IN
DEGREE PROJECT INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT,
SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS STOCKHOLM SWEDEN 2021 ,
Motivation in the Remote Workplace
Understanding the Threats and Opportunities to Motivation During Enforced Remote Work
ALEXANDER DRYSELIUS JOEL PETTERSSON
KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT
Abstract
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, organizations across the world have been forced to move operations into the homes of its employees. This shift has dramatically changed the individual workplace contexts that employees are subject to, raising questions about which effects this will have on employee motivation. As levels of motivation relates to both productivity and well-being of individuals, it is critical that organizations know how motivation can be facilitated in a remote working (or “teleworking”) context so as to safekeep the productivity and well-being of their employees. Through semi-structured interviews, this study gathers the opinions and experiences of employees from five different companies in knowledge intensive sectors. Analysing this material we constructed seven recurring themes that were related to motivation. Viewing these themes through a theoretical framework based on previous studies of remote working, the Job Demands-Resources Model, and Self-Determination Theory we conclude that teleworking affects motivation in the areas of lacking social interaction, the level of informational transparency in the organization, challenges to work-life balance, a responsibility shift between managers and employees, troubles reaching out for support, digital meetings, and perceptions of learning. We conclude the study by providing managers and employees with lists of practical guidelines that can help them facilitate motivation in the teleworking context.
Keywords
Motivation, Self-Determination theory, Teleworking, Remote working, Self-leadership, Work-Life
balance
Sammanfattning
I kölvattnet av Covid-19-pandemin har organisationer över hela världen tvingats flytta verksamheten till de anställdas hem. Denna förändring har dramatiskt förändrat individernas egna
arbetsplatskontexter. Detta väcker frågor om vilka effekter detta kommer att få på anställdas
motivation. Eftersom motivation är relaterat till produktivitet såväl som välbefinnande hos individer är det avgörande att organisationer vet hur motivation kan underlättas i ett fjärranslutet (eller
"distansarbetande") sammanhang för att skydda sina anställdas produktivitet och välbefinnande. . Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer samlar denna studie in åsikter och erfarenheter från anställda från fem olika företag inom kunskapsintensiva sektorer. Genom att analysera detta material konstruerade vi sju återkommande teman som var relaterade till motivation. När vi tittar på dessa teman genom en teoretisk ram baserad på tidigare studier av distansarbete, Job Demands-Resources-modellen och Self-Determination-teorin drar vi slutsatsen att distansarbete påverkar motivation inom områdena med bristande social interaktion, nivån av transparens inom organisationen, utmaningar i balansen mellan arbete och privatliv, en ansvarsförskjutning mellan chefer och anställda, svårigheter att be om hjälp för att lösa problem, digitala möten och upplevelsen av lärande. Vi avslutar studien med att ge chefer och anställda en lista med praktiska riktlinjer som kan hjälpa dem att facilitera motivation i
distansarbete.
Keywords
Motivation, Self-Determination theory, Teleworking, Remote working, Self-leadership, Work-Life
balance
Abstract 1
Sammanfattning 2
1 Introduction 6
1.1 Background 6
1.2 Purpose 7
1.3 Research Question 7
1.4 Delimitations 7
1.5 Contribution 8
2 Theoretical Framework 8
2.1 Teleworking 8
2.1.1 Teleworking and Productivity 8
2.1.2 The Teleworking Workplace 9
Job Crafting 9
2.1.3 Challenges of Teleworking 10
Psychological Challenges 10
Physical and Temporal Challenges 10
2.1.4 Changed Contextual Demands for Teleworkers 10
2.2 Job Demands-Resources Model 11
2.3 Self-Determination Theory 12
2.3.1 Basic Psychological Needs 14
2.3.2 Self-Determination In the Workplace 15
2.3.3 Supporting Needs Satisfaction 16
Needs-Supportive Job Characteristics 16
Needs-Supportive Leadership 17
3 Methodology 18
3.1 Methodological Approach 18
3.1.1 Research Paradigm 18
3.2 Research Process 18
3.2.1 Literature Review 18
3.2.2 Shaping the Purpose and Problem Formulation 19
3.3 Data Collection 19
3.3.1 The Timing of Interviews 19
3.3.2 A Qualitative Approach Was Used 20
3.3.3 Semi-Structured Interviews as Primary Data Collection 20
3.3.4 Finding a Sample Group 20
3.3.5 Interview Guide 21
3.3.6 Conducting Interviews 21
3.3.7 Challenges With the Interviews 21
3.3.8 Reliability and Validity 22
3.4 Data Processing and Analysis 22
3.4.1 Primary Data Analysis 22
3.4.2 Data Processing 22
3.4.3 Secondary Data Analysis 23
3.5 Ethics and Sustainability 23
4 Results and Analysis 25
4.1 Participant Distribution 26
4.2 Challenges to Social Interactions 27
4.2.1 Spontaneous Interactions Between Coworkers 27
4.2.2 Manager Views of Spontaneous Social Interactions 28
4.2.3 Organizational Tactics for Stimulating Social Interaction 28
4.2.4 Individual Tactics for Stimulating Social Interaction 29
4.3 Transparency in the Digital Organization 30
4.4 Work-Life Balance 31
4.4.1 Boundaries Between Private and Work Lives 31
4.4.2 Loss of Managerial Control 32
4.4.3 Employees Work Longer Hours 32
4.4.4 Task Planning 33
4.4.5 Rituals 33
4.5 Employee and Management Experience a Responsibility Shift 34
4.5.1 Employee Perceptions of Employer Support 34
4.5.2 Manager Expectations on Employees 35
4.5.3 Junior Employees Suffer From Perceived Lack of Clarity 35
4.6 Reaching Out To Colleagues 35
4.6.1 Booking Meetings for Everything 36
4.6.2 Written Communication Increases Clarity 36
4.6.3 Writing Formally is Taxing 37
4.6.3 Written Communication is not for Everyone 37
4.6.4 Issues with Availability 38
4.7 Challenges of holding Digital Meetings 39
4.8 Motivation in the Workplace, what did I learn? 41
4.8.1 Second Wave of the Pandemic Leads Thoughts Into the Future 41
4.8.2 The Difficulties of Remote Work 41
4.8.3 Learning for the Future 42
4.9 Discussion 43
4.9.1 Work-Life Balance 43
4.9.2 The Importance of Organizations facilitating Social Interactions 44
4.9.3 Whose Responsibility is “it”, anyway? 44
4.9.4 The Power of Transparency 45
4.9.4 Reaching out to each other 46
4.9.5 Challenges of holding Digital Meetings 46
4.9.7 What did I learn? 47
5 Conclusion
485.1 Connection to Research Questions 48
5.2 Recommendations for Managers 51
5.3 Recommendations for Individual Employees 52
References 53
6 Appendices
566.1 Interview Questions 56
1 Introduction
In this section we walk through the contextual background to this project and present a
problematization of the subject we have identified. We then define the purpose of the study as well as the research questions that have guided the research. The section is concluded with necessary delimitations, and finally some notes on the contribution we hope to make with this research.
