How are you hanging in there?

Here’s the question we’re all getting a lot these days: “how are you hanging in there?”.
But it’s a loaded question.  

Erika Van Noort has been checking in with her colleagues, friends and family remotely over the past seven months, and realizing how fundamental technology is in everything we do. It’s played a starring role in maintaining her success, her relationships, and her own mental health. 

But it’s also brought up a lot of questions.
Like, how do businesses maintain a company culture remotely?
Do we humans even need physical connection at work? 

On our first episode, we’re diving into how IT leaders and their teams are helping people overcome isolation in a work-from-home world.  

Featuring:
Meghan Reid, Career Counselor and Psychologist at Canada Career Counseling
Chantale Rondeau, CIO at Sempra Energy 

Special appearances by: 
Nicole Francis, Content Operations Senior Manager at Softchoice 
Saad Afsar, Digital Marketing Senior Manager at Softchoice 
Richard Carson, Partner Marketing Manager at Softchoice 
Aine White, Marketing Programs Manager at Softchoice 

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The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast that is shining a light on the human side of IT leaders and reframing our relationship to technology.

Are you a leader in the IT space? Read more on Softchoice’s Innovation Executive Forum, an exclusive, members-only community of over 400 senior IT leaders across North America. 

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

Transcript

Erika  

From Softchoice, this is The Catalyst, the podcast that is shining a light on the human side of IT and reframing our relationship to technology. I'm your host, Erika Van Noort.

Nicole  

I think honestly I have adjusted to remote work perhaps a little too well because it makes me feel like, shouldn't I be missing the physical interaction? And perhaps a part of me does miss that from time to time. But honestly, I did face a pretty steep commute, and I don't have that anymore. And I just-- I have-- I've been okay with it. 

Saad  

There's moments where I'm very thankful that I don't have to take two trains to get there, or whatever crazy stuff I had to do, as well, to get to work. But then with the two kids at home, and the decisions around school, and stuff like that, it's been tough balancing them.

Richard  

We've got a lot more balancing act to do, and it's that kind of 5 o'clock cut off that does not exist anymore. And how do I put the stop on work when it's time for family time and balancing that out. I would also say I'm not keeping up with my podcasts the way I used to. So, on the upside, I'm saving a ton of money on gas, that's for sure. 

Aine  

For me, I've been working from my kitchen table in a basement for the last six months. Moving out next month, though, so I'll be much happier when I can see above ground.

Nicole  

Guess how I'm decompressing? Making dinner. That's actually decompression. Because the day that has proceeded that time, I'm focusing on perhaps five or six different things, and having multiple conversations at once. So, the ability to do just one thing feels like a break. 

Saad  

The commute was, like, a little break in between getting the kids to school, which is hectic, and then you sit down in the train, it's just you by yourself. And if you want you can work. I used to actually often work, but it was satisfying because I got work done without any distractions. There's no more-- no longer that, you just wake up in bed and your kids are there, and so is your laptop. It's like, okay, which one do I grab first? [laughter] The kids always, the kids first. 

[music plays]

Erika  

This is the sound of working from home, courtesy of my colleagues at Softchoice. For over half the year, I've been confined to the walls of my home office for eight or more hours on the daily. Alone at home, my co-workers just a beam of light through my computer screen, and kilometers or miles away. This probably sounds a little familiar. Prior to COVID forcing us all to work remote, when I worked from home it was time when you could focus-- spend time away from your office distractions, and I could really get things done. Now the lines between home and work are blended to the point where some days I'm unsure where things start and stop. 

[music plays] 

Now, 2020 has brought us a new reality, and with it making us question everything we know and feel about work. So how can a company possibly maintain their culture through group chats? And secret pajama pant-clad video calls? I mean, do people even wear shoes to work anymore? And on a more serious note, research is revealing that many employees are struggling with not seeing their colleagues in person. How is the new world of remote work affecting our mental health? In this episode, I'm uncovering how tech can make a difference in the lives of people working at home, the pitfalls, the best practices, and some inspiring and useful advice from the experts. I'm talking to Chantale Rondeau, CIO at Sempra Energy, who's been faced with managing a remote IT team and keeping her company connected as a whole. But first, let's dive into the people side of the equation. My first guest on the show is Meghan Reid. She's a career counselor and psychologist who knows a thing or two about how humans handle isolation, and even more about our desperate search of solutions that connect us. 

