Episode Details

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the mental health challenges in returning to the office space, the evolution of communication in the workplace and the reasons why many people do not want to work remotely – in Spain and other places. The set up of a hybrid workplace continues with its challenges. In episode 106 of My Pocket Psych, guest Dr. Hayley Lewis talked about how she was working with a government organisation whose chief exec wanted to reduce the office space in order to cut down on public spending.

However, when she looked into the living conditions of some of the employees, it was clear that asking (or offering) people to work from home would end up with some individuals working in difficult conditions.

While we're making sure we can have the conversation so that people can work flexibly, there's also a need to help people speak out when they feel they can't use their homes for work. In any case, saving money by reducing the office space might not be as straight-forward as it looks. According to a set of yet to be released data that Maya's had access to, to make remote work permanent in some organisations, they will have to invest heavily in IT and cybersecurity, etc. Something they maybe didn't do during the pandemic. 09.45 MINSThe return to the office is bringing some unexpected challenges and this article covers a few of them: Everyone Is Not OK, but Back at Work Anyway.

For example, the dynamics of a team that used to be colocated might have changed when it went suddenly remote. And now that they have to return to their previous workspace… it might not be easy. Many people have changed, and had different experiences of working remotely during the pandemic.

We need to continue talking about how we're doing, we're still in transition. What medium people prefer for being open about how they're feeling might vary. For some, the best medium might be face to face, others might prefer to tell you how they are on Slack, there's great diversity in this.

Different people and different teams will figure it out as they go along. What's common is that there is still a lot of uncertainty around what the future of the workplace will look like, and still around the pandemic. (And have you heard of "Schrodinger's Covid"?)

19.00 MINS

On a lighter note, Slack has published this article about how written communication at work is changing and becoming more informal: From jargon to emoji, the evolution of workplace communication styles. Instead of business jargon, people prefer to adopt more informal ways of talking to colleagues, using GIFs and emojis. Is this a hangover from the way we were taught to write "properly" at school? Or is it that we communicate much more in writing with colleagues and therefore can adopt more informal and playful ways of doing so? However, we can't let informality bring a lack of clarity (Maya's words!) and we still need to adopt formal ways of writing when needed. Pilar doesn't like emojis that duplicate a message, like the article with a smiley face followed by "enjoying" in the text. Sometimes it feels like information overload. But some of these emojis have a lot of energy behind them, and they have their place.

Different teams will evolve their own ways of communicating, even how you react to messages, or even having their own designs.

(Let us know what you think of this!)

29.20 MINSWe move on to a recent article about how telework is being adopted now in Spain, post-lockdown, "

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