New research shows work from home can be an escape from an unhappy culture or bad manager
How effective is remote work or work from home when it comes to employee satisfaction?
It may not be as much as expected, according to new research by Georgetown and Stanford Universities.
The study finds that while remote work is often associated with higher job satisfaction, that correlation is not as strong as previously thought.
Co-author Jason Schloetzer, associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, explains how their approach — surveying almost 165,000 employees from various sectors and different working styles — provides a comprehensive view of the effect of remote work.
“We took the approach that there are many dimensions that can impact satisfaction, or whether an employee wants to stay at the firm or not,” he says.
“Our finding is, basically, there's a lot of good things that are happening inside of firms that offer remote work, and those other good things that are happening explain more of employee satisfaction than simply the ability to work remotely or not.”
Connecting culture to remote work
For their study, “How Do Different Remote Work Arrangements Impact Employee Job Satisfaction and Retention?” Schloetzer and co-author Christos Makridis analyzed employee perceptions of their workplaces, including pay fairness, manager relationships, and feelings of appreciation.
They also measured the frequency and type of remote work these workers experienced to provide more varied results than narrower studies on remote work.
According to Schloetzer, their findings confirm what some experts have long suspected: companies offering remote work are often those with stronger overall policies and cultures already, making it difficult to separate the effects of remote work from broader organizational practices.
When employees already feel appreciated, the statistical association between remote work and satisfaction drops significantly.
Conversely, in some cases, employees may be seeking distance from negative aspects of their work environment rather than simply valuing flexibility. For Schloetzer, this means increases in remote work requests could be a red flag for employers.
“If a company where employees feel appreciated then adds remote work to the mix, the appreciation aspect is what drives satisfaction, from an economic standpoint, not adding remote work,” he says.
“You need to think about your overall company's policies and culture. Remote work isn't going to solve a problem with corporate culture.”
Escaping managers by working from home
The study also found that poor manager relationships can drive employees to seek remote work as a form of “escape,” Schloetzer says.
“What we find is an employee reports being more satisfied working from home more frequently when they say that the quality of their manager relationship is poor,” he stresses.
“On average, working from home all the time doesn't impact satisfaction, but we find that working from home all the time improves satisfaction in the situation where an employee says they don't like their boss.”
He cautioned HR leaders to recognize that remote work can become a “middle ground” for employees who are dissatisfied but not ready to leave. Whereas previously a dissatisfied employee would be motivated to leave the company, he explains, remote work as an option may extend their tenure by allowing them to “escape” a manager they dislike.
“[They think] ’Instead of leaving the firm, and instead of being in the office, I'm just going to try to escape this whole situation by working from home all the time,’” Schloetzer says.
“HR managers should recognize that now, maybe instead of employees leaving because they don't like their boss, they're going to try to escape by doing this remote work thing, and that they might actually want to come back in the office but it's the manager that's preventing them.”
Compensation and appreciation
He emphasizes that the most effective ways to improve satisfaction and retention are not related to remote work at all, but with compensation and appreciation.
“If I'm an HR manager, the big bang for your buck is ‘How do I make my employees feel appreciated? How do I ensure that their relationships with their managers are positive? How do I ensure that they feel they're being paid fairly, and that there's transparency around the pay policy?’” he says.
“If I'm a company where employees feel like they're not fairly paid, they don't feel like there's transparency around the pay process, they don't feel appreciated, and they don't have a good relationship with their manager, adding remote work to the mix is not going to affect anything.”
Understanding real reasons for remote work requests
For Canadian employers facing pushback on return-to-office mandates, Schloetzer’s advice is to look deeper than the surface complaints by asking for more honesty from employees and not necessarily taking reasons such as long commutes at face value.
“[It's about asking] ‘Tell me exactly why you don't want to come back in the office,’” he says.
“And HR managers should understand what those ‘whys’ are and fix them. Because if I don't want to come back in the office because I'm dissatisfied with my working environment, or I don't like my boss, or I don't feel appreciated, or my work is boring, that is very different than valuing flexibility.”
Focus groups with employees inviting transparency about RTO objections can shed light on bigger problems behind RTO pushback, Schloetzer says, insisting these objections are rarely as simple as they seem and also case-specific.
“Each individual organization, each individual department, needs to understand why the employees want to work remotely, and the acceptable answers are not ‘Because I don't want to drive to work,’” he says.
“There's a reason you don't want to drive to work. If it's ‘I can't afford it’, then there's a problem with pay; if it's ‘It's takes me too long to get there,’ then maybe there needs to be some flexible working hours, but still in the office.”