[music plays] 

Now, what are some of the main points that you hear people describe as their main issues with working from home isolation these days?

Meghan  

There are a lot of them. And I would say I think the most common one is feeling disconnected, isolated, lonely. Extroverted clients, especially, that they-- it's harder to be focused, and energized, and engaged. I think another big one that I heard at the-- especially at the beginning of the pandemic was trouble setting boundaries between work time and personal time. People feel like they should just be work, work, working all the time. And because they don't have other things to do, especially if they are self-isolating, sometimes the hours that people are working are crazy and they're having a hard time disconnecting there. There can be mental health challenges, like depression or anxiety, I think a lot of anxiety around uncertainty. And then I think there's some particular ones that come with work, which are, some people I'm talking to are feeling really uncomfortable about how they're being perceived by their peers or by a manager, because people aren't seeing what they're doing physically, and they can't get that physical feedback from other people. So that maybe demonstrating accomplishments or feeling comfortable or confident about what they're accomplishing at work. And then the last one would be communication challenges.

Erika  

Okay, so, I mean, I'm speaking as an ENTJ here, so heavily on the E from an extraversion perspective [Meghan laughs] so I can completely relate to what you mentioned at the beginning. So, let's go to the facts, like, we as humans need physical connection, and we need to be near people. So, what happens to people in isolation?

Meghan  

Well, there's two: there's physical connection, and there's physical contact. Physical connection, we are a social society, as social-- humans are social beings. And we need that social connectedness to feel good about ourselves. But being physically in the presence of others, it helps us build trust, it helps us build a sense of collaboration. Physiologically, you know, the skin is an organ, and it takes up a big part of our brain. So, when you are touched by someone else-- and that could be a hug, that could be a handshake, a pat on the back, there's a calming response to our stress reaction. But I think that reduction of stress is a big one that comes into play, as well.

Erika  

Absolutely. Well, it explains a lot of dog hugging that I've got going on in my household. [laughter] So thinking of the new remote work world, let's maybe dissect some of the people skills that you're talking about when in talk, you know, about connecting to other people.

Meghan  

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of my clients who are in the STEM careers, they are really, really focused on those technical skills. And the people skills are still very important. And people tend to have that higher focus or are overly focused on just, "What am I accomplishing with my tasks?" But there's a whole other side to work, which is the people side of work. Even if you're not working with customers or clients, you have maybe a team, you definitely have a manager. And so having skills like communication skills are probably the most important one that come to mind when we're thinking about people working at a distance. There's verbal and nonverbal communication, and sometimes that nonverbal communication like tone or body language gets lost in translation. Those are just some of the things that come to mind for me.

Erika  

So, when you think about people really needing to understand each other's behaviors, what skills should we be working on today with people?

Meghan  

I think empathy and general emotional intelligence are important. So being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes or consider their perspective. One of the strategies that I've shared with a few clients is, I will ask, what is the evidence, and what is their interpretation? So sometimes, for example, I'll have clients who get an email and they're very upset by the email and what has happened. But when we look at what's actually been written, there's nothing that's particularly inappropriate, or rude, or offensive. Sometimes I'll just challenge them, "What's a potentially another reason that that person made that comment?" And the last one that might sound a little strange: vulnerability and building your comfort level with being vulnerable. And when I say that I mean being uncomfortable, taking a chance. And so sometimes that's sharing an opinion that might not be a favorite opinion of everybody else. Maybe that's asking a question that you're worried people might think you're-- you know, you shouldn't ask that question. But I think it really humanizes you, and helps build connection with other people, and makes you a real person to them if you can show a little bit of vulnerability. 

[music plays]

Erika  

With all of this media that we're using, and the different channels being remote, there's the question of, you know, is-- should it be a phone call, should it be an email, or should it be-- in our case, it's a Teams meeting. Because there seems to be this desire to want to, like, really attach yourself to collaboration at every checkpoint, and maybe just sort of like some tips on what we should really do or distinguish between what could be an email versus a call without losing that that human connection that you speak of?

