We talk about ‘remote working’ but for many it’s office working that feels remote

Have you ever worked in an office or other workplace where one colleague left and the place just didn’t feel the same any more? I certainly have experienced that a few times and it’s an example of how individuals influence social networks.

In this case, the individual is the colleague who left and the network is made up of those who stayed behind. Their presence lifted everybody and now they’re gone. That’s an example of what is unromantically called social contagion.

Social contagion is about networks and their unacknowledged emotional effects. We never look around and say, “Oh, look, there’s a network,” but they are, indeed, all around us. Networks include the people you’re living with (if any), your neighbours, your friends, the group you go to football matches with and so on.

Why is this worth knowing? Partly because it gives us a clue about the importance of cheerfulness in the challenging times we’re in now; partly because it suggests that how we feel isn’t only down to us as individuals; and partly because it leads to some interesting speculations about working in an office or remotely.

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“Emotional states can be transferred directly from one individual to another,” wrote sociologists James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis in the British Medical Journal in 2008. This may happen by observing facial expressions and other bodily actions – watch two people having an enthusiastic conversation or a row and you’ll see this in action.

Most of us have heard the phrase, ‘happiness is an inside job.’ Well, not entirely – other people influence our level of happiness also and we influence theirs

But the influence isn’t just from you to me. It goes beyond me. Your happiness, to take that emotional state, influences friends of mine also although you may never have met them. It also influences their friends whom I may never have met.

Most of us have heard the phrase, “happiness is an inside job.” Well, not entirely – other people influence our level of happiness also and we influence theirs.

The connection with working, remote and otherwise, is illuminated, I think, by these findings. People’s unwillingness to return to the office might not just be a question of wanting to avoid the commute, for instance.

Improving the atmosphere

If, when working remotely, a person has cultivated a network of family, friends or neighbours which helps them feel happier, we can see how they might be reluctant to abandon that in the favour of a return to the workplace. And there’s no guarantee that everybody who was in the workplace before will be there now – it could be quite a different emotional experience.

So maybe employers who want to entice people back into the office, at least for a few days a week, might consider the overall atmosphere in which people would be spending time and whether they can do anything to improve that atmosphere.

Are workplaces in which it’s the norm to eat at your desk losing out on the cheering effect of sitting in the canteen slagging each other off or mocking the management?

It strikes me also that the phrase “remote working” fails to acknowledge that there is nothing remote about the experience of workers who are connected, in a positive way, to other people in their home setting. It might be the office that’s remote.

Are workplaces in which it’s the norm to eat at your desk losing out on the cheering effect of sitting in the canteen slagging each other off or mocking the management? The same question could be asked of the difficulties of having flourishing work social or sports events – these events did a lot to boost morale, but long commutes may have made them far less practical to organise.

A curious finding in the research was that people of the same gender seem to have a greater effect on the happiness of each other than do those of the opposite sex. But maybe it’s not so strange – guys out with “the lads” or women out with “the girls” can be observed hitting levels of euphoria that you don’t see in family groups.

The takeaway from all this is that if you are in a good mood, you’re doing a favour to others in your possibly unnoticed network. And when they’re in a good mood, they’re doing the same for you.

– Pádraig O’Moráin (Instagram, Twitter: @padraigomorain) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His books include Kindfulness – A Guide to Self Compassion; his daily mindfulness reminder is available free by email (pomorain@yahoo.com).