Attachment Styles and Remote Work Effectiveness

Remote working has soared in popularity in the past few years – not only has technology made it easier to work from anywhere in the world, but during the pandemic, it became the only option for many of us.

Some individuals and companies found that working remotely worked better for them than expected, and kept this work setup even after we gradually returned to office work. Some prefer a hybrid model, where they’re free to work from home some days and in the office for the rest of the time. Others prefer to be in the office full-time, and whether or not to return to the office is still a big question for many employees and employers.

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Since remote working remains such an important topic, we decided to include it in our Attachment at Work study to find out whether remote, hybrid, or full-time office work is related to certain benefits and workplace experiences.

About Our Attachment at Work Study

Our Attachment at Work study aimed to find out how your workplace attachment style – how anxious or avoidant your attachment is to your colleagues – relates to your experiences at work and in your inner life.

First, we undertook 5 rounds of trialling different variations of questions to measure attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance in the workplace. From this trialling process, we were able to identify a set of questions that successfully measure attachment at work as a new idea, separate to the attachment we experience with our romantic partners, family, or friends!

64,240 people took part in our study across several different surveys, answering different sets of questions to make up our complete set of data.

For a detailed overview of the Attachment at Work study, check out our article: What is Attachment at Work?

In our study, just over half of our participants were entirely office-based, and around a third worked in hybrid roles. Fully remote workers made up the minority.

Remote Work and Workplace Attachment

Your Attachment at Work, just like your attachment in relationships, measures your anxiety and avoidance in relation to the workplace. Our statistical analysis found that our measure of workplace attachment styles successfully separated workplace attachment from relationship attachment, giving us meaningful results. 35,375 people answered our questions on remote work and attachment.

62% of remote workers scored below the group average on workplace attachment anxiety, showing the least anxiety, compared with 60% of hybrid workers and 57% of office workers scoring below average on workplace attachment anxiety.

However, 55% of remote workers scored below the group average on workplace attachment avoidance, which showed more avoidance than hybrid and office workers, who both scored 59% below average.

Our statistical analysis revealed the same pattern: remote workers had slightly higher workplace avoidance than office and hybrid workers, but the lowest workplace anxiety.

Does Office Work Impact Job Satisfaction?

Our job satisfaction scale consisted of 9 total measures, including relationships with coworkers, sense of meaning and purpose, and workload. These measures were combined and averages calculated to obtain the total job satisfaction score. 1,107 people answered our questions on job satisfaction and remote work.

55% of hybrid workers scored above average on job satisfaction, compared with 48% of remote workers and 45% of office workers. Hybrid workers were the only group in which the majority scored above average for job satisfaction.

In our statistical analysis, hybrid workers were slightly more satisfied with coworker relations compared to office workers, and enjoyed their jobs more than remote workers.

Hybrid workers were more satisfied with organizational communication, pay and benefits, and promotion and recognition than office workers – in fact, hybrid workers were more satisfied with their jobs overall compared with office workers.

Remote workers were more satisfied with workload compared with both hybrid and office workers. Pay and benefits, promotion and recognition, and work environment were very slightly better with greater remoteness.

How Does Remote Work Impact Our Willingness to Give Back?

Your organizational citizenship behavior, or OCB, is how inclined you are to go above and beyond to contribute to the company in some way. When you volunteer your time or efforts for the benefit of others or the company as a whole, you are showing organizational citizenship behavior.

In our study, measures of OCB were split into OCB-O (acts that benefit the organization as a whole) and OCB-P (acts that benefit individual people within the organization). 688 people answered our questions on remote work and OCB.

Examples of OCB-O might be volunteering for extra work, giving up breaks to complete work, saying positive things about your company outside of work, and offering suggestions for improvement in the workplace.

Examples of OCB-P might be offering support to other employees for work or personal problems, showing appreciation and encouragement to colleagues, or changing vacation or break times to accommodate a coworker’s needs.

