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Remote Workers Need Small Talk, Too - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN
HBR Staff
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Summary.
Small talk is something many of us miss about going into the office, and for good reason: It helps people feel emotionally connected and boosts collaboration and creativity. Yet not everyone is a fan; some think small talk is inauthentic and a waste of time. To resolve these views, the authors did a 15-day study of the impact that small talk had on 151 workers. They found that though small talk was both uplifting and distracting to employees, the positives outweighed the negatives, and the negatives could be managed. The issue today is that the move to remote work environment is cutting many people off from workplace small talk. However, managers can find ways to integrate it into virtual settings and use new tools to make it more inclusive and productive.
Before Covid-19 and social distancing, small talk was a daily workplace ritual for most of us. We exchanged hellos with colleagues on our way in from the parking lot, chatted about our weekends while waiting for meetings to begin, and swapped stories about our families with our cube mates. Though these encounters probably lasted only minutes, they played a crucial role in making us feel emotionally connected at work.
Small talk is important to us in other ways, putting us at ease and helping us transition to more serious topics like negotiations, job interviews, sales pitches, and performance evaluations. The tidbits we learn about our colleagues — for instance, that they play guitar or love dogs — build rapport and deepen trust. Research
even suggests that chance encounters and spontaneous conversations with
our coworkers can spark collaboration, improving our creativity,
innovation, and performance. Many people say that small talk energizes
them and makes them feel “seen.” As one employee of a midsize accounting
firm told us, “Your coworkers don’t necessarily need to know every
detail of your life, but it certainly helps everyone feel like a real
person.” No wonder so many of us are mourning the loss of small talk during the pandemic-driven work-from-home boom.
Yet others are deeply skeptical of small talk. They say it makes them anxious, spreads gossip, wastes time, and is inauthentic and awkward.
Some even arrive at meetings exactly at the start time to avoid having
to chitchat. This makes small talk a bit of a social paradox and raises
the question: Is it ultimately more helpful or more hurtful to
employees’ daily lives?
To
resolve these views, we surveyed 151 full-time working adults three
times a day for 15 consecutive workdays before the pandemic. We asked
how much small talk they made at work each day and about their positive
emotions (friendliness, pride, and gratitude) and ability to focus. And
each night they reported their levels of well-being and prosocial
behaviors.
The results revealed that small talk was both uplifting and
distracting. On days workers made more small talk than usual, they
experienced more positive emotions and were less burned out. They were
also more willing to go out of their way to help their colleagues. At
the same time, they felt less focused on and less engaged in their work
tasks, which limited their ability to assist others. However, we found
that one group — people who were adept at reading others and adjusting
their conversations in response — were less likely to report feeling
disrupted by small talk. We also saw that conversations didn’t have to
be intimate or lengthy to deliver benefits. On the whole, it was clear
to us that the positives of small talk outweighed the negatives and that
those negatives could be managed.
As
organizations consider their optimal post-pandemic remote-work
strategy, they’ll need practices to integrate small talk into their work
ecosystems. The good news is that the virtual landscape presents a
surprising opportunity to enhance the value of small talk. Drawing on
our research, we offer managers and employees the following advice:
Encourage new social rituals. Working from home has blurred the lines between people’s jobs and their personal lives, and without routines like daily commutes
to divide them, many employees are struggling to shift gears between
the two. Small talk can help people disengage from the “home” role and
ease into a business mindset. That’s why it’s a good idea to build in time
at the start of every meeting for members to greet one another,
exchange pleasantries, and ask playful questions. This can also set a
positive tone for a meeting.
Other
tactics include creating “virtual lounges” in Slack or Teamwork where
teams can socialize and holding regular virtual coffees, trivia nights,
and happy hours. A recent INSEAD study
of more than 500 professionals working remotely across the world showed
that the teams that were thriving in the new virtual environment were
formally scheduling social gatherings involving quizzes, shared
playlists, book recommendations, and movie clubs. Although this
mandatory “fun” might have felt a little awkward at first, the teams
that didn’t engage in such rituals struggled to adapt to the new normal and reported feeling less connected.
Re-create “casual collisions.”
Some organizations have found creative ways to orchestrate informal
virtual interactions among employees. There are companies like Spark
Collaboration that help employers organize “office video-chat roulettes”
that pair up employees who don’t already know one another for real-time
social interactions. One Spark client at a global law firm explained,
“During the pandemic it was important to us to make sure employees were
still making the random connections you might find in a shared office
space to help with innovation, building networks, and collaboration. It
has been invaluable for relationship building.” Platforms like Airmeet
set up virtual speed networking for employees. One probable upside is
that these exchanges, though less spontaneous, are more inclusive —
giving everyone the opportunity to connect rather than leaving it to
chance.
Stick to the script. Managers
and employees alike should be careful not to let social conversations
take a negative turn. Small talk should be polite, surface level, and
focused on neutral topics, like the weather, sports, and TV shows. It
should never devolve into gossip — especially about the company or other
employees — which breeds incivility, cynicism, and distrust. Managers
should also steer teams away from potentially controversial topics like
religion, politics, and romantic relationships. Another thing to avoid
is excessive self-disclosure: Sharing your deepest anxieties may be okay
when you’re meeting a friend for coffee, but it’s not when you’re
greeting an acquaintance. If someone asks, “How are you?” it’s
ill-mannered to rant about your bad day. Nevertheless, the pandemic has
made it commonplace to say things like “Hope you and your family are
safe and well” and to acknowledge our feelings of worry and concern.
Emphasize the upside. Highlighting the ways small talk can boost employee happiness as well as the company’s bottom line can win over people who tend to self-isolate. Encourage employees to take charge of their own social health by
building in daily social breaks. Although these might seem
counterintuitive when you’re under deadline pressure, our research
suggests that they are restorative and reduce burnout.
New online apps, such as Water Cooler, allow employees to pick a time
to chat with coworkers about shared interests, hobbies, or fitness
goals. Because the program sets a fixed window for conversations, it can
prevent productive work time from being eaten up — something that’s
more difficult to manage in face-to-face settings.
Employees
can also ask themselves, “Have I been feeling more or less connected
today?” “Whom can I reach out to if I need support?” and “What
relationships are the most important to me?” Meanwhile, simple
strategies like regular brief check-ins can do a lot to alleviate
employees’ feelings of loneliness.
Though easy, this approach is extremely effective: Research shows that
employees feel the greatest sense of belonging at work when their
coworkers simply text or email to ask how they’re doing.
As
we navigate endless Zoom meetings and new work/life challenges, let’s
not underestimate the value of small talk. Just because we might be
working remotely doesn’t mean that casual conversations are no longer important. In fact, they may be more important than ever to help us seize daily opportunities to connect across the virtual divide.
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