'Managers who are enforcing it differentially create these little pockets where people feel they're being treated unfairly'
Four years on from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many organizations are still navigating the fallout, including their workforce’s working model going forward – be it fully remote, flexible, hybrid, return-to-office (RTO), or some combination of them all.
But a recent survey suggests many companies are getting it wrong, leading to resentment among teammates.
Almost half of the employees surveyed (41%) said their employer’s policies around flexible work are not enforced equally throughout the organization – this “shadow management” occurs when certain leaders give more flexibility to their direct reports, says Owl Labs, which interviewed over 500 American knowledge workers.
Hybrid workers are the most affected by this unequal implementation of policies, with 52% saying the policies are not distributed equally, compared to full-time in-office employees (38%) and fully remote employees (31%).
Hybrid work is creating a “surveillance culture” in some workforces, as differing levels of enforcement result in differing participation levels, says Marie-Hélène Budworth, assistant professor of human resource management at York University.
“The managers who are enforcing it differentially, they create these little pockets where people feel that they're being treated unfairly,” says Budworth. “And then on top of that, they have superiors who now have to ask them to enforce the policy, which reinforces this surveillance culture.”
‘Procedural fairness’ comes into play
These findings around unfairness and work models are not to be taken lightly, says Budworth, because when organizations implement policies such as RTO and hybrid working models, the idea of “procedural fairness” comes into play (as opposed to fairness in how compensation is distributed or how we interact).
Perceived procedural unfairness, including around who gets which privileges and who makes those decisions, can have serious ramifications for an organization, she says.
“If you start to erode people's perceptions with procedural fairness, it's really damaging to all aspects of their experience within the organization,” Budworth says. “It erodes their trust, it erodes their belief that this is a place that I belong or can be committed to. Fairness is kind of a core guiding principle in HR.”
Hybrid workers most susceptible to feelings of unfairness
Somewhat predictably, the Owl Lab report showed that full time in-office workers have the highest levels of feeling like they’re being taken advantage of, at 21% compared to 6% of fully remote workers. The report posits that this could be a result of RTO mandates forcing employees back to the office when they don’t want to be.
“People want to have choice, people are dealing with issues around social anxiety, people have gotten used to the fact that they can pick their children up after school, that they have this flexibility,” says Jennifer Moss, workplace researcher and author of The Burnout Epidemic.
“To claw it back makes people feel like their fundamental freedoms are being taken from them. So employers need to do a better job of recognizing that you can't curate culture by just forcing people together.”
If there's no reason for it, with people doing the exact same thing that they would be doing at home, it feels extremely arbitrary, she says, “and one of the root causes of burnout is lack of fairness.”
Transparency, connection with employees to counteract unfairness and resentment
A starting point for employers wanting to move towards agile and equitable teams is allowing for autonomous management, says Moss.
However, that process must be based on a strong program of corporate hygiene. This includes a process of instilling values, leadership buy-in, and behaviour modelling – not a quick and easy solution but a roots-deep one, she says.
“Autonomy for managers is a big deal, but you have to be really well established in your corporate hygiene and culture before this happens. You have to really know who you are … before you can actually give autonomy to managers,” says Moss.
Start with your team and gathering data, she says, including stay interviews as a tool to find out what exactly will keep talent productive and feeling heard, and what would force them to quit.
“You can't make decisions for people without knowing exactly what's going on. You also have to recognize that this is a trust-building exercise,” says Moss.
“People might not trust you right away, they might think if they speak up, they’re going to get fired. So you have to build trust over time, and be asking and actioning, until people do start to see that your intent is to retain them, is to develop them, and that you're there to give them a future within the organization.”
