{"id":4599,"date":"2025-05-08T18:26:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=4599"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:41:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:41:25","slug":"building-work-relationships-remotely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/building-work-relationships-remotely\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Work Relationships Remotely"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher <\/a><\/p>\r\n

Many organizations successfully transitioned from full-time office work to hybrid work schedules, but remote arrangements do have implications for team and department cohesiveness, bonding among colleagues, and organizational culture.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWhen we consider how people build these relational identities with others, how they develop a way of interacting with someone else is crucial,\u201d said Academy of Management Scholar Jessica Methot<\/a> of Rutgers University and the University of Exeter. \u201cSay I know that my boss isn\u2019t a morning person, and so I wait 30 minutes before he comes into the office before I approach him with a question; we might not know that information about a new person who comes into the organization, either into our team as a direct report or as someone I\u2019m reporting to.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWe have to learn those things over time as we\u2019re interacting with them, but we don\u2019t necessarily get that opportunity as often when we\u2019re working remotely,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s possible and even likely that it\u2019s harder to develop these relational identities and to build these networks if we don\u2019t have a great understanding of the norms and the expectations and the social rituals with these other individuals who we only potentially see virtually or interacting over Slack or email.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Methot worked with a clinical organization as a consultant during the Covid-19 pandemic. Employees had to continue visiting their clients face-to-face in the field, but they ended up withholding their daily office debrief.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThey would usually come back together at the end of the day in the office and debrief about each one of the clients to ensure that everything was okay, that they had the resources and support that they needed during Covid,\u201d Methot said. \u201cThey did away with the daily debriefings in person and ended up switching to Slack and Zoom.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThey became so comfortable communicating over Slack that once they started coming back to the office again, they were sitting in the same office space in the same room still chatting with each other over Slack,\u201d she said. \u201cEven face-to-face, they were still messaging each other, and they became so reliant on that form of communication.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThey developed a more informal way of communicating and became more comfortable with each other in that way\u2014they hadn\u2019t readapted to the pre-pandemic norm of being with colleagues in person, and also found this technology-mediated communication really efficient.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

A sample of Methot\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n