problem isn't the tools. Nor is it the people who don't know how to use them. It's something in between. Software is becoming more elaborate Most of us don't use much of the capability of our tools. Software company Pendo says we rarely or never use 80 percent of any software product's features. Cloud software companies spend 30 billion US dollars each year developing these features, "dollars that could have been spent on higher-value features and unrealized customer value." This is perhaps one reason comparatively feature-lite Google Docs is so successful. Non-use of features is only half the story. A recent survey of US workers found 68 percent faced challenges with their workplace software. Common gripes included that software was hard to learn, always changing, and many technologies to learn. Interestingly, four in five high earners (earning over 100,000 US dollars) found software challenging, but lower-income earners coped better, with three in five reporting difficulties. Is software training helping? Kaspersky's research found 38 percent of the workforce want more support from their organization when working remotely. One in two saw work-from-home skills as essential. Yet, employees aren't that happy with their on-the-job training. A Degreed and Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning study found only one in five would recommend their employers' learning and development offer. Nearly one in two are dissatisfied with it. Poor development opportunities might drive your employees into competitors' arms – a survey by communications platform Hibob found 56 percent of staff considered learning and development opportunities more important than salary. Receiving training in using new software is by no means the norm. I asked peers if, when new software arrived, they were trained on it. One said, "When we get a new piece of productivity software, it's very much, "Here's something we bought. Now use it." We're never told why and never given instruction." Another said, "Everyone just assumes if you know how to use (Microsoft) Office, you can use everything else." This 'technology will solve all our problems'-thinking may, ironically, be holding companies back when it comes to digitalization. Consultancy firm Gartner lists factors that hold back digital transformation, including not leading from the top, vague goals and too much focus on technology rather than corporate culture. What do we see here? Staff receive new technology and are told to get on with it. Their only participation in the process is as recipients. The pandemic helped us adopt new tools, not just because we had to Considering this problem, the grand, forced work-from-home experiment in the first half of 2020 may have had positive effects. We all had to start using new technologies, and the reason for it was staring us in the face. Companies made support available, staff wanted to learn, and together, they made big strides. The pandemic work-from-home experience filled me with optimism. You heard moans about 'Zoom fatigue' initially, but most people adapted well, supported by their companies. In September 2020, Enterprise Technology Research surveyed about 1,200 Chief Information Officers around the world. They said they thought, compared with before the pandemic, their permanent remote workforce would double in 2021 to about 34 percent. Nearly 50 percent reported productivity had improved with remote work, with only 29 percent reporting productivity reductions. This echoes what I've heard. A major professional services firm partner told me earlier this year, technological changes that once would've taken years had been pushed through in weeks. They had to be. Knowing why you should use the tech isn't the whole answer. You still need to articulate a vision, train people and make sure it works. But having a ready-made case for change, such as a pandemic forcing remote working, was a big part of the answer. One lesson companies can take from 2020 is to show employees why they're introducing productivity tools. Make a compelling argument for them gets you halfway there.
25 hours day

What could you do if your day had 25 hours?

  • min read
    • Imagine what you could do with an extra hour each day to put into your business. Time to invest in innovation, space to evolve your thinking and the chance to move to the next level. So how do you do it, and how should you use it? We're sharing some ideas for improving your productivity and what some tech businesses got out of having an extra hour in each day. Small changes can make big productivity gains You needn't necessarily make radical changes. Many productivity gurus, like Tim Ferris in his best-selling book, The 4-hour workweek, make bold promises, like that you can increase your productivity tenfold. These guides have merit, but it's often small hacks that add up to make the biggest difference. Take, for example, David Allen's two-minute rule (if it takes less than two minutes, do it now) from his Getting things done method recommends always choosing action over procrastination. Adding a carefully chosen skill to your arsenal can also make a big difference in how much time you have. Learning to speed touch-type at age 15 landed me an office job to support my studies and has won me back perhaps months of my life compared with some of my two-finger-typing peers. What small hacks in your line of work could give the most back? Invest in good IT, especially cybersecurity For companies that rely on tech to get things done, IT plays a big part. But if troubles hit, you could spend much time dealing with malware that disrupts workflow, or worse, leads to a data breach. With reliable IT security, you'll spend less time maintaining your tech and more time innovating. What would you do with the extra hour a day? Kaspersky asked three innovative tech enterprises in three countries to test the 25-hour day theory. What's the best way to use the extra time to build your business? Making the magic happen, with language Memrise combines the science of how people learn best with artificial intelligence (AI) in an app designed to make language-learning faster and easier. Founder and Chief Technology Officer Ed Cooke summed up the value of the extra hour to the team: "The magic can't happen without the time to make the magic happen." Memrise turned their hour a day into a hundred new ideas, including using the capabilities of AI to make language-learning even more personalized. Breathing new life into business YogiLab is an online personal development platform that revolves around ancient techniques like yoga and breathwork. They're using an extra hour a day to find mindful ways to evolve. YogiLab found the way they used the extra hour aligned with their platform's philosophy and their business values. Using technology to find the most helpful information Le Wagon, Bali is a school teaching the technical skills behind coding. The team lives and breathes tech, so IT management is a time-consuming job. Here's how the team spend an extra hour to use tech to build their community. Self-education came to the fore for Le Wagon. They discussed the potential of technology to help filter all the information out there to find what is most relevant. Every person and business is different when it comes to what works to claw back that extra hour. These businesses all went down different paths, informed by the product they make and the skills they already have. Where will you find your extra hour, and how will you use it to make your business shine?
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About Secure Futures

Secure Futures magazine is your go-to business guide for opinions, trends and insight into the world of technology and cybersecurity. We help your business to bring on the future. Brought to you by Kaspersky, the global cybersecurity experts.

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