Covid-19 a catalyst pushing frontiers of communication further

To put this in perspective, analytics firm App Annie found that downloads of business apps topped 62 million from March 14 to 21 this year — 90% more than the weekly downloads average in 2019. Frost & Sullivan director Roopam Jain told the No Jitter publication that cloud video conferencing providers have seen exponential usage growth. Pexip saw 200% cumulative usage growth in March — nearly six times its January peak — while BlueJeans’ global use growth has tripled.

With this revolution in digital communication set to stick long after Covid-19, businesses have been forced to speed up digital transformation and get used to this new form of communication — whether they like it or not. Tech giant Facebook has already confirmed a permanent move to remote working after Covid-19.

“I think moving forward, all communication will become far more blended ... people begin to realise that they don’t have to fly halfway across the world to have a board meeting now,” Melanie Cook (main picture), Apac managing director of digital creative business school Hyper Island, says in an interview with The Edge Singapore. Human interactions, she says, will increasingly become a hybrid of online and in-person connections in the post-pandemic “new normal”.

So near, yet so far

Though online virtual communication has helped limit work and educational disruption arising from lockdown measures, this new medium of instruction has taken some getting used to. Users have lamented the loss of the intimacy and effectiveness of face-to-face conversations, with some even experiencing psychological and emotional strain from online interaction.

“Non-verbal cues cannot guide lectures over the computer. Passive recordings cannot substitute for spontaneous feedback and questions,” laments Yale University student George Chen in an op-ed for The Yale Daily News. US high-school teacher Bill Ivey agrees, telling the Education Week Teacher that he found it more difficult to catch movements and sudden mood shifts when teaching his students, hindering his ability to tailor lessons to students’ needs.

Libby Sanders and Oliver Bauman, Assistant Professors at Bond University, suggest that Zoom sessions can engender greater fatigue than face-to-face interactions due to the lack of non-verbal cues involved in such communication. “People feel like they have to make more emotional effort to appear interested, and in the absence of many non-verbal cues, the intense focus on words and sustained eye contact is exhausting,” they write in The Conversation.

However, the growing use of technology has also accentuated generation gaps. Technology does not just present “young people’s problems” for digital natives. Older learners face greater difficulty having constructive online discussions as they are not used to online communication. This stems from things as basic as refusing to switch on one’s camera when speaking from home for privacy reasons, creating a less personable conversation.

“Younger people are far more used to using screens and getting their points across quickly. We are heart-to-heart on a screen — even with group chats. Senior participants have been taken out of their comfort zone into their ‘danger zone’ where they are being forced to give this a go with no training or experience in it,” says Cook, underlining the need for empathy to give participants psychological safety and openness without switching on their cameras.

Cybersecurity has also been cited as a key concern for digital communication, especially for confidential discussions. Standard Chartered, for instance, has banned employees from using Zoom owing to cybersecurity concerns, fearing hackers would compromise Zoom channels and Zoom data would be routed via China. Hackers have even planted obscene images on Zoom platforms used for home-based learning in Singapore, prompting the Ministry of Education to suspend its use.

Cook sees users switching to more established providers such as Microsoft and Cisco Systems due to their more robust cybersecurity measures. Communication will also likely become slower and more prepared, since providers will increasingly possess recordings on conversations between users on their databases. “All of a sudden, there will be a permanent record that doesn’t go away,” she warns, with users having to become more careful about what they do and say online.

More control over learning

Online learning does have its benefits, especially within a classroom setting. Done correctly, the futurist argues, students will be able to take more control over their own learning as well as have a more cosmopolitan learning experience.

There is a misconception that online learning will involve didactic lecture experiences that do not provide interactive learning experiences, shares Cook. Hyper Island has been able to adapt its hallmark interactive teaching style to an online format, for instance, by running an online “murder mystery” activity to teach students about data-driven decision-making. Such interactions are key to ameliorating the stress and disconnect associated with online communication.

