Show up to work or stay home? Full in class session or distance online class? These twin dilemmas are rekindled just as soon as the COVID 19 global pandemic is tail-ending or now reportedly a treatable disease not to be dreaded.
First off, when he acquired Twitter recently, Elon Musk laid off half of its workforce and ordered the other half to show up in office, reversing the company’s existing work-from-anywhere policy with some exceptions. For employees who prefer work from home (WFH), it was a jarring unwelcome news, proffering albeit anecdotally that they are more productive away from the office.
Characteristically ordering a “take it or leave it” brashness, Musk is bent on managing Twitter the way he does with his other companies. By example, he spends more than 40 hours per week in the office and wants employees to do the same, at least a minimum of 40 hours in the office and more hours at home at their discretion. The more senior one is in the organization hierarchy, the more visible he should be in office. He proved the effectiveness of his style by maintaining the profitability of SpaceX and Tesla while other companies are losing.
With advanced technology and the generational proclivities of employees preponderantly from generations XYZ, such a dictate is hostile and clashes against their personal and cultural idiosyncrasies that might affect their productivity and performance. In various studies, these employees multi-task, have limited attention span, are optimistic, independent, demanding and jealous of their own unique identities. They are digital natives of the Internet world.
Many US executives agree with Musk seeing more negatives than positives about WFH. WFH does not enhance and foster corporate sustainability. Being together and seeing each other in the office create immense energy and synergy. More significantly, WFH stifles innovation and idea generation. It also weakens building healthy work culture because of “disconnectedness” in a world of interconnectedness. One should not “confuse digital connections with real relationships” because a real conversation with someone one cares about is irreplaceable. Being together in the workplace enables innovativeness of employees to achieve corporate profitability.
University of Texas professor of psychology and marketing Art Markman explains that observing work by others can lead to a phenomenon called “goal contagion.” By observing other people’s actions, one can adopt and align with the same goal reinforcing the achievement of a common purpose in the workplace. Other benefits of working in the office are facilitating and building institutional knowledge, strengthening a sense of shared mission and vision and belongingness in which working away would not foster.
This apparent clash of generational and cultural differences between corporate leadership and management and their employees is a highly critical and strategic issue that requires fundamental reimagining and innovative solutions. One-size-fits all strategy would not work because of differences of business models and people’s cultural norms. Thus, a hybrid strategy, where some days work are on WFH and on other days at the office may be the key to a win-win solution of the dilemma.
For schools, full face-in or distance classes uncannily face the same dilemma as in WFH. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has issued a memorandum (CMO 16) for the conduct of face-to-face or hybrid sessions in the degree programs offered by higher education institutions (HEI) in the coming second semester of school year 2022-23. This follows the similar directive of the Department of Education for full classroom sessions in the primary and secondary classes that began this month.
As a long-time professor in graduate schools, I have since been an active participant in the learning process, both in-face and online. The traditional modality of in-face session is by far the most fascinating and engaging mentally, emotionally, and physically. I see my students in flesh and blood directly engaging them to discover, to invent and to grow. In online, there is a whale of a difference I see only tiny images of faces on the screen, sometimes off camera because of weak Internet connection. What I achieve in physical interaction from in-face classes is less or artificial in an online.
Like corporations, it is also a serious dilemma for schools to require enormous strategic adjustments in capacity and capability building, changed mindsets and mindfulness to become effective for the benefit of the generational teachers and learners. It cannot be one-size fit-all strategy if one were to soundly resolve the generational divide between teachers and learners.
The sound and dynamic solution is not found between two mutually exclusive options. It is found in the identification of learning goals achieved through an evaluation of a range of complementary options that make for a win-win classroom engagement. Thus, a hybrid modality where some sessions are face-to-face and some sessions are online using synchronous and asynchronous modalities is the middle ground to address different and unique characteristics of the multi-generational learners.
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Dr. Cesar A Mansibang is a professional business practitioner and professor in the graduate schools of business of some universities.