1.1 Background
Teleworking, or telecommuting, is defined as “the activity of working at home, while communicating with your office by phone or email, or using the internet” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2020) - a concept popularized during the CoViD-19 pandemic, where a large part of the World entered societal lockdowns, “a situation in which people are not allowed to enter or leave a building or area freely because of an emergency”, of varying degrees.
Using teleworking in this way was anticipated by Lister & Harnish (2011), who stated that telework could be used to prevent or circumvent flu pandemics. This scenario is no longer a hypothetical, as the concept is becoming increasingly common during the pandemic. Sostero et. al (2020) state that a third of the European population was teleworking in August of 2020; before the so called second wave of the pandemic. Due to the level of uncertainty about the immediate future being high, previous barriers preventing a widespread implementation of teleworking have been toppled, at least temporarily. With teleworking now being encouraged by authorities, it is up to organizations to cope with the changes that this poses for them.
One of these changes is the individual workplace contexts that the employees are subject to. As offices close, individuals now face challenges in setting up a workplace environment in their homes.
As we will show in this study, introducing teleworking has been shown to have an effect on employee productivity, with conflicting findings regarding whether it increases or decreases when compared to an office baseline.
On one hand, a Japanese study conducted within the pandemic context has shown productivity to be lower after switching to teleworking (Morikawa, 2020). Bloom et. al. (2015), instead showed that productivity went up when teleworking, and that it increased even further when teleworking was a voluntary decision by the employees, albeit outside of the pandemic context. In an interview conducted in 2020, Bloom stated that his work was not representative for the pandemic context, inviting further studies into the topic.
There is a strong relation between employees levels of motivation and positive outcomes on an organizational level, including productivity (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017). With knowledge of this, it is in the interest of every organization to strive towards having motivated coworkers. Previous
research has identified how multiple aspects of work life, ranging from the design of individual tasks, communication proficiency, the role of leadership, and much more, can impact the motivational levels of employees (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017).
Previous studies have, however, been mainly focused on motivation in physical offices, or
organizations where teleworking has been a minor feature. In an era of mass-teleworking, important
questions emerge regarding how motivation can be safe-guarded when organizations are faced with dramatic change.
1.2 Purpose
Organizations have been taken by surprise by the pandemic, and the shift towards teleworking was necessarily rushed. There is much know-how when it comes to structuring organizations in an office, but less so when it comes to structuring the work of sometimes thousands of single person home offices. To know what effect the currently adopted ways of teleworking have on employee motivation, and in turn what can be done to increase it, there needs to be thorough empirical research of how employees are experiencing teleworking. This will be the focal point of this thesis.
The purpose of this thesis is to provide an understanding of motivation in the context of company wide teleworking schemes by discovering the challenges and opportunities that individual employees have encountered in their experience of teleworking.
1.3 Research Question
Given the description of the purpose of this thesis as stated above, we have formulated the following research question to guide our research.
“How does enforced teleworking affect employee motivation in highly skilled, knowledge intensive Swedish organizations?”
To answer this question, three sub-questions are asked:
1. What are the main challenges and opportunities for sustaining motivation during enforced teleworking, as presented by employees and managers?
2. What can managers do to facilitate motivation during enforced teleworking?
3. What can individual employees do to facilitate motivation during enforced teleworking?
1.4 Delimitations
We have delimited our research to cover only Swedish organizations. The main reason for this is that the scope of this study does not incorporate variability in culture that may affect attitudes towards teleworking in different countries, or deeper concepts like work ethic or the importance of work.
There might also be structural differences such as levels of digitalization and general technical know-how that might affect how people view teleworking. Furthermore, countries differ both in how hard the pandemic has hit them, as well as how national governments have reacted to it. Limiting the study to one country diminishes these possible variabilities.
We have also chosen to delimitate which types of organizations that are a part of this study. As reflected in the research question we will cover organizations that meet the requirements of being knowledge intensive. We use the definition of this term as described by Alvesson (2011, p.6), “There is an emphasis on knowledge-intensive operations, as opposed to labour-intensive or capital-intensive.
Human capital is the dominant factor in knowledge-intensive firms”. The main reason for this
delimitation is to narrow the range of companies looked at. Some companies are not able to become
teleworking due to the nature of their business, other companies will not have to realign their ways of
working in any major ways. We see that knowledge intensive organizations will be an appropriate type of companies to perform the study on, as well as provide some clarity to the scope of the thesis.
1.5 Contribution
This study contributes with a different angle on motivation in the teleworking context, a characteristic of which is that entire organizations have turned to teleworking. This will be an important difference from most previous research that has viewed teleworking as a marginal element of otherwise
physically collocated organizations. Such research considers aspects of differences between remote and office workers which becomes irrelevant when the entirety of the office is distributed.
We also hope that the empirical results of this study will provide a richer understanding of how employees experience teleworking. This knowledge can give a better grasp of what aspects of teleworking have the largest impact on motivation, and serve as a basis for further research into how motivation can be best facilitated in the teleworking context.
For practitioners in organization we hope to provide a set of practical guidelines, based on the results we gather, which can be instructive for companies that are structuring their teleworking practises. For this reason, we hope that this study will have a high relevance both for academic purposes as well for practitioners in organizations.
2 Theoretical Framework
This section presents the theoretical framework constructed in this study. It contains a compilation of previous studies of teleworking and its empirical results. Further it presents the theoretical models of Job Demands-Resources, and Self-Determination theory. Lastly, applications of Self-Determination theory to the context of the workplace is covered.
2.1 Teleworking
2.1.1 Teleworking and Productivity
There are conflicting findings with regard to the effect that teleworking has on productivity. Various studies have looked into the business impacts, showing that telework can increase organizational productivity due to improvements in flexibility, employee productivity, larger talent pools, and reduced healthcare costs from using telework instead of sick leave. (Bloom et. al., 2015; Seejeen Park
& Yoon Jik Cho, 2020)
Teleworkers usually demonstrate a lower absentee rate, as they can continue to work from home even when they are sick and experience lower levels of stress because they manage their own work
schedule. Bloom et. al. also go on to show that employee attrition and following turnover was reduced by 50% and that employee work satisfaction increased, compared to a control group, when
implementing teleworking in a Chinese telemarketing firm.
