Pre-pandemic, Gallup’s State of the American Workplace [downloadable] study revealed that 43 percent of employees were part of a remote workforce at least some of the time. During the height of the pandemic, 66 percent of Americans worked from home at least part of the week, according to Clutch’s The State or Remote Work During COVID study. Now, McKinsey’s 2022 American Opportunity Survey shows that the hybrid work-from-home phenomenon has settled in at 58 percent, with another 35 percent of employees working from home every day.
With so many employees working from home for at least part of the week, employers are finding themselves faced with new ongoing challenges. There are benefits, to be sure, but how are companies tackling the obstacles?
Biggest Challenges to Work-from-Home
University of Cincinnati Carl H. Lindner College of Business professors dissected the biggest challenges facing organizations that have instituted hybrid and fully remote workforces. In an interview with Phys.org in September 2022, they shared some of the top problems companies face and offer solutions to them.
Collaboration and Creativity Loss. Remote workforces aren’t constrained by geography. It’s not unimaginable to have employees in each U.S. time zone working in one department. That can be a nightmare for leaders, especially when trying to coordinate teams working on a big project. There is no water cooler for people to gather around to trade and build off each other’s ideas.
Solution: Organizations’ leaders need to figure out how to “be very intentional about collaboration and relationship-building in a remote or hybrid workplace,” says Suzanne Masterson, Ph.D. University of Cincinnati associate dean, faculty, Research & Lindner Culture, Department of Management.
Because of the time zone differences, “best practices for remote workforces [should] include periodic face-to-face interaction,” says Jaime Windeler, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati associate dean, Undergraduate Programs and Student Experience, Department of Operations, Business Analytics and Information Systems.
Video calls can help, but actual physical presence is what Windeler suggests, which can be expensive, as it would be up to you as the employer to pay for the travel and lodging costs of out-of-town employees.
Soft Culture and Increased Turnover. Another disadvantage of having a workforce that works from home is the inherent lack of cohesion, which can soften corporate culture. The relationships between leaders and new employees that are ordinarily built from onboarding through the various stages of employment are harder to develop when there is little face time. Relationships between employees take longer to develop, too. “Those things can all be built online, but it takes more intention and effort,” says Windeler, “and it doesn’t feel natural to most people. The more remote workers you [have], the less engaged or embedded [employees] feel in the organization, so turnover is going to be higher.”
Solution: HR and leadership can help strengthen culture and stave off terminations by instituting vertical and lateral mentorships.
Vertical mentorships can help employees learn important aspects of an organization’s culture – “how we do things” and “why we do things this way.”
Lateral mentorships can help employees learn connections within and between departments, as well as the intricacies of project tasks.
Laying strong ground for people to stand on their own will open them up to more engagement, which will help embed them into the organization.
Less Connection and Poorer Communication. Rhett Brymer, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati assistant professor, Department of Management, says that “what you miss is just connecting with people. That’s critically important at the beginning of any kind of employment with an organization – getting to know the people you’re working with.” Not working closely with peers doesn’t allow employees to get to know each other’s personalities, which can lead to miscommunication in things like emails and direct messages.
Solution: Outside of organizing quarterly or annual in-person gatherings, leaders can use technological solutions to assist in fostering connections. Virtual team rooms where employees can see each other and direct message, if not actually speak with, each other as they work can help employees band together to support each other in their work.
Leaders can hold virtual weekly check-ins for individuals and groups to build rapport and show support. As people get to know each other in these face-to-face meetings, they can learn about each other’s personalities and communication styles.
“Once you have a rapport with somebody,” Brymer says, “it’s a lot easier to work remotely with them because you know their personality. You know if you write an email, you can hear them saying it and know how to interpret it because you’ve met them in person.”
Tackling the organizational concerns facing businesses in the post-pandemic work world, in the end, “all comes back to intentionality,” says Masterson. “There’s got to be some intentionality about how we think about the social side of it. The work can get done,” she says, “but if you’re not intentional about building relationships, it really is just going to be that economic exchange relationship. ‘You pay me, and I’ll do what you have listed in my job description.’ Work gets done, but it’s not always the most meaningful, and it’s not always the most fulfilling for either side in that relationship.”