The Coronavirus Crisis Doesn’t Have to Lead to Layoffs

The Coronavirus Crisis Doesn’t Have to Lead to Layoffs

by Atta Tarki , Paul Levy and Jeff Weiss - March 20, 2020

During a crisis, the path between corporate denial and layoffs is often a short one. For weeks, our corporate clients and contacts waved off concerns about a potential economic impact from the Covid-19 outbreak. Then something changed around March 9. First, our contacts told us they were restricting visitors to their offices and encouraging remote work. Now, only a few days later, we are hearing that many them are considering layoffs to ensure they make it through the crisis - and a recent survey found that a vast majority of corporate leaders are considering some sort of financial action as a result of the pandemic.

To be sure, a cost-cutting reflex is understandable. Leaders are obligated to make responsible decisions to keep their companies afloat. But those who manage the economic effects of this crisis in a clear and compassionate way create more value for their companies and will come out of this pandemic stronger than ever before. So before announcing deep layoffs, we recommend that you consider these measures first.

Communicate Openly

Many leaders assume that if they admit that the company is facing turbulent times it will scare away its best employees. The assumption is that these employees will worry less if management holds their cards close to their chest. Nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone knows that we are going through a global pandemic. Everyone knows certain sectors of the economy are already getting hit hard by changes in consumer behavior as a result of this virus. And everyone knows a slowdown in parts of the economy and increased uncertainty might impact their company as well.

Instead of forcing your employees to second-guess what might be in store for them, be utterly clear with them about the financial health of your firm and what goals you will prioritize. These goals will not be the same for every company, and you shouldn’t communicate empty statements you don’t believe in, such as “we put our employees first.” These statements can be confusing and even counterproductive when people are worried about their jobs. It’s better for you to be specific. For example, if your goal is to save jobs while meeting your bank covenants, say that. If it is to make a series of changes swiftly to shore up job security, clarify that you are prioritizing that decision over other, slower changes.

Share the Pain

If you are doing cut backs to save job losses, you must lead by example and do cut backs that impacts your own day-to-day as well. If you don’t, there is a danger that your staff will feel like saps, doing sacrifices while the C-suite continues unaffected. Get a commitment for a pay cut from your senior leaders. As CEO, you should take the largest salary cut yourself. Several airline CEOs, for example, are temporarily forgoing salaries or taking pay cuts amid looming cutbacks for the industry.

Consider Crowdsourcing Ideas with Employees

It can be overwhelming to open the floor for ideas from employees on what the company should do. You might fear that employees will be resentful if their ideas are not selected. You might also fear that asking your employees for ideas means that you will appear to have less control. We know one CEO who slapped down the idea of such open consultation, saying, “Participation is one thing, pandemonium is another.” But crowdsourcing doesn’t have to be equivalent to chaos. In our experience, it is critical that you ask your employees to voice their ideas. By showing them, not just saying, that you care about what they think, you will have stronger buy-in for the initiatives you eventually prioritize.

For example, when Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) undertook a crowd-sourcing  approach to cost-cutting following the 2008 financial crisis, most of the comments were positive; indeed, employees appreciated the openness so much that they defended the moves to disgruntled colleagues who wanted to lash out or sabotage the process.

To begin the crowdsourcing process, leaders should offer structure by articulating that you intend to prioritize initiatives with lower capital requirements, lower risk profiles, proven positive impact on cash flow, higher chances of saving jobs, and so on. Then truly demonstrate that you are open to the ideas of the staff.  You might even present the final packages to the staff and let them indicate their preferences between the various options. The bottom line is, you lose no control by this kind of approach. You enhance your standing as a leader.

Review All the Options (Even the Less Conventional Ones)

Before layoffs, consider all your non-obvious options for reducing cost. A four-day work week for roles where you have excess capacity will reduce staff cost by nearly 20% (assuming some costs will remain due to overhead and benefits). Some employees might agree to working half-time if they know that doing so will save jobs.

You can also offer employees the opportunity for unpaid leave if they so wish - framing this leave as a “sabbatical” can help take some of the stigma of the absence away. In fact, you might find that some employees welcome these options and wish they could have had them all along. By making it clear that one of your overriding goals is to avoid layoffs, you might find that employees are amenable to the personal sacrifices inherent in salary-increase freezes, halting bonuses, bans on overtime, pausing of payments into retirement funds, reduction of vacation days, and other cost-saving measures.

Consider decelerating pay decreases for lower salary ranges to protect employees who are the most vulnerable. For example, you might reduce salaries of your highest paid employees by 10%, mid-range salaried employees by 5%, and everyone else above a certain threshold by half of that. This is what was done at BIDMC during its cost-reduction - and employees appreciated that senior leaders tried all sorts of creative approaches to minimize head-count reduction.

Have “Ice in the Belly”

Being a leader in turbulent times can be nerve wracking. If you act too fast, it might turn out that you overreacted. If you act too slow, the business might go under. It would be wise to have what in Swedish is called Is i magen, “ice in the belly,” roughly translated as your ability to keep your cool in a critical situation.

First, recognize that as bad as things look, government assistance may be forthcoming. Many business leaders recall that there was resistance toward economic stimulus packages in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Part of that resistance was due to public resentment towards bailing out financial institutions that had caused the crisis. The public is more likely to be supportive of economic stimulus packages in the current case where the downturn is hard to blame on one particular industry. And economic aid might also be targeted towards companies that can prevent layoffs.

Furthermore, don’t treat all negative indicators for your business the same. If your client is a movie theater and they need to pause your project, you have reason to believe they will not be able to pick the project back up anytime soon since the theater industry is taking a big financial hit. However, if your client is a hospital that says they’d like to pause your project so that they can focus on the high volume of patients at the moment, it’s worthwhile showing their management team that you understand their current priorities.

It’s also reasonable to explain to them that you are trying to understand what the economic impacts of this pandemic will be on your firm and ask them if they can have an open discussion with you to help you understand how likely it is that they will continue the project once things calm down.

But Is i magen does not mean that you are cool to the needs of your staff. This is a time to show empathy, rather than maintaining an emotional distance from your people. Lead with compassion, especially for the most vulnerable members of your company. One common misconception is that most people primarily look out for themselves in turbulent times. On the contrary, our experience is that during a crisis, individuals overwhelmingly prefer to make sacrifices if it means that their company can help more of their colleagues keep their jobs.

Going through a downturn and making tough decisions to keep your company afloat is hard. However, if you lead with compassion you will touch the lives of your employees in an extraordinary way and come out of this potential slowdown stronger than ever before, enhancing the shared values of your staff.

Atta Tarki is the founder and CEO of specialized executive-search and project-based staffing firm ECA. He is also the author of the book, Evidence Based Recruiting (McGraw Hill, February 2020). Find him on Twitter: @AttaTarki 

Paul Levy was CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from 2002 to 2011. His actions to avoid layoffs during the Global Financial Crisis led to worldwide attention and acclaim for his hospital.  He is the author of Goal Play! Leadership Lessons from the Soccer Field. Find him on Twitter: @Paulflevy

Jeff Weiss is founder and managing director of CCI, a national CEO network, and Assistant professor, adjunct at UCLA School of Medicine.

A Guide for Working (From Home) Parents

A Guide for Working (From Home) Parents

by Avni Patel Thompson - March 19, 2020

Amir and Ria are working professionals living in Seattle: he works at Amazon and she’s the CEO of an early-stage start-up. They have two kids, Amara and Aryan, who are 6 and 2 years old. They’re used to managing the usual challenges of dual working parents - coordinating childcare with schools and activities, managing meals and household chores, and spending quality time together on the weekends.

