Beyond Opinion: Scientific Insights into Hybrid Work Models

Research Upholds the Importance of Office Presence for Company Growth and Culture

The Paradigm Shift of Hybrid Work in High Growth Companies

The hybrid regime represented a true paradigm shift in the world of work for countless companies, done in record time due to the covid-19 pandemic. It has become possible for work that requires concentration to be done at home instead of in an open space with lots of people and distractions, and for employees to be able to save time and money on commutes. But from an early stage, initially empirically or simply intuitively, it became evident that there would be increased difficulties in all issues involving innovation, creativity, resolution of complex problems, or even the simple transmission of business culture: in essence, some of the most important contributors to the success of companies.

Last week I was a guest speaker at a behavioral engineering session, dedicated to the topic of culture and growth, organized by my friend Gonçalo Gil Mata from Mind4Time. I was able to expose the challenges that high and rapid growth environments pose to organizations, through the example of the fantastic journey of Critical Manufacturing , which in a relatively short amount of time increased its turnover fivefold, and almost from one moment to the next had more than 600 people in 5 different geographies.

But in addition to sharing this journey and the related challenges with a few dozen people with high responsibility in top companies in Portugal, what really got me thinking was the lecture given by Gonçalo on biologic explanations and mathematical models on transmitting business culture. As corporate culture is a series of unwritten norms of expected behavior in the company's various situations, these are transmitted on the one hand verbally, but on the other through the example that the older members of the company provide to the younger ones, shaping their behaviors. And one thing that struck me was the scientific explanation of the influence of remote or hybrid work and the rapid growth in this transmission of culture.

This led me to realize that something that at the beginning of this article I referred to as being based on intuition or empiricism, could after all already be explained on a more scientific basis. And so, I would be able to explain to my own teams, of engineers used to questioning and thinking, the reason for the necessary increase in time in the office. And this is even more important as it is not part of our culture at Critical Manufacturing (here’s the culture again) to impose measures such as fixed days in the office; If we want to instill certain actions or behaviors in autonomous and intelligent people, we have to convince and explain them.

An in turn, this led me to look for scientific articles in this behavioral area, and I discovered that the pandemic situation generated so much data and so many extreme situations, that studies on these topics proliferated, causing significant advancement in the field of behavioral engineering.

Scientific Evidence on Hybrid Work Dynamics

Among the various articles I had the opportunity to read, I would like to highlight two here, both published in Nature magazine, and which show that this topic should be treated as something that science explains and not just the result of opinions.

The first one is called “The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers” and provides an insightful analysis of how remote work impacts workplace communication dynamics.

The researchers used data from emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls and workweek hours of 61,182 US Microsoft employees over the first six months of 2020 to estimate the effects of the imposed remote work on collaboration and communication.

The results show that the shift to firm-wide remote work caused business groups within Microsoft to become less interconnected. Additionally, the informal network that facilitates collaboration across the company witnessed a reduction in connections that bridge distinct groups. Employees also altered their collaboration habits, spending more time with their established, stronger contacts, which are effective for sharing information, but less time with weaker contacts that often provide new insights and information.

The picture below shows the estimated causal effects of switching to remote work on serval indicators such as the number of collaborators an employee has, the number of distinct groups the employee collaborates with, the number of cross-group ties an employee has, and so on. The most impressive results are the ones related to the share of time with cross-group ties, with weak ties and with bridging ties – meaning all interactions not related to the direct working group.

This trend towards siloed communication has significant implications for innovation and information flow within organizations. In a typical office environment, casual interactions and spontaneous meetings can lead to the cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge across different teams. However, in a remote setting, the reduction in these incidental interactions can lead to a more narrowed focus, where employees are less exposed to diverse perspectives and new information. This could potentially stifle creativity and limit the scope of problem-solving approaches.

The second study from Nature Computational Science is called “The effect of co-location on human communication networks “ and nicely complements the first one, delving into the impact of physical presence on collaborative networks.

This study analyzes the impact of the transition to fully remote work and subsequent transition to hybrid work at MIT in the structure of its digital communication network. In particular, it shows how physical distancing breaks the so-called weak ties - ties between distant parts of the system - which are responsible for the flow of new information.

The picture below shown in the study depicts clearly what happened to the evolution of weak ties that become strong and to the weak ties that are lost.

And interestingly, it shows how the reintroduction of partial co-location through a hybrid work mode led to a partial regeneration of weak ties, yet still way below the levels registered before the remote work was introduced.

The results, therefore, reveal that the lack of physical proximity among employees tends to diminish the formation of new communicative connections, thereby affecting the flow of information in the workplace. These insights are particularly valuable for understanding how human communication networks evolve over time and space. This understanding is crucial for organizations operating in hybrid work models, as it can guide them in determining the optimal balance of remote and in-person interactions needed to maintain a productive work environment.

Conclusion: The Imperative of Balancing Remote and On-Site Work

The results of these two studies are important because they are scientific evidence. However, I cannot consider them surprising. From my own experience, the ease with which, in an office environment, we end up talking to people from different teams or departments, in perfectly casual encounters, such as being in front of the coffee machine or having a meal in the dining area, and becoming aware of situations new but important for our work, or challenges equivalent to ours, or of solutions that we were unaware of but that can shed some light on problems we have at hand, is mind-blowing. Perhaps the most important moment of the day for me is when I have lunch with different colleagues, and where we talk about work topics that were not on my agenda at all. I become aware of new issues, new perspectives and new ideas. While technology enables the facilitation of some of these dynamics in a remote setting, they do so to a limited extent only.

Equally significant, if not more so, is the aspect of business culture. Culture is a set of rules, values, behaviors, and practices, and despite efforts to codify them, only a fraction of a company's culture can be effectively captured in writing. Therefore, exemplifying these values often surpasses other methods of imparting them.

Back to the behavioral engineering session, Gonçalo used an analogy to biology, comparing the transmission of diseases in a population with the transmission of culture, which is more effective the greater the simultaneous contact with more elements and the longer the duration of this contact.

It was not difficult to find studies on this. As an example, the study titled "Cultural Transmission in International Organizations: Impact of Communication Network" examines how organizational cultures are transmitted through interactions among organizational members. It particularly explores the link between the extent of an individual's communication network and the degree to which they adopt work-related values and beliefs from different groups within the organization. This suggests that the breadth and duration of interpersonal contacts within an organization significantly influence the transmission of its culture.

So, the bottom-line is, both innovation and culture transmission within organizations require office presence. As such, only by balancing the flexibility of remote work with the collaborative benefits of in-office interactions, companies can foster a vibrant culture and drive innovation.