Thoughts on Remote Work and Emotional Connectedness
There is a certain amount of gravity around remote work. Even those of us who like going to the office occasionally, struggle to produce the force necessary to escape the pull of our home office. It feels less of a matter of will power and more the universe conspiring against our innate desires. The commute, the kid’s karate class after work, laundry, a day of meetings that will be all virtual anyways, are all things that take a decent plan of an in-office visit and relegates it to the heap of unfulfilled ambitions for the week.
But there is a chorus of voices that are espousing the benefits of in-person work. The collaboration is stronger, the sense of connectedness deeper and the speed at which problems can be addressed swifter. For employers, this means the pull of the office must be stronger than the gravity of the home office. It’s not enough to match the incentives of the before times but we have to rethink what the strengths of in-person work is and figure out how to amplify them.
I don’t have the answer. In fact, I don’t believe it will be a single answer but more of a tapestry of solutions that are tailored to the culture of an organization. There won’t be a one size fits all but a drive to understand the desires for in-office connectedness.
One piece of this conversation that I’ve found interesting is the idea of emotional connectedness. Much of the discussions around return to office has focused on the concept of physical proximity being the engine for innovation. But emotional connectedness looks at emotional proximity as being the secret sauce. Co-workers feeling connected to not just each other, but to their role, team, department and company as a whole.
When I was introduced to this concept, I wanted to start thinking about how our emotional connectedness ebbs and flows over time. I started thinking about these emotions as a measurable resource. Imagine every employee had an emotional connectedness score that reflects their level of engagement. What increases someone’s level of connectedness? Since the pandemic, we’ve relied almost exclusively on in-person meetings, and for good reason. For a lot of people that social interaction dumps a huge point value into their connectedness score. Many people have a bit of a buzz about them after a couple days in the office connecting with colleagues. It’s also insanely easy for the employer since it’s leveraging an already sunk cost resource. (The office itself)
But there are two problems with this as the sole means of addressing the connectedness score. For starters, not everyone gets the same boost from in-office visits. For some people it’s a drain on them to be in person for a myriad of reasons. If in-office visits are the only way your company is boosting the connectedness score, you’re likely leaving a decent percentage of your staff unfulfilled. The second issue is a problem with all boosting methods and it’s what I describe as drainage. Our connectedness scores are boosted by activities, but they also drain at a regular rate. That rate might change per person. You can feel it as the buzz of your in-office visit begins to fade after week one. A month later you might be back in the same connectedness valley. Sue might be able to ride the high of her office visit for an entire quarter, while Jack may need a more frequent top-off of emotional energy. This drainage is something we have to pay close attention to and build rhythms in the organization that are aware of this drainage and are structured to curtail it. I took care to use the word curtail as oppose to eliminate. We can’t eliminate drainage. The best we can do is slow it.
We can’t rely solely on in-office visits though. The more frequent office activities become the more energy it takes to escape the home office gravity well. (The events quickly get taken for granted) Developing remote activities and rituals that also produce emotional connectivity is key. This is where things will deviate per organization. An organization with a young population might gravitate towards different activities than a company that skewed older. Because of that there’s no playbook for the type of events that could work virtually but here are a few broad categories I can think of.
- Employee Resource Group events centered around themes of interest
- Book Clubs
- Gaming groups/clubs
- Trivia groups
- Special interest projects
- Virtual coffee meetings (people are randomly paired together for 30 minute discussions)
The secret sauce here is to have a broad array of programs since you have a diverse array of personalities and interests. You also need to take care to create opportunities for smaller sets of connections, even just 1-on-1. There are quite a few people that don’t function well in large groups. Putting those connections into a remote setting just exacerbates that problem. Being able to come up with options of various engagement sizes is key.
Having a point person for each of these categories is ideal to serve as a coordinator and cheerleader of sorts. When groups are left to self-organize they often die prior to the group reaching a critical mass of attendance and consistency that allows the group to thrive on its own. These groups and activities don’t provide the same bang for your buck as an in-office visit, but the barrier to entry is much lower and they can provide small point boosts to the connectedness score in-between office visits.
Another source of connectedness points is the relationship an employee has with their work. This is something that leadership must have a strategy for. How does someone relate their job to the overall strategy of the business? How does their department factor into the corporate goals? This requires all levels of leadership to understand the strategy and how they fit in, but it also requires relentless repetition at all levels of the organization. As much as employees see themselves as attentive and engaged, the truth is people need to hear the same message over and over again in various mediums before it really begins to settle in. This means leaders need to have their talking points in-hand that they can say over and over and over and over again, so that employees see how they fit in to the larger plan.
A central theme that has come up in my thinking is the idea that managing this connection score is work. It’s work that we took for granted in the office because it came so naturally because of the setting. I dare say that we didn’t even respect that connection management as work but as goofing off. Bob is always at the water cooler. Pam spent half an hour chatting with Frank in the kitchen. We didn’t recognize the building blocks of relationships that those moments created. Now that we don’t have it, we’re desperate to recreate it.
Hybrid work is definitely going to be a tough nut to crack. We’ll need to experiment with a bunch of different options and have honest conversations about what keeps us at home, what gives us energy and what drains us. For some companies the first step will be creating the psychological safety necessary to have open, honest discussions about what works and what doesn’t. If everyone is living in a place of fear where any criticism of remote work leads to a return to office mandate, you’ll never receive honest feedback about the state of remote work. It’s been a huge help to many people but its far from perfect for the company or the individual. Being able to have honest discussions about that is step one.