Things all became more complicated with the outbreak of the coronavirus in Seattle and its suburbs a couple of weeks ago. First Amazon asked all employees to start working from home, and then a week later Amara’s school announced they would be closing for four weeks, with potential for more. Ria’s office and Aryan’s daycare closed soon after. Since then, Amir and Ria have been trying to juggle full-time childcare for both kids and working from home while trying to preserve as much productivity as possible.

For the first week, they approached the situation like a vacation, with little structure around schedule or duties. This quickly turned into a frustrating situation for everyone. They weren’t getting work done, they were worried about how much they were relying on a tablet to keep Amara entertained, and regular things like meals and cleaning seemed to be just piling up. That they were all stuck together in a closed space just made it all worse.

As a company building software to help working parents collaboratively run their families, we routinely gather the best practices of busy parents and in the past days have been polling families in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City that have already been experiencing this new normal.

Their experiences have taught us that the key is to invent new ways to preserve old routines. Maintaining a sense of familiarity and consistency is both comforting and therapeutic in times of upheaval - but it’s also practical. When you’re going to be fighting for every inch of productivity, you want each day to feel like an established habit, no wasted time on wondering what’s for lunch or when we’re going outside to play.

Here are three steps to bring your old plan into your new normal:

1. Maintain routines.

The first step is to keep the structure of the day the same as it has typically been. Beyond the benefits of familiarity, maintaining a regular schedule will give you firm guideposts for building your work and childcare schedules.

For one family we work with, their daily routine used to include breakfast at 8:15am for the kids and then a day of activities with the nanny once the parents left for work: an hour of free-play time, an outdoor adventure, lunch at home, and then a mix of educational and craft activities before one more outdoor time. They ate dinner at 5pm before the parents came home at 6pm. In the evening they read books and played before bedtime at 7:30 or 8pm.

I’d advise this family to keep their routine. Whether or not they still have the nanny, they should try to keep the meals, blocks of activity, and outdoor time. (I’ve personally used this approach when traveling with the family for extended periods.) You’ll be creating the actual schedules in the next step but the key first is identifying the foundation based on what you already know.

2. Create modified schedules.

Next, build a schedule for each week that incorporates these routines at a high level but is modified to account for your work blocks and other new responsibilities meals, chores, childcare.

We’ve modified the “Sunday Check-in” planning rundown we created for busy working parents specifically in these chaotic times when planning out the week is even more important.

In your planning make sure you’ve covered:

• What is your kids’ schedule?
• What will you have for each meal?
• When will you do chores?  (laundry, dishes, tidying, cleaning)
• When are your key work meetings or times it’s critical you have someone to cover your work while you handle a household task?

Take this info and put it into a calendar and start assigning shifts and duties to specific family members. Our family has a Google Calendar and we’ve created a simple example for families to use to create their kids’ schedules and add shifts on top.

Finally, create work blocks. Depending on your childcare, community, and quarantine situation, here are three ways to make this work:

A partner swap: 4-hour shifts in which one partner works and the other cares for kids.

Short shifts: 30-minute to 2-hour shifts that rotate among some number of adults.

Video shifts: While you’ll still need to be paying some attention, it’s possible, especially with older kids, to organize virtual playdates (more on this below) or calls with grandparents that will keep them entertained while you’re getting in a phone call or doing some heads-down work.

It will feel like you need to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of every minute in the day. It’s a reality that many of us will have to find time to work early in the morning or after the kids are in bed. But be sure to schedule in breaks and unstructured times to unwind and connect with your partner and kids. This is going to be a marathon and it’s important we find ways not to burn out.

3. Swap in new ways to do old things.

Finally, if your kids are used to having playdates or weekly activities, find ways to keep those events on the calendar, just in a new form. Everyone will appreciate the social time and, as a bonus, it also can buy you 30 minutes of uninterrupted work time. Some options to consider:

Virtual playdates: Choose Google Hangouts (or Zoom if you prefer) and then send invites to your kids’ friends’ parents. For the playdate itself, have a station set up in your house with a tablet, laptop, or Alexa Show/Facebook Portal ready to go. During the playdate, it can be as simple as the kids catching up and coloring together or one of the parents leading an activity or reading books. 

Creative athletic activities for the kids. Register your kids for free online classes like Cosmic Yoga, Art Hub for Kids, or Go Noodle. Schedule these during the times they might otherwise be doing after-school activities. They should get some exercise every day - this could even be just going into the backyard and do some soccer drills or play catch.

Parent pods: Find a group of 3-4 other families you’re close with and create a shared pool of resources, whether it’s meal plans, activity schedules, or lesson plans.

Book club or sports viewing nights for you. Staying social, active, and connected is just as important for the adults. If you don’t already have one, create a book club or a sport/TV show viewing club. Get it into people’s calendars and set up a video call so everyone can watch together. Make sure to still get your workouts in with a run outside, an indoor circuit, or using  online options. Even a family walk around the block will do wonders.

We need to lean on our village now, more than ever. The nature of this crisis requires that we find safe and responsible ways to help each other out while upholding our responsibilities at work and at home. Lean on your village - the other parents in your community - to share responsibility, looking out especially for those that might need extra help, such as healthcare or hourly workers left without childcare. Accept that things are not going to run completely smoothly and we aren’t going to all be our 100% productive selves. But with tempered expectations, a flexible approach and resourcefulness, you’ll be amazed at how we can all adapt. With any luck, we’ll emerge from this crisis even stronger and more collaborative: a modern take on an age-old approach to parenting.

Avni Patel Thompson is the founder and CEO of Modern Village. She is a third-time founder building technology solutions for today’s parents. Her previous company, Poppy (YC W16), helped connect parents to vetted caregivers when they had gaps in childcare. Prior to taking the entrepreneurial plunge, she spent over a decade building big consumer businesses at P&G, adidas and Starbucks. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSc Chemistry from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband and two little girls.

Build Your Resilience in the Face of a Crisis

Build Your Resilience in the Face of a Crisis

by Rasmus Hougaard , Jacqueline Carter and Moses Mohan - March 19, 2020

As the spread and far-reaching impacts of Covid-19 dominate the world news, we have all been witnessing and experiencing the parallel spread of worry, anxiety, and instability. Indeed, in a crisis, our mental state often seems only to exacerbate an already extremely challenging situation, becoming a major obstacle in itself. Why is this and how can we change it? As the CEO of a firm that brings mindfulness to companies to unlock new ways of thinking and working, let me share a bit about how the mind responds to crises, like the threat of a pandemic.

Even without a constant barrage of bad or worrisome news, your mind’s natural tendency is to get distracted. Our most recent study found that 58% of employees reported an inability to regulate their attention at work. As the mind wanders, research has shown that it easily gets trapped into patterns and negative thinking. During times of crisis - such as those we are living through now - this tendency is exacerbated, and the mind can become even more hooked by obsessive thinking, as well as feelings of fear and helplessness. It’s why we find ourselves reading story after horrible story of quarantined passengers on a cruise ship, even though we’ve never stepped foot on a cruise ship, nor do we plan to.

When your mind gets stuck in this state, a chain reaction begins. Fear begins to narrow your field of vision, and it becomes harder to see the bigger picture and the positive, creative possibilities in front of you.  As perspective shrinks, so too does our tendency to connect with others. Right now, the realities of how the coronavirus spreads can play into our worst fears about others and increase our feelings of isolation, which only adds fuel to our worries.

Watching the past month’s turmoil unfold, I have been reminded of the old Buddhist parable of the second arrow. The Buddha once asked a student: “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? If the person is struck by a second arrow, is it even more painful?” He then went on to explain, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.”

