Editorial
Return to office (RTO) full-time. Hybrid flexible work. Remote work. Not since the beginning of the industrial revolution has there been so much debate on working arrangements.
The return to office mandates issued by large corporates like Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Dell, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, JP Morgan, etc. have been roundly criticized as a retrograde step emerging from the pandemic. While debates continue on the pros and con impacts on productivity, well-being, culture and more, a few immutable facts have flown under the radar.
The Time Zone Challenge
Firstly, time zones matter. Many countries now enforce "right to disconnect" laws, which allow employees to disengage after hours. If taken to the fullest extent, directed synchronous communications will be impossible in many situations, independent of workstyle approaches. Has this been overlooked by RTO mandate issuers?
Proximity Bias in Decision-Making
Secondly, RTO mandates are invariably issued by senior executives located at the company’s central head office. For these executives proximity bias is a real risk. What might look good for the global head office is not always so for globally located offices. Post pandemic, employees have now experienced a different way of working. Results of these mandates appear to be mixed, with employee turnover and retention, employee satisfaction and even enterprise performance showing downward trends as a consequence.
Related Article: Return-to-Office Mandates: Layoffs in Sheep's Clothing?
The Complexities of Hybrid Work
Thirdly, hybrid flexible working has also had its challenges. Numerous studies have covered the benefits of increased employee satisfaction, retention, productivity and organizational performance. However, commonly mentioned challenges include co-ordination and collaboration, proximity bias, erosion of company culture, onboarding new staff, technology and security, and managing physical spaces.
A Data-Driven Experiment on Communication Patterns
To explore these issue in detail my firm Swoop analyzed Viva Engage social networking interactions of a global trade organization over an extended 2-year period. The organization has around 770 employees spread across some 35 globally located offices. Around 400 employees participated in enterprise social interactions.
Our first finding confirmed the Allen Curve. MIT professor Tom Allen developed this theory in the 1970s, which revealed an exponential drop in frequency of communication with increasing physical distance. The critical distance was 50 meters. Perhaps more profound was the relationship still held true when communication became digital, e.g. email communication.
Digital Communication Frequency Diminishes With Physical Distance
We reproduced the Allen curve studies using Viva Engage communications.
The range of physical distances was between 0 and nearly 20,000 kilometers (roughly 12,427 miles). The critical drop off was at around 300 kilometers (roughly 186 miles). This effect is likely disturbing for internal communications staff. How would you feel if you found your global all-staff message only engaged those living in the same state as you?
Related Article: Internal Comms' Number One Channel? Email
The Further a Message Travels, the More Likely It's Sent Outside Office Hours
Next, we looked at the time spent outside traditional office hours and the physical distance the message travelled. We found a significant correlation with the percentage of hours spent outside traditional working hours. Are leaders aware of the work-life balance of the more remote offices?
The implications are that engaging the periphery requires the brokerage of strategically placed intermediaries, more so than being achieved through direct communication lines with the leaders. For example, you may have a remote office in South America who largely ignore head office messages, unless they come through a former local leader now posted to the central office. For internal communications staff, identifying these information brokers becomes critical.
Finally, we selected a significant satellite office from one of the world's major cities and the central head office, which is a regional capital but a much smaller city than the satellite office. Looking at communication interactions of the two offices, we saw that the majority (77%) of communications occurred during traditional office hours for the central head office. In contrast, the majority (63%) of communications for the satellite office happened outside of traditional office hours.
Is the head office HR even aware of this dynamic?
When we looked at the specific central office and satellite office communications, we saw that both offices made concessions to the time zones of the target office, in other words, messages were sent to arrive within the traditional office hours of the receiver. These concessions were more evident for the satellite office, though also evident in head office messages to the satellite office. This is an interesting effect, given that Viva Engage is not designed as a chat service, with little expectation of an immediate response.
Are your remote office workers more at risk of leaving the organization? Perhaps the reason is an unwritten, and perhaps even unexpected, expectation that remote office staff accommodate central office time zones? Appropriate work-life balance policies supporting these staff can easily alleviate this situation.
Related Article: Always On, Too Many Meetings: Is This the Future of Hybrid?
Implications for Flexible Work
While our study involved just a single organization of modest size, we believe it is representative of the global communications across similarly global, but larger enterprises.
The results suggest that one-size-fits-all RTO mandates, particularly ones that favor the view that what's good for the head office is good for everyone, can have damaging effects. Such policies ignore the social dynamics of core-periphery organizational structures that span significant time zone differences. Enforcing traditional office hours will result in significantly slower communications and diminished agility. The need for synchronous communications typically disadvantages the more remote offices.
The organization we studied explicitly promotes its flexible work policies. That said, the work patterns of the satellite office having 63% of its Viva Engage communications occurring outside traditional office hours, appears excessive. Flexible working policies could benefit by explicit instructions on when "out of office communications are expected, to achieve a better work-life balance.
Related Article: CEOs Blame Work From Home for Company Failings. Here's Why They're Wrong
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Possible Resolutions
- The first resolution is to acknowledge that satellite offices may be ceding to central office time zones at the expense of their own work-life balance. A simple review of their digital work patterns, as illustrated here, could help expose this.
- We've seen that even asynchronous channels like Viva Engage and email may still be used in a synchronous way. Correct these misperceptions. The ability to post a message any time, but delay their transmission to the target’s office hours, is a useful practical solution to combat this.
- Be clear when an immediate response is expected. A forewarning of this expectation is essential.
- Limit synchronous activities between the central offices and the satellite offices to only essential ones. If more than a one off, the central office attendees should share in the out of office hours requirement.
- Leaders, resist proximity bias. A healthy and engaging enterprise social networking platform like Viva Engage can facilitate leaders engaging with employees, independent of their proximity to a central office.
To put it bluntly, unilaterally applied RTO mandates can be damaging, but we need to improve flexible work to get the work-life balance to acceptable levels.
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