Remote work remains a hot topic of discussion for employees and managers alike. Many employees want to keep their flexible hours and a better work-life balance. On the other hand, some managers and leaders believe that being in the office is the only way for employees to truly engage with their work.
According to a Harvard Business Review (HBR) report, an important argument for bringing employees back to the office is to decrease their sense of disengagement with their company culture and their colleagues. And this research shows that when remote workers feel isolated and disconnected, they are more likely to quit their jobs.
Encouraging employees to mingle with others and pairing them up with a colleague to talk to can help alleviate this feeling of isolation. Employers can also set up hybrid meetings for remote employees who live in the same city, to reduce their feelings of isolation.
Is returning to the workplace necessary to increase productivity?
Many employers suggest that returning to the workplace is necessary to increase employee productivity, indicating that workers are doing less work at home than in the office.
However, the HBR study says otherwise. The researchers gathered metadata from all Zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx meetings (involving webcams on and/or off) from 10 major global organizations and compared the periods from April to mid-May in 2020 and the same six weeks in 2021 and 2022.
The study concludes that remote work does not decrease productivity but changes the way workers and companies define productivity. Compared to 2020, when remote work was new, the habits of remote workers have changed in 2022.
Virtual meetings today are more frequent, more spontaneous, shorter and have fewer participants
According to the study, virtual meetings today are more frequent, more spontaneous, shorter and include fewer participants. Presumably, as remote work has become more ubiquitous, people have realized that — sometimes — you don’t have to have a 30-minute to hour-long meeting.
HBR found that meetings were down by 10 minutes, 66% of one-on-one meetings were unscheduled, and there were 60% more virtual meetings in 2022 than in 2020. These statistics can be attributed to the fact that managers and employees are holding meetings on an ad hoc basis, whereas workplaces adhered to rigid schedules before the pandemic.
The number of people participating in meetings has halved from an average of 20 participants to 10. According to HBR, this decrease is due to the increase in the number of one-on-one meetings in 2022, since 42% of meetings were individual meetings this year, compared to 17% in 2020.
Unscheduled meetings could replace in-person interactions
The HBR study aims to refute the claim that remote employees don’t engage with their colleagues. According to the study, unscheduled one-on-one meetings could replace the in-person interactions employees used to have in the office.
Although current working methods are different and may still change over time, it is clear that people are still working. At the end of the day, when employees get their work done and hit the numbers, does it really matter where they do it?
Source: “ZDNet.com”