We are all experiencing the first arrow of the coronavirus these days. We are impacted by travel restrictions, plummeting stock prices, supply shortages etc. But the second arrow - anxiety about getting the virus ourselves, worry that our loved ones will get it, worries about financial implications and all the other dark scenarios flooding the news and social media - is to a large extent of our own making. In short, the first arrow causes unavoidable pain, and our resistance to it creates fertile ground for all the second arrows.

It’s important to remember that these second arrows - our emotional and psychological response to crises - are natural and very human. But the truth is they often bring us more suffering by narrowing and cluttering our mind and keeping us from seeing clearly the best course of action.

The way to overcome this natural tendency is to build our mental resilience through mindfulness. Mental resilience, especially in challenging times like the present, means managing our minds in a way that increases our ability to face the first arrow and to break the second before it strikes us. Resilience is the skill of noticing our own thoughts, unhooking from the non-constructive ones, and rebalancing quickly. This skill can be nurtured and trained. Here are three effective strategies:

First, calm the mind.

When you focus on calming and clearing your mind, you can pay attention to what is really going on around you and what is coming up within you.  You can observe and manage your thoughts and catch them when they start to run away towards doomsday scenarios. You can hold your focus on what you choose (e.g. “Isn’t it a gift to be able to work from home!”) versus what pulls at you with each ping of a breaking news notification (e.g. “Oh no…the stock market has dropped again.”).

This calm and present state is crucial. Right away, it helps keep the mind from wandering and getting hooked, and it reduces the pits of stress and worry that we can easily get stuck in. Even more importantly, the continued practice of unhooking and focusing our minds builds a muscle of resilience that will serve us time and time again. When we practice bringing ourselves back to the present moment, we deepen our capacity to cope and weather all sorts of crises, whether global or personal. (Fortunately, there are a number of free apps available to help calm your mind and increase your own mindfulness.)

Look out the window.

Despair and fear can lead to overreactions. Often, it feels better to be doing something … anything … rather than sitting with uncomfortable emotions. In the past few weeks, I have felt disappointment and frustration with important business initiatives that have been adversely impacted by Covid-19. But I have been trying to meet this frustration with reflection versus immediate reaction. I know my mind has needed space to unhook from the swirl of bad news and to settle into a more stable position from which good planning and leadership can emerge. So, I have been trying to work less and to spend more time looking out my window and reflecting. In doing so, I have been able to find clearer answers about how best to move forward, both personally and as a leader.

Connect with others through compassion.

Unfortunately, many of the circles of community that provide support in times of stress are now closed off to us as cities and governments work to contain the spread of the virus. Schools are shut down, events are cancelled, and businesses have enacted work-from-home policies and travel bans. The natural byproduct of this is a growing sense of isolation and separation from the people and groups who can best quell our fears and anxieties.

The present climate of fear can also create stigmas and judgments about who is to blame and who is to be avoided, along with a dark, survivalist “every person for him/herself” mindset and behaviors.  We can easily forget our shared vulnerability and interdependence.

But meaningful connection can occur even from the recommended six feet of social distance between you and your neighbor - and it begins with compassion. Compassion is the intention to be of benefit to others and it starts in the mind.  Practically speaking, compassion starts by asking yourself one question as you go about your day and connect - virtually and in person - with others: How can I help this person to have a better day?

With that simple question, amazing things begin to happen. The mind expands, the eyes open to who and what is really in front of us, and we see possibilities for ourselves and others that are rich with hope and ripe with opportunity.

Rasmus Hougaard is the founder and managing director of Potential Project, a global leadership and organizational development firm serving Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco and hundreds of other organizations. He is publishing his second book The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results with HBR Press in March 2018.

Rasmus Hougaard is the founder and managing director of Potential Project, a global leadership and organizational development firm serving Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco and hundreds of other organizations. He is publishing his second book The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results with HBR Press in March 2018.

Moses Mohan is a leadership expert with Potential Project, formerly with McKinsey & Company and former Zen monk.

Virtual Meetings Don’t Have to Be a Bore

Virtual Meetings Don’t Have to Be a Bore

by Andy Molinsky - March 19, 2020

Those of us who present, facilitate, and teach for a living understand the importance of developing a personal connection with an audience. It’s critical to be and feel natural; to make people laugh, feel at ease, and fully engage - and perhaps even lose themselves - in the content you’re delivering. That’s why it feels so unnatural and awkward to create this kind of atmosphere in a virtual environment where you have no in-person audience at all.

As a professor, I’m now grappling with the challenges of teaching and presenting in a COVID-19 world and have recently brought my classes online as a result of the pandemic. But I’d been doing a great deal of online teaching and facilitating even before this crisis. I’ve done keynote speeches online - often to hundreds of people at a time. I’ve participated in group meetings both as a group member and as a consultant. I’ve also provided online training to people scattered around the globe on their computers or tablets, with all of us staring into that little dot of a camera at the top of our screens.

What have I learned about online teaching and facilitating from these different experiences over the past few years? That it’s truly an entirely different context, not a simply an in-person meeting or class on a screen. And while you should shoot for the same goals as you would in an in-person setting, you’ll need different tools to achieve them.

With that in mind, here are my tips for embracing the differences and making the most of a format you might not yet be comfortable with.

Make it personal

Virtual settings can feel quite impersonal because of the physical and psychological distance, so you need to be creative. For starters, I like to arrive to my online meeting early so I can greet people as they pop up on the screen and engage in a bit of friendly small talk before the main meeting. I also encourage people to turn on their video functionality, if possible, in order to enhance the personal connection. Because some people need preparation time to feel comfortable and presentable on video, I typically let them know ahead of time if video is preferred.

I also try to imagine the reactions of the people I’m interacting with - especially if I’m presenting to a large group - since I don’t necessarily see these reactions as I would in real time. For example, when looking at the camera on the top of my screen, I remember to show a warm, engaging smile, insert an occasional laugh, and convey a friendly, engaging tone. It feels like acting at times, but at least to me, it doesn’t feel false; it just feels necessary to create the warm, inviting effect that I’m aiming to create.

Finally, I also try to use people’s names when referring to them, and invite them to take the floor and participate, if they feel comfortable doing so. And with a chat function that indicates who said what alongside video images with people’s names, it makes personalized facilitation easier.

Convey warmth and presence

Typically, when we look at a screen, we do so passively, sinking into the couch to watch our favorite TV show or listen to a webinar or how-to video. But when you’re facilitating an online meeting, you have to adopt an engaged, active persona in an environment that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to that.

There are a number of little things you can do to create warmth virtually. For starters, make “eye contact” with your participants by looking directly into the camera as often as possible. This can be hard to remember to do, especially when the image of your participants may be away from where the camera is on your computer. I often manually move that image as close as I can to the camera, so I’m simultaneously making eye contact with them and also seeing their response.

You can also try to make sure that your image and the angle of the camera on your face is at a comfortable level for others to see you. When I first started out, I’d erroneously put my laptop on the desk and tilt the camera up to my face, which I soon learned gave my audience a great view of my nostrils.

Just like in-person settings, on-line environments also have their own distinct cultural rules and norms, and not all settings are the same. For example, there are some contexts - say, my undergraduate class or a meeting with collaborators on a consulting project - where it would be fun and appropriate to turn the camera on my dog laying by my feet on the floor. It’s a great way to create a sense of warmth and connection. However, I probably wouldn’t use the same tactic during a virtual keynote talk to a corporate audience or in an executive education presentation. In these more formal settings, I’d probably start with a personal story, a poll question, or ask people to write in where they’re calling from - all in order to create a personal vibe that’s more in line with that setting.

