NEW YORK–Credit unions wrestling with creating the right balance and making decisions about employees returning to work or working from home may want to consider “categories of team interactions” to help drive their decision-making.
In this, the fourth in a four-part series, CUToday.info provides a synopsis of interviews conducted by the New York Times examining how companies should move forward with plans as more offices are opened even as many employees prefer to remain at home. The big question: how to strike a balance.
To better understand how teams can best work together online and in person, Harvard researchers Ashley Whillans, Leslie Perlow and Aurora Turek interviewed employees at a consulting firm as it adapted to remote work during the pandemic. The researchers used what they learned to define categories of team interactions, which companies can consider when deciding how to structure work — regardless of where it happens, according to the Times.
The Categories
Those categories include:
- Content interactions: communication about tasks, such as sharing feedback while sitting side by side. “When work went virtual, more of these interactions took place asynchronously, through digital work tools such as Slack. One manager said communication had improved because individuals had more time to think.”
- Bounce interactions: new idea generation, as with an impromptu whiteboard brainstorming session. “In the virtual version, individuals often generated ideas on their own, and then they and others emailed them back and forth. That made it harder to align with others; some teams adjusted by moving brainstorming sessions to videoconferences.”
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Process interactions: defining and structuring work, such as check-in meetings. “Without an option to drop by a colleague’s desk to ask a casual question, teams felt there should be more process conversations, but also that these chats could be exhausting. Some teams moved away from using video meetings to less-demanding communication tools like Slack.”
- Social interactions: getting to know one another, such as sharing meals when traveling together. “Some teams experimented with virtual happy hours or dinners, but not everyone was interested in taking personal time to participate, and many saw these virtual events as less effective than in-person outings,” according to the researchers.”
- Huddle interactions: informal exchanges, like those that take place in a hallway between meetings or over coffee. “These largely went away in the virtual environment, and managers became the primary conduit of all information. Some teams began scheduling time for informal conversations about work, such as sending a Google invite to debrief after a meeting.”
- Huddle interactions: mentorship and development feedback. “While weekly meetings continued in the virtual workplace, informal feedback conversations stopped. One person suggested ‘sideways’ feedback meetings, where all participants, regardless of position, give feedback to one another.”
- Development interactions: mentorship and development feedback. “While weekly meetings continued in the virtual workplace, informal feedback conversations stopped. One person suggested “sideways” feedback meetings.”