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Workplace Survey
Distance at Work (Part 2)
December 27 ,2021
With COVID-19, the sense of dis tance we feel surrounding work, such as the distance from the office, from members we work with, and from work itself has become more varied. We will explore what kinds of work styles workers are adopting, and what they are demanding for the future.
Sense of Distance Between Members : How Employees Share Information
The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly changed the sense of distance we feel from colleagues we used to work with in the office. With the rise in remote work, we surveyed the ways* in which people share status information with subordinates, superiors, team members, and collaborating members of different teams, by the holding regular one-on-one talks, or chatting informally during breaks should make it easier to share life circumstances or mental and physical conditions that are difficult to mention in emails and online chats. Furthermore, when people come into the office, we need to modify the working environment to accommodate the various type of information shared*.
We found that, for both superiors and subordinates, reporting on working hours and in-office attendance, as well as monitoring and reporting work progress, mostly took the form of emails and online chatting. For monitoring and reporting on life circumstances or mental and physical health, people mostly relied on conversation, including small talk (Figs. 5 and 6).
* Ways of sharing information consisted of conversation including small talk, phone calls, emails and online chatting, schedulers, one-on-one talks and interviews, meetings, morning and end-of-day assemblies, documents and reports.
* Regarding members of divisions other than one’s own, we asked only about on one’s own work and life circumstances (Fig. 6).
Even in the era of COVID-19, conversations, including small talk, seem to offer more opportunities for sharing status information, although many still rely on emails and online chats. Talking about living conditions or mental and physical health seems especially easier during casual conversations.
During periods of remote work, holding regular one-on-one talks, or chatting informally during breaks should make it easier to share life circumstances or mental and physical conditions that are difficult to mention in emails and online chats.
Furthermore, when people come into the office, we need to modify the working environment to accommodate the various changes caused by COVID-19, such as coordinating in-office days for teams, or encouraging casual conversation.
* One-on-one: A closed interview between a superior and a subordinate.
* We describe innovative ways to encourage people to connect, such as conversations between members, in Special Feature #3, and ideas pertaining to remote communication in Special Feature #4.
Sense of Distance from the Organization : OvercomingOrganizational Barriers
When working remotely, many may feel that they are increasingly being paired with the same people at work, compared to the time before COVID-19. At Okamura Corporation, we believe that, following COVID-19, collaborating with people of various backgrounds and working across group and organizational boundaries will be increasingly important in order to produce good results. From this section on, we will consider the sense of distance we feel at work from the organization, with a view to overcoming organizational barriers.
First, when asked how large the “organization” the workers themselves perceived as is, in the context of overcoming organizational barriers, the percentage of those who answered “department” was the highest, followed by “section” and “unit” (Fig. 7).
Next, we investigated the importance and difficulty of overcoming organizational barriers. A little less than 70% of the respondents thought that it was important to overcome organizational barriers. And more than half of the respondents answered that it was difficult to overcome organizational barriers (Fig. 8).
Furthermore, we surveyed the importance and difficulty of overcoming organizational barriers by job type. 80% of executives answered that it was important, but only around 40% thought it was difficult. Looking at job categories other than top management, there were no significant differences in the job categories that were higher up on the list, both in importance and difficulty. It seems that many people in non-executive positions find it difficult to overcome organizational barriers, while sensing the importance of doing so (Fig. 9).
Based on the above results, for job categories that ranked higher both in terms of importance and difficulty, we think it is necessary to take a multifaceted approach to make it easier to overcome the barriers of the organization workers are most familiar with, such as the section, unit or department.
Sense of Distance from Work : Favored Work Styles for the Future
COVID-19 may have led people to be more flexible regarding the places and times they choose to work, leading them to reconsider the sense of distance between their private lives and their work. In order to adopt a flexible work style, it is necessary to install a system that allows for flexibility regarding time and place. Given such requirements, we asked people about the work style they wanted to adopt in the future.
First of all, when we looked at systems regarding places and times of work, the one most widely used at present was the “work from home” model, utilized by more than 60% of respondents.
Continuing on to the system people wanted to adapt in the future, more than half of the respondents, consisting both of people who were currently using the system and those who were not, answered that they wanted to adopt the “work from home” and “hourly paid leave system” in the future. (Fig. 10, upper rows).
When considering the sense of distance between one’s private life and work, it is important to put into place a career support system comprising recruitment practices and retraining programs, in addition to considerations of places and and times of work.
Looking at the systems related to recruitment practices and career support, slightly less than 30% of the people were using the “discretionary work” system at present, but the percentage of people currently utilizing other systems was less than 20% (Fig. 10, middle and lower rows).
It may be that people now understand and make use of the work-from-home system better, given the restrictions on in-office work due to COVID-19. However, regarding systems other than workfrom- home, the percentage of those who do not use such systems amount to 30-40% or more for each system, and the percentage of those who are not aware of such systems also amount to 30-40% or more for each system.
In the future, in order to adopt more flexible ways of working, it seems necessary to promote awareness and spread understanding of systems other than work-from-home.
Summary of Distance at Work
It seems that many workers want to do their jobs by coming into the office some of the time. We have found that minor consultations and impromptu discussions are better held at the office, and that casual conversations play an important role in sharing information with team members.
To encourage casual conversation, we should create spaces that encourage lighthearted communication, and coordinate inoffice dates for team members, etc., as a way to provide opportunities for mingling while incorporating remote work. In addition, it seems necessary to consider introducing work styles other than work-from-home systems, depending on the situation.
This article was reprinted from the KNOWLEDGE WORK DESIGN REVIEW by Okamura.
In Part 2, you will find information on ”Distance from members, the organization, and work"
Research: Ayumi Mineno, Kouichi Ikeda, Mai Morita（Okamura）
Edit: Nanako Ono
Illustration & Infographic: Shinji Hamana、Hana Fujii（Beach）
Production: Plus81 inc.
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