Poor mental health, demotivated teams and diluted company culture: leaders concerned about the impact remote working is having on their employees

Last week, new measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 came into effect across the UK. Companies that have been gradually welcoming employees back into offices over the past few months quickly had to pivot and ask their employees to work from home. 

Prior to the latest government guidance, new research from LinkedIn - which surveyed 250+ C-level executives in UK organisations with 1,000+ employees and annual turnover of ￡250 million - found that half of leaders were focused on getting their employees back into offices safely. Nearly half (46%) expected some employees to return to workplaces in the next 1-2 months, and a third expected all employees back within the next 6 months. The brakes have now been firmly applied and plans are being reconsidered. 

While many companies and their employees quickly adapted to remote working at the start of the pandemic, in recent months there has been a growing appetite from leaders for some sense of normality to resume, particularly regarding the reopening of workplaces. Our study highlights the reasons why: 39% of leaders feel that company culture has already been damaged or diluted as a result of remote working, 37% are concerned about employees’ mental health, and 35% fear workers may be bored or demotivated due to continued time away from workplaces.

Speaking to Steven Buck, Head of People Science for EMEA at Glint, which specialises in employee engagement, he told me: “According to our data, we found that at the start of the global pandemic employees felt well supported working remotely, but as time has gone on, that sense of connectedness has gradually loosened and employees now feel less invested in their colleagues and leaders. This is cause for concern amongst executives, and there is now a real focus on helping teams to thrive in a virtual environment. This means managers keeping important dialogues open with their teams, and finding new ways to keep organisational culture alive by building strong and sustainable habits, such as regularly getting employee feedback and insights, having conversations, setting effective goals, and encouraging learning and growth.”

The study also found that leaders fear the longer their employees work from home, the harder it will be to encourage them to return to offices when they reopen as they get used to working remotely. More than two-thirds (68%) of executives say that employees have become fearful about workplace safety and are increasingly vocal about their concerns (63%), and 38% expect that they will be resistant to going back. 

Leaders have reason for concern - additional research from LinkedIn finds that less than a quarter (24%) of UK workers say they would willingly return to offices when they reopen. Sixty percent of employees say their biggest worry is exposure to others who may not be taking safety guidelines and precautions as seriously, and 42% are concerned about working in close proximity to other colleagues. 

When normality eventually resumes, leaders recognise the need to create new flexible working policies to satisfy growing demands from their employees. Some of the long-term changes leaders want to make include introducing flexible working hours to better support working parents and those with dependents (41%), which will be welcome news to many people who struggle to balance demanding workloads with important personal responsibilities. Leaders also want to give employees greater options around working from home (49%). 

Recent data from LinkedIn further reinforces the need for employers to enable a more flexible future. Searches for ‘remote work’ have increased by 60% on LinkedIn globally since March. In the UK, views of remote jobs are 2.5x higher, and applications for these roles have increased by 189%. 

Longer-term, leaders say that creating a fairer and more equitable workplace (63%), improving the diversity of their workforce (38%), and creating cultures where everyone feels like they belong (40%), are high on the agenda for improvement. 

Kate Cooper, Head of Research, Policy and Standards at The Institute of Leadership & Management, reinforced the need for companies to offer greater flexibility and how to ensure policies are inclusive of all employees: “It is evident that employees are wanting more flexibility and autonomy when it comes to work, and this appetite for change is going to ignite an entire workplace cultural shift. In the early days of the global pandemic, we saw first-hand the realities of what many of our colleagues experience on a day-to-day basis, including juggling demanding work schedules with looking after children and loved ones. We truly saw their “whole selves.” Business leaders now have these great insights and are using them positively to create flexibility that works for all employees. However, we need to remember that not everyone will require the same type of flexibility. For instance, our research finds that single people living alone, particularly men, typically do not enjoy working from home and miss the social side of work. Ultimately, the more options available to employees, the more likely that new flexible working policies will benefit everyone.”

Building workforce resilience is going to be crucial to getting through this continued period of uncertainty. That means introducing new ways to keep employees engaged and connected, nurturing organisational culture virtually, and looking after the health and wellbeing of employees as they continue to work remotely. 

This is a period of accelerated learning for us all. I encourage you to share your insights and learnings below as we all find a way forward together.

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