Striking The Balance Between Technology And Humanity To Thrive In The Post Covid World

By Mimi Nicklin

After weeks of home working the uptake of digital platforms as a leading connection point to the world of work has been deeply entrenched. These behaviors will not disappear once the lockdown is over and it’s very likely that people who have been forced to adopt digital practices will continue these habitually going forward. This is a good thing. It enables us to work without geographical boundaries and to create flexible team structures and environments that can create people centric culture, however it does come with a warning label. Whilst technology makes it ever easier to communicate,  it also makes it ever harder to empathize.

Empathy is our social glue. It is the facet that allows us to connect and engage as people, and very often this can be made harder when we are separated by screens. A relationship built and managed at distance will never be the same as being in the same room to see and hear your audience in real life. However much we may believe in technology’s increasing ability to drive connectivity, the importance of human connectivity can never be underestimated.

As the corporate world grapples with ever increasing levels of loneliness and anxiety sweeping workplaces, and detrimentally impacting both performance and motivation levels, the post Covid leader’s role will be heightened when it comes to balancing the increased leverage of technology with humanity.  The creation of another app for your teams, members or clients will not solve (entirely) for the need  to be seen and heard as people first, face to face. If our teams are to thrive as cohesive unit’s technology needs to play a positive role in fueling part of the solution for greater social understanding. It will be the human beings behind the usage that ensure this is so. The parameters and approach with which we leverage our machine led engagements are of paramount importance when we remove the physical ability to sense people’s moods, read body language and reflect on someone’s behaviour. Especially when this is over an extended period of time.

It can be easy to let technology systematically override thoughtful, people-led experience versus simply seeing these mechanisms as the enabling mediums they are supposed to be. Technological interventions can undoubtedly strengthen our connectivity, but our virtual connections can weaken our cohesion as people if we let them. Technology isn’t going away, and nor should we want it to, but we must be aware that these digital mediums can exaggerate anti-social and polarised positions that evolve into loneliness as our teams sit with a screen as their only door to the corporate culture within which they belong.

Ultimately technology is only as powerfully positive as the people behind it. The balance of our digital engagement with our real-world empathy is to be managed with focus if we are to avoid seeing our performance dissipate along with the virus that sped us into these hyper tech-led relationships in the first place.