Get used to delayed feedback

Presenting virtually inevitably means learning to become comfortable - or comfortable enough - with a different mode of receiving feedback. For example, when delivering a virtual keynote speech, I typically receive no real-time feedback about how I’m doing. No nods of the head, no laughs from the audience, no opportunities to move around the room and engage with people in the crowd. In an online setting, I can deliver an entire 30-40 minute talk and by the end have no idea at all about how well the message was received until afterward, when I speak with the event organizers.

At first, I found this disconcerting and even distracting. My thoughts about my performance and its effectiveness or ineffectiveness were interfering with the very performance itself. But, over time, I learned to anticipate these feelings and remind myself that my talks are generally quite effective online, even if I receive no confirmation until well after the fact.

Make it interactive

I always try to make my presentations engaging and interactive - and with the right tools, you can make the virtual world just as engaging, if not more so. For example, I actively use the chat function. This enables people to comment in real time as I’m talking. Then I can involve these participants in a discussion. For example, I might say: “Anita just wrote in a great point about cultural differences in group dynamics - and it seems Juan also has a similar point to add. Do either of you want to explain to us your points in a bit more detail?” One big advantage of virtual settings is that they lower the bar for participation; you often get thoughts and insights from people who ordinarily might not speak in an in-person environment.

I often use the polling function on online platforms at the beginning of the session as well. It’s a great warm-up for the discussion and an early opportunity to get people involved and engaged.

I have also started using break-out rooms on the platform Zoom, which enable you to instantaneously beam small groups of students into their own virtual chat rooms to discuss a case or a problem before reporting back to the larger group. As the facilitator, you also have the ability to join these rooms yourself if you wish, just like you might be roaming around the room during a live event you’re facilitating. And then when you’re ready, you can bring everyone back to the overall meeting with a click of the mouse.

We are all getting used to operating in new ways - and moving to online platforms will push many of us out of our comfort zones. It’s important to acknowledge that while this form of delivery is different, and challenging in some ways, it also has advantages. Perhaps the biggest is that it allows us to stay connected and engaged in what’s a trying time for all.

Andy Molinsky is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School. He’s the author of Global Dexterity and Reach, and the creator of The Reach Method - a corporate coaching program to help individuals and teams step outside their comfort zones and reach their potential.

Anxiety Is Contagious. Here’s How to Contain It.

Anxiety Is Contagious. Here’s How to Contain It.

by Judson Brewer - March 18, 2020

As my class began on Thursday (March 10th), I looked around at my undergraduate and graduate students. Their faces were somber. I asked how they were doing, but I already knew. Harvard and Princeton had, days earlier, announced that they were closing in response and as a precaution to the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife, a professor at Holy Cross, told me the night before that her students were informed they would have a week to pack up and leave their dorms.

My students were waiting to get an email from Christina Paxon, the president of Brown University. It was rumored that Brown may be closing for the rest of the semester and the announcement was scheduled to go out early that morning. But here we were, at 9am, sitting in a technology-free seminar without access to our phones or computers.

Even though their devices were off, my students’ phones were burning holes in their pockets. My tech-free policy was blocking them from receiving vital information. Did the email go out yet? What was it going to say? Their slumped shoulders told me that they were in no mood for debate. They needed to know what was going to happen to them today. This email was going to affect their lives in significant ways - particularly my seniors’, some of who were holding back tears. Their “senior spring” was destined to go down in the record books as the most memorable, and not in a good way.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this pandemic is the uncertainty we are all facing. Uncertainty about how contagious and deadly Coronavirus is. Uncertainty about the travel that we have planned. Uncertainty about the economy. Uncertainty about our jobs.

Yet, uncertainty can be compared to a virus itself, one that is only adding fuel to the anxious fires burning in many of us. This is because uncertainty triggers the fear centers in our brains. Knowing how this process works, however, can help us take proper countermeasures and develop better mental hygiene.

First, it’s important to understand that fear is a basic human mechanism. It helps us survive. When something scares us, we are triggered, and through fear, we learn to practice behaviors that will help us avoid that danger in the future. When we successfully avoid that danger, we then feel rewarded. We inherited this three-step mental process from our ancient ancestors: see saber-toothed tiger (trigger), run away (behavior), live to tell our kids to avoid that part of the savanna (reward).

While fear helps us survive, when mixed with uncertainty, it can lead to something quite bad for our mental health: anxiety. And when anxiety is spread by social contagion - defined as the spread of affect from one person to another — it can lead to something even more problematic: panic. Just like walking into a party and suddenly feeling like you’re in a “social mood” when you hadn’t been moments before, fear and anxiety are two emotions that spread easily from one person to another.

Worse, thanks to social media, you don’t need to be in physical contact with people to catch an “emotional infection.” While many people on social media have good intentions and intend to share useful information about Coronavirus with the masses, as they report supply shortages and speculate on how bad things might get, they may be inadvertently doing the opposite. Constantly scrolling through the latest news on your phone or desktop is like walking by people who are sneezing fear. The more you read, the more you are likely to take on their worry, and spread it. The problem is that these emotions keep us from being able to think straight, and when overdone, they no longer protect us from dangers. Rather, they become the danger.

There are ways to combat this. Perhaps one that may be really effective, according to my research and that of others, is mindfulness.

The class I was teaching at Brown on Thursday morning serves as a case in point. In that particular seminar, my students are taught about the various scientific methods that are used to study the process and outcomes of mindfulness training. That day, we were scheduled to explore the relative benefits and detriments of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a tool for measuring the neural correlates of mindfulness. Put plainly, we were examining whether peering into someone’s brain as they meditate is an effective way to gather accurate information and move the scientific field of mindfulness, which is still very novel, forward. The students had been assigned to read some early studies that my lab published on the effects of mindfulness back in 2011. I was particularly interested in hearing how they digested the research. But I needed to help them calm their anxieties before we could move forward.

We spent the first fifteen minutes of class meditating, the same way we had begun each class this semester. (It is hard to measure how mindfulness works if you don’t first have a sense of what it is.) I led them in a type of meditation called “loving kindness.” This practice is aimed at awakening and fostering our inherent capacity for kindness and connection. It is a type of mindfulness that my lab has studied for years. We’ve found that loving kindness decreases activity in the very same brain regions that get fired up when people are anxious.

More recently, we’ve found that even simple, app-based mindfulness training, which teaches people how to use a number of in-the-moment exercises, significantly reduces anxiety in healthcare workers. We found a 57% reduction in clinically-validated measures of anxiety in stressed physicians. This kind of training also reduces anxiety in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. We found a 63% reduction in anxiety in our NIH-funded randomized controlled trial.

With this context, loving kindness meditation seemed like  the perfect Purell for my students’ minds that morning.

I asked my students to close their eyes and take a deep breath. I told them to bring to mind dear friends or family pets, and ground themselves in feelings of love that arise when they picture those images. I told them to repeat silently to themselves simple heartfelt phrases of kindness (e.g. “May you be happy.”) as anchors to keep them in the present moment. The practice is as simple as this: bring to mind a family member, a pet, a loved one, and silently offer them a phrase of well-wishing that feels authentic to you. Use the image and repeat the phrases at your own pace to help you stay anchored in the present moment. If your mind wanders, simply bring back to mind the image and begin repeating the phrase again.

After we finished the meditation, they were visibly more relaxed, but still not ready to engage with the day’s discussion. With the hope that they were more armed with some calm and present-centered awareness, I broke my technology-free classroom rule, and let my students check their phones for the anticipated email from President Paxon. I could tell by their eyes that it had arrived. They were glued to their screens.

I asked one student to read the email aloud to the class. Brown was moving to online learning for the rest of the semester. Classes were cancelled for the following week, and students were expected to vacate their dorms as soon as possible. They were also expected not to return to campus after spring break the following week. Though President Paxon tried to convey a hopeful note, writing that Brown was working to ensure that seniors and alumni could return to campus for graduation and reunions, I could see many of my students were defeated.

