Workers who communicate with their colleagues mainly through videoconferencing are far less effective at building relationships than when the communication is done face to face, according to a study we recently completed and just submitted for peer review. We also found two important ways employees can overcome the downside of video meetings.

Workers in our study reported a sharp deterioration in their work relationships after more of their communications were done via videoconferencing during the pandemic, which our analysis suggested made the employees three times less effective at building relationships.

Participants reported that it was harder to understand their coworkers’ nonverbal cues and to listen intently to what others were saying during virtual meetings compared with their in-person communications. Without these two crucial elements, the positive effects of relationship-building – such as coordination and efficiency – were tough to establish.

Looking at the data more closely, we found that those who reported that they focused on nonverbal communication cues from their colleagues or said they tried harder to listen attentively were less likely to see any change in the quality of their work relationships. In fact, we found that when these two communication behaviors were present, video calls were comparable to meeting face to face in promoting team efficiency and even more effective in coordinating team activities.

Why it matters

Relationship-building is known to be key to improving team outcomes – and even more important when employees are communicating over video. But it’s also more difficult.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic began in the spring, when about 79% of those polled by Gallop said they were at least sometimes working from home , many companies and workers have complained about the drawbacks of remote work, such as declines in innovation and a lack of social connection .

While more people have returned to the office since the spring, almost 60% of U.S. workers said they were still telecommuting part-time or full time in September. Given that about two-thirds of workers say they’d like to continue working remotely at least sometime after the pandemic ends, there’s a clear need to find ways to make it better.

Our findings suggest companies and workers could offset some downsides, which could pay dividends in the post-pandemic world.

What still isn’t known

Our findings are based on a survey of employees in the U.S., where workplace communication norms are often direct, meaning that people tend to use explicit verbal messages. U.S.-based results don’t easily apply to other cultures, such as those with communication styles that are indirect and relational.

How we did our work

Through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, which researchers like us used to recruit participants from around the world, we surveyed 324 American working adults who, before the pandemic, conducted the vast majority of their meetings in person and now use videoconferencing for a substantial share of them. We asked them about their work relationships, their communication behaviors when working in person and over the web, and their work unit’s performance now compared with before the pandemic, and used a form of statistical analysis to reveal patterns.

We conducted the research with the help of Ye Zhang, who just received her doctorate from Peking University , as well as Jeff Russell, managing director of InterCulturalEdge , which the four of us co-founded in 2015.

This article by Nancy R. Buchan , Associate Professor of International Business, University of South Carolina ; Wendi L. Adair , Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, University of Waterloo , and Xiao-Ping Chen , Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair Professor in Business Adminstration, University of Washington is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

A developer’s guide to dealing with growth, burnout, and imposter syndrome

This article was originally published on ult by Ryan Latta . ult is a media platform for untold developer stories, where developers can read content around the softer side of development and watch documentaries about the tech they love. You can read this original piece here .

Those first few days of a new job are full of excitement, nerves, and dreams of the future. As the onboarding comes to a close, millions of questions remain about how to start doing valuable work. This moment where the onboarding ends and work begins is often a bit overwhelming, and even more so for developers early in their career. Here’s what you might experience, and how to handle it.

Imposter syndrome

Ever feel like you’re a fraud and that sooner or later, everyone will find out? That’s imposter syndrome. People feel this throughout their careers. I still feel it after a decade. For people new to the field, it can create incredible levels of anxiety and doubt. If only we were as good as those other developers! When faced with those feelings, what do you do? What plan do you put into action to stop feeling like a fraud? It turns out that feeling like an imposter urges developers to feel as though they have to catch up.

Catching up

Almost every developer I’ve met, including myself, feels like we need to catch up. We have to learn the technologies, the code base, the social norms, and a million other details before we can be productive. For a start, we don’t know where to look in the codebase. We don’t know what system design exists, so we can’t begin building. What are the standards we should follow? What’s the process the team uses for code reviews and sharing code?

The way most developers catch up is basically the same way they first learned to code. This approach typically involves trying to read every bit of documentation that exists. Suddenly they are looking at tutorials, reading documentation on Redux and internal Wiki documents. They are trying desperately to consume all the material they can. They believe that if they know all of this information, they won’t be so far behind.

Except that it doesn’t really work out that way. At some point, they have to stop reading and start developing. Despite everything unknown, they must write their first line of code. Writing that first line is when that information gets put into practice. You can’t read your way to writing code, you have to write it.

Burning out

The feeling that you’re a fraud is leading you to think you have to catch up, and the pressure to finish work items, and keep up with peers means you begin to work nights and weekends. Trying to read all the material they couldn’t while at work. Then you might do a side project to push yourself even further. You’ll be working late into the night constantly chasing that voice in your head, the one telling you that you should be better.

Exhaustion begins to set in.

