CULTURE
Where are all my work friends?
New research show the lack of human connection is not just a remote work issue. It’s a culture problem — and it’s probably hurting your company
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A NEW GALLUP poll released last week found that only two in 10 U.S. employees say they have a ‘best friend’ at work ― troubling news, coming as workplace experts are starting to worry about an increased disconnection between employees and their job.
“We’re seeing in the data that younger people in general are feeling more disconnected from their workplaces,” said Gallup’s workplace and well-being researcher Jim Harter. “You can attribute some of that, potentially, to remote work. If they’re less connected to their workplace, they have fewer opportunities to connect with other colleagues and to develop those kinds of friendships that they might have had in the past.”
Sure, remote work is playing a part ― but so has years of orthodox business management that discouraged employees from bringing their personal lives to work, noted Jon Clifton. “Despite claiming “people are our greatest asset,” many executives I’ve met expect employees to leave their personal lives at the door when they come to work,” he writes in the Harvard Business Review. “Yet Gallup’s data shows that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including improvements in profitability, safety, inventory control and employee retention.”
It’s an area that one psychologist suggests could be part of the tepid response to the RTO push, and suggested that workplaces are falling into old habits when it comes to workplace socialization. If the office is meant to be dynamic and fun, employers have to let it be dynamic and fun.
“One of the things that I’m noticing is that people are coming into the office and saying ― why am I here? All I’m doing is sitting on Zoom meetings with my, you know, noise-cancelling headphones on because it’s so noisy,” said psychologist Lynda Gratton, on a recent Financial Times podcast.
“If I go into the office, it’s because I’ve got a friend at work. I want to speak to a friend," she continued. “So, I think if you’re a manager who’s asking yourself, how am I gonna get people back into the office? You get them into the office because there’s a friend there.” Kieran Delamont
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HEALTH & SAFETY
Liability in the hybrid era
If an employee is hurt working from home, is it a workplace injury?
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WHEN “THE WORKPLACE” can mean anything from the office to the bedroom to the café down the street, how does liability adapt? As hybrid work settles into some kind of permanence, questions of liability, insurance and privacy are continuing to vex workplace managers.
“Liability headaches are heaping up for companies in a range of industries as large numbers of employees work from home,” writes Rita Trichur, in The Globe and Mail. “They involve everything from occupational health and safety issues to privacy and security concerns. If an employee is hurt while working from home, is it a workplace injury? Should businesses provide workers with ergonomic chairs for remote work? Can health benefits be extended to workers residing in far-flung jurisdictions?”
It’s a legal issue that hasn’t yet been fully worked out. A 2021 Quebec case ruled that an Air Canada call centre employee working from home who fell did constitute a workplace injury.
“If I injure myself at home, but it’s because I’m doing laundry or taking the garbage out or something that’s not work-related, well then, that wouldn’t be considered a workplace injury,” said employment lawyer Samara Belitzky. “If [workers] injure themselves at their desk ― they hurt their wrist or they hurt their arm while they’re working ― that would be something that would be considered a workplace injury.”
What many legal and insurance experts recommend is that employers craft a work from home policy as part of the OH&S plans, which are usually required by law.
“Employers must still comply with employment-related legal obligations ― some of which, such as ensuring their health and safety in the home workplace, employers might not expect,” write McInnes Cooper’s Alex Warshick and Michael Murphy. “If these models of work persist, it’s likely employer compliance will be tested as a result of at-home injuries or investigation by OH&S authorities. Employers would do well to get ahead of any occupational health and safety issues in this next normal.” Kieran Delamont
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Terry Talks: The state of Work from Home ― where we’re at and where we might be going
| While many Canadian employees wish to return to a hybrid office enivronment — some adamantly so — others believe the need for social interactions at work could ultimately drive colleagues back to the office more often than we might think. | | | |
SOCIAL MEDIA
Bring your followers to work day
Thousands of young professionals are turning their careers into views on TikTok. But what does that mean for the companies they’re working for?
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FOR MONTHS, IT was hard to open TikTok and not see an aspirational workday vlog, playing up the allegedly cushy, perk-laden workdays of many in white collar industries.
“The genre often includes skin care regimens, eating habits or city-specific excursions,” writes the New York Times. “TikTokers also make day-in-the-life videos of their work lives, deploying the same editing style and careful curation to cast their office jobs in a more flattering light.”
And then, just as glamorous depictions of life in the industry were reaching their zenith, the tech layoffs started.
“The grim reality of the layoffs chip away at the facade of tech employee office vlogs, which frequently showed glamorous corporate perks like catered lunches, campus gym facilities and sponsored happy hours,” writes NBC’s Morgan Sung. “Now, many creators have pivoted to posting raw ― but still curated ― content about unemployment. Others are using their platforms to raise awareness of labour rights in the wake of recent layoffs.”
The videos might put some of those tech firms in a bit of a quandry. Amidst challenges with hiring, glamorous videos were “a powerful way to attract talent,” said one PR consultant. They were, among other things, a way for employees to brag about how good their jobs were.
But live by the sword, die by the sword: those same companies are now characterized with TikToks that portray their approach to layoffs as profit-driven, arbitrary and cold. But don’t expect the videos to go anywhere ― many creators say they plan to keep making them, job or no job. “This is my life now,” said one. “You might as well see it.” Kieran Delamont
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FLEXIBLE WORK
Miss the commute? You’re not alone
A time free of both work and home roles, there’s a reason you may be missing the personal time the commute created
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FOLKS ON SOCIAL media were having a bit of fun recently at the expense of this article headline: “You need to detach and psychologically recover from work, professors say. Commuting is a liminal space where that can happen.”
“The ‘you need to work in person’ propaganda is getting out of hand,” tweeted one. “They really don’t want to foreclose on skyscrapers, do they?” tweeted another.
And yes, to remote workers who have been regularly lectured to (or mandated), often on specious grounds, that they need to be back into the office for their own good, the suggestion was a bit tone deaf. But the research does hold some water.
“We sought to understand what it was that people missed when their commutes suddenly disappeared. During the shift to remote work, many people lost this built-in support for these important daily processes,” writes Matthew Piszczek, in NPR. “Without the ability to mentally shift gears, people experience role blurring, which can lead to stress. Without mentally disengaging from work, people can experience burnout.”
That research found that occasional longer commutes were even more beneficial ― workers came home more detached.
The point isn’t that commuting itself is good, but that commuting served an overlooked function in work-life balancing as a buffer between the two worlds. Even those enthusiastic about remote work have noted that the blurring of those boundaries tends to mean they work more, and escape from work less.
Though it didn’t make for buzzy headlines, the authors even offered some suggestions for replicating this at home, writing, “Our findings suggest that remote workers may benefit from creating their own form of commute to provide liminal space for recovery and transition ― such as a 15-minute walk to mark the beginning and end of the workday.” Kieran Delamont
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