Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash
- The Gig Economy Is a Public Health Risk
While most of Silicon Valley’s white-collar workers are working from home and the masses are being asked to self-isolate, Uber and Lyft drivers, Grubhub and Seamless delivery drivers, and Instacart shoppers continue to work. After weeks of silence and rolling out policies designed to convince customers to continue using their platforms (“contactless deliveries!”), several companies including Uber, have just rolled out two-weeks of paid sick leave, but even these policies feel dystopian, their subtext being: Keep working until you get the deadly pandemic with an unknown death rate. Then you can self-isolate (without health insurance) and hope you don’t die.
It’s easy to focus on the gig economy’s lackluster response during the pandemic, but this problem has been years in the making.
- ‘Everyone is so worried about their job they’re not doing the work’: Confessions of an agency exec
Do you think this will hurt agencies long-term?
It is going to be another thing that will hurt them. My sense is that 2020 is going to be a really tough year for agencies. Everyone is nervous about their jobs. Working at an agency is like Lord of the Flies right now. Everyone is so worried about their job they’re not doing the work.So people were already scared about their jobs but they’re even more nervous now due to coronavirus?
Yes. People [have been] so scared about their jobs that they’re willing to throw people under the bus to make sure they have a paycheck coming in every two weeks. It’s becoming a very caustic environment, which is affecting business as a whole because they are not performing at their best. Trust is lacking in leadership. People will want to defend themselves, their paycheck and their family. It’s a critical issue for the industry as a whole.https://digiday.com/marketing/everyone-worried-job-theyre-not-work-confessions-agency-exec/
- Why fighting the coronavirus depends on you
- Working Remotely Requires Cultural Change, Executives Say
“The first step [to going remote] is understanding that not every physical process needs an equal virtual process. For example, not every in-person meeting translates to a virtual meeting,” he said.
CIOs are primed to serve to lead the transition, he said.
”This is a giant opportunity for CIOs to make companies more efficient. If you can get a company to the point where people are equally effective when they’re working from home, you give your team members a lot more freedom and you create a lot more opportunities,” Mr. Sijbrandij said.
“Making the jump from the cube to the home or working off site—there are cultural accelerators that come into play. There needs to be some mentoring and modeling and acceptance,” said Wayne Kurtzman, research director at International Data Corp.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/working-remotely-requires-cultural-change-executives-say-11584053615
- How to help your remote workers feel involved
In meetings, make sure that all participants are, well, participating. Some people, especially those who are not used to working remotely, may at first be uncomfortable in video conferences, and so they may hang back.
Don’t force people to appear on camera if they don’t want to. While video meetings tend to work better when you feel as though you are talking to a real person, if a participant feels awkward being on camera (or is worried about how messy their house is), then they’re going to spend the meeting too distracted to pay full attention to the matters at hand.
If you or your employees decide to hold a virtual get-together, Twitch gaming session, video watch party, or other social event, make sure everyone in the company is aware of it and invited. Of course, you can have separate events for teams within the company, but it’s not a good idea to further isolate employees whose jobs may not usually involve working with others.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21178312/remote-work-worker-videoconference-slack-chat-connected