How does this impact your organization?

More and more organizations are experiencing increasing numbers of sick leaves due to stress, burnouts and other wellbeing struggles of employees. Add up the current challenges individuals face because of the home-office and dissolving work and (private) life boundaries and you’ve got the entire package.

Besides the immense impact these situations have on the employees itself, it also affects the team, team spirit and culture greatly.

Though some individuals might feel and perform better than ever before, others might face intense struggles while working from home. The impact depends highly on the individual and the private setting and therefore, no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution is at hand. Nevertheless, there’s always a common denominator available: we are all human beings. As human beings, we all have one thing in common, and that is the need and desire for connection.

Though we are theoretically and practically able to easily connect online. It is not the same as being physically present. We happen to miss many of the wordless signals the non-verbal communication is usually providing and therewith miss the ability to ‘read’ or sense each other’s mood, gesture, posture and physical behavior.

During the summer of 2020, I conducted research for my executive master at professional service firms on the sustainability of change decisions during crises. One of the main findings coming out of this was the fact that, communication, connection and engagement are found to be the main elements of managing a crisis successfully and sustaining a positive team culture. However, these elements are more difficult to maintain when being physically distant from each other. Even though working virtually does have some positive attributes from a process and practical point of view, from a social and human perspective working full-time from the home-office is not sustainable in the long-term.