WHAT IF REMOTE WORK IS RAISING LEVELS OF STRESS AND BURNOUT

I was pool running (yes, that’s a thing) this Saturday and thinking about a LinkedIn post I had read earlier about Mark Zuckerberg’s edict for Facebook employees to return to the office starting mid-September. Candidly, I am not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg’s nor the Facebook platform—I rarely use it.

Here’s what I read in the post: “It seems empathy and trust have disappeared from many CEOs' agendas after the pandemic.” Attached to the post was a fairly scathing article about the decision.

At first glance, I thought the author of the post was making a fair point and I was surprised that, of all companies, Facebook would take such a hard stance.

A few hours later, when I was about halfway through my workout, a thought shot through my mind like a thunderbolt: what if remote work was depressing empathic behavior in the workplace and as a result, employees were experiencing even more stress and higher rates of burnout? In other words, in general, a return to office represented a healthy change for employees.

What a paradox I thought.

So I came home and started to write my thoughts, and my thoughts turned into this article. Parts of this article are a little heavy and raw, but I thought the reader would appreciate a little background on the neuroscience of empathy.

In the last part of this article, I share what this all means to leaders.

But this article is sure to ruffle a feather or two—I decided to publish it because I think it’s an important part of the work-from-home versus in-office arrangement debate.

For those who don’t agree, I’m very interested in the counter-argument.

Introduction

“Everything about our hominin past has honed us to be responsive to one face at a time, to a face that is local and familiar, to a source of pain that we ourselves have suffered.” Robert Sapolsky, Behave

If there were a single human quality extolled today it would have to be empathy. According to many experts, empathic behavior unlocks workplace harmony, is the foundation of healthy relationships, and acts as a boost to wellness. It seems, indeed, that all roads to a better self, a more civil community and a more peaceful world are paved with empathy.

In the workplace, we’re strongly encouraged to show up in all relationships with an empathetic stance. We judge others by their empathetic behaviors and we judge ourselves on the degree to which we embody this altruistic trait. Sometimes we’re really hard on ourselves and others when we don’t meet “the standard.”

There’s also a contingent of people out there who view empathy as “soft.” A skill over-appreciated in leadership that pampers unaccountable people who really need hard love. To this group, people who claim to be empathic are self-serving hypocrites who are motivated by vanity, the need to project a warm glow of doing the right things to the outside world, and identity-insecurity.

When I look a both sides, I conclude each has valid points. I do think, however, that certain types of empathic states in certain circumstances, no matter the motivation, inherently contribute positively to people’s well-being and workplace performance. As Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientists at Stanford wrote “better that our good acts be self-serving and self-aggrandizing than that they don’t occur at all.” These positive contributions go in both directions: to the person in pain and to the person in an empathic state.

These positive contributions, however, depend on a number of environmental factors, several of which may be weakened by the dramatic change in work arrangements since the pandemic. Needless to say, meeting uniquely through a computer screen is bound to change people’s work experience.

Independent of all of the compelling benefits of remote work—and there are many—it may very well be that the ongoing spike in sustained stress and burnout in the workplace may reflect depressed levels of empathic states caused by remote work arrangements. In other words, remote work depresses empathy and prosocial behavior, causing more stress in everybody and delivering fewer rewards from the trait.

What is Empathy?

There are many different ways we respond to the adversity of other people. Empathy distinguishes itself from other states such as sympathy by not only feeling sorry from someone in pain (emotional and/or physical), but also understanding the cause and feeling like we’re walking in the person’s shoes. Thus, empathy as a state is a blend of emotional and cognitive activity in the brain.

Empathy serves human beings in a few ways. First, feeling someone else’s pain is a useful way to learn how to avoid the same pain. That’s right: we put ourselves in the other person’s shoes to condition ourselves for future avoidance of what causes the pain. For example, when someone burns their finger holding a steel pot on the stove, we feel the pain for reasons of self-interest—we learn the consequences for future avoidance.

Neuroscientists conclude this because they observe activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (most concerned about our well being) in the brain when somebody “feels other people’s pain.” Research also shows that over-identification with the pain of someone in distress can block an empathic state whereas focusing on feelings of warmth and care toward a distressed person create more positive emotions and pro-social behavior. So a strong identification with the pain can actually block empathic states.

Second, a plethora of self-oriented rewards increase the flow of dopamine. Some of these include personal identity reinforcement, recognition in a community or by a loved one, and reputation development.

Last, reciprocal altruism. As the label suggests, this motivation is driven by the individual benefits of cooperation and expectations of reciprocation.

