Since Covid-19, it seems like we all had a crash-course in risk assessment. Every time each one of us went to the grocery store, for a walk or caught a bus – we were calculating the risks of catching or infecting someone with Covid-19. With mixed guidance from governments compounding the problem, are we ok to be left to our own devices in making these everyday risk assessments?
Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, professor of law and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, in her piece for The Atlantic, writes “a century of research on human cognition shows that people are bad at assessing risk in complex situations”. Some of these ‘bad decisions’ have led people to socially shame one another for not socially distancing or wearing a mask. But Tess thinks our disgust should be aimed at governments and institutions – not at one another.
In this episode, we talk about how humans make complex decisions, biases leaders might fall prey to when deciding to reopen offices and how public shaming could transfer to the office environment…
Highlights
The dangers of forming our own risk assessments in the wake of a pandemic we are still learning about
The biases leaders might be susceptible to when reopening offices
How public shaming could transfer to the office
On going back to the office
Insisting people go back into a risky situation before the risk dies down to something more manageable is going to create a lot of interpersonal strife.
On why employers should reduce the cognitive burden
Employees in these situations are going to be navigating an enormous number of new decisions that is going to make work harder, and [if] the company can do anything to reduce the cognitive overload, it will increase compliance. You don’t want it to be on the employees themselves to find a place to sit apart from each other.
Links
Tess’s Atlantic article: Our Minds Aren’t Equipped for This Kind of Reopening
What does shaming people who don't social distance actually achieve?
Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges
If you have any comments or feedback, please send it to: theofficereset@gmail.com
The Office Reset podcast #04: Risky behaviour & office shaming