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Paradoxes of Engagement: Less Communication Is More
Minimizing hours for synchronous communication makes us more productive
In 2017, long before the pandemic, Gallup released research that showed some startling results regarding working out of the office:
All employees who spend at least some (but not all) of their time working remotely have higher engagement than those who don’t ever work remotely.
And those that work remotely 60%-80% of the time say they are more likely to strongly agree that working remotely makes them more productive.
When I wrote about this earlier this year in Paradoxes of Engagement: Remote Isn’t, I suggested that perhaps the difficulties linked to managers communicating with out-of-office workers led to better managing:
Because of all the difficulties of communicating with remote workers, managers have to make an extra effort to connect. That means they are likely to put it on their calendar or todo list, or both. Because of that, managers will pay more attention to what is being said, and as [Scott] Edinger puts it¹, ‘tend to be more conscious of the way they express their authority’. They are likely to make an effort to catch up with remote workers to get a sense of what’s going on in their lives.
But recent research suggests a different factor may be at play in the increased productivity and engagement of those who have adopted a minimum-office way of work.
Read the full post on Work Futures on Substack.
Read all the Paradoxes of Engagement series:
- Paradoxes of Engagement: Remote Isn’t | Do remote workers make their managers better?
- Paradoxes of Engagement: Workers are not Assets | They are investors.
- Paradoxes of Engagement: Most Managers Are Afraid To Communicate | Even though that’s their most important job.
- Paradoxes of Engagement: Less Communication Is More | Minimizing hours for synchronous communication makes us more productive
- Paradoxes of Engagement: First Trust, Then Trustworthiness | Managers are having a hard time trusting remote workers
