Taylor Telford has a piece in the Washington Post today about office workers no longer knowing how to act at work:
More than two years after employers began urging white-collar workers back to offices, Americans are still reckoning with the ripple effects of pandemic-induced disruption when it comes to workplace behavior. The years spent apart from colleagues have rusted workers’ social skills, and new ways of working have spawned a host of fresh etiquette issues.
I initially met this with my usual skepticism. Am I really supposed to believe that basic social skills atrophied in a mere year or two? I haven't gone into an office for more than 20 years, but I'm pretty sure my social skills are about the same as always (for better or worse).
But I kept reading and got interested despite myself. For example:
Workers who had substantial professional experience before the pandemic, including managers and executives, still need help adapting to hybrid and remote work, Senning said. He has been coaching leaders on best practices for such things as communicating through your calendar and deciding whether to call, text or use Slack to reach an employee.
Establishing etiquette for video meetings has also been a challenge for many firms.... “If I had a magic button that I could push that could get people to treat video meetings with 50 percent of the same level of professionalism they treat an in-person meeting, I would make a lot of HR, personnel managers, and executives very, very happy,” Senning said.
Huh. I guess I have to admit that I might be a little rusty on the fine points of not committing a faux pas by calling instead of Slacking—or presumably worse yet, emailing. And while Zoom etiquette seems fairly obvious to me—join on time, pay attention, don't jerk off while your camera is on—maybe there are details I'm not aware of. There's also this:
Richey, for instance, has noticed younger workers struggling with both verbal and nonverbal forms of communication, whether through eye contact, greetings or basic conversation. “This younger generation has been used to such an informal communication style with texting and social media,” Richey said. “It definitely has had an impact.”
Kelly Rownd, director for career readiness at North Carolina State University, said that young professionals today generally get more opportunities for skill-building than previous generations. But they’re not always experienced when it comes to the social elements: drafting emails, networking, knowing how to behave in a meeting vs. at a client dinner. Meanwhile, companies increasingly rely on colleges and universities to provide this instruction, she added.
Eye contact? We're talking about kids who have been through four years of high school and four years of college, mostly in-person. That's a lot of ordinary social interaction even if you text a lot. What the hell?
Now, as near as I can tell, business executives have been complaining forever that new hires straight out of college lack real-world skills. Which, almost by definition, they do. So maybe this is just the usual kvetching about thekidsthesedays.
Or not. I suppose I'll never know for sure.
Aristotle complained about thekidsthesedays.
And I think this fits the general trend of lazier and lazier executives. Complaining that entry-level workers don't have expensive certifications or prior experience. That first-time hires don't know the office's specialized memo format. That colleges don't teach Miss Manners classes as a mandatory course.
Business Journal Porn at its purest.
A month or so ago, a guy wrote in to Miss Manners. Having been out of an office environment for years, he wanted to know if it was still acceptable to announce he was leaving to use the restroom by saying "I've got to use the can."
Apparently, he had never heard of "oversharing" ...
The proper form is to request a bio-break 🙂
It won't be long before "taking a bio-break" will have the same connotations and associations as "taking a ----".
The names change, but the game remains the same.
Feels more generalization than anything at this point. Having worked with or interviewed many interns, I haven't seen this issue at all. All were professional in all the formats (chat, email, video, scheduling, etc). A bit more casualness comes through in some interactions, but all were eager to learn and step up as needed.
Several of the people quotes in this article offer training courses on professional behavior. I'm sure that has no effect on their assessment of the situation.
Many of my work meetings are on Teams and no one has their camera on. Almost no one speaks… regardless of age.
That sounds like my experience. On the TEAMS meeting I ran it was like talking to no one. I thought it would get better but even after a couple of years it was the same.
Steve
Why do I need my camera on unless I'm presenting something?
Yeah, what use is it to have a row of disembodied heads at the top of the screen? What information is being imparted?
Also, since when are using the correct media platform or Zoom format considered "social skills"?
You've never read the first few chapters of "Snow Crash", have you?
Well, they want to bully those without rigid control over their facial expressions.
This 100%. This entire article boils down to: Why won't the kids turn their cameras on?
- Because they don't have a presentation space.
- They don't have a support staff and might need to move out of camera to grab something or read a source.
- They don't think they can keep from picking their nose or sneezing or being in a effing hospital bed.
- They're in a shared space where others might be in the background...
Or like me, just don't want whatever is going on around me to intrude. I can not do eye contact so it won't look like I'm paying attention anyway. If I'm talking to my counselor, or presenting, or doing movie night with my family - yeah, the camera is on the whole time.
Is it social skill atrophy or just people realizing that office culture is (and has always been) bullshit, and more people deciding to simply opt out of participating even if they're being forced to go into the office?
I think it's more likely the latter. Your coworkers are not your friends or family. The bosses who write this shit are the ones who want their in-person office fiefdoms and equate playing along with the bullshit as social skills.
Add on the usual kvetching about kidsthesedays and companies not wanting to actually train their workers to do work, instead wanting fully formed workers to just be given to them magically, and there you have it.
Correct
I had a business that rented a mechanic shop from a landlord who owned a gas station and convenience store that it was attached to. He promised to treat us like family. I don't want a landlord that's like family. Let me pay my rent and stay out of my way. if there's anything that needs to be fixed, fix it.
But this guy especially. He owned the land, but had done 7 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter for killing his wife and daughter in that very convenience store. I diid NOT want to be treated like family by him.
Swear to god. True story.
The bosses who write this shit are the ones who want their in-person office fiefdoms and equate playing along with the bullshit as social skills.
Exactly, only worse: They know and you know playing along with bullshit doesn't equate with social skills. But they know you know they don't believe it, and you know that they know you know they don't believe it either. Saying otherwise is a dominance display and getting you to make that public tog of the forelock is what they're looking for. See Tom Wolf's essay in New York Magazine, The Ultimate Power: Seeing Them Jump.
I have found that the best way to get younger people to pay attention in meetings is for the phone to be no where near the meeting. I am not sure if they are texting or paying attention to every social media interaction, but they are terrible when near their phones. The area schools agree and all the students place their phones in a phone holder when they enter the classroom.
Problem is on teams I cannot get rid of their phones. Every meeting has a "Buehler" moment when someone has walked out of the meeting and stayed logged in.
The first thing that most students learn is that the politics of campus and work are polar opposites and that they should avoid bringing up the political talking points that they have learned on campus. For those that do not learn this quickly they end up finding about how unemployment works rather quickly.
Eye contact is code word for 'this is an asshole who wants to dominate your gaze'.
And they keep on using the ei ei o mail thing instead of post-its.
Sounds like a Kids These Days and People Don't Want To Work article. did they use the Word template?
Look at the metalanguage.
I can't imagine working for a boss who told me I can't do the job I was hired for, but I suppose most people don't mind being Bezo's indentured automaton.
When the kids get to the stage of saying "L-M-A-O" without looking the least bit amused, we'll have a problem.
The way I see it is, sure people are a little rusty on social skills, but more than anything, time away from people during lockdowns and WFH has allowed many people on the Autism spectrum to discover their true comfort zone. Having to go back to masking takes extra energy now, having had the luxury of working without masking.
I don't see how social skills can atrophy just because you're not going to the office. You still have a life and have to deal with people outside the office. I tend to treat the people I work with in much the same way as I treat anybody else I deal with in a business sense, e.g. the cashier at the grocery store; with impersonal courtesy.
The last 9 years have absolutely taught me that most people are just a half-step away from total oafishness.