We spent the next fifteen minutes discussing how to utilize the very mindfulness training practices that we were dissecting in the course (breath awareness, loving kindness, etc.) to help them prevent the spread of social contagion, and maintain healthy mental hygiene. I encouraged them to begin as soon as they walked out of class. Beyond loving kindness, here is what we discussed. If you find yourself experiencing similar anxieties, I recommend you try them too:

1) Run a code. In medical school, when I learned how to “run a code” - our code for resuscitating someone who’s heart had just stopped - I was taught to first stop and take my own pulse. This reminded me to pause and take a deep breath (or three) before proceeding. Taking a mindful pause works by keeping the thinking parts of our brains “online” so we can help rather than hinder. Taking a moment to pause in stressful situations, whether that means you take three deep breaths or simply pay attention to the feeling in not-anxious parts of your body (like your feet or your hands), helps ground you in calmer emotions. Especially for people who haven’t practiced mindfulness before, focusing on the parts of your body where you typically feel anxiety, such as your chest or stomach, only heightens your awareness of the negative feeling, and often makes it worse. That’s why grounding yourself in more neutral areas can help you stay connected to yourself in the present moment without triggering more anxiety. Another way to do this is to anchor your awareness in an external object (e.g. look out a window at trees or nature, or listen to the sounds around you). These are simple, ten second practices that anyone can do. Practice them when you feel your heart beginning to race as a sign of a social sniffle, so that you don’t sneeze and spread social contagion.

2) Get in touch with your “calm.” On top of simple mindfulness practices, you can also take a moment to pause and notice what it feels like when you are calm among the storm of people unknowingly spreading social contagion. When you do, you will notice that calm feels a lot better than anxiety. Use this to hack your brains’ reward centers. When given a choice, our brains will learn to perform the action that is most rewarding. Calm is the obvious, more rewarding choice when compared to anxiety. The more you practice it, the more it will become your norm rather than your exception. You can also look around to see if your calm catches. It might not be as contagious as fear, but done over and over, it can go a surprisingly long way to not only disinfect your brain, but spread that natural immunity that comes when you step back and see that we are all in this together.

3) Take it one day at a time. Our brains are hardwired to plan for the future. We don’t have enough information right now about how this pandemic is going to play out to plan 6 months down the road. If/when you notice that your brain is starting to spin out into future thinking and worry, take a mindful pause and remind yourself to take it one day at a time. Do what needs to get done today, and then take care of tomorrow, when it comes: tomorrow. When it comes to information, the closer to now you stay, the more clearly you will be able to think. For example, you can check in with yourself right now to see if you are hungry or thirsty. Based on that information, you can decide whether you need to eat or drink something. You cannot only remind yourself to take it one day at a time, but if needed, to help you stay calm, use an even smaller timescale. Ask: What do I need to do this hour? Take on the day hour by hour, minute by minute, and even moment by moment if thats what it takes to stay grounded in the present moment.

Knowing that uncertainty can spread social contagion through the viral vector of anxiety and coupling this with some simple mindfulness practices can help us all stay mentally connected and spread calm instead of germs. In moments of doubt, use the above practices to calm your mind, to stay present, and move forward.

Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, is an associate professor at Brown University’s Schools of Public Health & Medicine, Founder of MindSciences and the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love - Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. To learn more about his research, visit www.drjud.com. You can also watch his short daily videos on mental health and how best to manage during these uncertain times on YouTube.  

A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers

A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers

by Barbara Z. Larson , Susan R. Vroman and Erin E. Makarius - March 18, 2020

In response to the uncertainties presented by Covid-19, many companies and universities have asked their employees to work remotely. While close to a quarter of the U.S. workforce already works from home at least part of the time, the new policies leave many employees - and their managers - working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time.

Although it is always preferable to establish clear remote-work policies and training in advance, in times of crisis or other rapidly changing circumstances, this level of preparation may not be feasible. Fortunately, there are specific, research-based steps that managers can take without great effort to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees, even when there is little time to prepare.

Common Challenges of Remote Work

To start, managers need to understand factors that can make remote work especially demanding. Otherwise high-performing employees may experience declines in job performance and engagement when they begin working remotely, especially in the absence of preparation and training. Challenges inherent in remote work include:

Lack of face-to-face supervision: Both managers and their employees often express concerns about the lack of face-to-face interaction. Supervisors worry that employees will not work as hard or as efficiently (though research indicates otherwise, at least for some types of jobs). Many employees, on the other hand, struggle with reduced access to managerial support and communication. In some cases, employees feel that remote managers are out of touch with their needs, and thereby are neither supportive nor helpful in getting their work done.

Lack of access to information: Newly remote workers are often surprised by the added time and effort needed to locate information from coworkers. Even getting answers to what seem like simple questions can feel like a large obstacle to a worker based at home.

This phenomenon extends beyond task-related work to interpersonal challenges that can emerge among remote coworkers. Research has found that a lack of “mutual knowledge” among remote workers translates to a lower willingness to give coworkers the benefit of the doubt in difficult situations. For example, if you know that your officemate is having a rough day, you will view a brusque email from them as a natural product of their stress. However, if you receive this email from a remote coworker, with no understanding of their current circumstances, you are more likely to take offense, or at a minimum to think poorly of your coworker’s professionalism.

Social isolation: Loneliness is one of the most common complaints about remote work, with employees missing the informal social interaction of an office setting. It is thought that extraverts may suffer from isolation more in the short run, particularly if they do not have opportunities to connect with others in their remote-work environment. However, over a longer period of time, isolation can cause any employee to feel less “belonging” to their organization, and can even result in increased intention to leave the company.

Distractions at home: We often see photos representing remote work which portray a parent holding a child and typing on a laptop, often sitting on a sofa or living-room floor. In fact, this is a terrible representation of effective virtual work. Typically, we encourage employers to ensure that their remote workers have both dedicated workspace and adequate childcare before allowing them to work remotely. Yet, in the case of a sudden transition to virtual work, there is a much greater chance that employees will be contending with suboptimal workspaces and (in the case of school and daycare closures) unexpected parenting responsibilities. Even in normal circumstances family and home demands can impinge on remote work; managers should expect these distractions to be greater during this unplanned work-from-home transition.

How Managers Can Support Remote Employees

As much as remote work can be fraught with challenges, there are also relatively quick and inexpensive things that managers can do to ease the transition. Actions that you can take today include:

Establish structured daily check-ins: Many successful remote managers establish a daily call with their remote employees.  This could take the form of a series of one-on-one calls, if your employees work more independently from each other, or a team call, if their work is highly collaborative. The important feature is that the calls are regular and predictable, and that they are a forum in which employees know that they can consult with you, and that their concerns and questions will be heard.

Provide several different communication technology options: Email alone is insufficient. Remote workers benefit from having a “richer” technology, such as video conferencing, that gives participants many of the visual cues that they would have if they were face-to-face. Video conferencing has many advantages, especially for smaller groups: Visual cues allow for increased “mutual knowledge” about coworkers and also help reduce the sense of isolation among teams. Video is also particularly useful for complex or sensitive conversations, as it feels more personal than written or audio-only communication.

There are other circumstances when quick collaboration is more important than visual detail. For these situations, provide mobile-enabled individual messaging functionality (like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.) which can be used for simpler, less formal conversations, as well as time-sensitive communication.

If your company doesn’t have technology tools already in place, there are inexpensive ways to obtain simple versions of these tools for your team, as a short-term fix.  Consult with your organization’s IT department to ensure there is an appropriate level of data security before using any of these tools.

