At Work, Homecommuters
my work station at tea time
A new study finds that staying in constant touch via email, meetings or other means doesn’t boost telecommuters’ or office workers’ feelings of closeness to their co-workers.
In addition, frequent communication can lead to stressful interruptions, which can make teleworkers feel less attached to their companies, say authors Kathryn Fonner, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Michael Roloff, professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. (Read their research here and here.)
Managers may worry that telecommuters feel isolated and disconnected from their organizations, so they make special efforts to stay in frequent touch. But that isolation is a myth, the professors say. Moreover, frequent interruptions are “negatively associated with their feelings of organizational identification” among telecommuters, said Dr. Fonner. Simply put, reflexively looping remote workers into email chains and conference calls does not necessarily make them feel part of the group.
Office-based workers also reported stress due to interruptions, but the interruptions did not seem to harm their organizational identification, perhaps because such intrusions are seen as par for the course in the workplace.
The study examined a sample of 89 telecommuters and 104 office-based workers, asking them about their frequency of contact with their colleagues and managers, and surveying them about interruptions and stress levels. The workers were also gauged on their identification with the workplace, such as “When I talk about this organization, I usually say ‘we’ rather than ‘they.’”
Both telecommuters and office workers said phone conversations were less stressful than a barrage of emails or face-to-face meetings, possibly because phone communication is rarer these days than email. Moreover, the phone may be used for more focused communication, rather than for broadly contacting groups of people with basic or irrelevant information, which could lead to overload and increased distractions, Dr. Fonner said.
To help decrease worker stress and increase organizational affiliation, the researchers suggest limiting mass emails, reducing the number of weekly meetings, creating information “stores” where employees can easily access information and “fostering an environment where employees can schedule uninterrupted time to work,” according to the study.
The study appears in the June issue of Communication Monographs, published by the National Communication Association.
via WSJ.
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