A few weeks removed from the initial upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are settling into our new normal.
It’s not the spring semester anyone envisioned, but we continue to push forward.
To help us along, we reached out to University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Business (COB) Dean Barbara Rau, who counts human resources and work-life balance among her areas of expertise.
Rau has worked in the COB for more than 20 years and has doctoral and master’s degrees from the UW-Madison Industrial Relations Research Institute, specializing in personnel and organizational behavior.
She’s helped with the University’s strategic human resource management plan and served as chair of the UW Oshkosh Work-Life Balance Study Group. She’s also presented several papers on topics like employee relations, life balance, compensation and recruitment at national conferences and has been published in leading management, psychology and educational journals.
Rau also is known in the COB for her insightful and inspirational Tuesday Teller faculty and staff emails. In these unprecedented times, we thought we’d throw a few questions her way about adjusting to life hunkered down at home.
If there is a single thing you’d want to communicate to everybody staying home right now—educators, students, parents, other professionals—what would it be? What’s the most important thing we all should be doing to stay happy and engaged?
Find purpose in this moment in time. Regardless of what is going on around us, life satisfaction is always about tending to seven different areas: physical health, mental health, relationship health, financial health, intellectual growth, career/work and spiritual connection. This moment in time gives us all an opportunity to scan those areas and create a purpose for the present situation, whether it is to get yourself back into physical shape, to reconnect with those you love and care about, to serve the greater good through community works, to gain greater self awareness, etc. Once you know the purposes this time can serve for you, develop a plan to ensure you are doing things that move you forward and, hence, toward greater life satisfaction.
Barbara Rau
One problem that people might encounter when working from home is the further blurring of their work and their personal life. How can people keep their work-life balance under control?
Each of us has different preferences for how much integration and separation we desire and different abilities that determine how successful we can be under either of these extremes. Keeping work-life balance under control means knowing your own preferences and limits, setting boundaries around those limits and partnering with others in your life to understand and respect each others’ boundaries.
Maintaining as much normalcy as possible can be really helpful: keeping regular meetings and similar work hours, recreating your physical work space, checking in frequently with people you normally see at the office, exercising, etc. However, for some it is simply not possible. If you are now home-schooling your kids, you may need to create new patterns of work time and coordinate those around your kids’ schedule and/or your support network’s schedule. If you do not have dedicated work space, you may need to rely on noise-canceling headphones or other tools for ensuring privacy and the ability to concentrate.
Given constraints, people will benefit by creating new routines that allow them to keep some elements of normal while finding a new rhythm of life that works with your unique situation.
How about for students who feel the same way—because they’re not spending any time in physical classrooms, some may feel like they should spend every waking moment on their studies?
In thinking about those life-balance factors, college is a time when there is intense investment in intellectual growth and career/work. It is nothing new that students have trouble drawing and sticking to boundaries that allow them to work on the other areas. Ironically, I am hearing from students that this is allowing them a little more time to work out and take care of themselves because they are not rushing to classes and events.
For students who are having trouble disconnecting from their studies, I recommend routines and rituals that signal they are transitioning from one activity to another. For example, closing browser windows related to studies and tidying your workspace to put books and papers away can signal to your brain the time for studying is finished. Making plans to play games with friends (virtually), take a walk while talking on the phone or cook/craft together while connected via Facetime, Skype, etc. can ensure that you have some natural transition away from class work but also stave off feelings of isolation.
Along with your role as dean of the College of Business, you also have three college kids at home for the time being. What insights have you gained from that experience?
I had an “Aha!” when one of my kids expressed concern about a professor he had not heard from after about a week following the decision to send students home. His worry was a mix of “What is going to happen with my class?” and “Is my professor OK?” It pointed out to me how important it was for professors to reach out—this was not a normal spring break where students didn’t want to hear from their professors. Rather, they were relying on them as a touch point for normalcy, stability and calm.
There are a lot of fears about how the rest of the semester will go. They are worried about the loss of their part-time jobs, about summer and full-time jobs. They are sad because they are losing the college experiences they have enjoyed, they miss their friends and worry whether they will see them again. And yes, they are saying that they miss their professors and feel sad about not being able to be in class with them or missing the opportunity to say goodbye in person.
Add to that the concerns about the virus and the economic fallout and it is easy to see why professors, as important, thoughtful and knowledgeable figures in their lives, provide a touchstone for how they should process what is happening and how they should carry on in the new environment. If ever I needed a reminder of the role educators play in our lives, this has been it.
Watching my kids navigate the various obstacles toward completing their coursework, managing their time, looking for jobs, etc. has also sensitized me to what our students are going through. And not everyone has gone home to a nice situation. The challenges for some students are far greater than simply navigating logistics and trying to keep oneself on track. We must continually remember that and look for ways to ease their burdens as best we can.
For folks used to working in an office or shared space, are there any ways to try to recreate that when everyone is at home?
Absolutely! Instead of emailing everything, use Microsoft Teams and Collaborate Ultra for regular meetings and phone calls. Turn on the video feed and connect visually. I have even suggested that folks who are lonely consider finding a work buddy who will stay in a Teams room with them while they each work on their separate work. It just helps to stave off the loneliness and share the occasional amusing observation or ask an opinion.
Many of my work meetings end up having at least some portion of the meeting with both parties being diverted to other business. It is surprising how reassuring it is to have another person on the other end of the video. Virtual coffee and creative meeting themes like an Introduce Your Pet Day can create a sense of fun and replace the usual banter and laughter that we have at work.
Any other thoughts or words of advice as we navigate this new, homebound normal?
I like to recommend the work of Brené Brown, a social work scholar who studies shame, vulnerability, courage and resilience. In a recent podcast she gives some interesting practical advice but also makes the point that empathy, like love, is not finite. Mourning the loss of the things we found dear about our lives before COVID-19 will not diminish our capacity to feel extreme empathy for people who are experiencing tragic loss during this crisis. Therefore, it is important not to push those feelings aside as inconsequential or as if you don’t have a right to feel bad about what you’ve lost. You do. By acknowledging it and working through it, you will enhance your capacity to understand what you have lost, find ways to compensate for it, find silver linings in what you are experiencing and grow your ability to give empathy to others when they need it.
This new homebound normal can be a time of great awakening, self-understanding and self-compassion if we give ourselves license to pay attention to what we are feeling and get curious about why.
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