How long can someone keep up this round-the-clock pace while constantly feeling inadequate? Everyone has limits, and when this is the way we work, there’s no finish line. There is always someone who does it better and knows more, while making our tireless efforts look easy. We can never keep up, and so we burn out.

How do you know you’re burning out? It shows up differently for everyone, but there are a few key signs to watch for:

Loss of appetite

Major weight fluctuations

Short temper

Fitful sleeping

Nightmares

A daily feeling of hopelessness

Increased chances of illness

Early in my career, I developed a rule for myself. When I started having nightmares about work, I quit. I noticed that by the time I was having nightmares about my job, something had gone so off the rails, and by staying I would only prolong my suffering.

You need to pay attention to what is happening to your body and soul if you experience imposter syndrome. Think of burnout as the culmination of countless small hurts. Each individual one seems tolerable, but together they can damage your health, your mental state, and life. It can take years for those countless small hurts to heal.

How do others handle it?

All those people you think have their act together deal with this as well. They go to new jobs, start new projects, deal with new technologies too. How do they cope in these moments of self-doubt?

It’s important to know that all of us cope with imposter syndrome.

Developers early in their career believe they lack information and knowledge. Senior developers understand they will never know it all and leverage processes to power them onwards.

That’s the difference. Early developers focus on information, and senior developers focus on the process.

How does this look? Well, a senior developer when encountering a new code base confronts the same problem as the junior. They need to quickly make sense of it so they can begin to make changes. A more seasoned developer may apply the following techniques:

Matching existing design/architecture patterns

Debugging to bisect functionality

Executing tests

Asking for help

Now some of these things come with practice. One difference would be that senior developers tend to close their knowledge gap with a different process.

Each one of the techniques listed above is a hands-on approach to the codebase. This hands-on approach is a stark contrast to attempting to read your way through the unknowns. Pattern matching is a technique that comes with experience. When developed, a developer can see a new technology or a codebase and make very accurate inferences to how it works compared to similar patterns they’ve seen elsewhere. This technique allows them to focus on the exceptional elements instead of the common ones.

Debugging requires firing up the application with the ability to interrupt it at key spots in the codebase. This technique lets them see what is happening instead of reading about it. Executing tests provides a very similar level of insight while also communicating the intended behavior. The last one is the one to bring attention to.

Asking for help

More seasoned developers have learned to sense when they are spinning their wheels and not making much progress. They also learned early on that there isn’t any reason to struggle alone. They’ll seek help within minutes of encountering a surprise. Someone in the company has the answer.

Getting up and asking them compared to combing through documentation is faster, more effective, and provides longer-lasting information retention. The developer asks a question about one part of the code today, and when they come by tomorrow, the context is already there. This means the answers get richer and more appropriate as the conversation continues.

So for everyone out there who feels like they have to catch up, ask for help! When you get stuck, set a timer for 5 minutes. When it goes off, stop struggling alone and go ask for help. Someone already has the answer for you. This will save you days of struggle, protect you from burning out, and help you get moving sooner. Eventually, you’ll see that all these paragons of productivity are still just people.

How travel tech companies aim to survive the coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has so far had devastating consequences across the travel industry.

Airlines have flown empty planes to try and keep their usual slots despite flight prices dropping below unimaginable levels — tickets from New York to Miami were on offer for just $51 several weeks ago.

The situation is such that comparisons to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — which brought the travel industry to its knees — don’t seem overtly far-fetched.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) trade body estimates that worldwide revenue could fall by between $63 billion and $113 billion , or as much as 20% this year. To put this into perspective, after 9/11, airline revenues fell by 7% , or $23 billion.

Coronavirus‘ impact on international air travel is undeniable and so is the knock on effect on hotels, car rental, and hospitality services — and let’s face it, even if financial help does come in the form of government bailouts, it’s already too late for some .

So where does this leave travel tech startups and the wider industry as a whole? We spoke to two very different companies — one an established player and the other an up-and-coming business — to find out.

A challenging, unprecedented time

Founded in 2003, Skyscanner , which allows users to book flights, hotels, and cars, has become synonymous with travel, particularly among millennials .

“It’s a challenging and unprecedented time for travellers and the travel industry more broadly,” Skyscanner’s CMO Joanna Lord tells Growth Quarters.

Based in Scotland, Skyscanner was eventually sold to Ctrip — one of the largest online travel agencies in China — in 2016. Before then, the business , co-founded by IT professionals Gareth Williams, Barry Smith, and Bonamy Grimes had raised $197.2 million in external capital, reaching tech unicorn status in January 2016.

The tech titan — which reported a record $324 million in revenue last year — gained momentum in the highly competitive travel market by offering consumers greater transparency on fare prices.

Its business model has traditionally been ‘meta-search,’ aggregating prices for flights and taking commission on bookings.

But as the company evolved into a travel marketplace, the business model and associated revenue streams grew to include commission from completed bookings of flights, hotels, or car hire (including affiliates), display advertising in the marketplace, and proprietary travel APIs.

