The study included 275 interviews and about 330 hours of observation. Most people in the groups I followed ended up working from home four or five days a week, joining meetings by video. What I found was the opposite of what I expected.
Remote work made these colleagues more open with each other, not less
Learning more about colleagues
Rather than pulling colleagues apart, remote work brought them closer and made them more willing to be open with one another. The findings were peer-reviewed and will be published in an upcoming issue of the management journal Organization Science.
In the office, before the shift to remote work, I found that people primarily viewed one another as work colleagues rather than whole people. Reflecting this relationship, workers sometimes said they felt uncomfortable sharing with one another aspects of their lives that might limit their ability to do work.
For example, one worker I interviewed, Patrick, was afraid to tell his colleagues he could not work late one night because he was helping his mom. All the names I’m mentioning are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people involved and their employer.