Bloom et al. (2015) found an average increase of productivity among all workers and that the
productivity gain was amplified by a factor 1.5 in a follow-up study that allowed all employees the
freedom to choose whether to work from home. These findings are corroborated by Anderson,
Kaplan, and Vega (2015), who state that there are individual characteristics that influence the affective well-being of employees in a teleworking context.
Gorlick (2020) references Bloom et. al. when he states that the pandemic has four key characteristics that make the study inapplicable in the CoViD-19 context, namely children, space, privacy, and choice. Other practitioner studies have corroborated this claim, that teleworking during the CoViD-19 pandemic has led to lower employee productivity. (Morikawa, 2020) Bloom et al. make the case that the autonomy, or the choice, of working from home represents a large part of the reason for the productivity gain, contextualizing the initial findings.
In conclusion, teleworking can increase organizational commitment because employees feel more committed to the organization when they are allowed to work more flexibly compared to a traditional office setting work environment. However, being forced into a different way of working can offset this effect.
2.1.2 The Teleworking Workplace
The characteristics and dynamics of work change in the teleworking setting. When teleworking, Greer
& Payne (2014) make the case that employees have to deal with changes on different boundary levels, where a boundary is defined as “a means of simplifying and ordering the environment” (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000, p. 474.) Namely, the temporal, physical, and psychological boundaries.
Analyzing these boundaries is key to understanding how the working context changes during telework, as the reshaping of these boundaries are going to have an impact on the job bound aries in forcing every employee to engage in “job crafting”.
Job Crafting
Job crafting is defined as changing the boundaries and conditions of job tasks and job relationships and of the meaning of the job (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Through the practice, employees can change the boundaries of tasks, relationships, and meaning of their work. This means changing how work is carried out, with whom to interact in facilitating task completion, and ascribing personal meaning and significance to their work. (Berg et al., 2008)
Job crafting is associated with higher levels of motivation, due to satisfying the psychological needs posed by self-determination theory, as well as higher employee engagement. (Bakker & Oerlemans, 2019) Tims and Bakker (2010) connect this heightened sense of motivation to increasing available job resources and the tweaking of the job demands.
Engaging in job crafting has been observed in successful teleworkers, who apply strategies to increase their performance in the workplace. Among these are conscious efforts to being accessible, extra productive, flexible but scheduling, communicating with coworkers, supervisors and family, preparing the home environment for work, adopting a work-oriented mindset, setting work goals and
priorizations, using advanced technology, and, lastly, using dedicated childcare during “office” hours.
(Seejeen Park & Yoon Jik Cho, 2020) Bakker and Oerlemans go on to state that the task of job
crafting is a consuming one and associated with energy depletion, preventing the completion of other
tasks.
2.1.3 Challenges of Teleworking
As presented in the previous sections, teleworking is not a unanimously praised work form. Literature presents many challenges that need to be addressed in order for teleworking to yield positive results.
Some of these difficulties are due to the employee having to adapt to changes in their work.
Psychological Challenges
From a psychological perspective, people create different thinking, behavioural, and emotional patterns that are appropriate for their domains. Depending on role and context, people tend to showcase different attitudes and behaviours. Switching between these contexts is associated with a psychological cost. (American Psychological Association, 2020) Mental preparation is necessary for these transitions, and traditional office work implies a “switching ritual” in the commute. This could potentially lead to extra stress as home office life often has these roles intersect. (Seejeen Park &
Yoon Jik Cho, 2020)
Physical and Temporal Challenges
Physically, there is the difference of co-workers no longer working in the same location at the same time. The beginning and end of the workday become more fluid and that changes the time that employees are available for family and co-workers. From this dispersion arise communication challenges that can be damaging for more collaborative work efforts, as well as experienced isolation from the co-workers.
Furthermore, Greer & Payne (2014) report a potential lack of developmental opportunities for the teleworker, as the frequency of interaction with co-workers goes down. Golden et al. (2008) state that teleworkers feel a lack of work-related information and that their decision making suffers lower quality, a claim corroborated by Dahlstrom (2013), highlighting a lack of awareness of internal organizational issues. When managers telework, their employees report receiving less feedback, having lower workloads, lower job satisfaction, and an increased turnover intention (Golden &
Fromen, 2011). Gorlick (2020) also states that a prolonged lack of social interaction is likely precarious to the psyche, and risks leading to a future mental health crisis, as well as a loss of innovation.
These issues can, however, be countered by supervisory proficiency in telework. This proficiency includes navigating a changed social context, where face-to-face interaction, interdependency of teamwork, performance management, lack of work-related resources, and distractions in the home environment are defined as key challenges to combat. (Seejeen Park & Yoon Jik Cho, 2020)
2.1.4 Changed Contextual Demands for Teleworkers
Observed in the teleworking research is a change in job characteristics with increased autonomy in the planning of work; the when, the how, and the what. This is reflected in increased demands posed on employees as well as managers, where the prior has to take an increased responsibility for carrying out work and has to compensate for the lack of communication and the latter has to accept a lower sense of control.
Successful teleworking employees make use of advanced communication technology, child
management practices, and adapt their performance mindset by setting higher standards for
accessibility, goal setting, and end result (Seejeen Park & Yoon Jik Cho, 2020). For managers,
teleworking proficiency is associated with higher productivity. While Greer and Payne (2014) report a lack of developmental opportunities when working from home, we argue that the characteristics of development are different. The presented studies show that the skill set needed for a worker or a manager to perform changes drastically when going from office to home office, demanding the development of new competencies ; technical, physical, and mental.
In the challenges section, we see communication challenges, increased flexibility with regard to work hours, isolation from coworkers and a reported lack of awareness in internal organizational issues. A lowered frequency of colleague interaction is damaging to mental health and a, generally, lower sense of relatedness .
Observed are changes to the demands posed on and the resources available to the employees. Previous research into employee motivation and perceived strain of work has connected organizational
outcomes to these two processes. The following sections present the Job Demands-Resources Model and the Self-Determination Theory as means of analyzing effects of work context changes and its effect on motivation, drawing a meta-framework for analyzing the motivation of workers in the CoViD-19 induced home office.
