Remote working is commonly regarded in a positive way by employees, with some even willing to take a pay cut in order to secure the autonomy and freedom that comes with it. While this perception is common, it’s not universal, as a recent study from ESCP Business School in Spain demonstrates.
The study reveals that our perception of remote work can be viewed in a positive way and as a sign of organizational support and confidence, but it can also be seen as a threat to one’s career prospects.
A mixed picture
The very fact that remote working could be viewed in such a mixed way may be something of a shock to managers who have been trained to view it in purely positive terms. Indeed, in our post-Covid world, offering remote work has almost come to be seen as a “must have” feature in order to attract talent.
The research suggests that people have a mixed opinion of remote working in large part because of factors outside the workplace, and it’s, therefore, vital for managers to understand the context within which remote working operates to understand whether employees value it or not.
It’s a process the researchers refer to as understanding the “external fit”, and it’s important that managers are able to align the signals people get from their external environment with those given off by the messaging they get from HR.
Environmental factors
The researchers analyzed a number of interviews about remote working that were undertaken during the 2008 financial crisis. The analysis revealed the key role the wider environment played in how employees interpreted the risks and benefits of remote working.
For instance, employees would often reference the difficult environment caused by the crisis, and this general uncertainty prompted many to view remote work as an unnecessary risk to their careers due to the reduced visibility they feared they would have with their bosses and colleagues, which they thought would ultimately harm their career.
This fear resulted in few of those with this mindset working remotely, or if they did so, only occasionally to ensure they retained their visibility in the office. By contrast, employees who view remote working as a fundamental benefit to them would be far more willing to participate in the program, and often were already taking advantage of the opportunity to work remotely.
Contextual awareness
So if the context within which policies are introduced plays a big role in determining how employees respond to them, what might our current context be doing to perceptions of remote work?
It’s important to understand that our perceptions of remote work have been fundamentally changed by the pandemic. Whereas previously, it may have been viewed as a nice to have, but somewhat minority activity, that aims to support the wellbeing of the employee, this perception was changed by the pandemic.
After all, during the pandemic, remote working was not seen as a nice to have but rather a necessity to allow teams to continue functioning. Indeed, government restrictions made remote working the only viable option for many organizations, so it became a matter of survival rather than anything “nice to have”.
Obviously, restrictions have been lifted in most places, which has prompted many discussions about whether to retain remote working as a standard practice, whether to deploy hybrid working, or whether to return to business as usual from pre-Covid times.
The researchers believe that the best approach is to examine how they can achieve an alignment between the external environment and the messaging and signals sent by HR. At the current time, the external environment is typically one in which employees, and especially highly talented employees, are in the box seat when it comes to negotiations. With large numbers of vacancies unfilled and skills shortages rampant across the economy, this is an external context managers need to be aware of when considering whether to offer remote working or not.
