Research shows organizations are eroding employee performance and well-being with virtualized office-centric design
Current virtualized work design models are damaging employees’ well-being and productivity, according to Gartner, Inc. To succeed in a hybrid future, organizations must stop duplicating office-centric practices and shift to a human-centric model. Organizations largely recreated features of the office – virtualizing on-site practices, adding monitoring systems and increasing meetings – in response to the large-scale shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These methods have exacerbated existing fatigue among employees.
Gartner’s 2021 Hybrid Work Employee Survey of more than 2,400 knowledge workers in January 2021 reveals that employers’ attempts to recreate visibility by investing in tracking systems has made employees nearly 2 times more likely to pretend to be working, exacerbating the “always on” phenomenon. Employers’ attempts to recreate serendipity by adding more meetings has led to virtual overload – employees who now spend more time in meetings are 1.24 times more likely to feel emotionally drained from their work.