̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - teamwork

Remote working is a ‘mixed bag’ for employee wellbeing and productivity, study finds

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:22:33 +0000

̽��ֱ��shift to remote working for many office-based workers at the start of the pandemic initially led to an increase in productivity, especially by reducing commute times, but a new large-scale study has outlined the many ways in which remote working has affected wellbeing and productivity over the past two years, both positively and negatively.

One of the big changes for remote workers was the number and quality of meetings. As outlined in a new article in MIT Sloan Management Review, the study from Cambridge Judge Business School and the Vitality Research Institute, part of the wellness and financial services group Vitality, found that the average number of meetings increased by 7.4% from June 2020 to December 2021.

̽��ֱ��study, based on more than 1,000 Vitality employees, also found that people in most departments spent more hours in low-quality meetings – defined as meetings in which participants multitask, are double-booked into competing meetings or tasks, or are accompanied by another person with a similar role.

“Low-quality meetings often translate into less productivity and high levels of multitasking can increase stress,” said study co-author Thomas Roulet from Cambridge Judge Business School.

̽��ֱ��study, which looked at employees from four Vitality locations in the UK and across all business units, is based on automated data collection using Microsoft Workplace Analytics complemented by weekly surveys.

̽��ֱ��authors focused on five core workplace behaviours that have the most significant impact on a range of wellbeing and work outcomes: collaboration hours (meetings, calls, dealing with emails); low-quality meeting hours; multitasking hours during meetings (including sending emails); ‘focus’ hours (blocks of at least two hours with no meetings); and workweek span (number of hours worked per week).

Work capacity was captured based on four factors: life and work satisfaction, anxiety and stress levels, work energy, and work-life balance.

̽��ֱ��relationships emerging from the data are clear: employees were working longer (a higher workweek span), spent time in more low-quality meetings, and had higher levels of multitasking, all of which are associated with worse outcomes, including a decline in work-life balance and quality of work.

More after-hours work predominantly affects one’s sense of work engagement but has no real impact on work productivity and quality. Increased focus hours affect work outcomes but not work engagement.

̽��ֱ��authors conclude that the shift over the past two years toward remote or hybrid working has improved wellbeing for some workers but not others, so they caution against a ‘blanket approach’ to workplace rules such as requiring employees to come into the office for a set number of days or under specific conditions.

̽��ֱ��research found, for example, that increasing ‘focus’ hours was beneficial to senior employees who may need to concentrate on more complex tasks, but it decreased well-being for junior employees who want more social interactions rather than working in isolation from their team.

̽��ֱ��article in MIT Sloan Management Review – entitled “How Shifts in Remote Behavior Affect Employee Well-being" – is co-authored by Shaun Subel, Director at the Vitality Research Institute; Martin Stepanek, Lead Researcher at the Vitality Research Institute; and Thomas Roulet, Associate Professor in Organisational Strategy at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Adapted from a story published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Adapting remote and hybrid work policies to employees’ specific work-life situations can result in increased well-being and productivity, but many employees are stuck in an increasing number of low-quality meetings when working remotely, according to a new study.

10'000 Hours via Getty Images

Woman using laptop for team meeting

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

How to get teams to share information

sc604 — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 08:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��study reveals that teams across the land are not playing nicely after all. In fact, there are many occasions when we choose not to share information with colleagues if we think it can harm our own prospects of success. And when that information determines, say, the level of funding passed down from a CEO, it can have a significant – and counter-productive – effect on the company as a whole.

“Most organisations must make decisions about where best to allocate resources,” said Nektarios (Aris) Oraiopoulos of Cambridge Judge Business School, whose study, published in the journal Management Science, examined how these issues play out in the pharmaceutical industry. “Pharmaceutical companies as a whole need to regularly reassess their research and development portfolios and decide which projects have the greatest potential; for example they might choose to improve an existing drug or develop a new one. Such decisions are often made by executives who rely on information provided by the project managers. But individual project managers do not necessarily give accurate information to the boss if they think it will cost them the resources that fund their projects.”

Oraiopoulos’s study, undertaken with Vincent Mak of Cambridge Judge Business School, and Professor Jochen Schlapp of Mannheim ̽��ֱ��, revealed managers’ likelihood to share information depended on whether there was an appropriate fit between the type of the project (e.g. a new project vs a ‘me-too’ project) and the incentives scheme in place.