2.2 Job Demands-Resources Model
The Job Demands-Resources model was first proposed by Bakker (2003) as a way of evaluating stress in the workforce and is applicable in human resource management. It is based on the assumption that every occupation has its own specific risk factors that can be classified into either one of two
categories, demands or resources. Inherent in the model are two psychological processes that play a role for strain and motivation in the work.
The first process, health impairment from demands, has poorly designed jobs with work overload and chronically high emotional demands exhaust the mental and physical resources of the employee, eventually resulting in a breakdown. (Demerouti et al., 2000, 2001; Leiter, 1993; Hockey, 1993) Job demands are the psychological, emotional, physical, social, etc. efforts or skills that need to be exerted when fulfilling one’s work description. The fulfilment of these demands are associated with
previously mentioned psychological and/or physical costs. The higher effort required to meet the
demands, the higher the risk of these turning into job stressors or strain. (Meijman, & Mulder, 1998)
Figure 1. Job Demand-Resources Model
The second process assumes that resources are inherently motivational in that it fosters growth, learning, development, or helps achieve work goals. (Bakker, 2007) These resources refer to the physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that are functional in achieving work goals, reduce job demands and the associated costs, or stimulate personal growth, learning, and development. Resources can be evaluated at different levels of the organization, from the organization at large and down to the task level. (Bakker, 2008) This motivational potential comes from the
resource’s ability to fulfill the basic human needs stipulated by self-determination theory (Deci &
Ryan, 2000).
2.3 Self-Determination Theory
Self-Determination theory, SDT, by Ryan and Deci (2000), builds on previous theories of motivation distinguishing two different types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. The former refers to
performing activities as a result of finding them inherently interesting and satisfying, whereas the latter entails engaging in activities that are satisfying as a result of their extrinsic consequences (Gangé & Deci, 2005).
SDT, details a complex landscape of different types of motivation, drawing on a central distinction between autonomous and controlled motivation. Autonomous motivation refers to engaging in an activity volitionally, whereas controlled motivation entails a sense of being pressured to engage in an activity. This is to say that autonomous motivation is more intrinsically regulated, whereas controlled motivation is more extrinsically regulated.
SDT uses the concept of internalization, which is defined as “taking in values, attitudes, or regulatory
structures, such that the external regulation of a behaviour is transformed into an internal regulation
and thus no longer requires the presence of an external contingency” (Gangé& Deci, 2005). In SDT
the concept of internalization is continuous, meaning that regulation of motivation does not have to be
either external or internal, but that a regulation can be internalized to a higher or lower degree. It is with these assumptions that SDT posits a controlled-to-autonomous continuum.
Figure 2. Self-Determination continuum.
The leftmost point in this continuum (Fig. 2.), amotivation , is by definition not regulated and
completely nonintentional. The rightmost point, intrinsic motivation , is when motivation is inherently autonomous and completely intrinsically motivated. This type of motivation requires that the activity in question is interesting and provides enjoyment detached from any extrinsic consequences it may have. It is the area of extrinsic motivation that the distinction between autonomous and controlled motivation and the concept of internalization most useful.
Beginning with the two leftmost types of extrinsic motivation, external regulation and introjected regulation. The former is when uninteresting activities are initiated and maintained by factors external to a person. For example, “Working only because one’s boss is watching”, implicitly assumes that working is necessary to avoid negative consequences, captures the idea of the concept. Introjected regulation needs a level of internalization, where the regulation is taken in by a person but the regulation functions in a controlling manner. This can be the result of ego-involvement, where the regulation is pressuring a person to behave in certain ways so as to not lose their sense of self-worth.
Both of these types of regulation are controlling.
The two rightmost types in the continuum exhibit even greater levels of internalization. Identified regulation motivates a person to perform certain behaviours because they are congruent with the person’s goals and values. An activity can be felt to reflect aspects of who we are and who we want to be. Doing charity work, for example, can be motivated by seeing a value in such activities, which can maintain the behaviour even though it may not in and of itself be interesting. Integrated regulation is the highest level of internalization, according to SDT. Such behaviours are maintained by being central to one’s identity and connected to one’s sense of self, i.e. being self-determined.
What differentiates integrated regulation from wholly intrinsic motivation is that the motivation is not characterized by a person’s interest in the activity, but rather the sense that the activity is
instrumentally important on a personal level (Gangé & Deci, 2005). These two regulations, together
with intrinsic motivation, is what constitutes autonomous motivation.
SDT postulates that the underlying regulatory processes of autonomous versus controlled motivation will differ, but also that the accompanying experiences too will differ in meaningful ways (Gangé &
Deci, 2005). Empirical results have shown that greater levels of internalization, i.e. more autonomous motivation have many advantages, such as more behavioral effectiveness, greater volitional
persistence, enhanced subjective well-being, and better assimilation of the individual within social groups (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
For organizations, enabling employees to internalize the regulation of their motivation to work, becomes an obvious imperative as it is likely to improve their performance and well-being. To achieve that, one must understand the variables that support or thwart internalization.
2.3.1 Basic Psychological Needs
A fundamental assumption of SDT is that humans are naturally active (Deci & Ryan, 2000). This is to be understood as humans being naturally inclined towards development and being drawn towards activities that support growth and development, i.e. they are intrinsically motivated to perform such activities. These tendencies can be supported or thwarted depending on whether they are provided with certain nutriments to function. These nutriments are postulated as three universal human needs;
namely the ones of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000).
The levels of motivation displayed are contextual, where one feels less motivated in situations where the enabling of one or more of these needs is thwarted. So interest in a particular activity will depend on whether a person experiences that their needs are being satisfied whilst engaging in the activity.
The suggestion that the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are universally applicable has not been uncontroversial, especially the need for autonomy, which has been suggested to be a Western phenomenon not present in every culture (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). There is however empirical support backing the suggestion that autonomy is universal (Chirkov et al., 2003), the key being understanding autonomy not as synonymous with individualism, but rather as the sense of volition in enacting one’s behaviours.
Autonomy is defined as having an “internal perceived locus of causality” (deCharms, 1968), meaning that a person must experience their behaviour as self-determined. Feelings of autonomy therefore involve feeling like the origin of one's behaviours. The idea of autonomy as a necessary nutriment for intrinsic motivation has been supported by research of events that decrease autonomy by moving the perceived locus of causality outside of the person. Events like threats (Deci & Cascio, 1972), surveillance (Lepper & Greene, 1975), evaluation (Harackiewicz et al., 1984), and deadlines (Amabile et al., 1976) were shown to lead to decreased intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, providing choice (Zuckerman et al., 1978) and acknowledging people’s inner experience (Koestner et al. 1984) was shown to increase intrinsic motivation.