51% of hybrid workers scored above average on total OCB, while only 45% of office workers and 42% of remote workers scored above the group average. This means that hybrid workers tend to be slightly more likely to voluntarily support the organization and their coworkers without personal gain.

According to our in-depth statistical analysis, hybrid workers had higher organizational citizenship behavior directed towards the company, while remote workers had lower organizational behavior directed towards other people.

Hybrid Workers Are Healthier, Happier, and More Productive

Our study measured the sustainability of someone’s career on their health, happiness, and productivity at work. The percentage of each group scoring above average can be seen below:

Hybrid and remote workers score similarly on health and productivity, but office workers are less likely to score above average on all 3 domains of career sustainability. Hybrid workers scored higher than average more often than both office and remote workers on happiness.

Our statistical analysis showed that hybrid workers had higher happiness-related career sustainability compared to office and remote workers, and that office workers consider themselves somewhat less productive.

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Remote Work Benefits Psychological Safety

Your psychological safety describes how supported you feel at work. It explains whether you feel safe enough to challenge things, explore new ideas, and admit mistakes. When we feel psychologically safe at work, we’re able to solve problems more efficiently and effectively and enjoy a better work experience – so scoring highly on psychological safety is a good sign for you and your team.

Low scores on psychological safety indicate fear, anxiety, or apathy around raising issues or mistakes. While this minimizes conflict in the short term, it can cause problems at work to go unchecked and snowball into bigger issues over time.

65% of remote workers scored above the group average for psychological safety, compared with 60% of hybrid workers and 48% of office workers – meaning remote workers were the most likely to score highly on psychological safety, followed by hybrid.

Our statistical analysis agreed, showing remote workers felt the highest psychological safety, followed by hybrid workers, with office workers feeling the lowest psychological safety.

Office Workers Score the Lowest on Self-Esteem

We measured self-esteem at work using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, which comprises scores of self-liking and self-confidence.

Office workers were the least likely to score above average on both measures of self-esteem and overall, with 50% scoring above average on self-liking, 46% on self-confidence, and 50% overall.

Hybrid workers were the most likely to score highly on self-liking, with 55% scoring above average on self-liking and 50% on self-confidence, but remote workers were the most likely to score highly on self-confidence, with 51% scoring above average on self-confidence and 50% scoring above average on self-liking. Hybrid and remote workers were equally likely to score above average overall, at 54%.

Hybrid and remote workers both have higher self-liking and self-confidence, and therefore higher self-esteem in total, than office workers.

Is There a Link Between Remoteness and Burnout?

Burnout happens when we experience so much work-related stress that we’re no longer able to maintain regular functioning. The American Psychological Association defines burnout as:

“Physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes toward oneself and others. It results from performing at a high level until stress and tension, especially from extreme and prolonged physical or mental exertion or an overburdening workload, take their toll.”

We measured burnout risk using the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT), a scientifically validated measure developed at Utrecht University, which defines burnout using measures of exhaustion, feelings of detachment from work, difficulty with thinking tasks, and emotional difficulties.

Office workers show somewhat higher exhaustion than remote and hybrid workers, but the lowest levels of thinking difficulties. Office workers also show slightly higher emotional difficulties than remote workers, but remote workers report the highest levels of difficulty thinking out of all of the groups.

We found no statistical difference in total burnout scores, nor in resilience scores.

Clues, Not Concrete

Our results look pretty positive for hybrid workers, who show the highest job satisfaction and career sustainability – but it’s important to put this into context.

People with hybrid roles are generally more likely to have higher positions, which afford them the ability to work where and when they choose. Their higher positions also mean they might experience more benefits at work, including greater respect from others in the company. They might also be in higher positions because they experienced greater career sustainability and satisfaction, rather than the other way around.

Even though our results give us an interesting insight into our workplace experiences, they should be taken as clues rather than concrete conclusions. For instance, if your personalized results show the same pattern of self-esteem as our study – that hybrid and remote workers experience more than office workers – it’s important to consider all of the potential reasons that are unique to your workplace.

Start here to get your personalized company workplace attachment report, including everything reported here and more.

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