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Social presence and workplace ergonomics control predict perceived remote work performance

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Colin Conrad suggests social presence and workplace ergonomics control are important predictors of perceived performance

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 7, 2024

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This video video discusses the impact of remote and hybrid work, particularly post-pandemic, focusing on how individuals perceive their productivity in such environments. The author emphasizes the changes in workplace dynamics since 2022, driven by the forced adoption of remote work technologies during the pandemic.

The research aims to explore what factors contribute to perceived productivity, particularly examining two key factors: *social presence* and *control over workspaces*. Social presence refers to the feeling of connection with colleagues through digital mediums, while workspace control pertains to individuals' ability to customize their work environments at home, which could influence their productivity.

The study employs structural equation modeling to analyze survey data collected from a diverse group of individuals with remote work experience. Findings indicate that both social presence and workspace control are strong predictors of perceived performance. Interestingly, collaborative tool efficacy—how effectively individuals can use remote work technologies—emerged as a notable precursor to social presence.

The research also revealed that traditional management techniques, like frequent meetings, do not effectively enhance social presence, suggesting that managers should reconsider their approaches to employee engagement in virtual settings. The implications highlight the importance of developing skills to use digital collaboration tools effectively and fostering organic relationships among team members. Finally, the text suggests a growing need to address the challenges faced by junior employees in remote work settings, advocating for the cultivation of soft skills that facilitate better online interaction and engagement.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This is an interesting topic from my perspective

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because,

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the world was a very different place back in 2022, right?

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Uh, so today, you know, we live in a world where workplace,

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sort of remote work, hybrid work is kind of endemic.

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And a big part of that is, yeah, we had these technologies

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before the pandemic,

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but during the pandemic we had a phenomenon of sort

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of forced, adoption

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of these technologies in many aspects of society.

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Um, and so what I was very interested in knowing is,

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you know, for people who are just, you know,

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very common everyday folks,

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what is their experience like related to remote work?

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And specifically what I wanted to know were

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what are the factors that lead

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to their perceived productivity, in remote work?

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Um, and the approach that we took, to this paper was

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to take, you know, some of my previous work related

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to cognitive perspectives on information systems,

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and plug this in and try to merge this with,

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emerging literature in ergonomics.

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Um, so I was particularly interested in this phenomenon

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called social presence, which is the experience

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of fueling your colleagues

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through an information technology medium.

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Um, this is something

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that information systems scholars have

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studied for quite a while.

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It kind of draws heavily from the e-learning literature,

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but folks like David Geffen,

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started laying the foundations

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of expanded perspectives on social presence

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back in the early two thousands.

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Um, so I wanted to see if this was a predictor

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of perceived work performance for remote workers,

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and importantly,

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whether they had control over their workspaces,

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if this was an important aspect

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of their perceived productivity.

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Um, so in the case of, control over workspaces,

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I was particularly interested in knowing whether you're able

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to arrange your office, whether you're doing, able

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to do things like control your environment,

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potentially close your doors, these types of factors.

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Um, so being able

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to control your workspace in your homework environment, is

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that something that added to your productivity during

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that covid remote work?

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I actually will point readers always to the model

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because I'm from this discipline

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where we like boxes and arrows.

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Um, and I know we're gonna talk about the methods a little

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bit later, but for a paper that's based on a survey,

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using this type of approach,

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the structural equation modeling approach, we usually start

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with that model to then explain the concepts.

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Um, and so where I was coming from in this is I drew kind

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of heavily towards, from perspectives that were related

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to cognitive load, cognitive workload,

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and looking at some of the antecedents to that.

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It's not explicitly mentioned in this paper,

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that we were looking at things

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that were related to cognitive load.

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Uh, but, you know,

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you can see like the paper from Iris vei back in 1991 about

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cognitive fit, wa and friends a bit later.

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Um, besets, type of, stuff they all had to do

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with workplace collaboration technologies

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and sort of cognition.

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Um, and so what we wanted

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to do was look at the behavioral factors that were related

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to this in predicting social presence.

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Um, so the social presence literature, it is kind

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of interesting because though there are information systems

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researchers who come from, you know,

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the traditional sort of business school, type

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of mindset,

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it's also discussed pretty heavily in e-learning.

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Uh, so we tried pretty hard to, find, good examples

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of social presence, in the literature.

