AMSTERDAM LEADERSHIP LAB - January 26, 2022Mark van Vugt - Hybrid work: Curse or blessing?
PRIMAL INSTINCTS: COLUMN PSYCHOLOGY MAGAZINE,NO11
Tech giant Apple has a problem. The company's management wants its 12,000-plus employees to return as quickly as possible to the lush Apple campus near San Francisco. But the Apple employees don't want to go back at all, now that they have experienced how nice it is to work at home. Some of them have already quit their jobs out of dissatisfaction and are on their way to a competitor who does offer them that space.Such conflict will be seen on many workplaces in the near future, from business to government. Research shows that over 60 percent of employees in organizations in Europe, the US and Asia want more flexibility in where and when they work. And they have a point: evolutionarily speaking, another form of work suits us better. In hunter-gatherer tribes, such as the San in Southern Africa, the Hadza in East Africa, or the Inuit in Canada, the members are also free to choose how they spend their day. There is no boss to force them to do anything. If work is done, it is within a close social context of family and friends. People hunt together and the search for fruit, nuts and seeds also takes place in groups. Everyone is a member of the same company and has a high degree of autonomy within it. There is no strict separation between work and private life.
The way in which our work is now organised in Western society bears little resemblance to this. The current five-day working week of nine to five is the legacy of the industrial revolution, when much of the work was mechanised and factory workers went to work for a boss. We are now in the middle of the digital revolution and the coronapandemic is forcing us to rethink our relationship with work. Bearing in mind the saying never waste a crisis, it's time for a paradigm shift whereby we organise our work in a way that better suits human nature.
The new trend will be a hybrid work model, in which employees work partly in the office and partly at home, and in which working-from-anywhere (e.g. on a campsite in France) should also be possible. However, a hybrid work model also has elements that don't suit us very well. How do you set it up so that both the organization and the employees profit optimally? Four psychological factors are crucial to success from an evolutionary perspective - and the solution is not always immediately obvious.
SELF-STEERING AND CONNECTEDNESS
Perhaps the most important factor is trust. As an organization, how can you count on employees if you don't see them on a daily basis? Companies may choose to monitor home-based employees online using software, such as Spyware. But monitoring is not a desirable solution because it is based on distrust.
It is much better to place this role with the teams themselves. In the case of hunter-gatherers, mutual trust is guaranteed by a high degree of self-direction and solidarity. The joint hunt fails if someone does not keep to the agreements. Research does show that trust is lower in virtual teams than in physical teams. So regular physical meetings remain important, especially when a team is new.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
The second important factor is psychological safety. According to Harvard psychologist Amy Edmonson - the expert in the field - employees need to feel safe enough to give each other feedback or criticize each other. Safe teams make better decisions whether it's a board of directors or a team of doctors. Online, people find it harder to be critical of each other, perhaps because reconciliation afterward is harder to organize. Hunter-gatherer groups have all kinds of informal ways to achieve reconciliation, for example through humour, alcohol, and laughing and gossiping together at night by the campfire. The Friday afternoon drink as a campfire moment at the office to let off steam is not a superfluous luxury.
PROXIMITY BIAS
Thirdly, it is important to prevent us-versus-them thinking. We feel a stronger connection with people when we see them regularly and this mechanism is deeply rooted in our primal brain. This proximity bias can cause problems if some employees come to the office more often than others. This creates an in-group and an out-group within the same team and reduces the sense of belonging.
Managers also have a preference for employees who are more visible to them. The challenge is therefore to prevent a division into first and second class employees. This can be partly overcome by having fixed days on which employees come to the office or work from home.
WHO WANTS WHAT?
Finally, it is important to take individual differences into account. Employees who score high on extraversion or engagement want to come to the office more often, while introverts or less driven employees prefer to work from home. Age also plays a role: the older generation prefers to work at home than younger employees. And research at the VU shows that employees with a chronic illness would also prefer not to return to the office. Organisations must convince these groups of employees that the office offers an attractive and safe place to work.
In short, the hybrid work model is not a sine cure. The diversity and inclusion agendas of organizations have a major new issue: how do you ensure equal treatment of employees at home and at the office? Because it seems clear that we won't go back to a rigid (physical) separation between work and home after this pandemic.
Sources
A.C. Edmondson, Z. Lei, Psychological safety. The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct, Psychol. Organ. Behav., 2014
K.M. Kniffin, et al. , COVID-19 and the workplace. Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action, American Psychologist, 2021
NIP, Balancing in corona time. Tools for effective leadership, 2021
J. Suzman, Work. A history of how we spend our time, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020