Suddenly Virtual

CHAPTER 12Empowering Employees on the Tech Front: The Converged Perspective

As knowledge workers the world over shifted suddenly to virtual operations, their mantra might have echoed Nike's: “Just do it.” Thoughtful planning was a luxury few could afford unless they were willing to let business grind to a halt as they established their footing. Silicon Valley tech companies were among the first to send their employees home, conducting what The Wall Street Journal called, “A nearly million‐person, real‐time experiment into whether it is possible to operate a fully remote workforce in the age of the coronavirus” (Copeland and Mickle 2020). You might imagine those in the tech industry would be well‐suited to the shift, but that was not necessarily the case. Secrecy around products, high levels of security, and complex in‐office equipment setups don't easily transition to a suddenly virtual work environment. When Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, sent workers home, it was reportedly overrun with employee requests for “work from home” kits – monitors, cables, and other technology (Copeland and Mickle 2020).

Knowledge workers across all industries scrambled, as did their companies, to make remote work . . . well, work. While some employees were able to grab their office necessities before heading home for an indefinite period of time, others simply made do with what they had. The consulting firm Accenture had no more than 10% of their 500,000 employees working remotely prior ...