Competence is a need to feel effective and a possibility to grow. People want to feel that they have the resources and skills to complete the daily tasks they face successfully. It has been observed that socio-contextual events such as feedback, communication, and rewards, to conduct toward feelings of competence during action can enhance intrinsic motivation for that action. Competence does however not enhance intrinsic motivation unless it is also accompanied by a feeling of autonomy.
Developmental efforts to create a perception of autonomy and competence in a social context are
therefore typically a precursor for intrinsic motivation. (Reeve, 1996)
Relatedness , too, is connected to intrinsic motivation, where studies on infants show that security and maternal autonomy support show higher degrees of exploratory behaviour (Frodi, Bridges, &
Grolnick, 1985), studies in children show that adults not acknowledging the task performance interesting to the child resulting in lower intrinsic motivation (Anderson, Manoogian, & Reznick, 1976), and Ryan and Grolnick (1986) observed lower intrinsic motivation in students that interpreted their teachers as cold and uncaring.
Autonomy and competence have been found to be the most impactful influences on intrinsic motivation, but relatedness is still crucial. Deci & Ryan says: “a secure relational base appears to provide a needed backdrop—a distal support—for intrinsic motivation, a sense of security that makes the expression of this innate growth tendency more likely and more robust“ (Deci & Ryan, 2000).
Whether these needs are supported or thwarted in a particular context can be studied empirically, offering a way to examine which aspects of the context have a positive or negative effect on the satisfaction of needs. This means that in a workplace context, conclusions can be drawn about organizational measures that facilitate the internalization of employee motivation and the positive outcomes that entails in a particular context.
2.3.2 Self-Determination In the Workplace
Applying the self-determination theory to understand the workplace is not a novel idea. The Basic Model of Self-Determination Theory in the Workplace (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017) sketches out the way SDT has most commonly been applied to workplace contexts. It is a useful conceptualization of the variables that affect, and are affected by, different levels of motivation.
It uses primarily two sets of independent variables, workplace context and individual differences.
Workplace context variables of interest have been the way in which organizations support or thwart employee needs. This often connects to how managerial styles differ and what consequences this has on needs satisfaction. A common variable for understanding individual differences is employees' general causality orientations, which have been described as “relatively enduring, trait-like
characteristics reflective of an individual's belief about their ability to promote or cause change” (Deci
& Ryan, 2000). In other words, causality orientations are individual differences in people’s tendencies toward self-determined behaviour.
For the purposes of this study, the workplace context variables are of the most interest, as the context of interest is born out of a situation where companies have been forced to work exclusively from home, creating a novel context that has not been studied in great detail.
Mediating variables can be either the satisfaction or frustration of needs, or the self expressed level of autonomous versus controlled motivation. Given that specific aspects of jobs and organizations have a direct impact on needs satisfaction, this study is mainly focused on identifying these aspects and examining the effect they have on needs.
Dependent variables have tended to be of two types, either focused on work related performance or on
aspects of health and well-being. Performance variables can include the quality or quantity of work
performed, which is often measured in terms of economic outcomes of a group or an entire company.
Health and wellness variables relate to the well-being of employees, measured in terms of levels of burnout, self-expressed job satisfaction and commitment.
Fig. 3. Basic Self-Determination Theory model in the workplace
In “Self-Determination Theory in Work Organizations: The State of a Science”, Deci, Olafsen, and Ryan (2017) present a comprehensive and recent overview of research of Self-Determination Theory in the context of the workplace. It gathers results supporting the theoretical suggestion that employees reporting high levels of autonomous motivation had multiple positive consequences such as less burnout, work exhaustion, and turnover intention, as well as greater work satisfaction, work commitment, and performance.
Studies looking to use satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as predictors found that satisfaction of all three led to less exhaustion, less organizational deviance, greater enjoyment of their jobs, and more autonomous motivation. In a meta-analysis (Van den Broeck, 2016) it was found that looking at just satisfaction for each of the three needs could predict intrinsic motivation and well-being, but that it was better at predicting positive outcomes as opposed to negative. It is suggested by Van den Broeck that both satisfaction and thwarting of needs should be used as predictors of work-related outcomes. Studies looking at frustration of needs or frustration and satisfaction of needs also found that frustration of needs led to lower levels of well-being and vice versa.
It is well-founded to suggest that satisfying the basic human psychological needs in the context of work has a positive effect on outcomes, both in terms of performance and well-being. This, in turn, begs the question of what actions or adjustments can be made from an organizational perspective in order to support the satisfaction of employee needs.
2.3.3 Supporting Needs Satisfaction
Needs-Supportive Job Characteristics
As mentioned above, certain characteristics of jobs can be frustrating for a person's need for
autonomy. Events like evaluations and deadlines are not always possible to avoid, and tasks that are
assigned will not always be inherently enjoyable. Research has shown, however, that when the
rationale for doing the task is clear and accepted, and when we see a sense of purpose in what we are
doing, we can still feel a sense of volition i.e. autonomy (Rigby & Ryan, 2018). This means that jobs that provide clear rationales for tasks, and impart purpose are supportive of autonomy.
In order to have a sense of competence, employees must feel that they have the resources to perform tasks assigned to them. This means that in order to support the need for competence, tasks must be designed at an appropriate level of difficulty, as well as provide the resources needed to perform the task, in order to not produce anxiety and disengagement. (Deci, 1975) People also have a natural wish to improve or master the skills that they use in their daily work tasks. Providing employees with a path forward that leads them to new challenges and responsibilities, makes them anticipate growth in their work, and satisfies their need for competence (Rigby & Ryan, 2018).
Meeting the human need for relatedness requires that organizations provide their employees with a feeling that they belong. This means allowing employees to connect and not allowing situations where people feel isolated. In the workplace, a need for relatedness entails feeling respected, valued, and included by direct managers, coworkers, and leadership (Rigby & Ryan, 2018).
Needs-Supportive Leadership
Much of the research on how organizations can be needs-supportive have been focused on the perception of leaders as supportive of needs. The experience of one’s direct manager has been found to be one of the most influential factors determining levels of motivation and engagement. When managers are perceived as supportive of basic needs, their subordinates report higher motivational quality, organizational loyalty, and engagement. (Rigby & Ryan, 2018).
