Angela Hall

Associate Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Angela Hall's research interests include employee accountability and employee legal claiming.

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Ask the Expert: How can I make a smooth return to in-person work?

As COVID-19 restrictions lift, many people are finding themselves getting called back to in-person work environments after 16 months in remote settings. To help those grappling with anxiety and uncertainty surrounding this return to "normal," Angela Hall, associate professor in Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, offers tips for making the transition as smooth and stress-free as possible. What are some tips for adjusting from a work-from-home back to a nine-to-five schedule? Practice! Practice getting up early, putting on your work clothes and even retracing your commute. Things like that can get you physically and mentally prepared to get back to the office. Create a daily, a weekly and even a monthly schedule for yourself that you continuously update to not only hold yourself accountable and stay on track with events and meetings, but to get a psychological boost every time you check something off the list. Set new ground rules for interactions with your co-workers. In some offices before the pandemic, hugs and handshakes were totally fine, but now those norms may need to be reconsidered. Just because someone was comfortable with that before doesn't mean they'll be comfortable now, which is why having a conversation about boundaries and comfort zones can ease those anxieties. Be generous with your time when scheduling meetings and assigning yourself tasks. Not only will you probably be juggling virtual and in-person meetings, but you may also have a bunch of people coming to your desk to say hello, especially when you first return. Realize that you may not be as productive as you think you'll be right away. Finally, use this transition as an opportunity to hit the reset button. This is an opportunity to revisit and possibly revamp how you do things at work, so try to put a positive spin on that and think of ways to improve your workday. What are some tangible ways that employees can practice self-care during the workday if they feel anxious or overwhelmed? First, know it's totally normal to feel stressed out right now. Just like it was very stressful when we first went home, this is a new kind of stress. As humans, it’s very stressful any time there are major changes, so give yourself some grace and know it's okay to be anxious. Take time for yourself, even if it's just five minutes. Things like practicing meditation, listening to calming music and going for a walk can make a very big difference. If you feel comfortable, lean on your co-workers. Research shows that social support acts as a buffer between stressors and actual feelings of stress. Be willing to talk to your co-workers, laugh with them and commiserate with them — it can be helpful for both of you. For employees who may be asked to come to the office more often than they may be comfortable, what are some good tactics for addressing those concerns with their supervisors? First of all, be transparent and proactive. Bring your concerns to your boss before you return to the office full time, feel miserable and become resentful. Schedule a time to talk and be open and honest about your concerns. Arm yourself with data. Be prepared to prove your flexibility and productivity with whatever metric you use to measure your success at work, whether that's quotas, numbers, ratings, etc. Let your success over the last year-and-a-half talk for you. Explain your reasons behind wanting to continue working from home at least some of the time. Does the quiet environment help you focus? Does the lack of commute allow you to get more things done? Explain how working from home benefits you and your work performance simultaneously. Finally, predict and address your boss' concerns. Is your boss worried about maintaining a lively office culture? Productivity? Acknowledge these concerns and show how you plan to address them so they won't be an issue later. Finally, what are some things employers can do to help their employees transition smoothly back into the office? Don't expect things to be perfect as soon as people come back. Strongly consider a hybrid model to ease the transition. Have regular check-ins with your employees to discuss comfort levels and individual concerns. Make sure they can still perform everyday office duties, like using a photocopier or using their office phone, as these are skills they haven't used in over a year. If you can, try scheduling meetings for midday rather than early in the morning or at the end of the day. That way, as employees are still getting used to waking up early and spending an entire day at the office, they don't miss any important information if they're tired or burned out. Finally, be open to feedback and employee ideas about how to make the transition smoother and what improvements can be made to make the workplace even better. Keep in mind that even though things may not be exactly how they were before the pandemic, they can still be great in their own way If you're a journalist looking covering the workplace as America begins to transition back then let our experts help with your coverage.  Angela Hall from Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations is available to speak with media simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.

Angela Hall

Biography

Angela T. Hall is the Associate Director for Graduate Studies and an Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. She received her JD from Florida State University, College of Law and her PhD from Florida State University, College of Business. She has previously been on the faculties of Florida State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Angela practiced law full-time. Her research interests include employee accountability and employee legal claiming. She has taught a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate, masters, and doctorate levels including business law, organizational behavior, human resources, leadership, and employee training and development. Angela has also authored learning modules and cases for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Legal Services

Areas of Expertise

Relationships Between Accountability and Job Performance, Satisfaction, and Tension
Leader Reputation, Leadership, and Training and Development
Employee Legal Claiming

Accomplishments

Award for “Most Aspiring Faculty” and nominated for “Best Management Professor”, UTSA MBA Association

2010

McKnight Junior Faculty Fellowship, State of Florida

2007 - Awarded one of five state-wide paid sabbaticals for untenured Florida university professors for the 2007-2008 academic year

Best Research Paper Award, Global Conference on Business and Research Finance

2007

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Education

Florida State University

Ph.D.

Business Administration

2005

New York University

B.S.

Management and Organizational Behavior/ International Business

1991

Florida State University

J.D.