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Um, and we ended up drawing from Garrison

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and Friends 1999, which was later expanded by Richardson

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and Friends, in their social presence construct.

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There were a couple others that we threw in there,

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but basically we were trying to find the right sort of set

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of questions that were related to social presence,

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in the context of remote work, specifically drawing from

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that literature that mostly had to do with e-learning

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and also mostly had to do with collaboration.

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And then finally, we also had, this construct

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of, productivity.

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Productivity was actually a sort of missing piece

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of the puzzle because I'm not from an

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organizational behavior background.

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Uh, but that was from Williams

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and Anderson 1991, which I guess is actually one

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of the most commonly used productivity measures in

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organizational behavior.

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Like a lot of them use that type of approach,

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to measuring productivity.

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So sort of subjective self-report, very simple measure,

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but I guess it underpins a lot of their literature.

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Um, so we borrowed that for this, this study.

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Um, and then workplace economic

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sorry, ergonomics control.

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Um, this was actually kind of interesting

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because we drew a lot from the covid literature.

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Um, so a lot of this stuff,

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because, you know, when you write a paper

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and it's published in January 2nd, 2023, you know, most

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of the work happened in 2022, right?

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Um, so we were particularly interested in finding as much

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as we could about, sort of, different aspects

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of, workplace control over your home work environment

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that specifically had the tag around COVID-19.

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Uh, so the wreath and Haman and Berger Fort

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and Friends, both published in 2021,

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had parts of this.

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And they had different, identified different concrete

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factors around workplace control and home environments.

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So when we built our construct, we started

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by looking at those things, those factors that led,

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to productivity in their research

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that we assumed would probably work in this context as well.

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So this, it's important to qualify

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that this was done online.

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So this was done with an online panel.

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And the method

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and approach that we did was entirely questionnaire.

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So this is a per, sort of perception study.

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So we sent questionnaire messages

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to a group of people who we recruited

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through the prolific platform.

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And I think the condition that they had to follow

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Was that they had

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to have some experience with remote work.

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So they, that was sort of the exclusion criteria.

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They had to have had work,

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but they had to actually have had experience

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with remote work type of environment.

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So it was designed to be a very broad survey.

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Um, and the reason why we did it is

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because we wanted the larger sample size,

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not really the largest type of sample size,

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but more than big enough, to account for sort

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of subtleties in that sample population.

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Um, as well, the people had to be able,

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they were fluent in English,

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and they, you know,

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were across multiple countries in this case.

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Uh, so they were mostly countries in the developed world,

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though we did incorporate some voices in

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the developing world as well.

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Uh, so in this case, Portugal, Poland, Mexico, South Africa,

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as well as some other countries were included in this.

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Um, so we created these questionnaire measures based

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on the prior literature.

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And what we did is we asked the questions of the people on,

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Qualtrics, they responded to,

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the, the questionnaire.

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It was a pretty short questionnaire.

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Um, and then with all of that data,

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what we do is we use a technique called

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structural equation modeling.

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So, SEM, and just gonna flag this for a second

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because I'm an interdisciplinary researcher,

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but my primary audience is information systems.

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This technique is very common in information systems in some

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areas of psychology, and I think some areas of sociology,

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but a lot of other disciplines don't use this.

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Um, and I don't particularly know why.

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'cause from a methodological perspective for survey data,

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it's quite a bit more robust.

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It can help you understand causal relationships a lot better

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than say, multi multiple linear regression anyways.

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Um, so we use the structural equation modeling package in

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the, our programming language.

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You create the model and you specify the relationships,

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and then you're able to analyze, yeah,

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what is the robustness of that model,

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but more importantly, what are the relationships

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between the different variables?

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So if readers are able to take a look at the model, so

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that's the boxes and the arrows

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that's included on the paper.

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Uh, it will explain, sort of the significant,

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values as well as the, sort of predictors

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between the various aspects, that go into the model.

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So ultimately, for instance, workplace control being 34,

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percent, that's actually a kind

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of like a linear regression, but not quite the same.

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Uh, at any rate, it's a strong predictor

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of perceived performance.

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And likewise social presence, it's a pretty strong predictor

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of perceived performance as well.

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And the things that lead to social presence, the

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collaborative tool efficacy, was also quite significant.