“In small companies such as start-ups, there’s often such a strong culture of collective ambition and responsibility – and enhanced risk – that it’s hard to attribute success or failure individually,” said Oraiopoulos. “Therefore the most effective incentive rewards everyone on the basis of the collective success. But as the company grows, people inevitably assume singular responsibilities, the outcomes are less risky and, in the interests of the company, managers start following individual agendas – and management starts rewarding individual performance.”

Which is where the problems start. “If two project managers are offered a group incentive for success, individuals are more willing to be upfront about any failings. But when the two project managers compete for resources and rewards, as it often happens in a bigger organisation, project managers are less likely to step aside.”

There are many reasons for this, said Oraiopoulos, not necessarily based in deception. “Pharmaceutical research includes many ‘true believers’ – researchers who have absolute faith in a new product, especially if it could cure an important disease. But that faith skews their judgment. They believe their breakthrough is just around the corner, even if all the existing evidence suggests otherwise.”

This is a difficult moral argument for any CEO to reject – a difficulty compounded by the lack of impartial information in such a knowledge-specific industry. “One project manager’s specialty might be cardiovascular, another’s oncology,” said Oraiopoulos. “No one knows the science and potential of their product better than they do. They can present an accurate case on why their project deserves resources – or, consciously or subconsciously, mask its failings because no-one has the expertise to challenge them. So how does the CEO tell the difference?”

̽��ֱ��answer is trust and giving teams a compelling motivation to be honest. But a collective incentive has drawbacks. “If you’re leading one of five departments who are rewarded only for collective excellence,” said Oraiopoulos, “where’s your motivation? You might as well let the others carry you.”

And even financial incentive doesn’t necessarily work. “Many researchers’ greatest reward is completing their project,” said Oraiopoulos. “That means being consistently confident their boss supports their work.”

So what’s the solution? “Organisations are tackling it in different ways,” he said. “Some are creating smaller, individual units, for example, centres of excellence or turning departments into small start-ups, with defined budgets. Others are promoting more collaboration between departments.”

Swiss global healthcare company Roche did both. When it bought drug developer Genentech in 2009 it kept the two companies’ research and development sections separate, empowering its “late-stage development group” to pick the strongest project – and motivating the losing group by announcing it would develop its plans later. But while that worked with Alzheimer’s treatments, a more linked approach was required for fast-paced developments in cancer research. “ ̽��ֱ��need to understand the biology and right therapeutic approach requires the best minds,” said Roche’s head of oncology Jason Coloma. “We needed to leverage the knowledge in these divisions and break down some of these firewalls.”

̽��ֱ��company formed a cancer immunotherapy committee which, says Roche, “brings the leadership and senior scientific minds together to consider different areas of interest and unmet needs that can be fulfilled by looking at different combinations.”

Roche’s approach confirms Oraiopoulos’s findings that new products require a team strategy, while ‘me-too’ projects benefit from more individual approaches. But how to break down a colossal R&D function into start-up-style divisions?

GlaxoSmithKline replaced its research and development ‘pyramid’ with 12 centres of excellence. “We learned these centres must be built around two things,” its then CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier said later. “A specific mission – the most effective therapies for Alzheimer’s – and the stage of the R&D process required to perform that mission, for example choosing a target for attacking the disease. Anything not critical to the core R&D process must occur outside the centre. All other functions – toxicology, drug metabolism, formulation, had to become service units, delivering at the lowest possible cost.”

Simultaneously, GSK overhauled its incentives. “Pharmaceutical R&D typically pursues two objectives – to be first in class and to offer the best-in-class compound for attacking a disease. For too long the industry has tried to be a ballet dancer and a footballer at the same time.”

But he warned fragmenting a company needs commitment. “To operate in this fashion, companies must strengthen opportunities, negotiate deals and nurture external scientific ‘bets’ (work with outside experts). This means a cultural shift. It’s an enormous but necessary task.”

Oraiopoulos’s research suggests there are so many variables – different products, motivations, branches of medicine, organisational goals – each company must then find its own solution. Pfizer’s recent buy-out of Botox maker Allergan is expected to maintain separate divisions for innovative and established treatments, so how the company allocates its resources remains to be seen.

“You must strike a balance,” said Oraiopoulos, “between rewarding individual and group performance. It’s a spectrum and each company must find their place on it, for patients and for the advancement of treatments. Many companies are encountering this challenge. We’re only scratching the surface.”

