Working Hard or Hardly Working: Bolstering Productivity Amid a Public Health Crisis

9 min readApr 23, 2021

By Colleen Jackson, Emma Duffy, Kennedy Cassie & Ryynn Rathwell

Picture this: one minute, you are at the office socializing with colleagues, exchanging ideas and procrastinating about the pile of work you must complete before the end of the week. Fast forward through a global pandemic and you are sitting at your kitchen table, kids hollering in the background, and somehow you still have the same stack of papers staring you in the face with a Zoom meeting in five minutes. How did you end up here? And where did your motivation go?

The Problem

After reading “Working Hard or Hardly Working”, our team determined that the firm Shareworks by Morgan Stanley was suffering from a lack of motivated employees. With little motivation or incentive to complete their work remotely, employees dedicated their working hours to passion projects and otherwise had a difficult time working at home. This was clearly a twofold problem — on one hand, employees were experiencing a lack of motivation with their work; on the other, remote working was eating away at their communication skills and ability to manage time. But with the convenience and productivity potential of remote working, could Morgan Stanley really solve this problem by blowing the whistle and sending everyone back to the office? Our team thought not.

After identifying the above problems, we laid out several possible solutions based on solid decision criteria. These criteria included ensuring limited cost was incurred by the employees, the recommendation was flexible for both Shareworks and its employees, it leveraged the use of technology and productivity tools, and it increased employee engagement and productivity in the workplace. Based on these criteria, we brainstormed the following possible solutions:

Implement flexible work arrangements. Such as a minimum number of days employees must work in person. For example, those employees who still need flexible arrangements can work 2 days at home and 3 days in person. Then there are still three days of work where they can be supervised, and management can ensure company time is being used appropriately.
Using AI technology to keep track of employees at home. Surveillance technology, for instance, could keep track of the time employees are spending working at home to ensure that during the workday, employees are working on what they are paid to work on.
Improve the work-from-home environment. Give employees the resources they need to better manage their time at home and feel comfortable working for a full day at home. For example, sit-stand desks, additional computer screens, and ergonomic workstations.
Improve communication tools in the online environment, or experiment with new communication tools to try to find what works best. Use different tools for different purposes (ie. Slack for quick questions, Zoom for longer conversations with more information).
Set daily check-ins with managers with clear goal setting. Establish rules of engagement for employees. Clearly define when communication is required, and which communication method is best.
Create an effective, anonymous survey to determine engagement levels and why there is a lack of engagement/disgruntled employees. Data results could be visualized to determine key areas of improvement for organization.
Create an open innovation space for associates at Morgan Stanley to collaborate.

The Solution

From this list of potential recommendations, we narrowed it down very quickly to create a space for employees and employers to collaborate. Employees were clearly doing their own projects during working hours; why not encourage this behavior to encourage more engagement and productivity in the workplace? We thought of what is referred to as the 70–20–10 rule, where 70 percent of work is done in relation to their job role, 20 percent is used to work on related side projects that benefit the company, and 10 percent was allocated towards wildcard passion projects.

In fact, the 70–20–10 rule is an integral part of the bottom-up planned emergent strategy and has been associated with higher likelihood of serendipity in the workplace; as an emergent strategy, this means that an idea, like our team’s Dream Lab, can be generated from within an organization and completely pivot the firm’s direction if successful. As the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt actually applied (Hübner, 2019) this model to encourage innovation in the workplace. Emergent strategy is often an effective tool because it grants greater autonomy (Jackson, 2020) to workers. Since workers tend to work more closely with customers, their solutions can be to the benefit of the overall functioning of the firm. Knowing that Shareworks was still subject to public health regulations at this time, we knew the framework used to employ this recommendation had to be remote, creative, and accessible. Enter technology tools.

Using the Right Tools

Technological tools have always been available, but with the onset of the pandemic they have never been more widespread. As a SaaS firm focused on investment management, Morgan Stanley was no stranger to technology and our team sought to capitalize on this. To support employees in their passion projects, we started with a website using Square, knowing that this would have to serve as a proverbial collaborative space. What we liked most about a website builder like Square, compared to an HTML format, was that the coding was already done for us; we simply had to assemble the final pieces. Although marketed to sell products, we attempted to pivot this model to make it more accessible as a job board and space to collaborate, while making sure it was simple and had an intuitive structure. We also used Canva to create a new logo design for The Dream Lab, and leveraged YouTube to create an introductory video.

