Remote Employees Report Higher Trust and Stronger Communication

MOST ANSWERS DON’T CHANGE WITH LOCATION. WHERE THEY DO, REMOTE EMPLOYEES ARE ALMOST ALWAYS MORE POSITIVE.

Most Christian-led organizations have settled into some mix of office, hybrid, and remote work that fits their overall strategy. Remote work has been normalized in recent years, so fewer leaders question whether to allow it. They may question what difference it makes to the workplace experience. Do people feel heard from afar? Do they feel included when not in the same physical space? How is trust impacted by distance?

We can answer that. Our Employee Engagement Survey asks every employee where they primarily work. Across 10,909 employees in 84 Christian-led organizations (5,598 in an office, 3,472 fully remote, and 1,839 hybrid), we compared coworkers inside the same organizations, so that each comparison is between people with the same employer. Hybrid and office employees answered 54 of our 56 survey items in a similar way, while remote and office employees did so on 37 items. Where remote employees differed, they were the more positive group on 18 of those 19 items.

WHAT WE FOUND

Here is how all three groups answered questions that tend to come up whenever working arrangements are discussed. Each number is the percentage of that group who agreed or strongly agreed.

Remote employees rate their workplace experience higher than office employees on these five questions, by an average of nine points.

Overall, 66 percent of remote employees are engaged by our measure, against 59 percent of hybrid employees and 56 percent of office employees. Some of that gap belongs to the organizations rather than to the arrangement. Healthier organizations may be more likely to employ remote staff in the first place, having already worked out how to address these questions over time.

The sharpest relative differences are at the negative end. Office employees are more than twice as likely as their own remote coworkers to strongly disagree that leaders explain the reasons behind major decisions (4.5 percent against 2.0), twice as likely to strongly disagree that their organization seeks staff suggestions (3.9 percent against 1.9), and nearly twice as likely to strongly disagree that leaders and employees trust one another (5.5 percent against 2.9). Across questions about being consulted and being told why, nearly one office employee in eleven strongly disagrees with at least one of them. Among remote staff it is one in twenty.

On one notable question, office employees come out ahead, and it is the only one where they do so against both remote and hybrid employees. They are about three points more likely than the others to say they have fun at work. This is understandable given how remote arrangements hinder some aspects of fellowship that can occur only when employees gather in the same building. For a remote worker, at work may mean behind a screen in their living room rather than in a breakroom filled with colleagues sharing pizza or cake to celebrate an anniversary.

WHAT OTHERS HAVE FOUND

Researchers led by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, publishing in Nature, put a related question to a randomized trial. They tracked more than 1,600 employees of a large company for up to two years. Some employees worked from home two days a week and some worked in the office all five. They found no difference in performance reviews, promotions, or measured output between the working arrangements.

We asked employees about the people they work with, and their answers point the same way. Remote employees are slightly more likely than their office coworkers to say colleagues are committed to excellence, 95 percent against 92, and just as likely to say their area works effectively as a team.

WHAT THIS DOES AND DOES NOT MEAN

The employees in our data were not assigned at random. The working arrangements were part of an existing structure that, for most organizations we surveyed, functions very well. The differences we found were statistically significant but modest in practical terms. On its own, no arrangement delivers a healthy workplace, and none prevents one. Leaders are encouraged to decide where their employees work based on mission, talent strategy, and the needs of those the organization serves. What these numbers reflect most is how people are led, in every arrangement. Voice, inclusion, and trust are not constrained by geography.

NEXT STEPS

Whatever the working arrangement, four practices follow from this:

• Lead the people, not the floor plan. Where people work may be a smaller factor in their perception of workplace health than it once was. The questions in the table above vary far more from one organization to the next than from one desk location to the next.

• Invite suggestions from office staff as deliberately as from remote staff. Remote employees are the most likely of the three groups to say their suggestions are sought, perhaps because an opinion offered from a distance has to be invited; it cannot be picked up in a casual hallway conversation.

• Explain the reasons behind major decisions, especially to the people down the hall. Office employees are more than twice as likely as their remote coworkers to strongly disagree that their leaders offer such explanations. Intentionality goes a long way here.

• Prioritize an ongoing conversation about each person’s progress, whether across a desk or across a screen. The practices behind these numbers work at any distance.

AN ENCOURAGEMENT

There is freedom in this. Trust, recognition, teamwork, and voice are the fruit of how people are led far more than of where they sit. Those aspects of workplace flourishing are available wherever your people are located.