Behave Yourself

Part 3 and final (for now) of our Future of Work series considers the one question we’ve been grappling with from the start, what does the future of work hold and how do we get there? Aishwarya Kumar, Research Lead at Busara gives an outline of the solutions that we can test, how we came about them and what they mean for us.

As part 2 of turning our BeSci skill set inwards to improve work well-being and productivity, we take a behind the scenes look at how and why we plan to run an org wide experiment on ourselves to understand whether we’re working from home or living at work.

We're turning the behavioral scientist inwards to improve work well-being and productivity by running a future of work podcast series. To help kick us off on this series Alice Escande a senior program associate in Busara, has a candid conversation with Lori Foster on how to use organizational psychology and behavioral economics to think differently about our work practices.

In Episode 7, we hear from Busarians' Magdalena, a research specialist and Grace, a project associate and some external friends namely Angela, founder and coach at Triple Bottom Line Associates and Gospel, a research and development economist at Streetnomics based in Nigeria. We learn how consumers are affected by misinformation and the researchers' responsibilities in disseminating accurate, relevant and accessible information to marginalized groups.

We all know fake news is a pervasive, global problem, especially when it comes to sensitive situations like the current pandemic or elections. Eric Mugendi from PesaCheck speaks to us about his work tracking and combating misinformation across Africa. He speaks about the need to build a culture of fact-checking through the act and art of questioning all media. He reminds us that people need a discerning eye to unpack how and when media content is divorced from its context. Both Busara and PesaCheck implement behavioral science techniques, such as salient visual cues, to help media consumers alleviate the mental guess work of what may or may not be fake news.

In Episode 5, we discuss the extent in which misinformation devalues expert information and can have a ‘devastating’ impact on public order. For marginalized communities in the Global South, we conclude that building trust and anticipating a comprehensive response to misinformation is a moral imperative. At Busara, that's what our research seeks to do and sets the bar for what the behavioral science community as a whole should do.

In this episode, Ruth engages Bilal Siddiqi, a friend of Busara based at the Center for Effective Global Action, and Anna Yalouris, an engagement director at Busara, in an enlightening comparison between the responses of the 2014 Ebola outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic. When we consider methods used in previous pandemics to contain the current health crisis, how do we account for the public’s trust towards health systems and the spread of misinformation? Listen to their dialogue on how cultural norms must be changed to prevent transmission of the virus. Don't forget to subscribe to hear our next series on misinformation!

In this episode, Lornah facilitates an engaging discussion with Busara staff members Dhwani, Rosa, and Amy, who bring together view points from Kenya, India, Ethiopia, and the United States. They share their perspectives on the alternatives to social distancing, ways of coping with uncertainty during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as how it has changed the ways in which Busara conducts research - aliases and safe words anyone? To wrap-up, the discussants paint a picture and anticipate how the future will look post Covid-19 with topics such as digitization, mental health and climate change coming up.

Amy Shipow is back and in conversation with Syon Bhanot, a behavioral and public economist, and an Assistant Professor of Economics at Swarthmore College. The conversation is on social norm change. How are people treating their health and the health of their community, and are there gender differences in driving certain social norms?

Amy Shipow's curiosity as a researcher has her asking, what is the psychological impact of social distancing in the global south? To answer this question, she teams up with colleagues from different divisions within Busara to discuss how COVID-19 has affected the daily lives of people. What comes next is an introspective chat about feelings of anxiety brought on by the uncertainty of their financial futures, as well as a dive into topics such as how governments and media are responding to the pandemic and the conflict low-income earners face when presented with two options specifically, social distance or feed your family.