Virtual Work: How Committed Are You?

Pandemic-related lockdowns have closed or slimmed down most brick & mortar offices and pushed large numbers of workers kicking and screaming into the world of working remotely. As restrictions ease, will things go back to the way they were, with most office work being done in person? We reviewed a variety of articles on the subject and took a close look at six COVID-related benchmarking surveys to get a better sense of what is happening and where things might be going.  

One take-away is that employers need to get off the fence and fully commit themselves to sustaining a virtual office environment, even after the current crisis abates.

Industry experts are encouraging us to prepare for a permanent reset in how we work (Deloitte, 2020; McKinsey, 2020). Workers seem open to this change, if not universally happy about it. According to three studies (Culture Amp, 2020; Mercer, 2020b; Glassdoor, 2020), more than 90% of respondents indicate that they have everything they need to work remotely and view the prospect of future remote work favorably. They’ve had a taste of remote work, and it’s not as bad as some of them thought it would be. Work that “couldn’t be done any other way but in person” is getting done despite the absence of hallway conversations, conference room meetings and cubicle distractions…and in some cases, that absence might even be helping productivity and job satisfaction.

According to the New York Times, long-term vacation rentals have skyrocketed this summer, as more office workers escape their homes and realize another benefit of their new work-from-anywhere situation. In our client interactions, it’s no longer unusual to see someone participating in a conference call poolside, on their deck, or at the beach. What was initially seen as a short-term necessity is gradually feeling more like a more permanent shift in how we collaborate. Online productivity tools—like video conferencing, cloud storage, instant messaging, automated workflows, and a wide variety of mobile apps—have been pressed into service and are helping to provide a solid infrastructure for virtual offices. For those of us who have enjoyed working virtually for years, it’s nice to see the rest of the business world catch on.

But at some point, the pandemic will ease and at least some of the work will go back to brick & mortar offices. That is already starting to happen, with some workers returning to offices bristling with new protocols for maintaining social distance and hygiene. Even so, many office workers feel hesitant to return because of health concerns (PwC, 2020; Culture Amp, 2020). How will employers respond to this unease?

With any unstable situation, the best approach is to take it slow. We recommend giving employees as much choice as possible, so that they retain as much sense of control as they can. What’s the rush? If the work is getting done remotely, and there is no real loss of productivity happening, then give employees a choice of how soon they come back to the office. Where there really is a need to be onsite, consider how you could shift those tasks to the employees who most want or need to come back to the office. It may require cross-training employees, but it’s worth the investment in order to have employees onsite who actually want to be there. Patience will allow time and space for workers to adjust to the shift, for work processes to be modified, and for new back-to-office technologies to emerge.

As for the rest of the employees—who are uncomfortable with returning just yet or who have discovered that they really never want to return to the office if they can avoid it—it’s important for organizations to demonstrate a long-term commitment to remote work. At the moment, the research indicates that employers are less committed to remote work for the long term than their employees (Glassdoor, 2020). This creates stress for workers, because they see a decision looming on the horizon: 

Will I at some point need to leave this organization for one that embraces remote work, one that embraces new technologies and new ways of working?

This commitment, this mind shift, needs to start at the top and work its way down through every layer of management, and then lead to concrete changes in work processes, standard operating procedures, best practices, and cultural norms. 

We work with a number of pharmaceutical sales organizations, for example, and we’ve observed that some management teams were quick to shift their sales reps into a virtual mode of calling on customers, when in-person sales calls were no longer possible. Sales managers could no longer go on ride-alongs with their reps, but some management teams adjusted quickly to this, asking their reps to invite them to video conferences with their customers and scheduling debrief calls afterwards. While some embraced the new reality, other managers resisted and sat idle, assuming that their sales reps would soon return to the field, so no substantive changes were needed. Their sales reps likewise sat idle, grew anxious as a result of the loss of control over their work lives, and some even spiraled downward into depression.  That didn’t happen with sales teams that embraced the new way of working: reps retained a sense of control and normalcy even in the worst days of the lockdown. And as restrictions loosened, they have found it easier to use a combination of in-person and virtual meetings with customers to grow their territories. Employees will find a way to get things done, but only when their managers embrace new ways of getting things done and are willing to let go of old assumptions.

So, one take-away from the research data is that employers need to demonstrate an acceptance of the reality that remote work is here to stay. Stop telling your employees that things will return to “normal” soon. They won’t, certainly not for everyone, to the same degree or in the same timeframe. For the foreseeable future, managers need to embrace—and yes, do so enthusiastically—a virtual office environment and find creative ways to mesh it with the brick & mortar one, especially as restrictions ease and work shifts into more of a hybrid model. Let’s lead the shift, not be a victim of it.

Are you happy with your organization's commitment to virtual work? If so, please share what they are doing to demonstrate this commitment. If not, what could do they differently?

This is the first in a series of blog posts related to the COVID Workforce Reset, which summarizes findings from our review of the research. Our hope is to contribute to the dialog about the future of work, so please, like, share, and/or comment!

By: Will Eddy & Gus Prestera

References

If you'd like to learn more about the COVID-related research studies that we examined, here's a summary table of them:

...and below is our reference list with hyperlinks to all of the articles and studies:

Brown, A. (2020). 4 Key Findings From COVID-19 Employee Survey Results. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/covid-19-employee-survey

Culture Amp. (2020). COVID-19 Combined 2020 Benchmark. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://academy.cultureamp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015027279

Deloitte. (2020). 2020 Global Human Capital Trends Report. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www2.deloitte.com/cn/en/pages/human-capital/articles/global-human-capital-trends-2020.html

Gallup Inc. (2020, March 23). COVID-19: What Employees Need From Leadership Right Now. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/297497/covid-employees-need-leaders-right.aspx

Ghorpade, J., Lackritz, J., & Singh, G. (2011). Personality as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Role Conflict, Role Ambiguity, and Burnout: ROLE CONFLICT, ROLE AMBIGUITY, AND BURNOUT. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41(6), 1275–1298. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00763.x

Glassdoor for Employers. (2020). COVID-19 & Employee Sentiment on Changing Workforce. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/new-survey-covid-19/

Mercer Talent All Access. (2020a). Global survey #3: How are companies supporting their employees during this pandemic. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/covid-19-employee-survey

Mercer Talent All Access. (2020b). Global survey #4: How are companies adapting to the COVID-19 business environment. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/covid-19-employee-survey

Mercer Talent All Access. (2020c). Global survey #5: How are companies handling the return to the workplace. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/covid-19-employee-survey

McKinsey. (2020). The Next Normal: Business transformation in 2020 and beyond. Retrieved August 10, 2020, from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/Business-in-2020-and-beyond

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2020). Reboot: Employees want safety and well-being prioritized. PwC. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/employees-anxious-about-returning-to-workplace-1.html

Sawitri, H. S. (2012). Role of Internet Experience in Moderating Influence of Work Stressor on Cyberloafing. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 57, 320–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.1192

Salesforce Inc. (2017). The Impact ofEquality and Values Driven Business. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/assets/pdf/datasheets/salesforce-research-2017-workplace-equality-and-values-report.pdf

WorkTango Inc. (2020). Covid-19-Remote Work Benchmarks. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://worktango.com/covid-19-remote-work-benchmarks/