The Pajama Effect: Humans@WORK, #1

For K1, K2 and K3

Table of Contents

Fast Forward

This book began as Chapter 8 in a textbook that I wrote with Dr. Yoany Beldarrain, in 2011. That book, Anonymity in Digitally Mediated Communications: Trust and Authenticity in Cyber Education, was the first and last textbook I will ever write. I knew when I wrote the chapter I would write the book. I have been dealing with the virtual workplace for almost 15 years now. I have seen many really good, reliable, smart and creative people struggle. I became very interested in what behaviors people needed to succeed. In early 2011, I began conducting research. I surveyed many virtual workers from all over the country. I had conversations and held focus groups. The Pajama Effect is a result of that research. I thank all the ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) chapters that participated, all the volunteers who took the survey, and all the people who agreed to have the critical conversations and share their thoughts and frustrations with me.

I also want to thank everyone from the DLA (Distance Learning Association) annual events put on by the University of West Georgia and ASTD, as well as the many corporate, organizational and non-profit virtual volunteers who agreed to pilot test the RAI, or Respond-Ability Index. Your input and comments helped me make the RAI easy to use, online and readily available to everyone.

The purpose of the RAI and this entire project was, and is, to help people. Always remember that the respond-abilities are behaviors and behaviors can be changed. You can learn any of these with enough desire and practice. Also keep in mind that the secret to changing behavior is changing thinking first.

The 21st century will continue to bring us an avalanche of expansive change. Some of the technologies that I used as examples just a few years ago when I started this project are now obsolete. As we move forward in the 21st century and become more entrenched and dependent on virtual workers, we will find it necessary to teach these skills at a younger and younger age. Everyone can benefit from the ability to respond and not react, but for people in the virtual environment, this ability is essential.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My husband, Alex Baggio, and adult children, Bert, Alexa and Tori, have been listening to me talk about The Pajama Effect for quite some time now. I thank them for their patience, thoughts, encouragement and input. And I thank them for their friends, some of whom made the Meet... sections in Chapters 4 – 8. I also thank my learners, colleagues and friends who gave me support and encouragement.

I am sure The Pajama Effect will be with us for a long time to come. Our ability to adapt to change and new environments, even though we are out of our element, is what makes us human and what makes our evolution so exciting and blessed. The rate of change with technologies has not, and will not, slowdown in the foreseeable future. As we move forward, it will be even more important to be in charge of our own responses. After all, we can’t control people, technologies or the future; we can only control ourselves and how we respond to those continuing forces.

Introduction

Increasingly available new technologies and ways to connect have caused radical changes in the ways humans communicate, blurring the lines between different aspects of life. The Pajama Effect is the result of these changes. It describes a psychological and behavioral shift human beings experience when working in a physically detached and virtually connected world. This change puts them out of their element and vulnerable to a new environment, isolation and other challenges.

The economics of the 21st century has inspired companies and organizations to embrace the virtual environment to both increase productivity and lower costs. Digital technologies have given us increased speed, connectivity and independence. These advances offer us a more flexible and mobile way to work and live, yet the impact of these technologies on human beings is only beginning to be understood. The digital age came upon all of us with excessive speed. The rate of change and adaption is unlike anything we have ever seen, and that rate of change is increasing.

The online world has little respect for time, space and place. The 9-to-5 day no longer applies in a 24/7/365 world. It is difficult to know when work stops and play starts, or when to call it a day and say, Enough is enough. People work from home, cars, hotels, and just about anywhere in increasing numbers. Telecommuters and workshifters have grown in number to more than 50 million workers and that is probably an underestimation. This also impacts learning, schools and training. Almost no industry is impervious. Even if you are a landscape contractor, with teams of people digging in the dirt, chances are you connect remotely and use technologies to accomplish some of what you do. The tools that connect us, and how we use them, are limited only by our imaginations. This ability to connect from anywhere with anyone is now part of our social fabric. We are all becoming a part of a technologically connected global culture that blends work, play and learning online. This affects every facet of our lives.

We are more connected and we are more mobile. We have access around the clock to colleagues, friends, family and shopping. All of this connecting has increased distractions. People are texting when driving, in meetings and in the checkout line. We need many conversations about what is appropriate and when, yet those discussions seem to be missing from our daily lives. The same scenes play out in restaurants, meeting rooms and homes: instead of focusing on being out to dinner with our significant other, we are on a cellphone, responding to a client; instead of listening during a meeting, we are texting our kids; instead of relaxing on the sofa, we are checking work emails.

The impact of this connectivity and our response to it has affected the way we live and our language. From LOL (laughing out loud) to TTYS (talk to you soon), we have created shortcuts that are acceptable in the digitally connected world, shortcuts that are more informal and increasingly more accepted. Just a few years ago, the digital world was seen as less-than, in education, publishing and many other areas. All that has changed. Newspapers are struggling to keep print versions alive; more students than ever are taking online courses, with 18 of the top 20 universities offering MOOCs (massive online open courses) for free. Language is what connects us and describes the way we live our lives and view ourselves. Our world is becoming more equal, more democratized and more open. The structures, boundaries and limits of the 20th century are breaking down both in society at large and in our personal lives. We can work with people around the globe and never leave our own home. Remaining connected and working or playing from anywhere is simple enough, thanks to technology.

