NEW YORK, NY – During the pandemic, remote work provided employees with newfound flexibility and freedom, and it is now a permanent fixture in companies across the country. According to the Federal Reserve Board Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) and Unispace's "Returning for Good" report, 28% of employees would consider quitting if flexible work arrangements were eliminated. As the future of work continues to evolve, employers must understand the significance of creating a workplace that fosters employee satisfaction and organizational success. New research from Columbia Business School Professor Joel Brockner finds the anticipation of returning to in-person work significantly impacts employees’ work engagement and feelings of burnout. The study reveals that as employees’ return to the physical workplace becomes more imminent, they respond more favorably towards their jobs, that is, with greater engagement and less burnout.
In the research, Work Engagement and Burnout in Anticipation of Physically Returning to Work: The Interactive Effect of Imminence of Return and Self-affirmation, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Joel Brockner, the Phillip Hettleman Professor of Business and his co-author, Erasmus University Rotterdam Professor Marius van Dijke, studied how the anticipation of returning to work affects worker engagement and burnout, and whether tools like self-affirmation can affect employees’ reactions to returning to work. The study finds that when workers believe their return to work is imminent, they tend to feel more engaged with their jobs.
"The dynamic evolution of the workplace presents ongoing challenges for employers as they navigate the influence of remote work,” said Professor Joel Brockner. “Uncertainty surrounding the future of work can significantly impact employee psychology. It is imperative for employers to comprehend these psychological shifts and harness this understanding to formulate effective strategies for helping their employees to re-adjust when they return to work.”
Conducted in the summer of 2021, the authors recruited 286 participants through Prolific, a platform connecting researchers with willing survey respondents using a question-and-answer survey to gather data to determine their findings. During the survey process, the participants were asked several questions about returning to work, which were repeated in a follow-up survey after two and six weeks. Professors Brockner and van Dijke measured how soon the participants anticipated returning to work and asked some of them to rank how important different values were in their lives, like relations with family, sense of humor, social life, and technology. These same individuals also were asked to write about why their most important values are significant to their identity as a person, a practice known as self-affirmation. The researchers wanted to see if engaging in self-affirmation would affect their feelings about returning to work. By analyzing the multiple responses gathered over six weeks, the researchers examined how the date of returning to work, self-affirmation, and the idea of returning to the office would impact employees' level of engagement and feelings of burnout.
Key Findings
- Workers' Response to Impending Return: As their return dates approached, employees reported feeling more engaged with their jobs and less burnt out. One possible explanation of these findings is that as the date of returning to work grew nearer, employees “psychologically prepared” themselves for it by looking at the bright side.
- Effect of Self-Affirmation vs. No Self-Affirmation: Contrary to what the authors expected, engaging in self-affirmation did not produce any beneficial effects. Relative to those who did not engage in self-affirmation (the control condition), employees who self-affirmed and who were returning to work imminently actually reported lower levels of job engagement and higher levels of burnout. Moreover, among those for whom returning to work was not imminent, self-affirmation had no effect one way or the other on their feelings of engagement/burnout.
“Workers have shown remarkable adaptability, as our research reveals positive reactions to an ever-changing work environment. This highlights their resilience and ability to cope with change,” said Professor Joel Brockner. “To thrive in this dynamic era, organizations and HR professionals must tap into this adaptive mindset. Proactively managing workloads and prioritizing prevention of burnout are crucial steps to harness the full potential of engaged employees amidst uncertainty in the future of work. And for all the recent evidence extolling the virtues of self-affirmation, our findings suggest that managers would do well to consider that sometimes less is more, that is, they can better facilitate employees’ return to work by not asking them to engage in self-affirmation.”
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