1993

Affiliations

  • Member : Academy of Legal Studies in Business
  • Member : Academy of Management
  • Member : Management Faculty of Color
  • Member : Society for Human Resource Management

News

Ford to require COVID vaccines for ‘most’ US salaried employees

The Detroit News  online

2021-11-03

Ford Motor Co. will require most U.S. salaried employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8 or they could be put on unpaid leave, a move likely to affect return-to-work and vaccination policies at other employers. Angela Hall, an assistant professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University, said the move will influence other companies and organizations to follow suit. “When Ford sneezes, a lot of other places catch a cold," Hall. said "They’re following what Ford does because they’re such an influential employer, and they also are linked to the economy in so many ways by the people they employ and the relationship they have with suppliers.

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As pandemic rages on, Ford's not alone in delaying return to office

The Detroit News  online

2021-08-25

Ford Motor Co. announced, on Wednesday, it is once again delaying its return-to-office date and introducing yet another remote work option to provide greater flexibility to salaried employees. “Organizations are really seeing that people have learned how to work remotely and that it’s not really worth the risk in a lot of cases, because we don’t know about this delta variant, and it’s only going to get more magnified as the weather gets colder and as kids go back to school," said Angela Hall, an associate professor at Michigan State University's School of Human Resources and Labor Relations.

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Ask the Expert: How can I make a smooth return to in-person work?

MSU Today  online

2021-07-13

As COVID-19 restrictions lift, many people are finding themselves getting called back to in-person work environments after 16 months in remote settings.

To help those grappling with anxiety and uncertainty surrounding this return to "normal," Angela Hall, associate professor in Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, offers tips for making the transition as smooth and stress-free as possible.

View More

Journal Articles

Review and Challenges of Technologies for Real-Time Human Behavior Monitoring

IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems

Sylmarie Davila-Montero, Jocelyn A Dana-Le, Gary Bente, Angela T Hall, Andrew J Mason

2021

A person's behavior significantly influences their health and well-being. It also contributes to the social environment in which humans interact, with cascading impacts to the health and behaviors of others. During social interactions, our understanding and awareness of vital nonverbal messages expressing beliefs, emotions, and intentions can be obstructed by a variety of factors including greatly flawed self-awareness. For these reasons, human behavior is a very important topic to study using the most advanced technology. Moreover, technology offers a breakthrough opportunity to improve people's social awareness and self-awareness through machine-enhanced recognition and interpretation of human behaviors. This paper reviews (1) the social psychology theories that have established the framework to study human behaviors and their manifestations during social interactions and (2) the technologies that have contributed to the monitoring of human behaviors. State-of-the-art in sensors, signal features, and computational models are categorized, summarized, and evaluated from a comprehensive transdisciplinary perspective. This review focuses on assessing technologies most suitable for real-time monitoring while highlighting their challenges and opportunities in near-future applications. Although social behavior monitoring has been highly reported in psychology and engineering literature, this paper uniquely aims to serve as a disciplinary convergence bridge and a guide for engineers capable of bringing new technologies to bear against the current challenges in real-time human behavior monitoring.

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The Role of Perspective Taking on Supervisor Off-Work Privacy Violations: A Three Study-Replication

Academy of Management Proceedings

Jacob Albert McCartney, Samantha Jordan, Jennifer Franczak, Wayne Hochwarter, Angela Hall

2020

Constant connectivity, aided by smartphones and email, is an increasingly prevalent reality of modern workplaces. Most research has emphasized the negative effects of this connectivity including employee stress (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015; Richardson, 2017) and anger (Butts et al., 2015). However, benefits of staying connected to work including flexibility (Kossek & Thompson, 2016) and perceived positive career outcomes (Boswell & Olsen-Buchanan, 2007), point to a more nuanced picture. Our study proposes a moderator to explain this variance; perspective taking. Perspective taking is a resource which allows individuals to understand the viewpoint of others (Ng, Hsu, & Parker, 2019). Within the context of supervisor off-work privacy violations (SPV), we propose that employee perspective taking can dampen the negative effects of SPV, through providing context for why these violations have occurred.

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Atypical Accommodations for Employees with Psychiatric Disabilities

American Business Law Journal

Stacy A Hickox, Angela Hall

2018

People with psychiatric disabilities often need atypical accommodations to participate in today's workforce. Some of these accommodations, including structural and social changes in the workplace, can address biases against people with psychiatric disabilities, while others ameliorate deficits that may affect performance or interaction with others. Many courts have denied requests for such accommodations based on employers' assumptions about performance or the direct threats purportedly posed by people with psychiatric disabilities. By challenging these assumptions, which can be influenced by stigma and stereotypes, and by enforcing an employer's duty to interact regarding potential accommodations, employees with psychiatric disabilities could benefit from structural and social accommodations. Courts should consider social science research in determining which nontraditional accommodations may be reasonable and whether the employer can establish that they impose any undue hardship. Such consideration will expand opportunities for people with psychiatric disabilities in the workplace without unduly interfering with employers' interests.

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