Self-interest, Altruism, Reciprocal Altruism

Empathy can’t be imposed, either by way of guilt or force. And there is a genetic spectrum that varies how we each respond to other’s pain. Our ability to enter an empathic state, however, also depends significantly on other contextual factors. These factors include:

• The nature and strength of your relationship with the person in pain—the stronger and more positive our relationship with the person—the greater the resonance. When the person in pain is somebody we don’t like or part of a group we don’t know, reaching an empathic state requires more cognitive energy.
• The moral values we were taught by our parents and the general culture of our community.
• The degree to which our personal identity is anchored in an empathic reputation.

Cooperation and altruism always contain some element of self-interest. The self-oriented rewards of acting compassionately are endless: leaving the beneficiary in your debt—reciprocal altruism; public reputation and acclaim, moralizing religion/gods; including goodness in your self-definition. Morality taught in upbringing greatly effects charitable acts. People become more prosocial when their reputation rides on it and it reinforces a person’s feeling of being a good person.

Altruism is very rare—there is almost always an element of self-interest.

Feeling vs. Doing

An empathic state does not necessarily lead to action. When it does, the act is considered compassionate. Learning what causes pain is one thing; relieving someone’s pain is much better. When an individual takes specific actions to reduce somebody’s pain, that reflects a state of compassion. That’s very different from empathy.

In fact, thinking of empathy as simply feeling someone else’s pain has its downside. Here’s how Leslie Jamison explains it:

“The peril of empathy isn’t simply that it can make us feel bad, but that it can make us feel good, which can in turn encourages us to think of empathy as an end in itself rather than a part of the process, a catalyst”

Jamison’s quote alludes to a second downside related to an empathic state: sometimes, feeling someone’s pain is too painful to endure. Overwhelmed, the normally empathic person looks the other way because it is an easier option to relieve personal stress. When individuals feel overwhelmed by others’ pain, it is less likely the person will behave in a prosocial manner.

For this reason, people who able to maintain some detachment are much more likely to take action to help a person feel less pain.

Cognitive Load

There are a number of cognitive areas in our brain that are involved when we’re in an empathic state. When these components are recruited, the cognitive task to overcome automatic responses from other components in our brain can be exhausting.

The cognitive load required for the task is higher when:

• The pain is emotional (and not physical). This is because it is more complicated to sense and understand than physical pain.
• The individual is different in some way or is unappealing.
• Our morals conflict with the cause of the pain. When empathy is a significant part of someone’s upbringing, empathic responses become more automatic and therefore require less energy.

When any combination of these is high, the energy required to reach an empathic state is greater. This is important in the context of our biological reality: we all live with a fixed body budget. We use energy to manage our body and to power our interactions with the outside world. As a result, when the cognitive load is high, we may to choose not to divert the energy required for an empathic state. And when this occurs, people become more stressed, less pro-social toward strangers, less generous, and less empathic.

What This All Means

Working in remote arrangements and interacting with people through a computer screen may very well be depressing our empathic states by creating much heavier cognitive loads and therefore higher barriers to empathic responses. If this is true, the argument for in-person work is stronger and may have a greater impact on the productivity and wellness of employees. At the same time, there may be changes in the remote work model that would address this potential loss of empathic behavior. and therefore levels of stress

Either way, there are some behaviors leaders can adopt to reduce the cognitive load on their employees from empathy and compensate for this potential loss of positive, pro-social empathic states. And when this is done, more energy is available to perform their jobs.

• Get to know your people. Remote arrangements, particularly for shorter-tenured employees, limit the frequency and quality of one-on-one and team interactions. The better you know your people individually and your people know each other (and they know you), the greater the trust, openness and reciprocal altruism.
• Create a feeling of “US.” Remote work can result in a less unified team with less loyalty to the cause. Unifying your team around a vision and fostering a culture of inclusion in the “Us” will strengthen the level of cooperation and collaboration. And when you accomplish this, makes sure to avoid designating other internal teams as “them.”
• Encourage people to share emotional “pain” to reduce the cognitive load of an empathic state. Many people are considerably more uncomfortable sharing their emotions using remote technology. When you offer to share some of your positive and negative emotions, there’s a greater chance others will follow your lead. These actions can trigger an empathic response.
• Avoid criticizing yourself and your team on empathy levels; empathy cannot be faked. Recognize that each employee shows up with a different history and different tolerance for feeling other people’s pain. What’s most important is to create a culture where trust reigns and individuals reap the benefits of feeling empathy. A culture that values empathy, compassion, and building healthy relationships.

ABOUT ME

After a 30+ year career as a marketing executive and CEO, in the US and Europe, I now coach many clients interested in growing their leadership effectiveness and advancing their career.

Please email me at [email protected] or give me a ring at 617-529-8795 if you want to talk.