Why are leaders finding remote work arrangements so fraught?
- Tamar Balkin
- Jul 14
- 10 min read
“If there's so many people here, then why am I so lonely?
Can I get a connection?
Can I get, can I get a connection?
Can I get a connection?
Can I get, can I get a connection?
Real friends, good friends, hard to find, let's face it”
Connections by One Republic (Click here for the song)
Recent research found that 42% of remote workers feel working from home negatively impacts their mental wellbeing.
“Researchers have conceptualised remote work “into four types of distance—psychological, temporal, technological, and structural—and three objects from which one can be distant—material resources, social resources, and symbolic resources.”
Paul M. Leonardi, Sienna Helena Parker and Roni Shen
To address the current challenges of remote work and flexible work arrangements, both employees and leaders need to step back and develop a deeper understanding of the complex and evolving concept of remote work.
What is the prevalence of remote work?
Since the 1970s, around 15% of Australian workers engaged in remote work each week, rising to 20–30% by 2008, though only a small portion worked primarily from home. From there, remote work steadily increased, accelerating sharply during the pandemic.
By 2021, 40% of Australians were working remotely, with 20–30% doing so most or all of the time. Even after restrictions eased, remote work remained high — in 2023, 37% worked from home, dipping slightly to 36.3% in 2024.
Remote work and flexible work are a complex interplay between distance and resources.
Researchers have found that although remote work always involves physical separation, psychological distance is often the more profound and less visible barrier. Research frequently highlights how physical absence from the office can reduce communication and weaken team cohesion, affecting how individuals think, feel, and relate to one another. Psychological distance refers to the mental, emotional, or social space between people. Bridging this gap requires significant cognitive effort because it involves abstract thinking and relating to others who may differ widely in culture, demographics, or nationality. Psychological distance can manifest as a lack of social connection or even conflict within geographically dispersed teams. While not synonymous with physical distance, researchers have found that being physically close often helps reduce psychological distance by fostering familiarity, smoother communication, and trust-building.
Temporal Distance refers to separation across time, such as working different hours, living in various time zones, or relying on asynchronous communication methods. Researchers have found that even colleagues in the same location can feel temporal distance if they communicate primarily through email or tools that do not require immediate responses. Communication that depends on technology may be subject to delays and interruptions, causing temporal distance. To offset temporal distance, some remote workers maintain a connection by staying available for real-time interactions, which may impact sleep or work-life boundaries.
Technological Distance captures differences in how people use and experience technology. Communication tools may fail to fully convey social cues like body language and tone of voice, reducing the richness of interaction. Additionally, individuals’ varying proficiency and preferences for technology can cause misunderstandings or frustration. Technological distance often compounds other types of distance, intensifying feelings of separation and disrupting workflow.
Structural distance refers to the gaps in how work is organised when employees are physically apart. In traditional office settings, defined schedules and visible workflows make coordination more intuitive. In contrast, remote work can obscure these structures, making collaboration and alignment more complex. Managers may find it harder to track progress, while employees may struggle to maintain boundaries between work and home life. Structural distance often overlaps with psychological distance, amplifying feelings of isolation and disconnection.
Material resources go beyond desks and computers — they include ergonomically designed workspaces, access to the right tools, and environments that support both the task and the person doing it. This includes quiet, private spaces for focused work and meetings. Remote work can either enhance or limit access to these resources, with implications for productivity, psychological safety, and physical well-being.
Social resources include trust, support, and shared knowledge. The foundation of these resources are the relationships and social connections at work, with stakeholders, colleagues, customers and leaders. Remote work tends to weaken these connections, making teamwork and coordination harder, especially when people are in different places or time zones.
Symbolic resources are the meanings and shared understandings that make work feel like work, such as office routines, dress codes, and the general “feel” of being at work. Remote workers often create new meanings around work, like feeling more authentic in casual clothes or having blurred boundaries between work and personal time. The discrepancies between the remote and the in-office symbolic resources can enhance feelings of psychological distance.
What behaviours are essential for successful remote work?
Researchers have found that success in remote work depends not only on technical competence but also on strong interpersonal skills, effective work habits, adaptability, and self-development.
Interpersonal skills
Building strong work relationships is essential in remote environments, where informal face-to-face interactions are limited, increasing the risk of isolation. Regular readers know that positive peer relationships enhance job satisfaction, commitment, and performance, while reduced interaction lowers social support and well-being. Effective remote workers offer help and share knowledge openly to support team performance. They communicate well using digital tools, leveraging virtual social skills to build connections and trust.
