One of the biggest changes to society post-pandemic has been how — and where — we work. Roughly a quarter of the American workforce is now remote. While that can mean flexibility and freedom, it also can leave remote workers feeling cutoff from their colleagues and their role within the company. 

A new study from Colorado State University College of Business researchers Tiffany Trzebiatowski and Christine Henle found that remote workers who felt professionally isolated from their organization and colleagues also felt more depleted and were less cognitively engaged with their work. 

Trzebiatowski and Henle recently spoke to SOURCE about the study and how employers can better support their remote — and on-site — employees.

So, obviously remote work has become par for the course for many post-pandemic. But it sounds like it can also get a little lonely.

Henle: If you think about it, when we’re professionally isolated, we don’t have a lot of people to give us guidance. We’re missing out on mentors, training, learning, bouncing ideas off of people. So, when we don’t have those resources, that can be really draining. 

Trzebiatowski: We started this research during the summer of COVID 19 when a lot of people went to remote work. The company that we were researching transitioned their entire workforce to remote work. So, we were interested in understanding how we could best support remote workers. 

What we found is that remote workers who felt professionally isolated felt more depletion and were less cognitively engaged with their work. We also looked at what organizations can do to help professionally isolated workers to feel more engaged at their job. 

And what did you find?

Trzebiatowski: We found that having two resources — family supportive supervisor behaviors and schedule flexibility — in alignment was a good way to help remote workers feel more engaged. Having a consistent message and support for the types of resources offered really helped these professionally isolated employees deal with their depletion and feel more engaged in their work. 

But when these resources were mixed, that actually was more cognitively taxing for them. An example would be having a very supportive supervisor who’s understanding of your nonwork situation but not having a flexible schedule, or having a flexible schedule but also having a supervisor who isn’t supportive of your nonwork activities. 

Henle: You really need both the support and the tools to go together. If I had the support but I didn’t have any tools to help me balance my life and help me manage all these things, it wouldn’t work. And if I had the tools but no one supporting me, that wouldn’t work either. If you have a flexible work schedule, but your supervisor really doesn’t want you to use it, it’s not going to work. 

Is this only related to remote workers, or do you think this can apply to office workers as well?

Henle: We were studying professional isolation in the context of telecommuters, but it can still happen when people are face-to-face. We often forget that even though we’re working closely together with all our different schedules, professional isolation could still happen in the workplace when people aren’t always telecommuting. That was one thing that surprised us a little bit when we started thinking of it that way. 

Trzebiatowski: Another surprising takeaway was that a lot of times studies look at one resource. So, we’ll look at whether flexible schedules are good for people, or supportive supervisors. When we looked at those two things together, we saw effects. But if you just look at them separately, you might not see these more nuanced impacts. So, I think that was a major takeaway for us, the systems-level perspective, and it’s something that we’d want organizations to think about rather than just what’s the latest and greatest new resource or thing that companies are doing. Maybe it’s better to look at your existing suite of resources and try to understand whether that fits in with the message that’s being sent to the employees, because you’re trying to signal that you’re supporting them or what kind of resources you will provide them. And if that’s very unclear or mixed, then employees are going to be confused and unable to understand how to use those resources, and therefore they’ll feel more depleted and less engaged. 

How can employees and employers both use this research?

Henle: First of all, companies need to address professional isolation, both among their telecommuters and their onsite employees, as well. There’s lots of ways to do that and lots of companies that are trying those things. In our paper we mention things like hosting gatherings or social events for them to be engaged in. Having assigned mentors could also help to alleviate some of that professional isolation. 

But also, as Tiffany mentioned earlier, the benefits really need to align. They need to support each other and be complementary because if you have really good benefits, but then you have another benefit that works against it, it’s not going to help you or the employees. 

Trzebiatowski: And as companies are considering remote work situations and even return-to-office policies, thinking about the context of the workplace and what kinds of professional opportunities or professional networking employees are looking for is important. 

Before a lot of the workforce went remote, there wasn’t a lot of research into professional isolation. Now there’s a lot more discussion around it including return-to-office policies, remote work, better engaging of remote workers, and the role of the professional environment in making people feel connected to their job and their role.  

It’s important to remember that sense of a professional connection with others as well as with the organization and try to think of those creative ways to support workers and make sure that they’re not feeling isolated from their work environment.