The business‘ success is undeniable, but so too are the effects of coronavirus as people refrain from spending on travel.

“We’re in the middle of a planet-defining and life-altering moment which will undoubtedly change the world of travel, but it’s too early to say exactly how,” Lord says.

No one yet knows how long lockdowns will last and how long people will be unable to travel for. For example, in the Chinese city of Wuhan — where the virus is first thought to have originated — pre-approved people are being allowed to move for the first time this week since January 23.

However, there are still restrictions in place as officials fear a second wave of infections — t hat’s why Lord and her team are constantly reevaluating their approach and trying to glimpse how the pandemic will change the industry in the long-term.

“Some of the questions we are asking ourselves right now are: When it is safe to do so, how do we encourage people to travel again? Will alternative or lesser known destinations become more popular as travel bans to traditional summer or winter destinations possibly remain in force? Will we see a marked rise in sustainable or more conscious travel?”

To try and work around this, Skyscanner has put systems in place to provide customers with more transparency when it comes to existing bookings but also future travel plans so that they are able to make informed decisions if and when the time comes. They’ve created “live” COVID-19 banners and advice pages in all markets where the company operates.

Impact is three-fold

But Skyscanner is not the only company in the space tha t’s h ad to ada pt at speed.

Dubbed the ‘Netflix of travel,’ BeRightBack i s a travel subscription service that allows customers to split the cost of their travel into instalments.

The premise is simple : Users pay a monthly subscription, decide which European cities they want to avoid, and in exchange BeRightBack sends them to a surprise destination (this is revealed a month before travel) three times a year.

The cost of holiday, which is ATOL protected , covers flights, and two nights accommodation in a hotel.

Founded in 2018, BeRightBack is backed by investors including Ascension Ventures and Founders Factory (a startup incubator and accelerator co-founded by Brent Hoberman , who set up travel behemoth Lastminuteom with Martha Lane Fox during the dot-com boom).

Gregory Geny, BeRightBack’s co-founder and CEO, tells Growth Quarters that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been threefold: reduced purchase intent in travel, customer uncertainty, and trip cancellations due to travel restrictions. Although this, he says, is likely to improve in the long-term:

“The positive news is that people are still getting in touch and telling us they intend to subscribe once the crisis is over as they’re desperate to travel and want a service that offers real protection.”

“There’s also been a slight increase in the number of customers pausing their membership although a large majority hope to resume it as soon as things go back to normal,” he adds.

As a result of the pandemic, BeRightBack has had to shift its focus completely. As with many other companies across the globe, the startup asked its employees to work from home in March.

It also created a COVID-19 Response Unit to get a better understanding of the situation and ensure the safety of their customers and suppliers.

“The team monitors the situation daily, keeps a close eye on travel restrictions imposed by governments and checks the recommendations from the WHO and the FCO,” Geny adds, noting they also made the decision to cancel all March and April trips “as it didn’t feel right getting people to travel given the rapid propagation of the virus.”

Geny says non-critical spending has been reduced. “We stopped marketing and advertising where we could as it doesn’t seem to make sense nor is it currently responsible to promote upcoming travel.”

Long-term industry changes

Both Lord and Geny believe that coronavirus will change the world of travel and how customers and suppliers behave and interact.

“There is going to be a lot of uncertainty and I would not be surprised if certain regions of Europe suffered from a lack of confidence over the next 12 moths, especially northern Italy and Spain, which have been hit quite severely,” Geny says.

Geny thinks the question over package protection will linger when even after normality eventually resumes:

“It may mean a resurgence of more traditional package holidays, even for short city breaks.”

There’s also the question of long-term economic damage and how this will impact individuals and their spending power. “People in general will feel the strain as the situation continues and this may be the limiting factor when next booking travel.”

On the supplier side, there’ s a real risk of more airlines collapsing, depending on how long the crisis lasts, and the financial support governments may be able to provide. If this were to happen, we could see a reduction in the number of available fights and routes but Lord remains optimistic.

“More broadly, we know that a lot will change, and no one is really sure how […] No matter how much changes, the yearn to travel and the need for flexible choices won’t change, and that’s where we will come in,” she says.

“We believe that travel will thrive in the world post-COVID-19. Sharing experiences with the people you care about most is one of life’s greatest gifts and we know that future travel has been a key topic of conversation between friends , family, and colleagues in lockdown and isolation around the world,” Lord adds.

For now, coronavirus is holding the world of travel to ransom and although the industry is already displaying clear signs of change, the true extent of this remains to be seen.

As ever, the impact is likely to be more acute for smaller travel businesses , especially independent hotels across Europe which have been closed for some time. In some cases , the loss of income will prove fatal and lead to a contraction in the total number of beds available.

Travel tech companies are probably best placed to ride this change but I fear their survival will hinge on how far along they are in their growth journey , the health of their accounts, and the support provided by governments . For others, now is probably the right time to get creative.