Published on the 13/12/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

But companies remain divided…

The rapid pandemic transition to remote work brought with it plenty of concerns for companies, not least of all the ongoing niggle of whether employees are less engaged when working remotely ­– concerns that likely have only deepened in a time of talent shortages and quiet quitting. 

But new research shows an encouraging evolution of remote meetings, with remote workers engaging with their colleagues more now than they did at the onset of the pandemic. 

The University of Texas at Austin research, which gathered metadata from Zoom, Teams and WebEx meetings of 10 large global organisations, showed remote meetings have become shorter, more frequent, smaller and more spontaneous – mirroring more closely in-person interactions and the activities vital to organisational performance and innovation. 

“The findings challenge the idea of what may be ‘lost’ about the in-office experience.”

“The combination of these findings presents an interesting picture: Not that remote workers seem to be becoming less engaged, but rather – at least with respect to meetings – they are becoming more engaged with their colleagues,” says Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the report. 

Despite the gradual return to offices, the research found that there were 59 percent more remote meetings per employee in 2022, versus 2020 – an average of five to eight meetings per week per employee. 

Recent data from LinkedIn shows many companies are seeking to get their teams back into the office, with a study of 100 Australian companies finding 36 percent of managers were scaling back remote work and 73 percent say they prefer employees to work from the office.  

Employees, however, are clear on what they want, with flexible working becoming a non-negotiable for many. The 2022 Remote Work Report from people management platform Employment Hero found 50 percent of Australians and 48 percent of Kiwis would consider quitting their job if their employees forced them back into the office full-time. 

Swinburn University of Technology and Deloitte Australia also reported earlier this year that close to two in three workers in an Australian survey were prepared to forgo pay rises for more flexibility in where and when they work – with a significant cohort prepared to trade up to a 10 percent pay rise. 

Despite that, there have been ongoing concerns from employers about the impact of remote work, including talk of potential negative impacts on productivity, stunted creativity and a reduction in innovation (it should be noted, that for every report about a negative impact, one saying the opposite can often be found in this instance), and many companies have reversed work from home policies.  

In June, Elon Musk told Tesla staff to return to the office for at least 40 hours a week or permanently ‘depart’. His email was headed up ‘Remote work is no longer acceptable’.  

A similar call from Apple for staff to return to the office saw a petition launched, with the company eventually settling on a two days at home, three days in the office model.  

Meanwhile Sir James Dyson has slammed UK legislation giving workers the right to request flexible working arrangements from their first day of work. He called the plans ‘staggeringly self-defeating’ and a ‘misguided approach’ that will generate friction between employers and employees.  

“We have seen from our own experience at Dyson during periods of government-enforced working from home how deeply inefficient it is,” he wrote in an opinion piece in The Times. “It prevents the collaboration and in-person training that we need to develop new technology and maintain competitiveness against global rivals.  

His views are shared by many employees. A recent Vanson Bourne report, commissioned by VMware, suggested employers believe their teams are more innovative when working in the office – though fewer than three in five employees felt the same.  

But Brodsky and co-author of the Universtiy of Texas report, Mike Tolliver, director of product management for collaboration software company Vyopta, point to engagement as a being vital for both organisational performance and innovation suggesting that the increased engagement seen in their report could point to positives for innovation and wider performance.  

Their report, which compared data from a six-week window in April and May 2020 with the same periods in 2021 and 2022, also contradicts ideas of employee disengagement or quiet quitting. 

“Our data would suggest that the increase of meetings was at least in part due to an increase in engagement, rather than fully an increasing need to pretend to be working,” Brodsky and co-author of the report Mike Tolliver, director of product management for collaboration software company Vyopta, say in the research published in HBR. 

Their data showed meetings in 2022 averaged 33 minutes –  25 percent shorter than in 2020. 

Meetings were also smaller, with the average number of participants down 50 percent since 2020 to 10 – something that is partly attributed to a growth in one on ones. 

But the meetings were more frequent and more likely to be unscheduled – with spontaneous meetings accounting for two-thirds of one on ones.  

“The findings from this research study don’t provide all of the answers, as much more data is needed to fully understand all the implications of remote work,” Brodsky and Tolliver say. “However, they do challenge the idea of what may be ‘lost’ about the in-office experience. In fact, employees seem to have adapted over time with regard to remote meetings – they are increasingly efficient (shorter), more frequent, and more spontaneous.  

“This suggests that remote workers seem to be compensating for losses due to working outside the office and are engaging in behaviours that are more and more similar to office work.” 

Meanwhile, a US report from ResumeBuilder shows nine out of 10 companies will required employees to return to the office ‘with some frequency’ next year, with 13 percent saying staff will be returning fulltime and 40 percent saying they want them in office four days a week.  

That report cited improved communication, creativity, productivity, company culture and employee oversight as the key drivers.  

Stacie Haller, career strategist and job search coach, says ‘generational’ aspects may be playing a part, with older managers not used to working with remote teams and holding prejudices and outdated ideas about work culture. 

“If these return-to-office decisions were in the hands of younger managers, who are more accustomed to working remotely, I think we’d see less companies shifting back to an in-office culture,” Haller says, adding that ‘it has been shown over and over that employee production increases with remote work’. 

For employees being forced back to work, companies are however looking to some novel options to sweeten the deal and address employee hesitation to return to offices, including catered meals, commuter benefits, raises, improved office space and pet-friendly offices. 

Whether that’s enough to lure workers into the office remains to be seen.