The Visibility Opportunity Cost of Remote Work
Interview with “Jordan”, a Compensation & People Operations Manager, for Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research
Curated by Aly Hassell
This post is part of an ongoing series in which Sharehold is publicly sharing our research that answered the question: “How does uncertainty impact one’s sense of belonging at work?” Access the insights here.
Meet Jordan
Given the sensitive nature of our Redesigning Belonging research, some participants have asked for anonymity. We’ll call this participant, “Jordan”. Jordan is a compensation and people operations manager at a pharmaceutical company. As part of Sharehold’s research on redesigning belonging at work for uncertainty, we interviewed Jordan about their experience of belonging at work during this period of time defined by COVID-19 and civil unrest. Jordan’s interview touches on a few themes:
- How people who do not belong drive change
- The relationship between belonging and innovation
- How working remotely can reduce opportunities to advance
Here are a few clips from our conversation with Jordan:
How do you define belonging?
“[Our company] has been struggling with this. I don’t believe we have a written statement on what belonging means for us. We’re in that phase where we’re just trying to figure out how to have belonging and inclusivity. As far as nailing down what does this mean for us? We don’t know.”
“Personally, belonging is the freedom to feel like you can be your true self.”
What’s the value of belonging at work?
“People who don’t feel like they belong often drive important change historically. There’s a little bit of an agitation that can happen when things aren’t right.”
“The value to the organization [is that] people will feel a greater commitment to the company. We are very mission-driven and this sense of belonging can only help enhance that. If you feel like your teammates and everyone has your back and you’re accepted for who you are, everyone can strengthen that drive towards the mission. You can drive towards a mission in a much more effective way.”
“Belonging could hurt innovation in some ways. Well, okay, let me take a step back. If people feel like they belong, and they’re able to speak their voice, put new ideas out there, and are not afraid of expressing those ideas, that will help drive innovation.
But it’s also a cautious edge walk because you don’t want to go too far to the other side where everyone begins to assimilate. It could become the new normal if suddenly you realize, ‘oh, everybody thinks like this.’ That starts to [create] a specific kind of culture. It’s a balancing act.”
How has this time of uncertainty impacted the experience of belonging at your company?
“People are nervous about visibility. Being in the office again is a way to network and to be seen by different groups, be around, and be present, and in the long-term, be recognized for opportunity… That’s one thing I’ve been raising my voice about a lot — how are we going to continue that visibility for people who wouldn’t volunteer to come back in?
We need to make sure our executives are demonstrating that we don’t all have to be there. Because once one of them goes in…”
“Even though we’re feeling more connected and more human, we’re still virtual. We’re trying to troubleshoot some of that. We’ve come up with a coffee roulette kind of thing — we’re going to pair people together into small groups who normally wouldn’t even interact in the office and within different levels in the organization and have them just say, ‘Hi, who are you? What do you do?’ We’re trying to find ways around that.”
Further Reading
Throughout our research, we’ll continue to share peeks into interviews and resources.
More on Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research:
