Work relationships are a lot harder to build on Zoom — but there’s a fix
Why it matters
Relationship-building isknown to be key to improving team outcomes– and even more important when employees are communicating over video. But it’s also more difficult.
But since the COVID-19 pandemic began in the spring, when about 79% of those polled by Gallop saidthey were at least sometimes working from home, many companies and workers have complained about the drawbacks of remote work, such asdeclines in innovationand alack of social connection.
While more people have returned to the office since the spring, almost 60% ofU.S. workerssaid they were still telecommuting part-time or full time in September. Given that about two-thirds of workers say they’d like to continue working remotely at least sometime after the pandemic ends, there’s a clear need to find ways to make it better.
Our findings suggest companies and workers could offset some downsides, which could pay dividends in the post-pandemic world.
What still isn’t known
Our findings are based on a survey of employees in the U.S., where workplace communication norms are often direct, meaning that people tend to use explicit verbal messages. U.S.-based results don’t easily apply to other cultures, such as those with communication styles that are indirect and relational.
How we did our work
Through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, which researchers like us used to recruit participants from around the world, we surveyed 324 American working adults who, before the pandemic, conducted the vast majority of their meetings in person and now use videoconferencing for a substantial share of them. We asked them about their work relationships, their communication behaviors when working in person and over the web, and their work unit’s performance now compared with before the pandemic, and used a form of statistical analysis to reveal patterns.
We conducted the research with the help of Ye Zhang, who just received herdoctorate from Peking University, as well as Jeff Russell, managing director ofInterCulturalEdge, which the four of us co-founded in 2015.
This article byNancy R. Buchan, Associate Professor of International Business,University of South Carolina;Wendi L. Adair, Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology,University of Waterloo, andXiao-Ping Chen, Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair Professor in Business Adminstration,University of Washingtonis republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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