Effective Work Habits
Remote work demands strong self-management skills. Researchers have found that remote work is associated with increased distractions and blurred boundaries; thus, maintaining focus is key to avoiding burnout and staying productive. Efficient time use—rather than longer hours—is what drives outcomes, with research supporting the value of structured or even shortened workweeks. Success in remote roles also hinges on the ability to work autonomously, with self-direction linked to higher performance, well-being, and job satisfaction.
Adaptability and self-development
Thriving in remote work requires adaptability, continuous self-development, and proactive behaviour. As roles and tools evolve, flexible workers are better equipped to manage uncertainty and sustain well-being. With fewer opportunities for informal career growth, remote employees must actively seek feedback and visibility to progress. Limited oversight also makes initiative and self-motivation essential for maintaining momentum and avoiding stagnation.
Researchers have found that developing these behaviours may predict higher levels of job performance, satisfaction, and well-being in remote work and hybrid work arrangements.
Downsides of Remote Work
While remote work and flexible work arrangements offer numerous benefits, researchers have identified the following significant challenges that impact employee well-being, collaboration, and productivity.
Communication Challenges
The absence of face-to-face interactions can lead to communication breakdowns. Virtual teams often struggle with delays, misinterpretations, and the lack of non-verbal cues, which can hinder both collaboration and effective decision-making.
Burnout and Overwork
Regular readers will know that many in the working-age population have experienced increased workloads, fatigue, and reduced motivation in recent years. Researchers have linked these outcomes to several characteristics of remote work, particularly social isolation, reduced day-to-day interaction, and blurred boundaries between work and personal life—all of which contribute to heightened stress and burnout.
Reduced Structure and Accountability
Remote work environments can lack the structure that some employees depend on to manage their time and maintain focus. Without the routine and visibility of a traditional workplace, productivity may decline and performance expectations can become unclear. In response, some managers have introduced tracking software to monitor employees in real time—an approach that, as regular readers will recognise, can undermine trust and damage team culture.
The “autonomy paradox”
Remote work obscures the physical visibility of labour, leading to lower promotion rates for remote employees. To counteract this, researchers have found that some remote workers engage in signalling behaviours—such as increased availability outside standard hours—to demonstrate commitment, often at the expense of personal life. This dynamic, coupled with blurred work-life boundaries and decreased visibility, pressures employees to extend work hours to offset perceived remote work disadvantages. Impression management—deliberate efforts to control how others perceive one’s work or image—often intensifies in remote settings, leading others to view those behaviours as inauthentic and ultimately diminishing trust and engagement.
Social Disconnection and the Impact of Weak Networks
Many remote workers feel socially disconnected. About 40% of flexible workers say they miss their colleagues, and 75% of organisations see a lack of connection as a major issue. Other common challenges include reduced collaboration (58%), difficulty monitoring performance (43%), and fewer mentoring opportunities (40%).Remote and hybrid arrangements are also reshaping workplace social networks. While remote work can strengthen bonds within immediate teams, it often weakens broader organisational ties. Reduced spontaneous interactions—like hallway chats or impromptu check-ins—make it harder to build social capital and visibility.
Loneliness is now one of the most commonly reported challenges in the workplace, especially in remote settings. Remote work can intensify feelings of isolation, with serious consequences — including disengagement, lower job satisfaction, reduced performance, and poorer well-being. Research shows that even working remotely 2.5 days or more per week can noticeably reduce the quality of workplace relationships.
"Marie Jahoda’s latent deprivation model proposes that unemployed people have a worse mental health compared to employed people. This is because they suffer not only from a lack of the manifest function of employment (earning money), but also from a lack of five so-called latent functions of employment: Time structure, social contact, collective purpose (i.e., the sense of being useful to other people), status, and activity."
A recent meta-analysis found that all latent functions, as well as the manifest function, emerged as significant independent predictors of mental health. It could be surmised that the absence of many of these latent functions in remote work is a large contributor to the poor mental health of remote workers.
What Can Be Done?
Face-to-face interaction remains a key counterbalance in remote work and hybrid work. Regular in-person meetings or site visits help reduce psychological and structural distance, strengthen trust, and support relationship-building that’s hard to replicate online.
To work effectively, remote employees must actively reconfigure their social networks: using digital tools deliberately to stay visible, maintain connections, and access support. It’s not just an individual task — leaders and teams play a role in noticing when someone’s struggling, sharing insights, and building strong, trusting relationships that buffer against stress and burnout.