Meghan  

Mm-hmm, I think that's a great question because that's definitely a challenge that a lot of people are having, being burnt out by being on video all day and feeling like they're in meetings that are unnecessary and don't need to be taking place. Really, my recommendation would be team-by-team or organization-by-organization to have a conversation with the team. And so, we built out a team charter of how to best communicate, and so we decided, in our case, internal communication was going to happen by our Teams and instant messaging within our Teams function. By email, one of the things that we have talked about is when to CC people-- 

Erika  

Mm! [chuckles]

Meghan  

And when to not-- and when to respond all. Another one is with email, one of the decisions, we made-- one topic per email. And if it needs to be more than a paragraph or two, that's when we would switch to a phone call or a video.

Erika  

No, it's a great point. And I think a lot of us assume people know which way to go with how they're to communicate but having a refresher and remembering that it is okay to give people guidelines, or just to refresh for them. Because we often sort of lose sight of so many things. And, you know, that CCing-- and I also found that for the first month, people that were used to being in pods physically with other co-workers were actually over engineering and really actually probably CCing more people now than they would have done before because they didn't have the opportunity to run into those people or have some of those natural conversations, so...

Meghan  

Well, and I think your point, even, too, with new stuff coming on-- especially as hiring is picking up-- if there already are norms, and rules, or guidelines set around communication, and I think that's a great idea, too. So, they can come in understanding what's expected of them with communication.

Erika  

Yeah. And when you bring about that-- I talk about the new people joining, as well. And sort of, like, that personal piece that reminds me, like, we've had new people join and you get to meet their children, you get to meet their pets. You have that ability to really connect with people in a very different way. I mean, if I'm on a call in the morning, and there's this, like, scurrying in my office people know now that it's the dog walker coming to pick up Zoe, and off she goes for the day. But people are just-- they're relating in ways that are just-- you know, we talk about it here at Softchoice, it's our human and inspiring elements. Like, years ago, we would apologize if a dog was barking when we were on a on a video conference. And now it's like, "Ah, it's just the dog." Yeah, nobody's...

Meghan  

And it's interesting, because I would say on the whole, there are more people who are finding it challenging to connect. But I have had certain clients-- and it's interesting thinking about it, they often have been people who are in positions of leadership, so usually executive level and up, where they are the ones that are saying, "I actually feel more connected to my team than I did in the past." And I wonder if it is something to do with the hierarchy and not getting so personal with people in the office just to maintain that leadership demeanor or level. But because these things do happen at home, children walk in, that's exactly what they're saying is I feel like I'm actually getting to know my team, or my staff better than I knew them when we were in the office.

Erika  

Yeah. Now, since we've implemented the whole work-from-home across North America, we're also seeing an increase in mental health services. So, things like addiction, depression, the loneliness piece. So, can you maybe explain the ways that you've been seeing people in the workforce coping with that, that isolation and some of those mental health elements?

Meghan  

Well, I think the poor mental health, depression, anxiety, et cetera, is stemming from that isolation. And something like addiction is a way to cope with those hard emotions or feelings. It's obviously not a healthy coping strategy. I have also seen people distract or avoid, so put off work or put off things that are stressing them out. I think on the flip side, I've seen some really positive coping strategies, too. I've seen people be much more active be getting outside during the day or doing their one-hour yoga class during the middle of the day, so that physical activity. And in certain ways, because people have been more isolated, I've seen people make bigger efforts to connect. And sometimes it's for themselves and wanting to connect other times. Again, that compassion for others, and reaching out and checking in, whether it's with loved ones, or colleagues, or friends. one other one that I've had a number of clients kind of engage in is journaling. I guess that would be from a psychological standpoint processing your thoughts and emotions, thinking about them, and letting yourself feel them whether they're positive or negative emotions. And it can help you notice if there are patterns, have you had a number of down days in a row? Other strategies I think is being grateful and appreciative. And it's just switching where your focus is. It's not saying that this is a good situation, or it's amazing and it's the best thing ever. But it's noticing what still is positive, where the opportunities are. What things you can be happy about, even in a challenging time. So, seeing the silver lining and taking time to notice that. Another one on top of that, too, outside of just being grateful or thankful, I think, is self-compassion. Striving for more isn't a bad thing, but it's a balancing act. And if you're always feeling like you're not good enough, and always putting yourself down, it doesn't benefit you in the long run. So self-compassion-- and self-compassion is being just as compassionate to yourself as you would to anyone else. 

