Help Remote Workers Become More Engaged

Legal and employee relations problems can arise when remote workers are less engaged than onsite employees. The solution might not be requiring the employees to work onsite, but to train managers to hold remote workers just as accountable as onsite employees and ensure employers are listening to workers’ concerns.

In some cases, “the lack of a supervisor being present around your workspace at any time, as is the case in an office, allows the employee to become less engaged due to the lack of immediate accountability,” said David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc, a human resource consulting firm in Norwalk, Conn. “One of the biggest issues is that employers have failed to train managers on how to adjust and adapt to these new norms—how to manage remote people in a way that ensures they are engaged.”

When managers lack the skill to measure performance and hold their teams accountable as when they were in the office, workers begin to tune out, he added.

But there’s no turning the clock back, according to Lewis. “This is the new normal,” he said. “Working remotely all or some of the time means we have to adjust how we work, how we manage, how we measure performance, how we engage with our teams, and how we maintain the same level of productivity and performance from our teams. We need to adapt versus expect things to return to [the] pre-COVID normal.”

Employers should make sure they are recognizing employees who are doing a great job and going above and beyond, said Amy Casciotti, vice president of human resources at TechSmith Corporation, a software company in East Lansing, Mich. “It ensures they know [their effort] is noticed but also helps other employees to see the behaviors you are looking for.”

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report found that 41 percent of disengaged employees said if they could change one thing about their workplace, it would be engagement or culture; 28 percent said pay and benefits; and 16 percent said well-being.

“Many respondents said they would like more recognition, opportunities to learn, fair treatment, clearer goals and better managers,” noted Christine Walters, SHRM-SCP, founder of HR consultancy FiveL Company and a lawyer in Westminster, Md.

Legal Trap

When remote employees aren’t engaged, employers need to ensure they are being consistent in their actions. Managers with some staff onsite and others remote don’t always hold all to the same standard.

Proximity bias—favoring those who work onsite—is one problem.

However, Lewis said another danger is that those onsite will be held to a higher standard than remote workers. This isn’t only an employee relations problem but a potential legal one.

Data suggests that Black people are more likely than white people to have jobs that require them to work in person and are less able to practice social distancing if they live in more-crowded housing, according to a 2022 study.

“When those working remotely are disproportionately nonminority, you have a perception issue for sure and maybe a real case of discrimination,” Lewis said.

Personal Reasons for Disengagement

Like many employees, remote workers might become disengaged due to circumstances in their personal lives. Unlike onsite employees, these workers might not get to step away from any disorder in their personal lives by coming to the worksite. Or they might not have built the rapport with their manager for the boss to realize early on that a leave-qualifying event has occurred.

Creating an environment that supports the worker, such as by pointing out the availability of an employee assistance program, can make a huge difference, Casciotti said.

“Making assumptions about if an employee is engaged or not can lead to issues, especially if the employee is actually dealing with a situation that might be covered by protected leave and you didn’t follow the steps you should have,” she said.

Loneliness might be another reason for disengagement. That could be a factor for a remote employee who lives alone or is in an unhappy marriage, for example, as well as for an onsite worker where others’ attendance is sporadic and collaboration slim to none.

“If you are feeling alone, it’s hard to be engaged and motivated,” Casciotti said.

Another cause of disengagement is if an employee feels like their company and boss don’t see and care about the worker as an individual, she added.

Ongoing Responsiveness

“Employee engagement is not a one-and-done thing,” Casciotti said. “Employers need to continue to work on employee engagement, check in with staff, figure out what is going well and what is not. When you find what isn’t going well or what can be improved, let staff know you heard them, your plan to address and continue to follow up. People want to be a part of something that has a purpose [and] is meaningful, and they want to work somewhere that cares about them as a human being.”

All too often, employers give employees assignments without asking how they are doing, what they like most about their job and what they like least, Walters said. “Just being asked, listened to and heard goes a long, long way to maintaining and enhancing positive employee relations,” she said.