Much of the research of managerial styles have been focused on levels of autonomy support from managers (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017). Having an autonomy-supportive managerial style can be defined “in terms of understanding and acknowledging the subordinates’ perspectives, encouraging self-initiation, minimizing pressures and controls, and providing relevant information” (Gangé &
Deci, 2005). The latter two aspects could be broken down further into variables such as, offering choices, providing meaningful feedback, making assignments optimally challenging, and giving a rationale for tasks that are given (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017). Studies from a wide array of working contexts such as police officers (Otis & Pelletier, 2005), health professionals (Moreau & Mageau, 2012), teachers (Nie et al., 2015), and others, show positive outcomes including more autonomous motivation as an effect of autonomy support.
In the context of educational institutions, it has been shown that team leaders who are more needs-supportive, allow educators to internalise the value of their work efforts and become more autonomously motivated. This had the auxiliary effect of improving performance and promoting well-being as well as work satisfaction (Orsini, 2020)
Supportiveness of all three basic needs have been studied as a composite, but most studies have focused on the aspect of autonomy supportiveness. It has been found, however, that the organizational and managerial support for autonomy, supports the satisfaction of all three basic psychological needs at a general level and that they are highly correlated (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017). This means that autonomy support is a good proxy for general needs support.
To summarize, there are many results showing that psychological needs can be actively supported
from an organizational level. One of the most influential factors that determine the level of perceived
supportiveness from the organization is the actions of direct managers. This means that the role of leadership is a crucial component for supporting the psychological needs of employees.
3 Methodology
This section aims to describe how the study was conducted, the epistemological and ontological stance, and the decisions made throughout the process. It will cover the data collection and its design as well as describe the process of analysing the data.
3.1 Methodological Approach
3.1.1 Research Paradigm
In the early stages of this project we settled on using a qualitative approach. We came to question this choice at certain points during the project, especially as we incorporated self-determination theory into our theoretical framework, since it is a robust framework that lends itself to quantitatively driven deductive research. It was through continuous discussion of the subject area and the purpose of the research question that we came to conclude that the most suitable approach would be an exploratory one. The motivation for this was that we were not interested in deductively testing particular theories of motivation to confirm their validity, but rather use the existing theory as a framework, or lens, with which to analyse our findings. The findings in turn are hoped to be an in-depth understanding of the novel context of the home office.
To grapple with the subjective nature of motivation, we adopted an interpretivist approach which rejects acquired knowledge as objectively determined (Carson et al., 2001, p.5). Even though
Self-Determination Theory can be argued to make certain claims to objectively describe the process of motivation, such as the universal relevance of basic human psychological needs, the fulfillment of these needs are subject to multiple realities that are difficult to interpret in terms of a fixed reality (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
This interpretivist view holds the ontological stance that there is no single external reality and that it is not possible for the researchers to gain access to such a real world (Hudson & Ozanne, 1988). It follows from this an epistemological stance that the knowledge we can and wish to seek is the perceived knowledge of subjective experience and the specific context it exists in (Carson et al., 2001).
3.2 Research Process
3.2.1 Literature Review
The literature review was guided through a series of talks with informants representing different points of view. We talked to leadership development educators, self-leadership researchers, and a C-suite manager of people and culture in one of the participating companies of the study. Through these interviews, we understood that there was a keen interest in understanding the tenets of
motivation in the home office, as well as a thirst for knowledge about the effects on the post-CoViD
workplace.
The literature review aggregated knowledge from motivational theory, teleworking, and leadership found on the Web of Science and Google Scholar to find accessible versions of the papers.
Teleworking, distance working, and home office were used interchangeably in the search terms to identify papers of interest through aggregated searches.
We rated the articles found independently, and articles were discarded based on the synthesized classifications, from A to C, of the paper abstracts. The papers that fit were read, after which the sources relevant to this study were analyzed in a “snowballing” fashion, leading to the framework presented in chapter 2.
3.2.2 Shaping the Purpose and Problem Formulation
A research proposal was sent out to HR managers of fifteen Swedish companies, inviting them to partake in an interview study of motivation in the home office. Every participating company was invited to a 30 minute presentation of the research outline and discussion of the practicalities of performing interviews. At the end of each presentation, the HR manager was asked whether there were potential angles of research that were of particular interest for their company.
Upon request, a preliminary draft of the interview guide, as seen in appendix 6.1, was then sent out to allow companies to gauge any potential risks in partaking, and gain necessary approval from within the company. The HR managers were instructed not to share any of the material given to them with persons selected for interviews, so as to not force any perspectives or preconceived ideas on them. No company made objections, or suggested any changes to be made to the interview questions.
The topic of motivation and productivity in the remote working context and the ramifications this epoch in history will have on the workplace of the future are of particular interest. The purpose of this study then shaped into drawing learnings from employee experiences of teleworking to guide the HR practices of tomorrow.
3.3 Data Collection
3.3.1 The Timing of Interviews
To meet our timeline we performed the data collection with interviews held throughout the month of November. Given the possibility to perform a continuing data collection over some period of time could potentially generate deeper insights into which aspects of teleworking that stands out, as well as capture any changes in attitude towards teleworking amongst employees.
A complicating factor of this approach is the fact that the proximate cause of the current teleworking
paradigm is the society wide lockdowns following CoViD-19. This has meant for companies that the
transition to teleworking has been abrupt. Most companies may still be adapting to the new situation
and the sudden change can in and of itself have an effect on employees motivation. The temporal
location of the study may therefore be of consequence, where one would expect different results
depending on whether the study was conducted one month or one year into the lockdown induced
teleworking. Our data collection was performed about 9 months into the lockdown, which we see as
ample time for companies to have settled into new ways of working and become accustomed to
tool to gauge employee motivation without being overly disturbed by noise in motivational levels from the sudden shift.
3.3.2 A Qualitative Approach Was Used
As previously mentioned, multiple companies were included in the data collection in order to produce results more generalizable to the group of workers in knowledge-intensive roles. One approach that we could have taken would be a quantitative data collection which would have given us the ability to gather more data. An issue with this is that the nature of this subject area asks us to understand the inner workings of people, their feelings and thoughts on certain topics. Such information is much harder to probe using quantitative means.
Going into this study, we accept established theories with empirical support explaining the dynamics of motivation, e.g. the frustration or satisfaction of basic human needs. We also have previous results charting out the territory of the workplace and what conditions of a workplace that tend to affect motivation. It is in the topic of teleworking where we encounter mixed results as to what conditions of the home office conspire to heighten or diminish motivation, as well as how these aspects in turn affect motivation. In trying to answer the question: “How does enforced teleworking affect employee motivation in highly skilled, knowledge intensive Swedish organizations? ”, we must first discover what novel situations are born from the home office context to then use previous theories to understand what resulting effect this may have for employees.