[music plays]

Erika  

This conversation with Meghan has me feeling really thoughtful, and I'm intrigued. And some of the other things I'm thinking about is, like, what are the things I'll take away and what can I apply as a leader? Mental health is real, and there's a lot of coping strategies. And I love the way she talked about self-compassion, because I think it's something most of us don't spend a lot of time doing. So, what does an IT leader do? Like, really, what is the role from leadership in technology today that's different than it was, say, six to eight months ago? IT more than ever is the glue that's holding us all together. IT today has a rule that they've never had before. 

[music plays] 

Chantale Rondeau is the CIO at Sempra Energy, a North American energy company based in California with 18,000 employees serving over 35 million customers worldwide. I've invited her on today to talk about how she and her team are staying connected and efficient during this pandemic, while continuing to push forward on digital business transformation. Hi, Chantale. Thanks for joining me here on the podcast. 

Chantale  

Hi, Erika. Thank you for inviting me. 

Erika  

So, big question: how are you hanging in there?

Chantale  

[laughs] Yeah, it's been, you know, several months and we've definitely had to adjust throughout the pandemic. Many, many adjustments, but we're hanging in there.

Erika  

It's funny, I like the way you laugh, because it really is hanging in there in some moments, isn't it? I'd love to know how your role as CIO has evolved since March.

Chantale  

It's been-- it's been quite actually easy to transition. There hasn't been a lot of obstacle. People basically, overnight, actually, were able to work from home. And the technology itself, really allowed to have, you know, our entire workforce overnight to transition and really work full time from home. Now, one of the big focus and a big adjustment that we've had to make is much more around organizational change management and the training of our employees. So generally speaking, our employees were working in the office almost 100% of the time. They weren't necessarily used to using technology remotely and weren't necessarily collaborating heavily working from home. So, there was definitely a big focus in the early on, put on organizational change management, as well as training, as well as making sure that our employees had the right equipment when working from home.

Erika  

That's, that's great. It's often that we don't hear, you know, from IT leaders like yourself around the whole change management piece. But really, this pandemic has really brought that to the forefront. Now, companies like Sempra rely on having highly technical and sophisticated people working together, like engineers. What are some of the solutions that you've put in place at your company to achieve this? And specifically, what's worked and what can you use? Like-- or what could use more from an improvement perspective?

Chantale  

Yeah, I mean, one of the key thing, you know, as engineers, and one of our core business is to work around engineering and construction. And so, a lot of our engineers need to collaborate. And typically, in the past, before COVID, they were collaborating on site together, basically a working on diagrams, working on plans. So, one of the solution that we've put in place is around whiteboarding. And we've come up with a couple of solutions. One is leveraging the Team's whiteboarding functionality. And another one had been to have, essentially some of the Cisco WebEx boards actually installed in some of our key employee's locations, so that we would be able to integrate both technologies and allow for better efficiency, better collaborations while working remotely as it relates to our engineering and construction teams.

Erika  

That's great. So not just the whole integration of the technology pieces, but how do you also get those people to collaborate using those technologies but also with each other. So how about major investments you made pre-COVID? Which you wish you had put in place, but are now rushing to put together?

Chantale  

Well, I'll answer it both ways, because there was something that we've actually implemented that turned out to be such a positive success story, and it's Zscaler, which is basically a cloud security technology, which basically allowed our employees to work remotely overnight, being able to connect to the internet, using a cloud solution and accessing all of their applications very easily. One of the solutions that we've had to ramp up-- so previously, because most of our employees were located in offices, we have primarily Cisco equipment as hardware for our video conferencing. And so just naturally, it was easier to use the WebEx client for most of our users, which was-- had a great integration with the Cisco equipment. And so, shifting working from home now, users or employees were looking for much more of an integration with the tools they were using at home, and so Teams became really a key solution that needed to be deployed throughout the company. We had started our deployment, but we were at about, I want to, say 5 to 10%, when COVID happened. And so, we've had to definitely shift gears from a priority perspective, and really roll out Teams to all of our employees very quickly. So, this was definitely one of the shifts that we've had to make.

