Upon the publication of the book The Employee and the Post-Pandemic Workplace with Routledge, the CoBS interviews researcher Michelle MacMahon, Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin on her study of Millennials during lockdown – and how they adapted to this new and remote way of working

Millennials: Lessons from lockdown and the future of work, Michelle MacMahon, from an interview by Tom Gamble, ESSEC Business School–Council on Business & Society. Related research: How Millennials Made Sense of Transactional Distancing to Maintain Work Performance: A COVID-10 investigation. OB Division Research Plenary: COVID-19 and Organizational Behavior, Annual Academy of Management Meeting, Virtual, August 2020. Conference Paper. Christine Zdelar and Michelle MacMahon, Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin.

Lessons from lockdown

The Covid-19 pandemic saw a shift from office to remote working for millions of employees. Research by Michelle MacMahon and Christine Zdelar, Trinity College Dublin, explores the impact that physical distancing had on Millennial employees using a transactional distancing framework originally developed for online learning.

Millennials were found to use three sensemaking dimensions – socialization, enactment, identity building – that enabled them to adopt new behaviours and increase performance. However, this posed a great challenge to companies post-pandemic as employees returned to the office, with subsequent company investment in change management to  maintain the positive aspects of working from home.

3 insights into how companies, leaders and employees can adapt

“The first key takeaway from our research,” says Michelle MacMahon, “is that the world of work has changed and therefore if employers want employees to work from the office, they need to recognise the change that this requirement imposes upon the employee and manage it as they would with any significant organisational change.”

Michelle MacMahon also highlights the need to take into account HR policies, especially those for existing and incoming employees. “Employers need to ask how has implied terms changed the explicit terms of the employment contract,” asserts MacMahon, “and therefore what effect this has for new employees in similar roles.”

“The third takeaway is perhaps the most important and this concerns the team meeting. Teams learn by cycling through periods of exploration and exploitation,” she continues, referring to research on teams and innovation that she published at the Academy of Management with Trinity Prof. Martin R. Fellenz in 2019.

“Flipping” communication techniques

“These cycles of learning are most effective when team members get the opportunity to communicate synchronously in a discussion that challenges and complements thinking.  

Indeed, the virtual world is a barrier to effective communication. For MacMahon, leaders therefore need to build tactics and strategies to conduct these meetings if held virtually, and employees need to build the skill of precision in their communication. “For example,” she states, “at a basic level, team leaders could give questions to team members ahead of the meeting. In the meeting, rather like the flipped learning process practices in education, the team leader could subsequently invite members to post their thoughts on a shared board. And in turn, team members are then asked to post a second draft of their thoughts.”

For Michelle MacMahon, this tactical example of conducting a virtual team meeting facilitates exploration of ideas while exploiting the knowledge of the team. “The outcome is an engaged team and a precise meeting,” she states. And if she had to leave a message for the people reading her research insight included in the book The Employee and the Post-Pandemic Workplace? “Build the skills you need to be a more effective communicator if you wish to continue to work successfully at home”.

Useful links:

• Link up with Michelle MacMahon on LinkedIn
• Read a related article: Remote Working: Lessons from NASA’s isolation pros
• Browse the Routledge-CoBS focus on responsible business book series
• Discover Trinity Business School and apply for one of the degree programmes.

Learn more about the Council on Business & Society

The Council on Business & Society (The CoBS), visionary in its conception and purpose, was created in 2011, and is dedicated to promoting responsible leadership and tackling issues at the crossroads of business and society including sustainability, diversity, ethical leadership and the place responsible business has to play in contributing to the common good.  

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Member schools of the Council on Business & Society.

• ESSEC Business School, France, Singapore, Morocco
• FGV-EAESP, Brazil
• School of Management Fudan University, China
• IE Business School, Spain
• Keio Business School, Japan
• Monash Business School, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia
• Olin Business School, USA
• Smith School of Business, Canada
• Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa
• Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Warwick Business School, United Kingdom.