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«Общаясь очно, хотя бы за столом за чашкой чая, мы передаем друг другу какую-то энергию»
Remote work has become commonplace during the coronavirus pandemic and looks set to remain a permanent fixture in the labor market. But over the past few years, the arrangement has gradually become a source of frustration for employers (but not employees), and a survey of top managers conducted by KPMG shows that many companies will require employees to work exclusively in the office over the next three years. Kommersant spoke to Maxim Krongauz, director of the Institute of Language Conflictology and Modern Communication Practices at the Higher School of Economics, about whether online interaction is really less effective than in-person interaction. Find out why written communication has replaced oral communication as the primary method of communication between people.
— According to a survey by the consulting company KPMG, most top managers believe it is highly likely that employees will fully return to the office within the next few years. At the same time, despite the experience already accumulated both in the office and remotely, there are still no reliable conclusions about how these modes affect employee efficiency. But is it possible to relatively reliably compare the efficiency of remote communication between people as individual elements of remote work? Is online communication inferior to live communication and in what ways?
— To answer this question, I think it is necessary to say a few words about the difference between written and spoken language. Oral communication arose first, but when oral communication suddenly disappeared and became possible in a limited space, written communication appeared. It took humanity thousands of years to figure out exactly how to do this. Initially, written language was used to solve a number of urgent problems, including recording crops and providing communication with remote areas. Then, gradually, written language became less and less practical, and thus literature arose.
Written and spoken language also have different internal characteristics. Oral speech always tends to be conversational. Written speech consists of monologues, narratives. Because of this, their vocabulary and syntax are different. For example, oral speech is always simpler in structure than written speech. That is, it involves less complex linguistic constructions and complex syntactic transitions. This is because spoken language is linear and cannot be heard again. Spoken language must be understood at the moment it is spoken.
The advent of the Internet has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. What's going on? In the Internet era, we began communicating through writing, which required a restructuring of the written language. When we communicate orally, we convey some information through gestures, facial expressions, and intonation. Written language, whose original function was to store and transmit information over a distance, did not have such an emotional palette. For example, emoji, Capslock volumes, and the use of fonts to depict accents are beginning to develop rapidly.
— So, oral and written speech have sort of swapped places?
- Yes, you could say that. But because of that, the value of writing began to decline sharply. Writing required mastery of several important skills and was intended for a limited audience. Now we all write letters to each other. As if we all knew how to do it, as if we could talk.
— How has this major shift in written communication affected business communication?
— There is also competition between oral and written speech. If it used to be easier to call a colleague to discuss some issues, now such a call must be agreed to in writing in advance. For the same reason, voice messages irritate many. We are already familiar with the fact that the main communication is recorded.
— How has the coronavirus pandemic affected this situation? Ultimately, in 2020, many people were unable to meet and communicate in person.
— As far as we remember, some methods of remote video communication were developed even before the pandemic. There was Skype, which was popular, and Zoom, which was not so popular. However, due to the pandemic, this method of communication has only appeared now and has become the only acceptable method. Such communication has become routine, and we very quickly noticed its pros and cons.
— The advantages of online communication are obvious. First of all, speed and comfort. Another important feature is that it can hide many things. Well, a person does not want the interlocutor to see his facial expressions. He turns off the camera in Zoom and communicates only by voice. It is clear that we have had many episodes when these boundaries were misunderstood. For example, someone can lie in bed and think that a colleague who was present at the meeting did not notice. But it is still convenient.
— Online communication is purely functional and of little interest to people. Remember how many people tried to organize Zoom parties at the beginning of the pandemic? Yes, people were ready to communicate like that during quarantine, but as soon as anti-pandemic restrictions were lifted, Zoom parties were forgotten. At parties, we get close to people, create a kind of spontaneous communication and wait for the opportunity to accidentally talk to each other. None of this is possible in Zoom. Also, when we talk in person, even sitting at a table and drinking a cup of tea, we transmit a kind of energy to each other. In Zoom, this is not the case.
— How do these advantages and disadvantages of online communication manifest themselves in business communication that occurs between employees? Between employees and management?
- Online communication increases distance. It is not advantageous for the boss. It is advantageous for the employees. Employees can choose how to behave and what to hide, but bosses are faced with the need to manage their subordinates differently. Control is very important for managers, but in online communication, control is distant and weak.
If their relationship is built on fear, it becomes harder for them to continue to build that relationship online. It is much easier to threaten someone in person than to threaten them remotely. It is harder to talk to someone through a screen than to talk to them in person.
Motivating people online is also harder than in person, so you have to manage your team of employees differently than ever before. And when the team itself gets big, it starts to fall apart in some ways. People interact less naturally and care less about each other. In other words, going online only is risky because it conveys information but loses the emotional connections, both positive and negative. The best option is obviously a hybrid. You need to think about what can be done offline and what can be done online. But giving up online completely would be pretty stupid.
— But is there still a correct type of communication?
— If we are talking about a business meeting, online is probably preferable for most participants. You don’t have to go anywhere, you can sit comfortably without pants. I was finally able to turn off the camera and focus on work. This is what people need, too. If the situation at home is a hindrance, you can go to a cafe.
— Communicative behavior, including communication methods, differ depending on nationality. For example, Yu. As he and E. Prokhorov successfully showed in their work “Russians: Communicative Behavior,” all people have certain characteristics, including Russians. A. Sternin. Do these characteristics allow us to say that some countries are better adapted to online communication than others?
— For the emotional Russian culture, the losses on the Internet are more significant. Of course, we are not southerners, but it is important to feel who you are talking to. Perhaps, at first it is not so easy for us to interact with each other, but after a certain point we easily cross personal boundaries. And vice versa, it will be easier for the average European to find a common language with a stranger immediately, but not beyond a certain point. The screen itself sets certain boundaries and rather prevents Russians from implementing typical communication models. In Zoom, you cannot “press the buttons” of your interlocutors, like the characters in Chekhov’s works.
However, English-speaking cultures adapt more easily to the online world because of different communication patterns and because English is already a global language. People who are culturally distant from each other have been communicating in English for decades.