Erika  

 It's interesting, I was speaking to another Softchoice customer the other day and they were talking about how they figure Teams is the-- going to be known as the app of 2020, the killer app of 2020. [Chantale laughs] In order to help everybody collaborate and come together. One of the other things I want to talk about is the working from home barrier, because I think it's something we always talked about before about it being really easy to just work from home. But it's time to kind of get real about this.

Chantale  

Yeah, it's definitely been a major concern. I think most of us are experiencing essentially meeting from very early in the morning, back-to-back meetings all day. And plus, if you're interacting or collaborating with people who are located in different time zones, it becomes even more difficult. And so, this has definitely been a concern. And I think one of the key reasons for that is also the fact that you lose the whole idea of meeting someone in the hallway, having a side conversation, meeting someone at the cafeteria. And I guess we minimized-- at the time, you know, realizing that we minimize the impact or the positive impact by being together in the same office and being able to have those conversations. So, in terms of some of the things that we've done to help employees with trying to balance, have a better work-life balance, in the office, we've implemented a lunchtime no-meetings zone as much as possible. So obviously, when you're meeting with folks that are not in the same time zone, sometimes it's not possible to do that. But to the extent that it is possible, we're definitely encouraging employees to, from 11:30 to 1:00, to keep that time for themselves. You know, we're doing our best to really make it so that it's easier for employees to continue working in this mode, because it's actually it's been difficult, for sure.

Erika  

That's great to hear. I know here at Softchoice we've got the 25-minute meeting instead of 30-minutes, and the 50-minute instead of 60. It makes a huge difference for people. You talked earlier about how you get employees to adopt this new technology because of the rush to go remote, and the lower adoption, I think you said 5 to 10% were adopting early on. What were some of their biggest challenges in that, like, shift to go to increase that usage from, say, 5 to 10% of your people adopting to a much higher level, what were some of the things you did there?

Chantale  

One of the things that we realized early on is that there was a need for this, you know, the informal tips and tricks that you get from others to maybe formalize that and make it so that it would be available to a broader audience. And so, we introduced what we call the tech and cyber cafes, which are every morning. 8 o’clock, you get an email with a quick tip. And even I have to say our President and COO, Lisa Glatch, has mentioned it in one of our business updates meetings, basically saying this, you know, 'Every morning, I have my breakfast, and I wait for my tech cafe to read it and practice it so that I get better." And so, it's been really great to see that we've gotten support from the top down, and everybody has really embraced learning about the technology and really enhancing the collaboration. 

[music plays]

Erika  

I think it's also great how people have become somewhat competitive in the early stages with their backgrounds, right? [Chantale laughs] So you'll get on, you'll log into a Teams call and you'll see somebody's got a super cool background. And so, the first two minutes is, "Okay, where did you get that? How did you get that?" So earlier in the show, I talked with a psychologist about another concern employees are facing. This is speaking more to fear that their growth within a company could take a bit of a nosedive without in-person connection with managers. When you think about that connection with managers, is this something you're seeing, and if so, what's your perspective on it?

Chantale  

This is definitely something that has been brought up at all levels that, in addition to increasing the number of touch points every week with employees, we've also implemented some leadership virtual roundtables with our leadership team to really allow our employees to engage on a more personal level. So, we're talking about a group of about 10 employees signing up to meet not one-on-one, but within a small group of people with one of the leaders of the company. This has been actually something that has been very beneficial that employees have said that this was a very positive outcome of the work from home situation of having actually more opportunities to meet with our leadership team.

Erika  

One of the things is about culture, and I'm hearing a lot of concern out there about keeping culture thriving in a remote world. You know, IT being leveraged in ways they've never been leveraged before, in order to keep that culture alive. What sort of things have you found the company relying on you for now, Chantale?

