Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Interview Plan (Pt. 2)

Self-Introduction: (Interviews will be held individually).

I AM A STUDENT CURRENTLY ENROLLED IN A COMMUNICATIONS COURSE titled Organizational Communication. Our purpose here today is to gain an in-depth perspective from work professionals relating to a specific topic that our group has selected to write about, specifically Flexible and Virtual Collaboration.

Regarding confidentiality, none of your answers, nor your name will be discussed nor distributed outside of our classroom, anything that may or may not have been recorded or noted will be deleted by the end of the Summer 2024 Session A quarter.

The main reason for this interview is to discuss the part that remote work plays within your field of work. We ask you to speak freely whilst holding nothing back whether your thoughts be negative or positive so that we may gain as honest a perspective about this subject as possible, as this will all be held in confidentiality.

Background Information:

Now that we’ve introduced ourselves and our purpose for being here today, we’d like to get some information regarding yourself and your place of work.

● What is your Name?

○ Brian Dincau

● What is the name for the organization that you work for?

○ CNSI CAL NANO-SYSTEMS INSTITUTE WITHIN UCSB

● What title/position do you hold at the aforementioned organization?

○ FORMAL TITLE: SPECIALIST, WORKING TITLE: Microfluidics Lab AND INNOVATION WORKSHOP MANAGER

● What roles/responsibilities are you expected to uphold at your respective organization?

○ MANAGE TWO DIFFERENT SHARED FACILITIES THAT ARE THE Microfluidics Lab and Innovation Workshop, WITHIN BOTH OF THESE HE HAS A WHOLE BUNCH OF high-tech TOOLS USED FOR fabricating parts for RESEARCH AND I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING these TOOLS AND TRAINING PEOPLE from all over campus HOW TO USE THESE TOOLS IN ADDITION TO FIGURING OUT LOGISTICS REQUIRED FOR BILLING THESE PEOPLE, Since these are recharge facilities (people pay small amount to use our equipment which is much more affordable than buying a laser

cutter for their own lab, they’d rather learn to use mine, cut their parts and take those parts back to their lab). I am THE ONLY MANAGER FOR THESE FACILITIES AND DO ALMOST EVERYTHING INVOLVED IN RUNNING THEM), additionally he has a rotating crew of undergrad staff ‘workshop wizards’, responsible in hiring and managing all of these staff, in charge of maintenance

● What qualifications (Undergrad/Postgrad if any)/ Prerequisites did you require in order to successfully acquire this position?

○ BA/MASTERS/PHD (NOT REQUIRED, PREFERRED, ALLOWED A HIGHER BEGINNING PAYSCALE, HAVING JOB EXP IN INDUSTRY WAS AN ESSENTIAL PART, WORKED FOR SEMICONDUCTOR FOUNDRY, IN SALES FOR KITCHEN HVAC, SKILLS)

Thank you for providing that information.

Effect of Remote Work in your workplace

Now that we’ve gotten some background information about you, we’d like to ask you some questions relating to how remote work plays a role in your organization.

● How much of the work is remote / How many of your employees are working remotely?

○ Directly under me (undergrad), not a lot of work possible to do remote, some maintain lab wiki (update/improve wiki), some staff assigned to do remote work, about 10% of work logged as remote, MANY coworkers are remotely working however, financial team and HR at CSNI frequently work remote, most work done at pc and as thus not required to be working in person. TLDR, lot of admin is gone working remote

● How do you determine which positions in your organization should or should not be a remote position?

○ Refer to previous question

● How do you manage workplace conflict/misunderstandings in the context that one party involved is working remote, and one is in-person.

○ Not in their experience, CSNI is very good at communicating and has a very small team which makes it easy to communicate, all contribute to a google calendar in order to properly align schedules

● What do you believe to be the advantages and disadvantages of remote work to be?

○ Was working during covid remotely, notices that advantages include comfort (being able to prepare favorite beverages/environment/comfortable clothing/pet presence), being able to tune in in the comfort of home helped with engagement to some degree, less to worry about and be self conscious of anything, just focus on the class material and content. Recordings were a large advantage, allows flexibility in students’ schedules. Disadvantages include comfort, in terms of if home is not under your control (housemates, family that is loud and disruptive, can make it difficult to focus on remote work), mentions visiting parents and trying to remote work can be difficult because they try to strike up convo constantly, reviewing drawings for a part of discussing a new tool are things that are very difficult to translate and communicate remote, technical language

● What technologies have you found most helpful for remote communication, and is it difficult to communicate with remote employees?

○ Slack, understanding limitations of remote work so don’t ask for in-person help, being able to screenshare and draw is very useful (can do it in zoom, in other social apps such as discord, being able to screen record is also very useful, whether its through tool or OBS, you can go back and re-listen to a meeting to ensure you don’t miss anything)

● How long has it been since your company has decided to adopt remote working?

○ Pre-covid it was not common at all, but after lockdown it sort of became CNSI soft-policy to have one remote work day per week , don’t really have the chance to use this as he is facilities manager and requires a lot of in-person work, other people do ake vantage though

● How long did it take for your company to transition into partial-remote work, and was the transition easy to accept for yourself and colleagues?

○ I’m not sure, started a CSNI in 2022, so by the time I joined the soft policy was already incorporated.

● (In the case that interviewee participates in remote work) How do you feel that working remotely has affected your work-life balance?

○ NA

● Do your fellow employees agree or disagree with the following statement: Remote work is beneficial for our organization.

○ Most would agree - the opportunity to work remotely is beneficial because it generally allows people to have a better work-life balance, because I am single and have no children but employees that do have family, spouse, children, family members it is critical to be able to have this option because maybe they don’ have anyone to watch their child, or needs to go to the doctor, they would be able to take those responsibilities themselves while keeping up wih work remotely (rather

than going to and from home and work), allows employees to manage their time efficiently, again, there is a HIGH LEVEL OF TRUST INVOLVED, can see in much larger companies members of a bigger team would be able to take advantage and slack when there’s so many people, at CSNI everyone has an important role and holds up their responsibilities neatly.

● How did training differentiate between remote and in-person employees?

○ All training that I;ve specifically gave is in-person, because it involves using hardware and tools, basically prefers muscle memory of everything, all my raining is hands-on using the tool during training. When people start using my lab for the first time, all of them have to take a course called fundamental of lab safety, which is done remotely, so all of my training incorporates both in-person and remote factors, if I didn’t have this program it would take up hours of my time and schedule re-teaching the same lab safety program to all the people who end up trying top train for our tools, remote makes it easier.

Thank you for your responses. Wrap-Up Before we end things off today, we have a few closing questions we’d like to inquire about;

● Is there anything that I haven’t already asked that you’d like to mention regarding remote work?

○ No, I don’t think so.

● Would you like for your real name to be used in our interview results, or would you rather use a fake name and if so, what would you like that to be?

○ Fine with using my real name. Thank you so much for your time and answers, your responses have provided critical insight for our group in regards to learning how remote work has affected the professional field.