The myths of 'distance' in a virtual work environment!

After more than a year, now that I was vaccinated and there was a partial opening up of restaurants, I finally went to a restaurant to have dinner. About 10 feet away, there was a family of four, including two teenagers. As they were the only other patrons in the restaurant, I glanced at them and was soon intrigued. As soon as they sat down, each of them whipped out their cell phones and began scrolling through; not a word transpired for a few minutes till the waiter came to take their order. As I ate my dinner, I occasionally glanced at them only to discover that they hardly spoke with each other-so engrossed as they were on their devices.

The family was physically close but virtually very distant. It was as though they were miles apart, each in their world. 

I am sure all of us can relate to the situation in some way. As the world argues about 'return' to work and some CEOs vehemently oppose remote work as an 'aberration' (David Solomon, Goldman Sachs) or as a discount on social capital, we need to separate myths from realities about the concept of distance.

Here is some counterintuitive research regarding distance for organizations to consider:

a) Thomas Allen, an MIT researcher, in 1977 experimented on communication patterns- who and how frequently subjects communicated with. He found that the probability of communications drops almost to zero once the person is beyond 100 feet! While it is obvious that the further the distance, the lower are the communications prospects, the fact that the distance bar is just 100 feet was revealing. In other words, if you have co-workers who are on a different floor, they might as well be in a foreign country!

b) Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban published research in 2018 that debunked another myth- open offices! Remember what you were told about open offices? That it will foster collaboration and serendipitous interactions that will create spontaneous opportunities for creativity and innovation? Well, it isn't true. Bernstein and Turban tagged their participants in a way they could capture their interactions before and after they shifted to an open office. They found that in an open office, face-to-face interactions dropped by 72% (yes, 72%), emails increased by 56%, and IM increased by 67%. In other words, in an open office environment, virtual interactions usurped face-to-face interactions. Your neighbor in the next cubicle may, for all you know, feel more comfortable in sending you a text message from 6 feet away!

c) However, here is the dark side of 'distance.' Researchers Erin Bradner and Gloria Mark found that people are less likely to be persuaded, more likely to deceive, and less likely to cooperate if the participants are at a 'distance.' The distance could be (as we know from example a) just 100 feet or many thousand miles away. We all know how easy it is to troll or get trolled by someone you do not know or is far away! The authors concluded that it is not the physical distance that is a challenge in human connections; it is the social distance. The more you know a person socially (albeit the social interactions happen over electronic media), the more you will trust the individual, cooperate, and communicate. 

d) Finally, researchers Asatiani et al. discovered that conscious social connections- with symbolic events that amplify an organization's culture and values-actually increase employee connectedness with the organization and leaders. Among other advantages of going virtual is that hierarchies flatten, giving senior leaders the medium to connect with and communicate to employees. So how organizations design their social interactions, social rituals, celebrations, and connections matters. Most organizations 'design' their virtual world for information interactions (with some leader check-in thrown in) but not necessarily large-scale social and cultural interactions. 

Bottom line, in a virtual world, distance is a socio-psychological construct, not a physical one. We have designed our organizations for physical interactions (open offices, conference rooms, cafeterias) and expect them to work in the virtual world. It doesn't. 

Remember Thomas Freidman's book, 'The World is Flat?' Though written in the context of outsourcing and the growth of globalization (including the rise of China and India), the book discusses that technology has enabled us to be connected in physically impossible ways. When we talk about virtual work environments, our emphasis (at least until recently) focuses on technology. Only now are we discovering the ill effects of this (Zoom fatigue, for instance)! That's because all we have done is transposed the physical world to the virtual and expect it to function as it were in the physical world. Microsoft recently reported that the year 2020 saw an increase of 148% in meetings, a 40.6 B increase in emails, a 45% increase in chats, and a 66% increase in docs among its Microsoft Office users. Just looking at those numbers makes me exhausted.

We need to design work for virtual work environments, given that it is here to stay. Many organizations spend enormous amounts of money to get their physical office spaces ready for employees ' return to work! But even if people return to the office, we know that they are still 'distant' if they are more than 100 feet away and are using open offices. We need socio-psychological innovation of how to work virtually, not just technological ones. Instead of repurposing the physical space, should we not be thinking about repurposing the virtual space? The future of work is not about technological connectedness; it is likely to be about socio-psychological relatedness. In other words, it is about humanizing the virtual world, not about technologizing the human world.

Do you agree? What ideas do you have?