This constant connectivity has influenced the way we act and react to its intrusion. Expectations are changed as roles and boundaries are blurred. Our personal time is vanishing and our schedules are becoming more flexible. We blend different roles, multiple tasks and new ways of doing things. There is an impact on human identity – on who we are and how we behave. Working, playing and learning have become so blended in our society that being ubiquitous has become second nature. We expect instant access and, for the most part, we get it. Instant access has become a necessity for getting things done and for our way of life.

Thanks to these technologies, the norms governing how we interact with coworkers, friends, family and society are also changing. The Pajama Effect has altered the expectations and approaches that came with us from the industrial age. There are conscious and unconscious elements at play in the virtual world. It is quite possible for virtual workers to be more productive, more relaxed and more in control of their lives but it is also possible for the exact opposite to occur.

It all depends on how each individual thinks and behaves – on the ability to respond and not just react. Distractions abound in the virtual environment, from advertisements, websites, social media and video everywhere to family obligations and love. The virtual environment can pull you off task and out of your element. To be successful working and leading in this new environment, you need to possess certain abilities.

The Pajama Effect has an impact not only on you, but it will influence the culture for generations to come. The future will be filled with remarkable challenges. We are in a unique position, leading the way forward on the technological frontier. It is our responsibility to teach the new generation skills it will need to be successful in the future. Although the challenges faced will be much different, the underlying struggle will be the same: the next generation will have to respond to changes when the boundaries and constraints of today’s workplace have been removed. There will still be only 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year.

The good news is those challenges can be met not just by where we work, but how we work. The virtual workplace has characteristics very different than most traditional office environments. The digital office is characterized by openness, vulnerability, personal privacy, informality and detachment. As a result, we have increased flexibility, less external direction and a different kind of stress. There are things we can do to balance personal and professional responsibilities. This balance is essential for success.

New technologies will continue to unfold. Holograms, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and faster, more integrated gadgets are sure to play a role in future forms of communication. These, too, will cause us to re-evaluate our psychological states and behaviors. The Pajama Effect will continue to be part of how we blend our private and professional lives for a long time to come. We will always have to find new ways of coping with unavoidable changes. The environments that we consider normal now will soon be outdated and replaced. Once again, we will be out of our element and dealing with a new environment where the boundaries and constraints no longer apply.

Chapter 1: Why Go to the Office?

Work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."

—Sam Ewing

Over the course of a year, 50 million people worldwide will begin the day by waking up in the morning, pouring a cup of enthusiasm and then walking into their offices in pajamas or whatever suits them.

Whether that office is the kitchen table, the basement or a hotel room, these individuals experience unique benefits – but not without challenges. Take Kelly, for example, who enjoys the flexibility of working from home because she has a small child. Yet, on any given day, you may find Kelly simultaneously doing the laundry, chasing her 3-year-old and typing a report, all while she waits for a scheduled web conference to begin. Then there is Robert, who used to get up at 4 a.m. to beat traffic and make it to the office on time. His new job is remote but requires that he collaborate with his teammates on a regular basis. His teammates, however, don’t live on the same continent; one is in Madrid and the other one in Beijing. Both Kelly and Robert cannot successfully perform their jobs unless they make mental and physical shifts.

The term workshifting is used to describe what happens when people find themselves working out of trains, hotel lobbies or from their kitchen tables (Lister & Harnish, 2010). The idea of working or going to school in your pajamas is not a new concept. There are plenty of ads out there highlighting the advantages of working or learning through digitally mediated tools. Among the advantages portrayed: staying in your pajamas or, at least, not having to wear business attire. Currently, there is increased interest in working virtually because organizations now rely on technology to do more with less.

The Pajama Effect, however, is more than changing your work location from the traditional office space to a corner of your home or hotel room. The Pajama Effect is a state of being where you find yourself out of your element and where normal constraints and boundaries no longer apply. The Pajama Effect involves a psychological and then behavioral shift. To function best in this dramatically different environment, you must focus on what it takes to be successful in the virtual world. This new workplace wilderness is an environment that is physically detached, where the conventional structure of the workplace has vanished. Interruptions and distractions abound, making it difficult to get the job done.

The Pajama Effect is a phenomenon brought about by the breaking down of walls. This absence of tradition and structure creates flexibility and new responsibilities affecting every facet of personal and professional life. Smartphones and digital communications have changed the 9-to-5 workday to a 24/7/365 never-ending cycle. You find yourself answering work emails while watching your child’s baseball game or texting your friend during an Internet-based business conference. There are more demands placed on your time than ever before and instant responses are expected. The Pajama Effect helps you understand what it takes to function successfully as you work in this detached yet highly connected and demanding world.