Reference:
Schlapp, Oraiopoulos, and Mak: 'Resource Allocation Under Imperfect Evaluation.' Management Science (2015). DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2083

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Are you happy to share information with your colleagues? And do they share their valuable information with you? A number of companies have realised that withholding key information within organisational silos might happen more often that we might like to admit. Now a new study suggests how and when companies should restore meaningful communication across the organisation.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Fact: there is an I in team

sc604 — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 08:05:00 +0000

It’s one of the most well-worn clichés in business: there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’. But research by Dr Mark de Rond, Reader in Strategy & Organisation at Cambridge Judge Business School, demonstrates there is indeed a place for the individual within a team.

His book, There Is An I in Team, and his fieldwork with groups operating under high pressure – from elite rowers on the Cam to hard-pressed army surgeons at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan – has thrown up numerous questions that defy the conventional wisdom on teamwork.

Why do even highly effective teams often feel dysfunctional? High performers introduce risks – how can these be mitigated? When does it make sense to sacrifice competence for likeability? Why are teams best under-resourced? And why do problems arise in teams even when they’re not in conflict?

̽��ֱ��answers are never simple. But Dr de Rond’s work is being used by numerous companies, including the McLaren Group, Stonehage and KPMG, to enhance their teamworking.

Steve Hollis, chairman of the KPMG Midlands Region, says a leadership development programme delivered by Dr de Rond and rooted in his findings had a considerable impact on partners’ team management.

In particular, the sessions empowered all team members to speak out and challenge the status quo.

This has been particularly beneficial, Hollis adds, given that it is the younger team members who are in a position to give relevant input on electronic and social media communication.

̽��ֱ��Midlands region also had the fastest growing financial performance in the UK in 2012 – an outcome Hollis attributes directly to the application of Dr de Rond’s research.

“My work methods are very old-fashioned,” says Dr de Rond. “I study people by living with them full-time to try and tease out the subtle dynamics of teams of high performers. These are not ordinary teams. Theses are people who are forced to work together under difficult circumstances. They might inhabit hypercompetitive environments, like the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� boat crew, where up to 40 people compete for only eight places in a Boat Race against Oxford."

Or a highly emotional environment, like the surgeons at Camp Bastion. They operate on people who are young and horribly injured, wearing the same uniforms as they do, or on young children as collateral damage of the war.

I live with them to try and understand how, when people are pushed to the extremes, they continue to operate effectively – or not.

It’s important to understand these dynamics. Many people, de Rond points out, have no choice but to work together. A surgeon or a rower can’t achieve anything alone but have to learn to coordinate perfectly with individuals very like themselves and with whom they also compete at other levels.

This kind of finely detailed, qualitative research doesn’t offer any easy generalisations.

But it can come up with new ways of thinking – such as, for example, recognising that tension within teams isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Sometimes tensions are best left alone because they exist quite naturally,” says Dr de Rond. “ ̽��ֱ��teams I study are typically made up of people who are inherently competitive. That is how they got to where they are. To form them into a team and expect this need for rivalry to disappear is not realistic.

“In rowing, the only way to make a boat go fast is perfect coordination. You have to get eight people to synchronise. Even if you work harder than anyone else, if you lose synchronisation, you slow the boat down. So you effectively have an environment in which competition and collaboration co-exist and feed off each other.

"People compete for places in the team, yes, but they can only compete effectively by collaborating perfectly with the people they are competing against. That’s an extreme case. But there are versions of this in most working environments."

And Dr de Rond is continuing to explore the idea of team performance under high pressure. He has just returned from his latest fieldwork project – being a member of the first-ever team to row the entire length of the river Amazon – which, he says, may bring more new insights.

“There’s a common assumption that harmony is a prerequisite for performance, so if you and I get along, the better we will perform,” he says. “By contrast, experiments in social psychology show that harmony is more likely to be the consequence than cause of performance. But the Amazon experience suggests that the relationship between harmony and performance in teams is subtler. These things are very complicated. Much of what I try to do is get a more subtlety and nuance in human behaviour.”

Working on the Cam and at Camp Bastion, Dr Mark de Rond is turning the theory of teamwork on its head

These are not ordinary teams. Theses are people who are forced to work together under difficult circumstances

Mark de Rond

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Boat Club

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes