Making hybrid and remote work: digital wellbeing and inclusion

In a recent Tech Talent Charter (TTC) Signatory forum with digital wellbeing researcher and consultant, Alessandra La Via from Live More Offline, we explored emerging research around the impact of digital beliefs and behaviours in the future of work. 

Digital wellbeing is a vital factor for diversity and inclusion (D&I) practice. The last three years have brought a growing concern about the human impact of digital work - from the health cost of remote work loneliness to digital presenteeism. Without intentional practices, digital workplaces can either further exclude or disadvantage certain groups, lead to burnout and staff turnover and hurt productivity.

Why should leaders care about digital workplace culture?

Hybrid and remote work is here to stay. TTCs recent Diversity in Tech report found that around half of tech role employees in our Signatory base have the option to work remotely as much as they liked with no restrictions, whilst the other half had some degree of hybrid working with restrictions on time or location. 

Remote and hybrid working is also an attractive draw for tech talent that is in short supply, and has been shown to be particularly important for tech talent from underrepresented groups, for example women and disabled people. With a tech talent shortage continuing to cost companies dearly in their recruitment and retention efforts and digitally-enabled work so prominent in the labour market and our workplaces, there is a strong argument for investing in a sustainable digital working environment. And in order to do this, it needs to be set up in a way that enables diverse employees to thrive.

Leaders are the ones making decisions on how we work remotely, yet we naturally look through the lens of our own experiences so it can therefore be hard for leaders to understand how digital work can impact other people: your subjective digital behaviour and beliefs can have an impact across the wellbeing of your staff.

Source: (Microsoft, 2021)

What are the markers of poor digital workplace culture?

Poor digital workplace habits can take many forms. Here are some common examples of poor digital workplace behaviours that could be hurting your employees and hindering your organisation’s goals:

• Work days have lengthened and employees are under greater pressure to be connected outside of work hours, with active screens and devices outside work hours. 
• Notification distraction and responding to work messages straight away when an immediate response isn’t necessary and could be pulling attention from more important work.
• With hybrid and remote work, employees are interacting online but not creating or being given opportunity for intentional human connection, leading to loneliness. 
• A pattern of prioritising visible work over other important work, especially in relation to employment and promotion opportunities. 
• Spending time in meetings where attendance wasn’t really necessary. 
• Constant expectation to use video calls, leading to video call exhaustion.
• Leaders not understanding or asking the question of how digital behaviours and beliefs affect others.
  Unclear expectations where different teams self-create their own company culture resulting in a fragmented company culture where people are working together in different ways. 

So what is healthy, productive and inclusive digital culture?

At its core healthy digital culture addresses three factors:

1. Wellbeing (digital balance)
2. Performance: this relates to how productive your employees are able to be within a digitally-enabled environment. It is about delivering value over delivering work.
3. Connection: this refers to how engaged your employees are, how well your business retains them and how inclusive your culture is for virtually-connected employees.

Here’s what you can do to address each of them in your work practice:

• Assess the work behaviours of your employees and identify if there are work trends amongst certain demographics. Survey or ask your employees how they feel about their experience of digital work culture. 

• Communicate a broad set of principles for why and how you want to change your digital culture, enabling teams to create their own processes within a broad set of expectations.

• Review your video call practices and meeting culture: use virtual queues, invite virtual participants to speak first, invite contributions through chat functions. 

• Divide work practices into those that sit well in a meeting and those that don’t. Reinvent the way you work for things that don’t sit well in meetings (eg. shared documents, status updates (like Asana, Trello etc). 

• Embed digital ways of working into onboarding and training. This is especially useful for new-in-career employees who may make assumptions about workplace expectations.

• Ensure email signatures state working hours and work expectations.

• Review progression criteria to check for a balance between in-person tasks and virtual ones. 

• Educate managers on new sources of bias such as proximity bias so they can be aware of and adjust for it.

• Leaders should “loudly” model digital wellbeing practices like disconnecting outside work hours.

Want to know more? Watch the recorded session here: