Face time vs. Zoom time?

A reprise of a blog post on 24 November 2010

On 21 June 2026 The New York Times printed an article by. Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel entitled: “We Liked Remote Work Until We Looked at the Data”, the gist of which was that more than half of the remote workers they surveyed feel “less connected to their colleagues.”

This triggered a reawakening of my concerns about a problem growing out of the Covid-19 pandemic: the sudden shock of converting normal office work to telecommuting/remote work, without any preparation beforehand, would cause worker anomie (feeling left out) and other ill-effects. This research validates that worry.

It need not have been that way if all those concerned had been given some pre-pandemic training (as well as post-pandemic reinforcement) that focused on maintaining group communication, among other topics. That brought to mind a blog post I had made in 2010, reproduced next.

The post

There has been a recurrent question about the viability of telework ever since we first started our research. The focus of the concern was the need—or lack thereof—for face-to-face interaction in order to have success at X, where X is whatever work outcome is at issue. That is, is your average teleworker at a disadvantage because she substitutes Facebook (or Skype or Twitter) time for in-office face time? On 15 November 2010 the Financial Times published two articles, both focusing on business education, relevant to this problem. The first article, on page 16 of the US edition, discussed the plans of the Kenan-Flagler School at the University of North Carolina to offer an MBA via distance learning. As to the demand for such a program:

“It really brings together a lot of trends we have seen around the world,” says the dean, in particular students’ willingness to use the technology. “The population of students, people in their 20s and 30s, are so comfortable with technology and technology-mediated learning.”

Further into the article we have:

“Five years down the line I think essentially everything we do will be online,” [Chris Brady, dean of the business school at BPP] says. He believes students will be able to choose whether to study online or in a classroom, depending on convenience and cost. “Even if you are a student studying face-to-face, you would still have access to everything online.” He believes this will be the path taken by most mid-range schools. “If they don’t, they can’t grow.”

All this is particularly interesting to me since Stanford University and the University of Southern California began giving MS in Engineering degrees in the early 1970s, 35+ years before this innovation among the business schools. But then, engineers don’t really need to be able to talk to other people face-to-face, right? In general, these engineers showed up on campus only twice: once to register for the courses, the next time to accept their MS degrees. Now, of course, they can register online.

For contrast we have the second article in the FT on page 17, by Sir Andrew Likierman, titled: Technology enhances but never substitutes. The crux of Sir Andrew’s argument is:

Learning in a group enables participants to pick up the subtleties of the interactions that are essential to management. The ability to understand not only what is said, but what is not, to negotiate and ultimately persuade is as important as having the right facts. Debating with faculty and fellow students builds the confidence to put forward ideas.

In the early 1970s, with its relative dearth of rich technologies, Sir Andrew’s point would have been quite appropriate. But now, I’m not so sure. In those early i-days one of my colleagues complained that she had to spend far too much time going around to her co-workers explaining what her emails actually meant (as opposed to what they thought she meant). Email is not a rich technology. But with the blossoming of several so-called social networking technologies the pallet of communicating options has grown to where many subtleties of interaction are available that were considered unlikely even a decade ago.

One of the key issues in designing telework programs is determining the allowable/desirable frequency of teleworking versus in-office face time. As Sir Andrew insisted, an important part of managing involves mastering the subtleties of effective communication with other human beings. Really effective communication long has been thought to require looking the other guy in the eye. Well, at least some of the time.

In my opinion, given the technology available today, 90%+ of most business situations (other than the obvious hands-on things like your annual medical checkup) do not require face-time; Facebook time (or its equivalent) may suffice. Except for those folks who are technology-challenged.

Yet tradition still seems to have an iron grip among the over-30s. As has been the case since the 1970s far fewer people are actually teleworking today—and wasting far too much energy in the process—than could be.

Today: the subtlety hunt

In 2026 the progress of technology has done much to increase communication subtleties. Zoom or similar calls are almost daily occurrences for many Americans. But office work still has its problems. My research team in the mid-1980s, in anticipation of such problems, developed a training segment that focused on maintaining high quality communications wherever the locations of the communicants. A good part of the feeling of “togetherness” comes from enabling that communication.

We taught the remote workers to be proactive about communicating with their group members; not to wait in hopes of receiving calls. Often, you can tell whether someone is feeling well or poorly just by the tone of voice. We taught the managers of remote workers to check that effective communications were happening. We included periodic face-to-face sessions (the hybrid part of the work) to fill in those spots that technologies didn’t support well.

When all those things happened, the feelings of anomie pretty much disappeared, even where some group members were too far away for other than occasional face-to-face meetings.

With a little foresight, planning and training, remote work works well.