Online internships: nearly as good as in-person ones?

Vanessa Tsao interviews five UCL students whose internships have been moved online in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The impact coronavirus has had on graduate jobs and internships has been severe, with hundreds of companies cancelling or delaying them. However, some firms - such as PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - have offered a digital summer work experience to its applicants; and other companies, large and small, have been adapting to online work. For university students who have had to abruptly adjust to online learning and examinations as many countries entered lockdown, online internships (if they were fortunately obtained) have been another area they had to adapt to.

Work schedule and flexibility

“I’m trying to do everything I get in one day because I know by the next day I’ll procrastinate until I get an email reminder.”

One of the largest differences between remote and office work is the scheduling; most interns said that there is a greater degree of flexibility in working hours. Lesley Wang, a third-year marketing intern, described her working hours as “very fluid.” Her company’s HR sent emails saying that as employees are working from home, they may start work at varying times, take longer lunch breaks or have to deal with kids, hence offering an accommodating and flexible approach.

This flexible approach benefits night owls too. Katie Holopainen Hadaway, a first-year student interning at a Philippines-based social enterprise, said she does most of her work at night as she works better then: “I design better at night, and spend my daytime researching and coming up with ideas,” she said.

However, when co-workers are scattered globally, schedule flexibility decreases. Angela Zhou, a first-year student working at a Hong Kong event planning startup, said that she generally worked in her own time, however due to the time difference between London (where she was at the time of the interview) and Hong Kong, there were only certain hours where her supervisor would be available to discuss her work. This resulted in tightly scheduled video calls, or difficulties reaching her supervisor.

For some, the lack of a clearly defined schedule in remote work can be difficult to manage. Katie says that this makes her “have no sense of time.” She receives assignments and does them in her own time, which, she feels, resembles a school deadline in making interns vulnerable to procrastination: “I’m trying to do everything I get in one day because I know by the next day I’ll procrastinate until I get an email reminder.”

Similarly, Lesley sees the parallels between moving online for work and for studies: “You have to be quite ‘on it’… It’s easy to say ‘I’ll do it later’ or that since it’s an online thing you don’t need to put in as much effort.” A 2012 study found that productivity depends on the type of task: people were more productive at tasks they found dull in an office setting, but when doing creative work, people performed better when working from home.

Management styles: micromanagement

Micromanaging was one potential worry faced by remote workers due to the fact that work is done behind screens and generally at one’s own pace, however interns felt that they were less micromanaged than expected. Katie’s analogy of a university deadline also applies here, since an assignment is given and handed in with little intermediate supervision or checkpoints. Trust is also a key factor affecting how much supervisors micromanage, as highlighted by Lesley who has worked at her company for eight months now. “[My manager] already knows how I work and she trusts me,” she said, noting that she even has to ask for more work at times.

However, with technology allowing instant connectivity, there can be constant supervision of online work. Angela’s work takes place on Google Docs, allowing collaborators to check in on the document with live updates, which she found strange at first. “Although he doesn’t really interrupt me [during my work hours], I see him picking through things [with his cursor], and I can tell from the user icon brightness if he is active or inactive [on Google Docs],” explained Angela.

Technology-enabled collaboration

Technology has increasingly enabled quick and easy collaboration, from virtual workspace tools like Google Drive to video calls for meetings. Kong Pei Yen, a first-year interning at a fintech startup in Singapore, outlines how this was helpful in fostering collaboration and accountability. “We have daily ‘stand ups’ [over video call], so everyday we update the team about each other’s progress, and tell the team what we aim to achieve by the end of the day,” she said. This prevents major miscommunications and creates an open environment, which she previously thought would be a challenge, given the virtual setting. Furthermore, as the startup involves meeting with many investors and various professionals from design experts to lawyers, the ability to have video call meetings rather than commuting physically to meet people has been a huge advantage.

Unlike Pei Yen, who works in a flexible startup setting, first-year Gréta Mile interns at human resources at a large international bank in Hungary. Yet she feels that she is not missing out on anything by working from home and not in an office. Due to the size of the company, they were better equipped to transition to remote work, and she works from an office laptop that functions as a cloud system to connect her with all employees. “Despite the lack of physical contact I feel very connected to my co-workers as I talk to them through video calls multiple times a day,” she said.

Collaborating online also pushes one to be a better communicator. Lesley noticed that she was forced to be better at written communication especially, since explaining a difficult thing over email can be challenging. But technology can also become a source of frustration.

Lesley felt that working became less efficient. “Before, if I want someone to do something for me or collaborate with co-workers, I’d just walk over and ask. Now, I have to send emails and reminders, which takes three to four days because I can’t physically show up to talk to them,” she said. Face-to-face working is definitely much better, she believes, for besides the advantage of efficiency, it also truly builds relationships.

Technology problems and disadvantages

“With working from home, you see more of their humanity when, for instance, the boss’ children come in the room and she shoos them.”

When technology slips up, this can cause a variety of inconveniences or even awkward situations. The most common one is delays or poor connection, which at its mildest, merely requires a switch from video call to voice call, as Katie noted. But when there is a lag in a video call, this could unintentionally cause minor offence. “When I’m talking to my boss and there’s a lag, it’s easy to interrupt by accident, which made him really annoyed at me,” Angela said. Furthermore, she had never seen her boss in person, which could help develop trust and rapport prior to starting her internship entirely online, so her first week was particularly horrible due to communication difficulties.

The importance of prior face-to-face time to build trust and rapport is also prevalent in Katie’s experience. “At first I got so scared to message [my supervisors], it’s like approaching a teacher, in a sense,” she said. This resulted in awkwardness when Katie called her boss “sir,” prompting a surprised reaction: “Why are you calling me ‘sir’?”

Still, the occasional blooper occurring over video call meetings can have an unintended effect of humanising co-workers in an amusing way. “We were on a Zoom call and someone’s dog came in to try and cuddle, and everyone went like ‘yay dog’,” Lesley remarked. “With working from home, you see more of their humanity when, for instance, the boss’ children come in the room and she shoos them.” These humanising moments contrast with the professional image one holds of their co-workers in an office setting.

Impact on happiness

Remote work seems to have a positive effect on work satisfaction — one CNBC survey in May reported that remote workers had a Workforce Happiness Index score of 75 (out of 100), higher than that of workers going into workplaces. Lesley concurred, saying that her co-workers are generally happier, as they do not have to commute to work and can spend more time with their families. Furthermore, Lesley felt that being at home gives one a sense of ease, relieved of the burden of having to act in a certain way in the office, often constrained and professional. “If you get an annoying email, at home you can complain or react to it freely, but not in the office,” she described. Pei Yen enjoys remote working too, especially as she is not a morning person. But although Katie is mainly positive about her internship experience thus far, she is slightly concerned about joining the social enterprise industry in the future as she is not actually experiencing it hands-on.

Thus, online internships have been mainly a positive experience, allowing students to work flexibly, yet gain rich experiences in these few months. But studies done on full-time remote employees have produced mixed results, considering many factors such as mental health during isolation, home environment and potential disturbances, domestic labour and its gendered division, socioeconomic status and more. So whether the benefits of remote work remain in the future is yet to be determined.