3.3.3 Semi-Structured Interviews as Primary Data Collection
Motivation is a highly subjective phenomenon, which makes it less suited for study using
observational data. Interviews on the other hand are used to explore data on understandings, opinions, what people remember doing, attitudes, feelings and the like, that people have in common, making it more suited to our purpose (Collis & Hussey, 2013).
Interviews were in this context deemed to be less intrusive than observation and gives us a high level of validity. For these reasons we relied on
interviews as the central method for data collection.
Interviews can be more or less structured in their format. Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson (2012, p. 132) suggest that unstructured or semistructured interviews are appropriate in situations where the purpose is to develop an understanding of the interviewees world and the personal constructs used as a basis for his or her beliefs. In our research we also had a theoretical framework providing us with a good baseline for different subjects that we wished to cover in our interviews. For these reasons we saw that a semi-structured approach would be the most suitable as compared to entirely unstructured interviews.
3.3.4 Finding a Sample Group
Ultimately, five companies chose to participate in the study. The companies were asked to supply the contact information for at least two teams to allow for participation and subsequent conclusions to be possible on an employee-manager level. The companies represented a variety of sectors; a company in the manufacturing industry, an internet retailer, a technical consultancy, a publishing company, and a media production company.
In the teams studied, the type of work they carried out varied. For the purpose of this study, a
company back-office, a board of directors back-office, a sales team, a team of business controllers, a
project management team, and an editorial staff were interviewed. The main commonality of these teams was that their jobs fit the definition of knowledge-intensive work.
The sampling was done through a mixed method of networking and natural sampling, where the HR managers first interviewed for the study were tasked with finding suitable work units to use as objects for the study. Each work unit was considered an object as long as there were employees and managers present to provide perspective on how the work was carried out in their unit. This method does little to provide generalizability, something this study strived to counteract through an amplification of the interview base until saturation of the domain was reached.
3.3.5 Interview Guide
The construction of the interview guide was done in two steps. First, the theoretical perspectives and findings presented in section 2 were sorted into different thematic topics. For each topic, a set of relating questions were composed. These were then grouped and condensed into thematic questions until the potential topics had been exhausted. The questions were trialed between ourselves, and further adjustments were made to ensure the amount of questions were appropriate for the planned time slot, as well as to make sure that there was a natural flow of questioning.
We received some material from a company working with leadership training, consisting of a set of challenges and opportunities with remote working expressed by about 100 leaders from a swedish publishing company. This material was condensed into the previously mentioned thematic questions which further informed the question set. This data was used to validate the question set, and the empirical data points had clear connections between leaders stated challenges and opportunities, and the questions posed in the interview guide. Using the expressed views of real life people helped translate the question into tangible concepts that were deemed to be more appropriate than much of the theoretical terms found in literature. The company from which this data was gathered did not take part in the study.
3.3.6 Conducting Interviews
The interviews were conducted by means of Zoom, a video conferencing tool that provides recording software. We were both present for all interviews, with one assuming the role of interviewer and the other as responsible for the collection of field notes. As the interviews were being conducted, we were able to read and write to the guiding document, allowing for the note taker to chime in, without disrupting the flow, as the questions went in directions deemed interesting enough to elaborate on.
The field notes were then analyzed after each interview, utilizing the key findings to iteratively improve the interview guide.
At the beginning of each interview, conscious efforts were made to make the interviewees feel comfortable with the situation as well as turn on their cameras. Once any technical hiccups had been attended to and resolved, the roles of interviewer and note-taker, and the purpose of the study were explained.
3.3.7 Challenges With the Interviews
Using video conferencing tools may have had an impact on the levels of trust felt by the respondents.
In some interviews, the interviewee joined the meeting without their web camera turned on. This may
have affected the quality of the interview since it was harder to establish a natural conversation
without seeing each other. When this occured the interviewers requested in a gentle manner that the camera be turned on, which was followed in most, but not all, cases.
The fact that the meetings were being recorded can also be an issue affecting trust. Zoom
automatically records both video and audio which may have caused some interviewees to be more aware of themselves and the answers they provided. Having their statements on record may possibly have had an added inhibitory effect on answering questions relating to their manager.
3.3.8 Reliability and Validity
To assess the robustness and quality of the study, we seek some tools to review the efforts with. There is no consensus for assessing qualitative research (Leung, 2015), however a helpful practise is
reviewing the study in terms of reliability and validity.
Validity is here understood in terms of the trustworthiness of the data. Firstly, the data collection was done using semi-structured interviews which allow participants a large degree of freedom to state their feelings and views in depth and with much nuance. To increase validity, interviewers frequently made use of yes-or-no follow-up questions intended to confirm that the interviewers had correctly
interpreted their intentions (Leung, 2015). The interviewers also made an effort to relax any
uneasiness that the interviewees may have felt in the interview so as to allow them to speak freely. In terms of analysis, we based categories and themes on the content of participants statements rather than pre existing theory, which increases the validity of the work (Grossoehme, 2014).
Reliability refers to the replicability of the study. In the case of semi-structured interviews, exact replicability is not a reasonable ambition. What can be done to increase reliability in research of this nature, is to make sure that the research process has a high level of transparency (Grossoehme, 2014).
Striving towards transparency, we were careful to detail the important decision points of the process.
The interview guide was also kept up to date and any changes made were added to the guide.
3.4 Data Processing and Analysis
3.4.1 Primary Data Analysis
The data was analyzed and discussed after each interview, focusing on the field notes and general reflections made. General reflections were documented to be used as input into the secondary analysis as potential themes. The main purpose of the primary data analysis was, however, to review the interview guide. In some cases the guide was rearranged to give interviews a more natural flow, in other cases questions were added or retracted. The changes to the interview guide was done on an aggregated basis so as not to allow every single interview to redefine the guide, giving it a natural evolution throughout the project.
3.4.2 Data Processing
The data was recorded into the Zoom format, providing audio files in an mp4 format. Soundflower
was used to convert computer output to input and Google’s automatic speech recognition software
transcribed the interviews into text files. The results of this process were deemed insufficient for the
secondary analysis. Due to time constraints, it was decided that the field notes were to be used as
input into the secondary analysis.
3.4.3 Secondary Data Analysis
All field notes were compounded into a master document in Google sheets where each cell contained statements from the field notes. The statements were denoted with the relating name, role, team and company. The neighbouring columns were left empty for codes to be assigned to statements.
