Remote employees feel less connected to their company’s purpose now than they did before the pandemic. But they still don’t want to come to the office.
According to a new Gallup survey of nearly 9,000 US workers with remote-enabled jobs, only 28% of those working remotely feel connected to their company’s mission – down 4% from last year. However, nearly one-third (33%) of workers who attend the office daily say they feel connected; Not a huge difference.
A lack of a common mission and purpose between onsite and remote employees can be detrimental to overall performance, wrote Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief workplace scientist and report author. “Many employees’ relationships with their employers are becoming increasingly ‘gig-like’ and less loyal, which has potential impacts on customer and employee retention, productivity and quality of work.” In other words, if you’re not aligned with or in support of a company’s mission, there’s little incentive to go above and beyond.
Fully onsite employees reported the greatest gains in engagement, particularly in categories such as knowing what is expected of them, that they have the materials and tools to do their jobs, and that they are doing their best every day. He gets the opportunity to do it.
“Exceptional managers” will have the best chance of taking that success to remote workers, Harter wrote. Namely, managers who communicate. In a study last May, Gallup determined that managers should have at least one meaningful conversation — 15 to 30 minutes long — with each employee per week. This conversation should discuss recognition, collaboration, goals, priorities and the worker’s current strengths.
But the secret sauce, as always, appears to be a hybrid plan. Employees who went a few days per week reported the most engagement with the company’s purpose; 35% of them told Gallup that they feel their jobs are important.
Even though they may not be feeling connected, remote workers aren’t too concerned about it. Gallup found that thirty percent of US workers with remote-enabled jobs work entirely from home, a number that has remained consistent from year to year. (It’s anyone’s guess whether this year’s Labor Day return-to-office order will have any effect on office attendance—it certainly hasn’t over the past three years.)
Although generally still low, overall engagement is on the rise again; 34% of all US employees said they are engaged at work, up from 32% last year. Additionally, Gallup found that the share of actively disengaged employees decreased from 18% last year to 16% this year.
While Gallup finds remote workers to be more organized than their in-office counterparts, other data suggests it’s not so clear-cut. A December 2022 study by University of Texas professor Andrew Brodsky and Mike Tolliver, a product manager at software firm Userta, found that remote workers are actually More Meeting more often and for longer periods of time than busy, office workers. Their data, they wrote, suggested that “the increase in meetings was at least partially due to an increase in engagement rather than an increased need to pretend to work.”
Again, meetings aren’t everything—much less a bulletproof indicator of engagement or empowerment. And according to Gallup’s reporting earlier this year, stress is correlated with engagement — and the stress level of the American workforce is at a record high. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, released in June, found that 44% of workers feel “a lot” of stress. In 2019 only 38% said the same. Gallup found that actively disengaged employees reported 26% more stress than engaged employees.
Around the world, fully remote and hybrid workers are more likely to experience higher stress than workers working fully in-person.In-spite of this Reporting higher rates of participation. As fate’s “It’s hard to feel like you’ve got a job and are engaged when you’re largely unhappy,” said Chloe Berger.