Chantale  

We did not see a lot of remote work in the past with our employees. But now, really, our leadership team-- after seeing what has happened with COVID, this has actually been a very positive outcome-- have come to IT asking for recommendations on how about longer term? How could we transition into what I would call more of a hybrid mode, where technology would be leveraged to part time work from home, but also part time work in the office? And so, I think one of the challenge that we're going to have as a technology organization, and overall organization, is to come up with the suite of technology that really provides the same user experience, whether you're home, or whether you're in the office. And so that users or employees don't have to learn different tools whether they're at home, or in a remote location, or in the office. So, this will definitely be one of the challenges we're going to have moving forward.

Erika  

I love the way you say that IT is now, you know, in the forefront, because IT, things like HR, have always been sort of behind the scenes keeping things rolling. But when a time like, you know, in the pandemic with COVID, we're seeing that these groups are really being brought to the forefront. So Chantale, COVID-19 forced teams like yours to undergo major transformation in weeks instead of months, or what would normally take years. In the past we probably were doing things a little slower. Is this pandemic going to make organizations more agile in the future with major IT rollouts and digital transformation, in your view?

Chantale  

Absolutely, absolutely. I think more and more we're seeing completely a shift in how employees are embracing technology. Actually, I have even seen more of a pull in terms of information where IT hasn't been able to keep up the pace, where we get requests from employees for more. They want to see more. They're actually reaching out to get more training. They're bringing business problems and are asking IT to provide solutions to those business problems. So, I can absolutely see that in the future, this pandemic will have the positive impact of truly shifting the mindset and allowing employees to continue to embrace technology and really put that at the forefront of how they're doing their day-to-day job.

Erika  

That's a great point when you say that the business is, you know, bringing problems to IT, something we've always dreamed about, right? And-- 

Chantale  

Yes, absolutely! 

Erika  

[laughs] You know, right? And it speaks to the CIO's role, roles like yours, recently being very much focused on internal things. So Chantale, one of the things I'd love to know is what have you learned about yourself and your own working style during this pandemic?

Chantale  

Hmm. So as leaders, we'd like to believe that we're compassionate towards our employees. And, and I think some part of me believed that I had it in me, and whether it was coming off, you know, very openly when being in the office or not, it's something that I believed I had. But really, since the pandemic has started, I can say that I've truly had to rely significantly on being compassionate, being accepting of different situations for employees, having these heart-to-heart conversations with employees where, you know, going through certain difficulties with kids being at home, with having to deal with homeschooling, with maybe having to deal with a sick parent, it has brought out more of the compassionate side of my leadership. You know, very, very important, I think, for all of us as leaders to be able to get through this pandemic. 

[music plays]

Erika  

2020 comes to an end in just three months. And in hindsight, it's crazy to think that I've actually spent the majority of the year separated from my colleagues and peers, basically alone. 

[music plays] 

After speaking with both Meghan and Chantale, one of the things that comes to mind for me is the connection that we have as it relates to our people. Oftentimes, we think everything is connected through technology, which it is, it's the true enabler of everything we do. But there's also the, how do you cope, how do you manage, how do you lead? And we've talked about the positivity and staying focused and being there for your leaders. Chantale talked about it, even from the top of the organization to how they share tech tips with everybody to sort of keep them engaged. And Meghan talked about the piece around, you know, also remembering to have compassion for yourself. So, leadership is not just around technology, and is everything working. It's also about the connection we have to each other. From where I sit, I don't think any company can successfully move forward without addressing big questions about culture, career growth, and our mental and physical health. And this is actually really encouraging to know. This unprecedented moment in history has given us the opportunity to pause and reflect on what it really means to be a valuable co-worker, employer, and really, a valuable member of society. I see empathy being at the center of tech innovation for years to come, and I can't wait to see what that looks like. 

[music plays] 

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for listening. Please rate, or better yet, review the podcast on your listening platform of choice and let us know what you think. And if you like this episode, trust me you're going to love episode two, where I'm joined by cybersecurity leader, David Kennedy, to dig into how the disruptions of COVID-19 have changed the game for security professionals and hackers alike. I'm Erika Van Noort. See you in two weeks for another episode of The Catalyst. 

[music plays]