Views on the HR News: Does Remote Work Increase Employee Happiness?

Editor’s note: If you’re part of the broader HR ecosystem, you’re very well aware of the sheer volume of insights, research, and reporting covering how companies deal with their most valuable asset: Their people. I’ve written before that there seems to be a “new trend” to understand (and pivot strategy to align against), almost weekly.

The magic in getting it right for your talent and business partners lies first in awareness of the above new trends and insights, but further, in then deciding what’s relevant, what’s worth adjusting course for, and what is noise. In short: We all need a collective gut check on what to do with this volume of HR news.  

This week I’m happy to launch a new feature on the Skillcentrix blog, Views on the HR News. Where we adopt a “shoulders of giants” approach to dissecting the HR insights marketplace.

To do that, we’ve pulled together a panel of experienced HR experts with decades of experience leading HR transformation initiatives across the globe. Each month, we will ask them to comment on a recent article from the HR press, to share their thoughts, letting us know what else they are seeing among their HR exec peers, and what to do with the insights inside.  

Let’s meet this month’s panel:

Mary Havern: An experienced HR and Leadership Consultant and Certified Coach, Mary’s a strategic thinker with diverse experience leading talent and change initiatives in large global organizations and smaller organizations on steep growth trajectories. With 17 years in HR, Mary’s domain expertise includes business partnering, design, and implementation of strategic talent, culture, and change initiatives. She has extensive experience working in financial services and biotech environments.

Mary integrates seamlessly with leadership teams, providing senior-level direction and support on all talent matters. Her level of experience and seniority enable her to coach key leaders on talent strategy, succession, and leading through change.

Laura Hume: With a doctorate in educational psychology and a 25-year career in professional services, Laura solves “chewy, complex HR problems” by translating research and analytics into actionable, down-to-earth solutions. She has partnered with clients of all sizes and across all sectors with a common goal to develop talent with the right mix of talent, process, and technology, at the right size for each organization.

A self-professed nerd, Laura is an exemplary people developer and coach who is passionate about creating strong, diverse teams. She is particularly adept at seeing the threads that link all aspects of the employee lifecycle—from talent acquisition through engagement and even employee offboarding—and works hard to identify the root cause of stated issues by considering the strategy, people, process, and technology implications ensuring they are underpinned by data.

Ken Joel: A former US Army Artillery Commander, and MD at Accenture, Ken has been at the forefront helping clients develop and execute transformational workforce strategies for over 25 years. Most recently serving as IBM’s Workday Practice lead for Public Markets, (including Healthcare and life sciences), Ken brings a unique focus on cognitive, HR cloud, HR Services, Operating Model Design, and Implementation to his client engagements.

This Month’s Article

Last week, Forbes published a new analysis on the impact of the hybrid workforce. Remote Work Increases Employee Happiness By 20%: New Study Finds reports back that (surprise!) remote work opportunities are strongly linked to employee happiness.

Surveying a cross-section of 12,455 globally, the results revealed a few telling insights. Among the findings:

• The ability to work remotely increases employee happiness by as much as 20%.
• Previous studies found that offering the ability to work remotely does not result in a drop in productivity, in fact, it has been found that happier employees are more productive.
  • Millennials are happiest when working remotely.
  • Returning to office-based work after the pandemic reduces employee happiness.
  • Employee happiness decreases as commute times increase.
• The data showed that the average person travels less than 40 minutes to the office. When comparing these average commute times to their happiness at work, the study found a negative correlation in the respondents, meaning that employee happiness decreases as commute times increase.
  • Happiness at work is significantly correlated to overall life happiness.

It’s no secret that the post-pandemic workplace has changed, and many organizations have adopted a hybrid work approach in its place.

But with The World Health Organization closing the books earlier last week on the “covid crisis”, many organizations are re-revisiting their in-office policies. But one thing is sure: There is no universal agreement on the return-to-work movement – especially from the employee front.

Our Experts Weigh In

Forbes’ new research from this week, sheds an interesting light on the remote employee experience, and how it’s driving increased job satisfaction. Nevertheless, simply looking at a narrow band of research potentially misses a broader understanding of the real drivers of employee engagement in the workplace and the impact of return to work on productivity overall.

Let’s get to their commentary on the drivers of employee happiness…

The Remote Work – Employee Experience Connection Was Well-Established Pre-Pandemic

“In fact, surveys conducted long before covid highlighted commute time as a factor in engagement and retention.  COVID and technology enhancements pushed organizations to rethink their policies.  I believe we all agree a “one size fits all” approach is unrealistic.  Leaders have the responsibility to understand the work and team capabilities to develop their hybrid work strategy. Continuously assess (EE and ER perspective) the model across the dimensions of productivity, collaboration, innovation, and engagement.    

Another aspect of the happiness article that’s missing is teaming and building an affinity to the team and organization to drive retention.”

– Ken Joel 

Happiness Isn’t Necessarily Engagement (or Productivity)

“I think more specifically, we should be talking about employee engagement. I think happiness is a component, but we also want our employees to feel inspired, motivated, and driven by the purpose of their work which goes well beyond the scope of being happy (which could be accomplished by seeing a colleague they haven’t seen for a while).

Many companies [can be] missing the mark in bringing people back into the office by not structuring the work more thoughtfully. I’ve seen lots of examples where employees are being told to come back to the office because the leadership thinks it will foster engagement, innovation, and productivity. Instead, employees are suffering through long commutes to come to sit in a cubicle and log onto a Zoom call. They have had three years of experience realizing that they can be just as productive at home.

I would argue that a monolithic back-to-the-office policy will never be effective. Instead, managers should be able to determine how their teams can collaborate most effectively together to be more engaged, innovative, and productive. For teams that are very geographically distributed, that may mean that there is no back-to-the-office mandate, but that they have 1-2 in-person meetings a year to set strategy, innovate on new products, etc. For more co-located teams, it could mean a certain cadence is set up, but the manager should be ensuring touchpoints that make the commute worth it and actually get the teams together working toward a common purpose for at least a part of the day.” 

– Laura Hume 

Mandates Inevitably Create Dissonance

“It’s the mandatory piece that impacts happiness and engagement. It infringes on 2 of 5 basic psychological needs: autonomy and fairness. having the choice taken away reduces autonomy. Not having a clear, compelling ‘why’ we’re going back to the office (especially when some offices are largely empty) erodes perceptions of fairness. Make it compelling for employees to choose to come back if you believe it will unlock capabilities and discretionary effort.

– Mary Havern