From there, we considered how the company could make The Dream Lab as engaging as possible given the remote nature of employee’s work. Using our combined experience, consultations, and the material learned in ENTI 674, we decided to create a platform for Morgan Stanley whereby employees could have their passion and work-related projects posted to the site, apply for funding for work-related projects through a voting system via Slido, and post on a skill share board to connect with members of their community. Different pages were created and linked together according to the workflow we wanted users to follow in the site.

To create a comprehensive prototype of The Dream Lab platform, we used some of our classmates’ examples (with their consent, of course) of their website landing pages as mock projects that Morgan Stanley has approved for display on the website. We thought it prudent to include both projects that could benefit Shareworks as well as wildcard projects, since each serves a unique purpose and incentivizes employees differently. For work-related projects, the intention was for the employee to feel motivated by having a space where they could see Morgan Stanley was investing in them, their workspace, and their ideas; and further, that their colleagues were also supportive. For passion projects, this incentivized employees to share skills with each other, manage time, and work collaboratively. In this way, the user would see an opportunity to share their ideas, receive feedback on them, and be motivated to reciprocate the support they received from their employer. Likewise, the employer would be motivated to invest in projects that would improve their business model and strategy, while providing a space to support their employees’ passions. Overall, allowing employees this creative space and increased autonomy will develop stronger leaders (Zhang & Zhou, 2014).

We then added a skill sharing board, where employees could post their headshots, connect with project leads, or offer their services. Each person’s photo was linked to their LinkedIn for project leads to see. The purpose in doing so was to allow colleagues to connect with each other, share ideas, and offer services to one another. In doing so, employees would have the ability to expand their networks outside of their traditional social circles, form new experiences, and seek out the opportunity to create value with their peers. Creating something together, with the support of an employer, would encourage greater satisfaction and fulfillment while enhancing productivity in the workplace.

Next, we incorporated a voting button so employees and employers visiting the site could vote for their favorite projects and visualize their popularity in real-time with Slido. This option added a unique level of engagement for both project leads and their fellow employees, where they could gauge validation for their projects, support others, and see trends in innovation to create new ideas. In the same manner, data visualization is a useful tool for Morgan Stanley so they can also view the types of ideas which are trending, how they could benefit the firm, and whether ideas should be invested in.

Initially done in lab for ENTI 674, Typeform and Zapier both proved to be an integral part of our project, facilitating an important component of communications. We simply embedded our Typeform codes into the website builder, allowing the user to see and fill the form directly on the page. For the application page, a Typeform was made to collect employee information before granting approval. This information included first and last name, email address, and a brief description of the venture. The second Typeform on the same page was to allow employees to share their skills. This required sharing their name, email, and skills they wanted to make visible to others. Applicants were also encouraged share their picture and their LinkedIn profiles, so project leads could learn as much information as they could about the applicant. In both cases, these Typeforms were connected to Google Sheets, where information was stored before sending an automated email from Gmail via Zapier.

Wrapping Up

Improving communication channels was one of the needs identified by our team in bolstering productivity and motivation, and we truly feel as though we have provided Shareworks by Morgan Stanley with a unique recommendation. Completing this project was certainly fun and invaluable when it came to leveraging our knowledge and encouraging us to learn new tools. Given we had more time to make the prototype, our team would have built a more comprehensive prototype to achieve the exact aesthetic we were seeking. That being said, the tools made available to us to complete the present prototype were more than sufficient to communicate our recommendation. If we were to integrate anything new, it would likely be a moderated forum where employees can engage with each other to discuss these projects in real time. Either way, we created a platform that serves its purpose and functions as it was intended to. We are proud of our work and what we have created.

Following the pandemic, many companies are choosing to pivot to online instead of simply moving back to the office. Although being online cannot fully replace our social networks, using technology to supplement is a strategic move that can benefit (Farrer, 2020) firms in the long term in producing motivated, satisfied employees. In addition, remote working entirely or a balance between on and off site working produces employees that are more productive, perform better, and are less likely to leave. Programs like the Crema Venture Lab continue to reinvent what employee engagement means and how we can foster that kind of productivity in the workplace. As a leading supplier of software for investment firms, Morgan Stanley would be wise to implement a similar platform so they can engage with their employees more fully.

References

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Crema. (2021). Venture Lab. Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://www.crema.us/venture-lab

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