Remote workers feel alienated and mistrusted

Almost half of remote workers feel alienated from office life, underappreciated and mistrusted, according to a new study by IBM and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The study of 351 remote workers in 29 European countries revealed that 40 per cent felt disadvantaged because they could not tap into 'water cooler' conversations and informal office networking.

Nearly 40 per cent also felt their office colleagues believed they were not pulling their weight while working from home, even though 61 per cent said they actually find it difficult to switch off from their work at home.

There still appears to be widespread suspicion about remote and home working, with 68 per cent of the respondents saying they did not believe their company advocated mobile and flexible working.

Eric Lesser, associate partner at the IBM institute for business value, said companies need to better prepare both office-based and remote workers for working in an increasingly virtual environment.

"Remote workers do feel at times isolated and companies need to take a proactive approach to make sure the workers feel involved. There is lots of opportunity to lose context this way and lose body language, especially when you rely on email too much," he said. "People also really believe their colleagues don't trust them working remotely when actually many are over-compensating at home."

Lesser said it is a trust rather than a technology issue but added that as bandwidth costs continue to drop it will enable wider use of more interactive and collaborative technologies such as video conferencing.