The workplace: a social space
According to the IFOP Paris Workplace barometer (2019), 42% of employees come “to the office primarily for social life with their colleagues”.
According to the OpinionWay study carried out for Microsoft France at the end of 2020, Social ties are a “key ingredient” of well-being for 40% of working people. The workplace is in fact first and foremost a place of exchange. Chatting with employees, laughing, learning from others, discovering through exchange are an integral part of the daily life of many company employees. How much do these moments matter to individuals? According to the IFOP Paris Workplace barometer (2019), 42% of employees come “to the office primarily for social life with their colleagues”.
For most, going to the office every day is in fact a factor of integration and social recognition. The team spirit and cooperation specific to the functioning of a company is a key element for cohesion and motivation. In addition, the feeling of belonging to a group allows individuals to build their identity and their existence. It allows them to set points of reference, and to establish certainties about their relational landscape.
Read also: How to maintain social ties at work? Our 4 best practices
Would remote work weaken social ties?
Since the health crisis, the use of remote work by companies has spread to many sectors of activity. While this way of working and this flexibility has many advantages, several surveys have nevertheless highlighted the risk of erosion of social ties associated with this practice. Indeed, team dynamics, moments of break or collaboration shared with several people have been weakened by remote work.
For many remote workers, digital interactions are not enough. For example, drinking coffee during a break with your collaborator is incomparable with a 15-minute Teams call. Digital interaction does not replace traditional social relationships that contribute to individual development and development over time. In particular, the degree of involvement in virtual exchanges is much lower than in face-to-face exchanges.
Thus, by not feeling pressured to intervene by some form of implicit external pressure, some employees have tended to disassociate and demotivate themselves. Cohesion within companies has therefore been affected by remote working.
m-work and social ties
Finally, the health crisis led to the following observation: human interactions are essential to the well-being of people who work, and remote work seems to have weakened this social bond. It is in particular to overcome this obstacle that M-Work was born. Recognizing the benefits of teleworking (reduction of travel time, flexibility, autonomy, etc.), we are committed to limiting its disadvantages. m-work thus allows employees and managers to meet at the same time in the office, thanks to an intuitive tool for planning office presence.
Our proposal: a tool that makes it possible to organize hybrid work in a simple and very collaborative way. In particular, the solution makes it much easier for users to find each other when they return to the office and to monitor well-being and employee experience indicators associated with these new ways of working.
Do you want to know more? Discover the m-work application!
