n=6 (averaged)
We asked six of our interviewees to estimate the time they used for each communication channel before and since COVID, in percentage as a share of the total working time. Not surprisingly, physical communication has all but diminished, including physical meetings in meeting rooms, other interactions in the office as well as off-sites and lunch meetings. These channels have been replaced by digital channels, with online group meetings (e.g. via Zoom or MS Teams) now making up 40% of the total work time of employees.
Both telephone calls and WhatsApp messages have roughly doubled usage, while email usage remained the same. The perhaps most surprising result is that time spent for desk work (i.e. getting work done by oneself at the desk), has fallen from 18% to 9%. So it seems that people have changed the way of working by using the new communication channels and (partly) replacing desk work instead. At least the participants in our interviews are perceiving it that way. As these are only preliminary results from six non-representative interviews, no general conclusions can be drawn from this. However, the results indicate that the communicative changes due to COVID are so drastic that we can expect equally large changes in work processes and collaboration that will in turn affect leadership behaviour.
Comic Strip: "Video Conference"
0 Comments