And then establish “rules of engagement”: Remote work becomes more efficient and satisfying when managers set expectations for the frequency, means, and ideal timing of communication for their teams. For example, “We use videoconferencing for daily check-in meetings, but we use IM when something is urgent.” Also, if you can, let your employees know the best way and time to reach you during the workday (e.g., “I tend to be more available late in the day for ad hoc phone or video conversations, but if there’s an emergency earlier in the day, send me a text.”) Finally, keep an eye on communication among team members (to the extent appropriate), to ensure that they are sharing information as needed.

We recommend that managers establish these “rules of engagement” with employees as soon as possible, ideally during the first online check-in meeting. While some choices about specific expectations may be better than others, the most important factor is that all employees share the same set of expectations for communication.

Provide opportunities for remote social interaction: One of the most essential steps a manager can take is to structure ways for employees to interact socially (that is, have informal conversations about non-work topics) while working remotely. This is true for all remote workers, but particularly so for workers who have been abruptly transitioned out of the office.

The easiest way to establish some basic social interaction is to leave some time at the beginning of team calls just for non-work items (e.g., “We’re going to spend the first few minutes just catching up with each other. How was your weekend?”). Other options include virtual pizza parties (in which pizza is delivered to all team members at the time of a videoconference), or virtual office parties (in which party “care packages” can be sent in advance to be opened and enjoyed simultaneously). While these types of events may sound artificial or forced, experienced managers of remote workers (and the workers themselves) report that virtual events help reduce feelings of isolation, promoting a sense of belonging.

Offer encouragement and emotional support: Especially in the context of an abrupt shift to remote work, it is important for managers to acknowledge stress, listen to employees’ anxieties and concerns, and empathize with their struggles. If a newly remote employee is clearly struggling but not communicating stress or anxiety, ask them how they’re doing. Even a general question such as “How is this remote work situation working out for you so far?” can elicit important information that you might not otherwise hear. Once you ask the question, be sure to listen carefully to the response, and briefly restate it back to the employee, to ensure that you understood correctly. Let the employee’s stress or concerns (rather than your own) be the focus of this conversation.

Research on emotional intelligence and emotional contagion tells us that employees look to their managers for cues about how to react to sudden changes or crisis situations. If a manager communicates stress and helplessness, this will have what Daniel Goleman calls a “trickle-down” effect on employees. Effective leaders take a two-pronged approach, both acknowledging the stress and anxiety that employees may be feeling in difficult circumstances, but also providing affirmation of their confidence in their teams, using phrases such as “we’ve got this,” or “this is tough, but I know we can handle it,” or “let’s look for ways to use our strengths during this time.” With this support, employees are more likely to take up the challenge with a sense of purpose and focus.

We’ll add our own note of encouragement to managers facing remote work for the first time: you’ve got this. Let us know in the comments your own tips for managing your remote employees.

Barbara Z. Larson is executive professor of management and director of partnerships at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. Her research focuses on the personal and interpersonal skills that people need to work effectively in virtual environments, and she works with collaborators in both academia and industry to develop training methods and materials to enable more productive virtual work. Prior to her academic career, Professor Larson worked for 15 years in international finance and operations leadership, most recently as Director of International Finance at R.R. Donnelley.

Susan R. Vroman is a lecturer of management at Bentley University.  Her research interests include the impact leadership enactment has on organizational culture and employee engagement, with specific focus on supporting flexible work arrangements.  Prior to her academic career, Dr. Vroman worked for over 20 years as an organizational effectiveness and strategic human resource management executive and advisor. She continues this work in a consulting capacity.

Erin E. Makarius an associate professor of human resources in the management department of the College of Business Administration at the University of Akron and received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Dr. Makarius has several years of experience in human resources and management, including working at and consulting with a variety of companies in the financial, insurance, and consumer products industries. Her research interests include boundary spanning in the form of technological, international, and organizational boundaries, with emphasis on the role of relationships and reputation in these processes.

Delivery Technology Is Keeping Chinese Cities Afloat Through Coronavirus

Delivery Technology Is Keeping Chinese Cities Afloat Through Coronavirus

by Chengyi Lin - March 17, 2020

For the last month, China’s cities, with their empty streets and deserted shopping malls, have looked like the set of a post-apocalypse TV series.  It may be a glimpse of the future for Europe and North America, where lockdowns are quickly expanding.

Public discourse in Europe and the U.S. is predictably focused on how bad things will get and the practicalities of life under lockdown: How will people get food supplies? Can the medical services cope? Will people get paid?

But even at this stage in the lifecycle of the Covid-19 pandemic, some lessons are already emerging from China about how we can cope with the social and commercial disruption of this kind. A key driver, it turns out, is digital technology.

Let’s start by looking at China, where the most recent signs suggest that the epidemic has now stabilized. In Wuhan - a city of 11 million people - the lockdown posed a serious problem. Because it was the first city affected, its citizens were unprepared for what they faced. Initially, the lockdown imposed by the Chinese authorities triggered panic buying of food and other essential items, emptying supermarket shelves.

Yet in a matter of days, supplies began to flow into Wuhan. Although fears and concerns about the disease ran high, residents fairly quickly came to terms with the lockdown and have leveraged digital technology to organize and collaborate with suppliers, thereby ensuring that supplies have reached the people who need them the most.  Two factors have contributed to this remarkable show of resilience:

• Digitally Enabled Delivery Systems: In China’s major cities, groceries and other items purchased online can be delivered to the home within as little as 20 minutes following a purchase.  This is largely down to the deployment of digital technology.  Alibaba’s Cainiao network, for example, supports the supply chains of the merchants it serves via an AI-enabled digital inventory system that links the online and offline shopping worlds, in which merchants’ physical stores serve an extended distribution network.  As a result, almost as soon as the lockdown was declared in Wuhan, Alibaba was shipping medical and food supplies into the province.
• Consumer Comfort with the Online World: In the past five years, Alibaba Group, JD.com, MTDP (Meituan Dianping) and many other companies have transformed the purchasing behavior of Chinese consumers, moving them away from bricks-and-mortar shopping into online spaces, often consolidated through a so-called “super app.”  As of 2019, China’s e-commerce penetration had, by one estimate, reached 36.6% of retail sales, with 71% of Chinese consumers transacting online at some point, mostly via smartphone apps (80% of e-commerce transactions).

The combination of consumer digital maturity and digitally supported supply chains has enabled local residents to organize home delivery of essential supplies to people in self-quarantine.  In the gated communities and neighborhoods that characterize Beijing, for example, residents have organized small groups of volunteers via group chat apps to receive supplies at the gate for the whole community, box them for each household, and deliver them to people’s doorsteps.

In the U.S. and Europe, however, the digital landscape seems rather less favorable for this kind of response than in China.

Although U.S. consumers are more than ready to shop on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms, only 16% of total sales in 2019 were on e-commerce platforms - a number achieved in China four years earlier.

Moreover, groceries and ready-to-eat food remain challenging categories in the digital world, despite efforts to experiment with home delivery of foodstuffs on the part of Walmart.com and Amazon, which recently purchased Whole Foods. U.S. consumers have been much slower to shift to the digital marketplace in these categories than the Chinese, while last-mile logistics for the grocery category have yet to reach the standards seen in China’s major cities. Even in the restaurant business, the likes of Uber Eats and others lag far behind China’s MTDP, Ele.me, and many other similar services in China.

Europe, unfortunately, is even further behind. Although large retailers such as Ooshop.com of Carrefour and start-ups like Deliveroo are building last-mile logistical capacities, consumer demand and readiness are low, while old city infrastructures and labor regulations make the rapid construction of an efficient delivery system an extremely challenging proposition.

