New employee (Gen Z} doesn’t want to meet in person

[outofofficeon]

I took on a graduate for a new position, she’d been job hunting for a few years, I felt good about giving her a hand up into a great career.
She lives about an hour away so works remotely. She bright and polite and reliable and a good member of the team.

The problem I have is that she doesn’t want to visit the office in person or meet her colleagues in person, I offered to put her up in a nice hotel and pay travel costs so that she could spend a few days with us in person. She declined. My latest issue is that she doesn’t put her camera on when we are communicating at work as part of daily work or chats. I understand she might not be very confident but I think that you have to get out of the house / your comfort zone if you want a career.

im not sure what to do- any advice oh wise ladies.

That's a bit unfair when she would have spent some of her teenage years - the time when we learn who we are and how to socialise - locked in the house during a pandemic.

The cameras on/off thing is often poorly managed in organisations which are still early in distributed collaboration.

I’ve worked with distributed teams for decades and as an organisation our own data backs up what little research has been done in this area. Interviews, initial conversations in small groups, social type introductory discussions - camera on facilitates for most people.

For large meetings (more than about half a dozen contributors) they are a significant impediment to information sharing and understanding. For smaller business meetings such as daily standups, collaborative creation on whiteboards and designs etc they also significantly reduce effectiveness. Similarly large information sharing meetings work best with cameras on for the presenters but not for the gazillion attendees.

I’ve also been to clients which require cameras on all day, even when not in meetings and unsurprisingly this reduces productivity (and increased staff turnover - it feels bloody creepy and people hate it).

People assume that cameras on is the same cognitively as being physically in an office with them that is not the case and it just adds to cognitive load. Interestingly the old Telepresence systems did not create this load in the same way but they were mighty expensive and therefore mostly used for exactly the kind of meetings where F2F adds real value.

Any blanket rule about cameras in the workplace is misplaced but guidelines about appropriate evidence based use really help productivity.

Sure @Katherine9 - here you go:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/4982564-when-did-you-realise-you-are-just-an-employee-and-loyalty-accounts-for-nothing

If it’s genuinely causing a problem for the business, you can consult with her (and others with the same contract) on a contractual change to mandate the things you require to run the business effectively. You might have to find a way to mitigate the impact of the changes as you have suggested.

Cameras on - just tell her.

A contract is not a red herring, it is the basis on which a person accepts a job. If it is advertised as fully remote, and you then insist a person goes to the office, you are in breach of contract. To suggest this request is something that may not make it in to a contract is laughable. It’s a material part of a contract agreement. Imagine you hire a disabled person who is unable to commute? They don’t have to disclose their disability, but they chose a remote positIon because of it. You’d be comfortable with changing those terms after you have employed them?

I agree. If everyone else has cameras on, she should have their camera on. If it is a mixed bag, then she can do as she feels best. If it is 1-2-1, she must have the camera on. OP needed to stamp this out early on.

Cameras on is a “reasonable management request”. It doesn’t have to be in a contract or a policy.

This

I completely agree with you. Just ask her to put her camera on for every meeting and explain why, as per your post above. You are being perfectly reasonable. You would think that a young woman who has been job hunting for years would want to make an effort and impress her new employer. If she isn't the right fit, you can find someone who is.

How have you done the id checks if you have not met her in person? Even wfh requires some interaction in person occasionally and an hour is no distance. Might there be other issues such as mh behind her reluctance. Is her work satisfactory otherwise? Is she in a probation period?

What a load of misogynistic bollocks.

Exactly this.

OP, there are a couple of young people in my team who would never leave the house if it was up to them. Our contracts say something about hybrid and I’ve used that to enforce norms around regular anchor days in the office. I also do a lot of keeping in touch with people by direct message and make sure they know I’m available for ad hoc chats and that I expect them to be too.

I’d really try to get her in more by encouraging it as an early career development thing but of course you can’t force it contractually.

You should really surface all of your expectations and her ability to meet them during her probation so you can make an informed decision. A young person working for us very successfully hid quite a lot of issues during his probation and now we’re on the receiving end of all of these letters about how he can’t come in because of his disabilities (which he didn’t disclose to us at any stage prior to the end of his probation).

Covid was five years ago and the lock downs where on and off for a year in schools with some extended restrictions which were largely ignored in latter 2021.

Throughout that period young people had a level of comms available unknown to any previous generation, including the teenagers who spent six years of their childhood under isolated curfew every night.

A 25 year old will have had 23.5 years of “normal” socialisation” and a short period of limited but still available socialisation. There is a point at which you

The rest of the world went back to work and back to normal, the UK is an significant outlier in our inability to get young people back to work.

I had an interview once and the interviewer had their camera off.

fucking crazy.

Majority of offices in London are now telling staff they have to come into office 3 days a week

Cameras on is non-negotiable. I do a few zoom meetings with clients or in a group and sometimes switch off for a few seconds if I get up to grab something off a shelf or open the window or something, but having it off throughout is unacceptable.

There was a theory with some of the recent cyberhacks that information had been gleaned in large meetings by people joining Zoom calls or similar with camera/mic off and not being the people expected.

This does not apply to the camera off question. Cameras on for meetings is a reasonable and widespread workplace expectation, especially for remote workers.

If the lack of contact is affecting team progress why is the work allowed to be remote ?

So then you tell her that "we expect all staff to have their cameras on during calls so please can you ensure that you comply moving forwards" - eaasy really. At the same time you say that whilst her contract states remote home working , in order to build a relationship with the team you would request that she attend the office once every X weeks for a full day - especially during her probation period. Explain that constant remote working isnt helping develop relationships and sharing best practise is hard when working remotely.

This seems lacking in logic. Why do you expect more cameras on from a dei team? Why does being able to see people particularly benefit… people with vision issues? Wouldn’t they be more benefited by being on equal grounds with everyone with no cameras on?
I have never seen this be particularly a women problem at all, and don’t see any reason why someone would expect it to be.

I’m not too sure why I’m getting attacked about this? I agreed with you that it’s not always the case but it can be. There are numerous people on here saying the same. I’m really balanced in seeing everyone’s personal circumstances differently - and it could be fantastic for this individual. Great if so. But there can be a negative side.

Apologies if I’ve offended at all.

nope A policy is a company mandated usually written expectation. If the whole team drink coffee and someone wants tea, you can't refuse it on the basis of team policy because everyone does it.

Two words you need to remind her of if she keeps trying to call the shots : Probationary period.

why does having camera on help with sight loss?

I’d be letting her go at her end of probation meeting.