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Yeah. So the findings of this work were kind of interesting

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because, what we've, we had some, some findings

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that we were quite confident were going to work out.

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And then we had a couple that were actually a little bit

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surprising and they actually were surprising.

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We, we were quite confident they were actually gonna

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have the opposite effect.

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Uh, and I have some explanations

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and some reasons as to why that might,

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that might have gone the way.

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Um, so into that model,

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basically when I explain the results, the R-M-S-C-A,

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the being 0.6 is basically means

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that this is a fairly robust model.

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It's not the most robust, but it is more than sufficient.

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So basically the statistics work out all the constructs they

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work together, to be able to explain the phenomenon, is

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what that statistic tells us.

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Um, but workplace control was a strong

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predictor of perceived performance.

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Uh, and social presence was of course a strong predictor

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of perceived performance.

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Um, but I think the more interesting part

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of the study was that we didn't just study the two things

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that predicted performance, but also the things that come

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before the sort of antecedents of social presence.

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And what we found was that collaborative tool efficacy,

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so people's ability, their perceived ability

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to actually work,

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with the technologies was a very strong predictor

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of whether they experienced social presence.

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So whether they experienced a meaningful relationship

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with their colleagues, during the COVID-19 sort

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of distancing, but, the mode of working.

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So whether this was synchronous or asynchronous,

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and importantly, the number of meetings that they had,

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those were not significant predictors of social presence.

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Uh, so why did we actually do this?

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Um, we asked, we wanted to study, whether

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or not some of the techniques

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that managers often used in these environments.

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Uh, so one example of such a technique was, okay,

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my employees are not around, so let's have a bunch

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of meetings,

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that will make them feel connected to the group.

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Turns out that doesn't.

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Uh, and that was really, I think,

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the more interesting finding of this paper.

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Uh, whether or not they're constantly being monitored

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or constantly being in sync with their workers as well was,

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or their, their colleagues was not a big

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predictor of social presence.

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Uh, so people's ability

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to use the technology was a great predictor,

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but those techniques that were very common

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during distancing were not great predictors.

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So the, the broader implications of this work is

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that I think organizations need

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to put a lot more thought into the actual techniques

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that they use to make remote work happen.

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Um, importantly

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because the collaboration tool efficacy impacts

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social presence as well.

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Uh, I think that's pretty strong evidence,

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from my perspective, that the ability

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to experience social presence online is actually a skill.

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Um, so a lot of my research right now is actually into

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learning sort of soft skills that allow people

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to use these types of technologies better.

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Uh, because, you know,

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if you can get good at learning online,

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'cause I'm more interested in learning personally,

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but also in collaboration,

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that's a skill that people can learn.

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I think people can become better at these things.

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Um, so we don't put a lot of thought into that,

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especially for young workers.

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And this is not directly in the paper, this is more,

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extrapolating in those key findings a bit more.

11:55.705 --> 12:00.205
Um, there's a lot of attention today in 2024 about how,

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remote work has kind of failed junior employees

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because they're not able to connect with their teams,

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they're not able to get too involved in the workplaces.

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Well, I would assert that that's actually a learned skill

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that you can do that.

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Uh, we just aren't very good at it.

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Um, so I think, as well with the number

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of meetings and the mode of meetings

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and their impacts on social presence,

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this basically tells me that,

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and a lot more attention needs

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to be focused on the concrete techniques that managers use

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to talk with their employees in online environments.

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And today, in 2024,

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I think there's a lot more knowledge about this.

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There's a lot more knowledge about how

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to effectively use well-designed tools.

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Uh, so what would be an example?

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Um, I think most of my students,

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because they did all the stuff during covid,

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they have some sort of understanding

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of a collaboration platform like Microsoft teams,

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or to a lesser extent, slack.

12:58.285 --> 13:01.025
Um, and that's good. They're able to communicate on mass,

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they're able to share, they're able to by default,

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give documents and stuff like this, create videos.

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They're very comfortable doing that.

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Um, but also to an extent they need to be able

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to do things that are almost fun.

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Um, so that's

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where our research on this topic has gone recently is

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to this, this last part, both the soft skills

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that I mentioned earlier about learning how

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to do the stuff online,

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but also, to what extent it's important

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to actually have fun, have organic relationships

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with your employees using these tools.

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Um, because the teams that do really well

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have great practices around remote work,

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from an employee's perspective.

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