Emergence of the Virtual Office

How did we get here? It all happened very fast, and there are no signs of it slowing down. For example, the story you may read today goes viral within 24 hours but then, within another 24 hours or less, it is considered old news. New fortunes are made and reputations are destroyed overnight. There is no time for psychological gestation or conscious absorption before we are on to the next thing. The pace at which we live is continually becoming faster.

It is important to understand how we got here in order to see where we are headed. Let’s take a trip down memory lane, back to the year 1999. That certainly was a big year; it may have been the year of biggest change. Situated at the dawn of the 21st century, in 1999, we were surrounded by exciting technological advancements yet many of us went to the office wearing a suit and faithfully following a 9-to-5 routine. We did not realize the potential of these advancements. In the meantime, programmers around the globe scrambled to make sure 1999 could turn into the year 2000 and the earth would keep on spinning. (Remember the fears about Y2K?) Even after all the 9s safely became 0s, some of us were partying like it was 1999 because we did not fully understand how technology was affecting our lives. Radical and dramatic changes had already begun.

The year 2000 doesn’t seem that long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was in high school. Google was an infant corporation and Microsoft was the evil empire. There was no iPad, no iPod and no iTunes. We had Learning Management Systems, but Web 2.0 was only a buzzword and the presidential election depended on counting votes on punch-style paper ballots. As we moved to a 3G network, connectivity increased, as did outsourcing and the use of digitally mediated communications. The barriers of time and place were slowly but permanently being blurred, affecting individuals, organizations and society at large.

The impact of these technological advancements is evident in the swift economic changes that now affect how you earn a living, especially as the economic position of the United States on the world stage has changed drastically. With the dollar value plummeting, only 36 percent of the top 500 global companies are now U.S.-based. China, the sleeping giant, has awakened and taken the lead in many areas of commerce. Brazil, Russia, India and China (known as the BRIC countries) are some of the fastest growing economies in the world. These, by the way, are the same countries to which the U.S. outsourced manufacturing, technology, accounting and production jobs not so long ago. The outsourcing trend altered western economies, making them no longer based on the production of goods or services. As a result, these economies evolved to include the knowledge worker (Lesonsky, 2011) as a key player in a company’s success.

The term knowledge worker originally meant one who works primarily with information or who develops or uses knowledge in the workplace. In today’s workplace, it commonly describes individuals who are experts in a certain subject area.

For a brief moment in time, it seemed that knowledge workers were not part of the outsourcing trend. Then technology caused the world to shrink, opening previously unforeseen possibilities. Knowledge workers in remote locations emerged. The lines between knowledge and information blurred, but both became available without anyone having to leave home.

Today, information and expertise are shared in nanoseconds, regardless of geographic locations or time zones. Whether it is the outsourced doctor in a remote country who reviews your child’s x-ray while you wait at your local emergency room, or the programmers in India who write the code that runs the New York Stock Exchange, knowledge is shared around the globe. Many positions are staffed from the global labor market and many jobs today require virtual teaming and collaboration. This new type of worker is not bound by traditional office rules. Today’s worker has the challenge of adapting to the demands of the virtual office. Digital connectivity has made knowledge a temporary thing, because new knowledge is generated constantly. Even new products and ideas are quickly outdated because someone else across the globe builds and creates a new product or idea. As Bill Gates reportedly once put it, Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

The changes affecting our global workforce are broader in scope than just the change from factory worker to knowledge worker. Because we have gone from stationary to mobile and from analog to digital, the make-up of the global workforce has rapidly changed. Many baby boomers and digital immigrants now find themselves out of jobs, struggling to go back into a job market dominated by technology. Digital immigrants by definition are all the folks who were born before the PC age, even if they owned the original Atari or played Pac-Man or Pong. Unless they update their skills, these digital immigrants stand no chance when competing in the job market with digital natives, who were born surrounded by electronic technology. Digital natives work online, they live online and they socialize online. They expect technologies to be part of how they live, work and play. They do not know life without digital connectivity.

Even though the majority of workers today still work in a traditional office, more people find themselves workshifting. In 1995, when author and computer expert Woody Leonhard wrote, Work is something you do, not something you travel to, he probably realized that what affects the bottom line of a business is that the job gets done, regardless of location. The terms telecommuting and telecommute were first used by University of Southern California researcher Jack Nilles in 1973. Today, telecommuters may work from home a few hours per week or the entire week. If you are one of them, you may or may not work in your pajamas and you may or may not have to collaborate with someone in a different time zone, but the effect is the same. You are working remotely and you live by connecting in the virtual environment.

In this book, the terms virtual worker’ and pajama worker are used interchangeably to mean a person who uses technologies to work, play or learn virtually. The terms virtual office and virtual workplace are used interchangeably to describe where the virtual worker works."

The virtual environment is very different from that of a traditional office. You are not in a physical location provided for and directly controlled by your employer. As a virtual worker, you work from home, on the train, at coffee shops,