Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Benefits of Office Bonding

A September 8 article in the New York Times (Kellen Browning and Erin Griffith, “If You Never Met Your Co-Workers in Person, Did You Even Work There”) sheds light on a pandemic-era phenomenon—people who have started and resigned from those jobs, all since the COVID lockdown began.

Browning and Griffith’s work confirms the important interpersonal bonds that form based on in-person, in-office meetings—and that there are some things that just don’t happen, and can’t happen, in a Zoom session.  They report that, “The coronavirus pandemic, now more than 17 months in, has created a new quirk in the workforce: a growing number of people who have started jobs and left them without having once met their colleagues in person. . . Never having to be in the same conference room or cubicle as a co-worker may sound like a dream to some people. But the phenomenon of job hoppers who have not physically met their colleagues illustrates how emotional and personal attachments to jobs may be fraying. . . Many of those workers who never got the chance to meet colleagues face to face before moving on said they had felt detached and questioned the purpose of their jobs. . . Employers who never meet their workers in person are also contributing to job hopping by being more willing to let workers go.”

Lots of people certainly spent lots of time planning lots of Zoom social hours and cocktail parties that were attended by people who left their pandemic jobs before the pandemic was even over. Without actually being in the presence of colleagues, in real actual life, and being able to make eye contact, shake hands (at least once), and smell their co-workers’ perfume/cologne not only did people not bond to their co-workers—they also didn’t become too attached to their employer, making it easy to move right along, without any angst or other emotional hiccups.

Companies don’t seem to be terribly bonded to their only-since-COVID employees either, so at least the feelings seem mutual. That seems like a bad omen of things to come, for things like funding programs to support professional development, etc.

People have been telling groups doing studies that they want to reconnect with co-workers by seeing them face-to-face in the office.  Some have been so bold as to say that the only good reason they can think of to return to the office is to see their colleagues.

It turns out all of these people who have been talking to research types are right about the power of being in the same place at the same time.  Place really is powerful, and “office power” extends beyond all of this bonding to supporting certain sorts of work—the kind that solves “wicked” problems, the kind requiring strategic/innovative thinking among sets of employees, for example—in ways that Zoom simply can’t, no matter how many meetings get scheduled.

Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.