All statements in the master document were analysed in multiple iterations where one or more descriptive words were tagged to the statement. The words used were not preconceived, but rather chosen ad hoc to best capture the statements topic. For example, a statement like: “I hate email threads, it is such a slow medium” would be tagged with a word like: “Communication” .
When all statements had been worked through the tags could be accessed by using the filter functions in Google sheets. This allowed us to view the data from many angles, combining different tagged words as well as focusing on a specific company team, or compare employees to managers. Through a process of filtering associated tags, high level themes could be constructed.
Since this analysis was not based explicitly on particular theoretical frameworks, some of the risk of confirmation bias could be alleviated. Instead of trying to force the data into the theoretical framework presented in this study, this method allowed close interaction with the pure data to which the
framework could be used as a lense for interpretation.
3.5 Ethics and Sustainability
Several steps were taken to make sure that ethical standards were upheld throughout this project, both in the collection of data through interviews and in the analysis of the collected material. These steps were designed to follow the guidelines of Swedish government agency Vetenskapsrådet’s codex for research ethics (Vetenskapsrådet, 2021).
Every participant was notified of the interviews being recorded and that the recordings would end up being transcribed for use in a study. They were also told that their contributions were anonymous and would not be shared with either colleagues or managers. Finally, it was communicated that any documentation such as video or audio recordings where participants could be personally identified were to be deleted when the project had been completed. Remaining documentation such as transcription were to be completely anonymized.
The companies in the study were told that they would get to read the excerpts of the study before publication, so as to guarantee that no sensitive information about the company or their employees could get into the wrong hands.
A crucial aspect of the analysis was to interpret statements made by participants in order for
conclusions to be drawn. A challenge with this process is that researchers run the risk of extrapolating too far from specific statements, attributing thoughts or feelings to interviewees that might be colored by researchers personal biases. This problem is alleviated by presenting many quotes from
repondants, and contrasting them with discrepant answers, allowing for a better representation of the data.
Evaluating this project from a sustainability perspective, we conclude that the environmental notion of
sustainability is somewhat applicable to our study. Much can be said about the effect of teleworking
on things such as commuting, over-dimensioned office spaces, etc. This is however not a focus point for the study. Social sustainability, and to a lesser extent economical sustainability, are however more central to the scope of the thesis. This study recognizes an association between well-being and motivation, and in turn motivation and economic productivity. With these assumptions this project can help address the areas of social and economic sustainability by potentially allowing for higher levels of well-being for individuals as well as increased economic productivity for companies.
4 Results and Analysis
In this section we present and analyze the findings gathered through interviews. We begin by
describing the companies and the individual teams that were interviewed. We then move on to present how attitudes towards teleworking differ in regards to a set of themes that we constructed from the data. Lastly we present a discussion of the cause and effects of certain actions and job situations based on the empirics, and match their alignment to our theoretical framework.
The interviews were conducted between November 11 and November 30 of 2020. Under the first subheading, the distribution of the participants across the teams and industries can be found in table 1.
The findings are found following the table, categorized as seven emergent themes. Each theme is
presented as a series of subthemes, supported by their corresponding statements or field notes as
presented under chapter 3.
4.1 Participant Distribution
The 30 participants were distributed over nine teams, with three participants not representing any team. 18 participants were employees and twelve were managers.
Table 1. Participant Distribution
Participant Team Role Industry
1 1 Employee Online Retail
2 1 Employee Online Retail
3 - Employee Eolic Energy
4 2 Employee Eolic Energy
5 - Manager Eolic Energy
6 1 Employee Online Retail
7 1 Employee Online Retail
8 3 Employee Online Retail
9 4 Manager Digital Production
10 3 Employee Online Retail
11 2 Manager Eolic Energy
12 2 Manager Eolic Energy
13 5 Employee Industrial Production
14 6 Employee Eolic Energy
15 3 Manager Online Retail
16 2 Employee Eolic Energy
17 2 Employee Eolic Energy
18 1 Manager Online Retail
19 7 Employee Digital Production
20 3 Manager Online Retail
21 8 Employee Political Lobbying
22 7 Manager Digital Production
23 9 Employee Industrial Production
24 4 Manager Digital Production
25 - Manager Eolic Energy
26 5 Employee Industrial Production
27 6 Manager Eolic Energy
28 9 Employee Industrial Production
29 9 Employee Industrial Production
30 8 Manager Political Lobbying
4.2 Challenges to Social Interactions
Most people spend a significant part of their lives at an office. Beyond collaborating to solve work related tasks, people interact with their colleagues for purely social reasons. Indeed, for some people the office functions as an important – or even the most important – avenue for social exchange in their everyday life. We find that teleworking has changed the terms for how people are able to interact with their colleagues, which we will showcase in this section.
4.2.1 Spontaneous Interactions Between Coworkers
In a traditional office, the coffee machine has come to represent somewhat of a social hub. Colleagues meet there and chat about everything from their work, their weekend plans, to the weather. What the coffee machine chatter, or the equivalent concept of “water cooler gossip”, seems to be a symbol of is the spontaneous social exchange that often occurs in between formalized meetings or individual work.
We have found that this form of social interaction is not only difficult to achieve at the home office, but also dearly missed by many.
“I get energy from people, but I don’t get it from the screen. Just chatting by the coffee machine is nice”.
“Those spontaneous moments at the coffee machine. You need those!”
As highlighted by the above quotes, spontaneous moments are valued by employees and serve as a source of energy that does not translate to digital meetings. Digital interactions are also affecting the multifaceted ways in which individuals interact in different constellations. One respondent speaks of how, in the physical office, you might end up next to someone at random during a coffee break. This is yet another spontaneous element of social interaction that is challenged by teleworking.
It’s not just the sharing the details of your weekend plans that is lost, one employee mentions coffee break interactions as a forum for ventilating things that are bothering you, be it something at work, or in its own words:
“Lamenting the current situation”.
This emphasizes a type of interaction that might be more challenging when not face to face with others. While this respondent had multiple opportunities to connect with others, he was lacking a social situation that can serve as an outlet for grievances and complaints. Conversations of that nature may perhaps demand more trust and a sense of confidentiality that is harder to achieve digitally.
It does seem like digital meetings lack some of the qualities of in person conversations. A recurring opinion is that short discussions in small groups work better in a physical office, most importantly discussions not directly relevant to a project or work duty. One interviewee said of the physical office that:
“You meet people with things in common with you. There is a social platform and togetherness that is limited at the home office, even with virtual fikas and things like that. People speak on top of one another, so only one person can speak at a
time”.
