New research shows a correlation between companies which are remote-work friendly and open, inclusive company cultures.
Data from Glint has shown that companies which promote remote working are also being linked to creating more inclusive work environments.
Staff at these remote work-friendly firms were 14 per cent more likely to feel able to speak their minds. They were also 9 per cent more likely to report that their leaders value different perspectives, compared to their peers in companies that haven’t enabled remote working.
Glint analysis further found that remote work environments were attributed to bolstering staff’s feelings of inclusivity.
The report found that offering this virtual type of work was conducive to providing flexibility to people with caring responsibilities, bypassing location bias and reducing the amount of time and energy required to conform to biased “professionalism” standards.
In addition, the shift away from physical work environments has meant that remote work has equalised opportunities for employees to be seen and heard, the analysis further revealed.
The pandemic, as a whole, has altered what employees believe makes a good work culture. Comparing data from 2019, the research found that five of the main drivers of work culture in 2020 did not even appear on the list in 2019.
Last year, employees ranked opportunities to learn and grow, belonging, organisational values and support for wellbeing and collaboration as essential for driving work culture.
Steven Buck, Head of People Science, EMEA, Glint, said:
In many ways remote work has equalised opportunities for employees to be heard and seen. In a virtual-work environment, every meeting looks the same, and each person takes up the same screen real estate, from the CEO to the intern.
As organisations re-examine how to foster diversity, inclusion and belonging in the new world of work, early signs indicate they’d do well to build on virtual work and expand habits, programmes and tools that help people bring their authentic selves to work. The way we work changed drastically in 2020. Employees want more from their employers now than just a pay packet. They want to be challenged, they want to work in a space where they can bring their whole selves, and they want leaders to mean what they say and say what they mean.
*The insights in this edition of the Glint Employee Well-Being Report were sourced from a blend of Glint People Success Platform data and LinkedIn job postings data. Work culture insights spanning 2019 and 2020 came from millions of Glint survey responses from over 600 companies around the world.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
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