The Remote Employee Experience— busting key myths and improving employee engagement

Remote working should work for everyone, but research shows that organizations still face challenges when it comes to this topic.

Satisfied employees aren’t just a positive for HR—they make companies stronger. According to?MIT, organizations ranking in the top 25% for employee experience have the best business value, highest customer satisfaction rates, are faster, typically more agile, and are also more profitable.

So, what can we do to improve the remote working experience and employee engagement? Let's start by dispelling commonplace employee experience myths.

Busting remote work employee experience myths

The move to remote work en masse during the pandemic and employee expectations of flexibility, hybrid and remote work models are rewriting the rules of work. Any attempts to simply ‘lift and shift’ office working practices into a virtual world are proving to be a fool’s errand. Reinventing the organization around the remote employee experience requires wholesale change and a somewhat radical leadership vision. Here are five myths being dispelled by progression in remote employee experiences:

1. Myth: You need more meetings to align employees

Reality: the?Slack employee experience index?shows that employees who attend weekly status meetings felt 3% worse regarding their sense of belonging compared to employees who received status updates asynchronously through digital channels (who also felt 6% more positive about their sense of belonging). The Slack index also indicates that, to keep employees engaged, companies need to bake in less frequent but more explicit opportunities for social interaction. Biweekly team celebrations to recognize achievements (+10%), monthly unstructured social time or games (+8%) and monthly team-building activities (+10%) all had a positive impact on employees’ sense of belonging scores.

2. Myth: Employees want a 9-5 routine

Reality: companies have generally transcribed the age-old insistence that “work happens primarily between 9 and 5” to remote work. In fact, employees who are given the option to define their own work schedule?score higher?across every aspect of the employee experience, including being nearly twice as productive as 9-5 colleagues—and scoring significantly higher on their sense of belonging.

3. Myth: Underrepresented groups need more support with remote work

Reality: in the US, historically underrepresented groups tended to?report higher overall scores?across all areas of the remote employee experience compared to their white colleagues, including an 8% rise for Black, 8% for Asian, and 5% for Hispanic employees. It’s therefore possible that remote work is leveling employee experience, making this equalizing force something employers should sit up and listen to.

4. Myth: Parents and caregivers all have the same challenges

Reality: women with children are disproportionately affected by remote work, scoring lower across all aspects when compared to men with children. That points to the issue of a lack of publicly-funded childcare in major countries like the US, which forces women to balance childcare responsibilities with working from home.

5. Myth: Leaders adapt easily to remote work

Reality: managers—specifically middle management—report some of the greatest challenges in adapting to remote work. According to the?Slack index, they feel 7% less belonging, 9% less productive, and 13% more stress and anxiety working from home compared to office working. That’s in contrast to the gains individual workers report across the board. That could be down to a change in the manager’s role in remote work, acting less as a gatekeeper and more as a social connector. They may feel the burden of creating a better employee experience in the remote work world, where social bonds are less easy to build.

Despite doing a good job in getting employees up and running as remote workers, research shows that?90% of respondents?believe their company’s digital employee experience (DEX) has room for improvement.?

To successfully tackle the ‘re-designing’ phase, companies need to focus on systems and processes that deliver consistently and solve complex problems. That includes: implementing systems that integrate operations across departments and silos, enabling seamless access to data (putting power back in the hands of employees), digitizing manual work allowing for employees to focus on higher-value work, and investing in employee platforms to allow workers to share knowledge and ideas.

If you're interested in learning more about how to improve the remote employee experience you can read the full article here