Just last fall, while Alibaba and Amazon celebrated their achievements during the Singles’ Day and Thanksgiving sales respectively, large merchants in Europe ran into serious difficulties in handling their logistics for “Black Friday” sales. I personally received apologetic letters and cancelation messages from a major French electronic retailer, which admitted, “We had unforeseeable difficulties in handling the large amount of transactions during the Black Friday period.” That is forgivable if all that happened was that one failed to impress a friend with a new gadget. When feeding their children is the issue, consumers will be less indulgent.

Of course, the pandemic will subside – and Americans and Europeans will find ways to cope with its effects; the Chinese do not have a monopoly on creativity and solidarity.  But as the U.S. and Europe emerge from the coronavirus epidemic, their governments, cities, and businesses should look at how China’s digital advantages have helped it respond to the logistic challenges presented by the crisis. Covid 19 is a wakeup call for European and the U.S., which both need to accelerate the digital transformation of their economies - ahead of the next pandemic.

Chengyi Lin is an affiliate professor in strategy at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France

Will Coronavirus Lead to More Cyber Attacks?

Will Coronavirus Lead to More Cyber Attacks?

by Brenda R. Sharton - March 16, 2020

While the world is focused on the systemic threat posed by Covid-19, cybercriminals around the world undoubtedly are poised to capitalize on the crisis by launching a different kind of “virus.” More and more employees are working remotely by the day, and companies may eventually face the prospect of functioning with little to no personnel on-site or skeleton crews in IT and other important support functions.

Against this backdrop, both employers and employees need to take the utmost care to protect themselves as well as confidential company information. Here are some things for employers and employees to keep in mind to minimize the risk:

For Employees

1. Be Extra Vigilant About Phishing Emails

Cyber criminals love a crisis. Be on the lookout for phishing emails designed to entice you to click on the latest and greatest offer related to coronavirus protections, or with urgent instructions from your boss who is out of the office, all with the intent of getting you to unwittingly download malware onto your device and the company’s systems.

The past few weeks have brought a sizable uptick in business email interruption scams (where Office 365 or Gmail accounts are hacked through a phishing email, and the hacker then sends fraudulent invoices purporting to be from legitimate vendors, with changed wiring instructions with the money going to the hacker’s account).

Enable multi-factor authentication on whatever accounts you control, and certainly be sure it is in use for Office 365 email accounts. That step will thwart all but the most sophisticated actors. If you have any question about the validity of an internal company email, don’t hesitate to contact the sender - and certainly do so before wiring any money or following changed payment instructions.

2. Practice Good Cyber Hygiene

Make sure your devices - including your internet router - are up to date on their anti-virus protection and that you’re using secure and known connections. Avoid the temptation of using Bluetooth in a public place - it is an easy way for hackers to connect to your device. Use multi-factor authentication on any accounts for which it is available. Follow company guidelines on internet use and use of your own device.

3. Only Use Secure WiFi

Only work on secure, password-protected internet connections. If you have to use public WiFi, be sure to verify with the owner that the network to which you’re connecting is their legitimate network and is secured through a password. Avoid accessing any confidential or sensitive information from a public WiFi network. Hackers will try to trick you by mimicking the name of a secure network, so look closely and verify to make sure the one you’re joining is legitimate. If you don’t, you can give the hacker control and access over everything you do on the internet.

4. Report Lost or Stolen Devices Immediately

Remote work increases the potential for the loss or theft of your devices. Be sure to report any lost or stolen device immediately to company information security personnel to minimize the risk of fraud.

For Employers

1. Set Up Remote Access Now

If you have personnel who need remote access, get it assigned now before an office closure. It is more difficult to issue multifactor authentication tokens to offsite employees who are working remotely for the first time and to install similar technology without physical access.

2. Confidential Information is Still Confidential

Remind employees to use the same care or more with confidential information as they would if they were in the office.  Personal email should not be used for any company business, and employees need to keep track of what they are printing at home.  If the printed document would be subject to shredding in the office environment, take care to segregate and shred that same document at home, or refrain from printing it in the first place.

3. Remind Employees Not to Use Personal Laptops for Work

Ask your employees to use company-issued laptops or to contact your information security personnel if they are unsure about the equipment they are using. Use of personal devices creates problems around document preservation matters and add increased risk. In addition, the software powering some home equipment can be months or even years out of date.

4. Update Your Emergency Contacts

Be sure your company has an “out of band” way to contact all employees - whether a cell phone number or other way to contact the employee outside of company systems. That way, should your company fall victim to an attack (malware, ransom, DDoS or other type), you’ll be able to communicate with your employees. For key personnel or senior management, set up a group on a secure texting application such as Signal so that if the systems are down and email is unable, senior management will be able to communicate without fear from interception by cyber criminals.

Remote access tools have advanced in ways that were inconceivable even as little as 10 years ago, making en masse remote work possible. As with all data security, however, remote access is only as strong as its weakest link. With a strong combination of technology and employee know-how and training, it can be done safely and smartly. Stay safe and be careful out there.

Ms. Sharton would like to acknowledge the assistance with this article by Goodwin colleagues David S. Kantrowitz, counsel in Privacy + Cybersecurity and ranked Legal 500 “Next Generation” lawyer, and Scott D. Kopcha, managing director, Information Security. 

Brenda R. Sharton is a litigation partner and the global chair of Goodwin’s Privacy + Cybersecurity practice. A pioneer in the space, Ms. Sharton has handled hundreds of data breaches for public and private companies as well as landmark privacy litigation.   She was named a “Leading Lawyer” in Cyber Law by Legal 500, just one of just 18 lawyers in the U.S.

15 Questions About Remote Work, Answered

15 Questions About Remote Work, Answered

by Tsedal Neeley - March 16, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is expected to fundamentally change the way many organizations operate for the foreseeable future. As governments and businesses around the world tell those with symptoms to self-quarantine and everyone else to practice social distancing, remote work is our new reality. How do corporate leaders, managers, and individual workers make this sudden shift? Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spent two decades helping companies learn how to manage dispersed teams. In this edited Q&A, drawn from a recent HBR subscriber video call in which listeners were able to ask questions, she offers guidance on how to work productively at home, manage virtual meetings, and lead teams through this time of crisis.

Are organizations prepared for this sudden transition?

The scale and scope of what we’re seeing, with organizations of 5,000 or 10,000 employees asking people to work from home very quickly, is unprecedented. So, no, organizations are not set up for this.

What’s the first thing that leaders and individual managers can do to help their employees get ready?

Get the infrastructure right. Do people have the requisite technology or access to it? Who has a laptop? Will those who do [have laptops] be able to dial into their organizations easily? Will they have the software they need to be able to do work, have conference calls, etc?  What about the employees who don’t have laptops or mobile devices? How do you make sure that they have access to the resources they need to do work? Direct managers have to very quickly ensure that every employee has full access, so no one feels left behind.

What should people who aren’t accustomed to remote work do to get psychologically ready for it?

Develop rituals and have a disciplined way of managing the day. Schedule a start and an end time. Have a rhythm. Take a shower, get dressed, even if it’s not what you’d usually wear to work, then get started on the day’s activities. If you’re used to moving physically, make sure you build that into your day. If you’re an extrovert and accustomed to a lot of contact and collaboration with others, make sure that still happens. Ask yourself:  How will I protect myself from feeling lonely or isolated and stay healthy, productive, and vibrant? Create that for yourself.

Remember that you might actually enjoy working from home. You can play the music you like. You can think flexibly about your time. It can be fun. As for managers, they need to check in on people. Make sure not only that they’re set up but also that they have a rhythm to their day and contact with others. Ask: “What can I do to make sure that this sudden and quick transition is working for you?”