Work Group Integration (WGI)
Recent research has defined WGI as the overall quality of a person’s relationships with their team — a sense of inclusion, belonging, and mutual support that provides emotional and practical benefits. Researchers have found that it helps people feel stable, valued, and connected.
In remote work, maintaining WGI is harder but even more important. Physical distance, fewer spontaneous interactions, and reliance on digital tools can weaken team cohesion. Without deliberate effort, remote workers may feel isolated, excluded from decisions, or unsure of their role.
Research shows strong WGI helps protect against loneliness, disengagement, and uncertainty in remote settings. It also boosts collaboration by building trust, support, and openness across distances.
Importantly, WGI has a greater impact on psychological health than support from individual colleagues. For managers, this means going beyond one-on-one check-ins—actively building team-wide connection through regular group interactions, inclusive communication, and shared team practices.
What Do We Do with All This Information?
One of the major challenges with the current situation and the friction around working from home is that, in most cases, employees had no choice, no say in the imposition of working from home during COVID, it was rapid and government-mandated. Regular readers know that when autonomy is removed, it causes angst at best and resentment.
Perhaps then the best way to address the current predicament is to reflect on why and how we are making decisions about work flexibility.
Regular readers know that the role of a leader is not to mandate a one-size-fits-all policy on remote work, but to foster open reflection and dialogue about the personal and collective impacts of working from home. Rather than assuming the reasons behind individual preferences or enforcing rigid arrangements, effective leaders create space for honest conversations, encouraging team members to explore not only what works for them but also how their choices affect others. This includes reflecting on how remote work influences collaboration, learning opportunities, visibility, workload distribution, and team culture. By facilitating these discussions with empathy and curiosity, leaders can support more thoughtful, inclusive, and balanced decisions that align individual needs with team and organisational goals.
“We say, “Could you give me your feedback on this?” or “Can you give me your opinion on this?” That’s a mistake. When you ask for an opinion, you get a critic. You get somebody who steps away from you, who breaks the unity bond, who separates and goes inside themselves for the pros and cons. If you change one word, and there’s research on this, and you ask for their advice, you get a partner. You get somebody, a collaborator, who’s working with you on this.”
Robert Caldini
As always, please email me if you or anyone in your network would benefit from coaching. If you want to lock in a time for a catch-up up please head to my calendarbridge by clicking here: https://www.calendarbridge.com/book/jotPVTT
Please click here if you would like to read my past blogs.
References:
Allen, K. S., Grelle, D., Lazarus, E. M., Popp, E., & Gutierrez, S. L. (2024). Hybrid is here to stay: Critical behaviors for success in the new world of work. Personality and Individual Differences, 217(1), 112459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112459
Chapman, C. (2025). Employee mental health: Remote workers | Pluxee. Pluxee.uk. https://www.pluxee.uk/blog/mental-wellbeing/a-spotlight-on-employee-mental-health-remote-workers/
Glazer, R. (2024). Robert Cialdini on persuasion, influence and leadership. Elevate Podcast. https://robertglazer.com/elevate-podcast/robert-cialdini-persuasion-influence-leadership/
Law, D. (2025). Remote work & working from home statistics Australia (2025). Red Search. https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/remote-work-working-home-statistics-australia/
Leonardi, P. M., Parker, S. H., & Shen, R. (2023). How remote work changes the world of work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-091922-015852
Paul, K. I., Scholl, H., Moser, K., Zechmann, A., & Batinic, B. (2023). Employment status, psychological needs, and mental health: Meta-analytic findings concerning the latent deprivation model. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1017358. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1017358
Rousseau, V., Aubé, C., Chiocchio, F., Boudrias, J.-S., & Morin, E. M. (2008). Social interactions at work and psychological health: The role of leader–member exchange and work group integration. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(7), 1755–1777. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00368.x
Torres, S., & Orhan, M. A. (2022). How it started, how it’s going: Why past research does not encompass pandemic-induced remote work realities and what leaders can do for more inclusive remote work practices. Psychology of Leaders and Leadership, 26(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/mgr0000135
Wells, J., Scheibein, F., Pais, L., Dalluege, C.-A., Czakert, J. P., & Berger, R. (2023). A systematic review of the impact of remote working referenced to the concept of work–life flow on physical and psychological health. Workplace Health & Safety, 71(11). https://doi.org/10.1177/21650799231176397
Zoonen, W. V., & Sivunen, A. E. (2021). The impact of remote work and mediated communication frequency on isolation and psychological distress. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 31(4), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432x.2021.2002299
Comments