Companies that cater to employees’ interests most likely to have strong remote workplaces: Research

The pandemic made remote working the norm for many, but it hasn’t always been a pleasant experience. There are many benefits to remote working, including improved flexibility, inclusivity for parents and individuals with disabilities, and work-life balance. However, it can also cause problems in teamwork, communication, and the general work environment.

New research from the Georgia Institute of Technology used data from employee review website Glassdoor to determine what makes remote working successful. Companies that took employee interests into account, gave employees freedom, fostered collaboration and had flexible policies were most likely to have strong remote workplaces.

“One of the biggest changes during the pandemic for all of us, whether for better or worse, was working remotely,” said Moonmun D Choudhury, Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing. “The motivation for us in this research was to understand what makes some organizations more suitable for remote work and others not. We found that cultural aspects mattered most.”

D. Chowdhary and his Ph.D. student Mohit Chandra presented the research in the paper, “What Makes Workplaces More Adaptable to Remote Work? Uncovering Employee Experiences During COVID-19 Through Glassdoor,” in the Proceedings of the 15th ACM Web Science Conference.

data discovery

Glassdoor made for an ideal dataset because employees can post anonymously, leading to more authentic reviews. Although review sites are known to attract people with strong views, this bias worked in the researchers’ favor – they were looking for people with strong opinions on company culture. “We’re missing the ones that are in the middle, but it actually worked in our favor as well because we were really interested in those positives and negatives,” D Chowdhary said. “We recognize the bias, but at the same time, it was still a really good data set for us to get a sense of the extremes of how people felt.”

Ultimately, they collected more than 140,000 reviews from current employees at 52 Fortune 500 companies that allowed remote work from March 2019 to March 2021, which overlaps with the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these companies include Verizon, Walmart, and Salesforce. Their textual analysis focused mostly on the pros and cons section of Glassdoor reviews.

To analyze the data, the researchers created an algorithmic prediction function to identify what cultural qualities a company had before the pandemic that would lead to a favorable remote work environment. Their model used statistical and deep learning methods and correctly predicted company-friendly remote work environments 76% of the time.

Using organizational behavior theory, the researchers divided company culture into 41 different dimensions classified into seven subgroups: interests, work values, work activities, social skills, job structural features, work styles and interpersonal relationships.

company culture curve

Companies with a positive culture for remote work excelled in three main categories:

Interests: Companies that empowered employees to pursue their goals, interests, and the way they worked were viewed more favorably.

Work Values: Companies that give their employees the freedom to make their own decisions and work in a collaborative environment are more satisfied.

Structured job characteristics: Companies with flexible remote work and hours were more likely to entice employees.

“We found keywords like ‘work-life balance’ or ‘flexible work’ in reviews, which are often in the professional section of good companies,” Chandra said.

In contrast, companies with toxic cultures often fail to promote diversity, equality, and inclusion efforts; made workers feel humiliated; and acted unethically.

Ultimately, the researchers believe that these results reflect generational differences in what is most valuable to employees.

D Chowdhary said, “There are a lot of reports of quiet job exits and great resignations because Millennials or Gen Z value culture a lot, unlike previous generations like Baby Boomers, for whom job satisfaction was largely about compensation.” ” “Younger generations can say they don’t mind an average salary if they can afford flexible work hours, and that makes these companies more conducive to remote working.”