Unprecedented levels of hybrid work seem likely to persist beyond the pandemic conditions that revolutionized employers’ attitudes toward flexible working arrangements. Even as offices have reopened, many employees are loath to give up the benefits of working from home at least some of the time. But some two years into what has been an unplanned global experiment in remote work, the costs of that approach are coming into sharper focus.

While employees appreciate saving time, shedding the stress of commuting, and having more flexibility to balance work and personal demands, remote work has downsides that go beyond domestic distractions and blurred work-life boundaries. In particular, the quality, frequency, and nature of interactions change when colleagues are physically remote and there is less dynamic, spontaneous communication. Neuroscience research has found that only in-person interactions trigger the full suite of physiological responses and neural synchronization required for optimal human communication and trust-building, and that digital channels such as videoconferencing disrupt our processing of communicative information. Such impoverished virtual interactions can lead to static and siloed collaboration networks, workers with a diminished sense of belonging to their organization, and social and professional isolation. Long before COVID-19, these issues led some to question whether the large-scale practice of remote work would create a society devoid of social connection, lacking communication skills, and less able to develop meaningful relationships.

In contrast, when employees are colocated in a physical workplace, they are set up for richer communication when they bump into one another in the hallway, stop by one another’s desks for impromptu meetings, go out for a chat over coffee, or socialize after work. While workplaces can be noisy and full of interruptions and other distractions, collaboration and coordination among team members is easier, and individuals are more visible when career development opportunities arise.

We wondered whether hybrid work arrangements would help reduce the potentially severe social disadvantages of working remotely. The research we conducted among individuals in hybrid work situations, in which we probed for differences in their experiences working at home versus in the company workplace, indicates that in-office interactions — especially with colleagues — can indeed improve employees’ job satisfaction and reduce their feelings of loneliness, even when working at home.

In May and June 2021, we surveyed hybrid workers in Western Australia, where such arrangements had persisted for more than a year even though minimal impact from the pandemic meant there was no public health need to keep employees at home. This provides insight into what we might expect to see emerging elsewhere as hybrid work persists to suit employee preferences rather than to accommodate pandemic restrictions. Our 386 survey respondents worked 33.8 hours per week on average, with 40% of that time spent at home.

We asked two sets of questions about colleague support, manager support, job satisfaction, and loneliness. One set of questions asked participants to reflect on their experiences while working from home, and the other asked them to consider their experiences while in the office. Previous research has exclusively investigated differences between individuals rather than focusing on differences within individuals’ experiences.

Support From Colleagues Helps Combat Isolation — and Boosts Job Satisfaction

Our research results support the idea that spending some portion of one’s working hours colocated with colleagues and managers might offset the social downsides of remote work. Survey respondents reported experiencing significantly more support from both colleagues and managers when in the office or other company workplace compared with working from home.

While a majority reported receiving the help and support they needed in both locations, open-ended survey responses point to a possible qualitative difference. One person noted that “engaging online is totally different than being present and interacting with staff,” a sentiment echoed by others. Another wrote that it is “easier to complete tasks and resolve problems based in the office,” suggesting a benefit not only for developing work relationships but for getting work done. Others highlighted the difficulty of team collaboration when working remotely.

We might expect workers to experience better support in the office, especially given what is known about the value of in-person communication. But the survey also uncovered somewhat counterintuitive findings about the sources of support that have the most impact: It is help from colleagues, not from managers, that is vital to improving the hybrid work experience, especially when it comes to loneliness.

Our survey respondents felt significantly more lonely, on average, when working from home than in the office, with 22% stating that they often or always felt isolated from others when working from home, compared with 19% who felt that way when working in the office. However, looking more closely at this data, we found that the most significant factor in loneliness was lack of support from colleagues at work. Our model took into account contextual factors such as age, gender, working hours, hours worked from home, and caring hours, but only office colleague support was a significant predictor of reduced loneliness — more important than managers’ support at either the office or at home, and colleagues’ support when working at home.

The good news in this finding is that, in the case of hybrid workers, support from colleagues when in the office can protect against loneliness. This is probably because connecting with others face-to-face enables higher-quality, more meaningful interactions to take place and increases a sense of belonging to a workplace.

That doesn’t mean that support for employees when they are working from home isn’t important — in fact, we found that job satisfaction depended on feeling supported by both managers and colleagues at home as well as in the office. But again, relationships with colleagues were the most significant factor. Our results showed that colleague support when working from home was the strongest predictor of job satisfaction, followed by colleague support in the office, with manager support when in the office or at home the least important predictor, again controlling for contextual factors.