“What we’ve realised is that in communications during Covid, the content is tried and tested. It is the experience which is different. What we have done is look at experiences that entice people and apply that to our content. It’s all about format,” Cook explains. Using an evolving stack of digital tools such as video conferencing, drawing boards, and a proprietary Hyper Island chatbot, the school has sought to bring to life the its content in a compelling way.

Where in-person classes or events were once the preserve of individuals present in a particular geographical location, the shift online has seen a more cosmopolitan feel to classes as Hyper Island welcomes students from countries as diverse as the UK, the Philippines and Japan to learn and share with one another. The online format has also allowed students to explore faraway places like Silicon Valley through virtual tours from the comfort of their homes.

“Often, we stop remembering because of geographies that we all live the same human condition — that’s what geographical boundaries do. But with online training, those geo-
graphical boundaries go away and the field is levelled,” says Cook, noting that the need to take turns on video has meant introverts are more able to contribute to discussions. Essential board meetings with Hyper Island’s global team, for instance, have been able to take place effectively online.

By all accounts, these endeavours have been a success — following the introduction of “circuit breakers”, a large majority of Hyper Island’s learners have reported a positive overall experience with online lessons, reporting that the online classes were interactive and “better than expected”. Hyper Island has also provided online live-learning to 1,000 staff from insurance firm AIA, while enrolment for its courses has risen exponentially.

The same principle can be applied to online meetings at work too. “One big advantage of virtual settings is that they lower the bar for participation. You often get thoughts and insights from people who ordinarily might not speak in an in-person environment,” Professor Andy Molinsky of the Brandeis International Business School explains in a Harvard Business Review article. He suggests creative use of breakout rooms, polling and chatrooms to fuel meaningful discussions.

Leadership is key

Ultimately, however, leadership is perhaps the most important factor that will determine if the transition to online communication is successful. Leaders need to be not only agile to ensure that firms are able to transition to the “new normal”, but also empathetic and kind to ensure that their teams are able to cope with the emotional challenges of this transition.

“Strong leaders define their mission, frame the stakes, and pivot as the situation requires. They also pay close attention to their teams, managing their energy and morale in order to build determination, solidarity, and a shared sense of purpose,” says Harvard Business School’s Professor Nancy Koehn in a virtual seminar for mayors and municipal leaders. She sees crises as opportunities for leaders to step up and get better at what they do.

With agile ways of working traditionally involving a high degree of collaboration to solve problems, translating such teamwork-intensive operations from the boardroom to
cyberspace presents unique challenges for business leaders. Managing such a transition requires soft skills — Cook suggests that leaders focus on outcomes rather than processes of achieving that goal. Rather than delegating fixed roles based on existing operational models, leaders should instead emphasise the end-goal of solving problems and producing a customer-centric product, deriving new, bespoke business operations from the ground-up process of adapting to present realities.

This new mode of operation requires managers and workers to adapt to a less directive operational method, with workers needing to operate with much greater flexibility and much less supervision. Managers will have to provide their teams with psychological safety to take risks and be creative, necessitating that they resist the temptation to micro-manage and assign blame when things don’t go according to plan.

Workers on their part need to get on board with lifelong learning to adapt to the more flexible demands of a more agile workplace and a more dynamic job market, especially with Covid-19 accelerating already-rapid industrial disruption. Cook also sees workers having to “become more prolific” and adapt to work-life integration, as the pace of production increases alongside a blurring between the spheres of work and family with more people working out of their homes.

Such practices may be unfamiliar to local firms, particularly traditional businesses. Cheryl Marie Codeiro of the University of Gothenburg describes Singapore’s management culture as hierarchical and authoritarian, emphasising centralised decision-making. While an SMU study by Professor Thomas Menkhoff has shown that local businesses are moving away from such norms, more conservative firms may have to reconsider their management style going forward.

Nevertheless, Cook wonders if Asia’s history of economic development has given its people the “can-do” attitude of self-reliance to learn and adapt to the post-Covid-19 workplace. She observes that local workers have been very enthusiastic in taking the time to upskill themselves at Hyper Island’s open courses despite having to continue their day jobs at the same time. If so, Singapore can face the future of a digital revolution with optimism, safe in the knowledge that its people are prepared for impending change.