{"id":962,"date":"2021-11-12T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/?p=962"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:07:17","slug":"measuring-remote-team-productivity-or-when-it-all-goes-wrong-part-5-of-5-keeping-work-in-its-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Remote Team Productivity or When It All Goes Wrong Part 5 of 5 Keeping work in its place"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

This is the fifth and final article in a series about keeping work in its place<\/b>.
\n As a reminder: emails are equivalent to messaging and I’m specifically
\nreferring to work situations involving remote teachers and students in
\neducational contexts.<\/p>\n

This last article is a grab bag of smaller stories to wrap up my topic of Keeping Work In Its Place<\/b>. I’ll prime you where we are going so that you can keep up.<\/p>\n

Measuring Remote Team Productivity<\/b> is about using spreadsheets to discover the chilling truth that remote workers tend to over <\/i>work, not under work.<\/p>\n

Take a Chill Pill<\/b> is about directing students to be responsible unto themselves. It’s not a sin. <\/p>\n

Slow Down Responding To Students<\/b>
\n is about supporting and backing up remote teachers so that if they do
\nnot answer a message, there is a support system filling in the whys and
\nhows.<\/p>\n

What Happens When It All Goes Wrong<\/b> is
\nHeather’s own story of checking email during a vacation, that lead to
\nthe direst of consequences. What was lost was more important than a job.<\/p>\n

Education Is An Insatiable Monster <\/b>–
\n I’ve been tagging these articles with this phrase all along. It’s the
\nunpleasant underbelly of the education profession. I’ll explain what the
\n problem is. Spoiler alert: I don’t have a tidy solution.<\/u><\/p>\n

Measuring Remote Team Productivity<\/h2>\n
For this story, I have to go backwards in time quite a bit and then forward in time.<\/div>\n

Many
\n years ago, when I was within my first few years of working full time
\nremotely, the university I worked for started a data collection effort. 
\n We had to fill in spreadsheets of every work activity we did down to
\nthe 5-minute increment.  To which, smarmy Heather asked her boss if she
\ncould create a category for her time called Filling in the Damn
\nSpreadsheet. My good-hearted boss said yes.<\/p>\n

What predicated this
\ncensus of remote activity was a long-standing belief (that has NEVER
\nGONE AWAY) that remote workers are lazy and don\u2019t actually work if they
\ncan help it.  Human Resources had reported that remote workers were not
\ntaking time off. Bosses put their suspicions and the HR data together
\nand said \u201cAh ha!  Everyone is out there relaxing. They are not working
\nat all! They are eating bon-bons, sitting in the sunshine and answering
\nan email or two once in a while! That explains why our success rate
\nnever rises!”<\/p>\n

So we filled out the spreadsheets for weeks and sent them in.<\/p>\n

The results chilled our bosses to their bones. It didn\u2019t surprise us remote workers at all.<\/p>\n

Folks were actually overworking.<\/b><\/p>\n

Anyone who was scheduled for an 8 hour day was actually working 10 hours.<\/p>\n

Anyone who was scheduled for a 10 hour day was actually working closer to 12 hours.<\/p>\n

The reason no one was taking leave was because we felt like we <\/u>could not<\/u><\/b> take leave<\/u>. 
\n The punishment, in terms of catching up on or worse, student loss, was
\ntoo devastating to risk.  So folks worked all the time; we worked
\nthrough holidays, sicknesses, everything.  There were many times when
\nfolks were ON WORK TRIPS doing work right in front of the university and
\n folks would have their laptop open, typing away on emails during
\ntraining sessions. When asked why, the answer was \u201cIf I don\u2019t answer
\nthese emails now, I\u2019ll never catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take a chill pill<\/h2>\n

One
\n time when I was on one of these work trips, I was caught by one of my
\ncolleagues walking down the street, literally with my hands in my
\npockets looking like the embodiment of relaxation. She said \u201cWhy do you
\nlook so different to everyone else here, who is basically panicking?\u201d I
\nsaid \u201cBecause I told my students to shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now\u2026I actually did
\nsay that to her, my colleague, because that language was acceptable with
\n her. But I didn\u2019t say \u201cshut up\u201d to my students. I professionally
\ninformed them that I would be traveling for work and that for a few
\ndays, they would have to make do on their own. Translation: Find your
\nown ISBN number for the Chemistry textbook!<\/p>\n

And I lived.<\/p>\n

Did I mention I earned a 100% satisfaction rating from my students?<\/p>\n

The
\n end of that story is that 3 hours a day of emails was, in my experience
\n for that job, normal. I was not going to budge on that. And I was NOT
\ngoing to suspect my faculty, once I became a manager, of being lazy.<\/p>\n

Slow Down Responding to Students<\/h2>\n

We
\n had an expectation to answer student emails within 4 working hours of
\nreceiving the email. Most of the time, we hit that metric \u2018with bells
\non\u2019 but I never cracked down on my team on that metric. I would hold
\nthem back when an email was from an –ahem– upset (that\u2019s a very <\/i>kind
\n word) student. I told them, \u201cIf anyone asks, I\u2019m taking responsibility
\nfor you not answering that email today. I\u2019m specifically asking you to
\nNOT answer that email today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

I have learned from personal experience that<\/p>\n

the email you write tomorrow will always be better than the email you write today.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is that?<\/p>\n

Forgiveness.<\/b>
\n I had learned that with time (an overnight, often) I could be much
\nkinder and forgiving of my students. I could answer better.  I might
\nhave thought of more solutions.<\/p>\n