How should those check-ins happen? As a group? In one-on-ones? Via phone calls? Or video chats? 

First, you should have a group conversation about the new state of affairs. Say, “Hey, folks, it’s a different world. We don’t know how long this is going to last. But I want to make sure you all feel that you have what you need.” This should be followed by a team launch to jump-start this new way of working. Figure out: How often should we communicate? Should it be video, phone, or Slack/Jive/Yammer. If you’re not using one of those social media systems, should you? What’s the best way for us to work together? You’ve got to help people understand how to do remote work and give them confidence that it will work.

Once those things are sorted out, meet with your group at least once a week. In a remote environment, frequency of contact cannot go down. If you’re used to having meetings, continue to do so. In fact, contact should probably go up for the whole team and its members. Newer employees, those working on critical projects, and people who need more contact will require extra one-on-ones. Remember, too, that you can do fun things virtually: happy hour, coffee breaks, lunch together. All these things can help maintain the connections you had at the office. There’s ample research showing that virtual teams can be completely equal to co-located ones in terms of trust and collaboration. It just requires discipline.

How does working from home affect psychological health?  What can employers do to make sure that people are staying focused, committed, and happy?

People lose the unplanned watercooler or cappuccino conversations with colleagues in remote work. These are actually big and important parts of the workday that have a direct impact on performance. How do we create those virtually? For some groups and individuals, it will be constant instant messaging. For others, it will be live phone conversations or video conferences. Some people might want to use WhatsApp, WeChat, or Viber. A manager can encourage those types of contact points for psychological health. People are not going to be able to figure these things out organically. You’ve got to coach them. One more piece of advice:  Exercise. It’s critical for mental well-being.

What are the top three things that leaders can do to create a good remote culture?

There are more than 10,000 books in the English language on Amazon on virtuality and how to lead remotely or at a distance. Why is that? Because this is very difficult to do, and managers have to actively work on it. Number one, make sure that team members constantly feel like they know what’s going on. You need to communicate what’s happening at the organizational level because, when they’re at home, they feel like they’ve been extracted from the mothership. They wonder what’s happening at the company, with clients, and with common objectives. The communication around those are extremely important. So you’re emailing more, sharing more.

During this period, people will also start to get nervous about revenue goals and other deliverables. You’ll have to make sure they feel like they’re going to be OK. Another thing is to ensure that no members feel like they have less access to you than others. At home, people’s imaginations begin to go wild. So you have to be available to everyone equally. Finally, when you run your group meetings, aim for inclusion and balance the airtime, so everyone feels seen and heard.

How will these changes affect productivity? 

Productivity does not have to go down at all. It can be maintained, even enhanced, because commutes and office distractions are gone. Of course, you might be at home with your partner or kids, and those issues will need to be worked out. Another problem might be your ability to resolve problems quickly when you can’t meet in person, in real time. That might create delays. But other than that, I don’t see productivity going down. There’s robust evidence showing that it shouldn’t change.

If the social distancing policies go on for a while, how do you measure your employees’ productivity and eventually review them on that work?

I’ll say this to every manager out there: you have to trust your employees.  This is an era and a time in which we have to heed Ernest Hemingway’s advice: “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”  You can’t see what people are doing. But equip them in the right ways, give them the tasks, check on them like you’ve always done, and hope they produce in the ways you want them to. You can’t monitor the process, so your review will have to be outcome-based. But there’s no reason to believe that, in this new environment, people won’t do the work that they’ve been assigned. Remote work has been around for a very long time. And today we have all of the technologies we need to not only do work but also collaborate. We have enterprise-wide social media tools that allow us to store and capture data, to have one-to-many conversations, to share best practices, and to learn.

Let’s talk about virtual meetings.  What are some best practices, beyond the general advice to clarify your purpose, circulate an agenda, prepare people to be called on, and so forth? 

First, you have to have some explicit ground rules. Say, “Folks, when we have these meetings, we do it in a nice way, we turn off of phones, we don’t check emails or multitask.” I highly recommend video conferencing if you have the ability to do that. When people are able to see one another, it really makes a difference. And then you trust people to follow the ground rules.

Number two, because you no longer have watercooler conversations, and people might be just learning how to work from home, spend the first six to seven minutes of a meeting checking in. Don’t go straight to your agenda items. Instead, go around and ask everyone, “How are you guys doing?” Start with whomever is the newest or lowest status person or the one who usually speaks the least. You should share as well, so that you’re modeling the behavior. After that, you introduce the key things you want to talk about and again model what you want to see, whether it’s connecting, asking questions, or even just using your preferred technology, like Zoom or Skype for Business.

The last thing is you have to follow up these virtual meetings with redundant communication to ensure that people have heard you and that they’re OK with the outcome. Say you have a video conference about a topic. You follow it up with an email or a Slack message. You should have multiple touchpoints through various media to continue the trail of conversation.

And how do you facilitate highly complex or emotionally charged conversations when people aren’t face to face? 

You can only raise one or two of these topics because you don’t have the time or opportunity to work things through after the meeting. You can’t just walk to people’s offices to follow up.  So, be very thoughtful about what you bring up and when and how you do it.  But you can still have these conversations. Allowing people to disagree in order to sharpen the team’s thinking is a very positive thing. Sometimes, in virtual environments, people don’t feel psychologically safe, so they might not speak up when they should.  And so you might even want to generate or model a little of disagreement - always over work, tasks or processes, of course, never anything personal.

In light of various daycare and school closings, how do you discuss children and childcare?

Leaders should be prepared for that conversation and to help people think those issues through. The blurring of boundaries between work and home has suddenly come upon us, so managers have got to develop the skills and policies to support their teams. This might involve being more flexible about the hours in which employees work. You don’t have to eat lunch at 12pm. You might walk your dog at 2pm. Things are much more fluid, and managers just have to trust that employees will do their best to get their work done.

We’ve talked about internal communication, but what advice do you have for people in client-facing functions?

We’ve been seeing virtual sales calls and client engagements. You do the exact same things. Here, it’s even more important to use visual media. Take whatever you would be doing face-to-face and keep doing it. Maybe you can’t wine and dine. But you can do a lot. Be creative.

What do you do in an organization where you have a mix of both blue- and white-collar workers? Or for those colleagues who aren’t properly equipped?

The organizations have to figure out a way to support those workers: some kind of collective action to help them because otherwise you’re completely isolating people who are critically important to your operation. I would put together a task force, and I would find solutions to keep them connected and ensure that they still feel valued. And include them in the planning.

If you sense that, despite your best efforts, an employee is struggling - not focused, lonely - what can you do? 

When you see the signs - like fewer emails or more inhibition in group conversations - talk to them. Increase contact and encourage others to, as well. Understand where they are. And get them what they need. Organizations should also make sure to have employee assistance services at this time. When you’re suddenly taking away people’s regular routines and connection with others, and it’s open-ended, some will struggle and need extra help. I would add that every CEO of every organization needs to be much more visible right now - through video conferencing or taped recordings - to give people confidence, calm them down, and be healers- or hope-givers-in-chief.

Do you see this crisis changing the way all teams and organizations operate going forward?

I think it’s going to broaden their repertoires. Organizations, teams, and people will experiment more with virtual work. Many of them have always wanted to test it as way of expanding their reach or labor force. It’s not that people are going to permanently adopt this new format of work, but this experience will expand everyone’s capacity. If there’s a tiny positive aspect to this mess we’re finding ourselves in, it’s that we’re developing certain skills that could helpful in the future. That’s my deepest hope.

Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School and the founder of the consulting firm Global Matters. She is the author of The Language of Global Success. Twitter: @tsedal