ZOOMing out on Personal Space!!

The last 8 months have been all about zooming into work at home and zooming out of home and work. Either ways the boundaries of work and home seem permanently blurred. Homes have multiple ‘Zoom’ corners now- school, office, walking groups of seniors, friends catching up, colleagues having intense conversations- the world has come closer and yet remains distanced. The last 8 months have been a constant source of anxiety, adjustments, treading with caution and taking every day as it comes. This seems akin to the Bruce Tuckman’s 4 stages of group formation of forming, storming, norming and performing. None of this seemed even remotely possible on March 16 2020.

1. March/April (First 3-4 weeks)- Forming stage: Offices closed and country went into lockdown in the 2 week of March. Lots of positive messaging happened. Most of us believed that this is a 3-4-week adjustment. These two weeks were also the time when domestic help (maids) stopped coming for the first time ever, and we had to cook and clean. New vocab ranging from social distancing, masks, sanitizers, lock down etc. crept in. Work during this phase was the easiest if one had a good internet connection at home and a sorted seating space. The workloads seemed quite manageable and everyone at home were happy that we got to spend a lot of time together and to top it all no traffic jams and some healthy doses of Netflix during breaks.

2.      June/July (4 to 6 weeks) Forming to Storming Stage: The initial euphoria of working from home was over and the house system now was in order, with responsibilities assigned for doing specific tasks at home. For some strange reason, working hours started becoming very erratic. The meetings would start earlier in the day like 8:30am (during office we started our meetings only at 9:30am) and went on till 8:30pm and most days without lunch, dinner or the 15-min tea breaks. The simple pleasures of having chai at the adda, catching up with friends, having lunch with colleagues, travelling for work seemed like a different life.

3.      August/September- Storming Stage: The meetings, the reviews the presentations continued beyond 8:30pm and weekdays extended to weekends. Every person, irrespective of hierarchy was putting in extra hours and shifting screens from meeting to meeting.  The personal and work space got completely blurred. On the work front, pleasantries became a rarity and every call was perfectly timed to have sharp and objective discussions and move on to the next. The sound of laughter in the corridors was replaced by intense and time-bound conversations.

4.    October and Beyond-Storming to Norming Stage: The world has opened and so have offices. The work timings continue to be erratic but there is a certain method in the madness now. Consciously making time for lunch to finding an hour in the evening to connect with folks at home has started. We seem to be in the norming stage. However, the threat looms large of slipping back to storming, instead of moving to performing stage. 

If we were to enter and stay in the performing phase, do we need to create more norms and boundaries or reduce them? ‘If we need to go far, go together’, says an African proverb, I am still wondering how can we take everyone along while we rebuild a new work ethic? How do we reduce the collective burn-out? How do we stay engaged, energized, safe and sane?