So as a boss, I\u2019d ask my faculty
\nto put on forgiveness \u201clike a shirt.\u201d I said \u201cYou don\u2019t have to mean it,
\n but I want you to truly try this. You have to be authentically looking
\nat this problem from the student\u2019s perspective\u201d (aka remember the days
\nYOU struggled in college).  Many times, a student was simply being
\ndifficult because they felt that they were hurt by us first<\/u>. It was a tit-for-tat war breaking out. But we could stop it.<\/p>\n

Even
\n if a student was wrong in every possible way, we could find forgiveness
\n for them. My favorite line was \u201cNo one wanted this to happen to you\u201d
\nbecause it was true! We didn\u2019t want our students to have difficulties!
\nStarting with that acknowledgement and pouring forgiveness on the
\nstudent solved many problems. (To be clear, you can forgive a student
\neven if the student is totally in the wrong. This isn’t about being
\ndumb, it’s about being hyper-aware of their perspective. This is active
\n listening, in other words, in action. You listen, but you don’t necessarily agree.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

The
\n most common response after we had composed a kind, understanding email
\nwas \u201cOh thank you! I was so upset! I\u2019m sorry. It\u2019s just been so hard to
\ngo to college with\u2026\u201d and you\u2019d get the backstory.  I was amazed at the
\nbackstories that had nothing to do with the problem at hand but you\u2019d
\nlearn that the student was facing some unimaginable<\/i> obstacles.<\/p>\n

Adding
\n in time and forgiveness meant that a great deal of student issues never
\n had to go past me and go to my bosses. Problem solved. <\/p>\n

(P.S. If
\n you’d like more tips on what to say to slow down to responding to
\nstudents or how to craft off-hours email coverage – ask me!)<\/p>\n

What Happens When It All Goes Wrong<\/b><\/h2>\n

OK,
\n what happens when Heather doesn\u2019t follow her own advice?  What happens
\nwhen she checks email on her day off, in the middle of a vacation? She
\nworked when she should not have been working.<\/p>\n

Oh, it got ugly fast.<\/p>\n

I
\n can\u2019t remember the impetus but I checked my email on a Monday in the
\nmiddle of my annual birthday week off. I must have been thinking \u201cOh, I
\nneed to check on this other issue something-or-other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To my
\nhorror, there in my inbox was notification that a major accreditor of
\nour coursework was pulling accreditation because they didn\u2019t find one of
\n my courses to be rigorous enough.  If we lost that accreditation, I\u2019d
\nlose faculty immediately because about \u00bc of the university would close. I
\n sat there, tears welling in my eyes thinking \u201cOh my God, what are we
\ngoing to do?\u201d I saw others on the email thread. So somehow, I shut down
\nmy computer, gulped back my tears, and hoped that if it was necessary
\nfor me to come into work from vacation, my boss would let me know. But
\nit was Monday and I would not be back at work for 8 more days. There was
\n plenty of time for the worst to happen. With me out, around 4 of my
\nfaculty could be unceremoniously fired before I came back.<\/p>\n

I worried every minute of the next 8 days.  Vacation destroyed.<\/p>\n

When
\n I came back into work and started reading through my emails, I found
\nout what happened. One person on the thread had replied, \u201cHey, I know
\nthe chief accreditor. I\u2019ll give them a call.\u201d  So the accreditor was
\ncalled.  The rigor of my course was explained. A little back room \u201cHey,
\nit\u2019s all good, whatcha gettin worked up about\u201d conversation and problem
\nsolved.<\/p>\n

No one was fired.<\/p>\n

No one was dumped.<\/p>\n

But I lost my vacation. All because I checked my email when I wasn\u2019t supposed to.<\/p>\n

So
\n I share this story because I know plenty of folks are going to counter
\nthis Keep Work In Its Place series with comments like \u201cIt\u2019s all fine and
\n good to say, but in real life\u2026..[dire situation\/consequences]\u201d  or
\n\u201cThese actions put people\u2019s jobs on the line!\u201d or \u201cYou will be accused
\nof not helping students!\u201d I wanted to show you that I\u2019ve walked the line
\n of \u2018everything being on the table\u2019….everything\u2026 my job, others’ jobs,
\n students’ success and students\u2019 failures. Through it all, the better
\ndecision was to preserve myself to fight another day. Work when you are
\nat work. Don’t work when you are not at work.<\/p>\n

It can be considered
\n a numbers game and I hope you\u2019ve seen that through my stories. When one
\n teacher or instructor or faculty member is saved from burnout or
\noverworking, they go on to help 10, 100, or thousands of students in
\ntheir teaching lifetime. But when I lose one student, I have thousands
\nto replace that one.  Sorry!! I know that\u2019s REALLY hard to read,
\nreally.  But you have to know where to invest if you have limited
\nresources and unlimited demand, which is what online education is.<\/p>\n

Education is an Insatiable Monster<\/h2>\n

I
\n used to subscribe to the idea that I had joined a noble profession,
\neducation.  Education is \u2018the gift that cannot be ungiven\u2019.  Oo, that
\nwas my favorite.<\/p>\n

But then one day I read that Education is an Insatiable Monster<\/a>
\n and I paused to really think. The article is about building buildings
\nand then recruiting students. Then building buildings and recruiting
\nmore students. It’s a geographical, place-based problem that puts
\nuniversities in a cycle that never stops eating; it is insatiable. No
\none stops it. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Philosophically,
\n education is a field in humanity where we never argue that one has had
\n‘enough.’  When does one have enough?  I\u2019ve heard medical suicide
\npatients claim on their last day of life that they learned something
\nnew! When do you reach \u2018enough\u2019 learning??  No one ever argues AGAINST
\nlearning.  <\/p>\n

Translated to online learning, how can teachers, then, argue against:<\/p>\n