Published on: April 23, 2025 at 6:51 pm
Leaders and managers can improve retention, employee morale, team building, and organizational cohesion by cultivating conversations among employees about their personal lives.
Academy of Management Scholar Carol Kulik of the University of South Australia said that one of the things that’s changed in organizations as a result of the increasing prevalence of remote work is fewer face-to-face chats.
“By spending less time in offices, we’ve lost a lot of the serendipity that contributes to colleagues building bonds with one another,” Kulik said. “Sometimes there’s some value in those chance water-cooler conversations or exchanges in the cafeteria when people bump into each other and shoot the breeze.
“We often encourage people who do work in remote environments to take an extra five minutes at the beginning of a meeting before you go to the agenda to find out what’s new, what’s on people’s minds,” she said.
Kulik cites the example of a manager who starts meetings by asking employees to choose which emoticon or emoji describes how they are feeling right at that moment. It can be an effective icebreaker that leads to team bonding.
“It’s silly, and it’s not for everyone, but it does surface team members’ moods, such as ‘I’m really frustrated right now,’ or ‘I’m feeling the pressure of this deadline,’” she said. “That just helps you to get behind the agenda and talk more personally.”
One of the current trends that Kulik’s research about organizations has uncovered is that work environments have become a lot less “sticky.” That can complicate organizations’ retention efforts.
“We always say that what helps employees to stay in the organization is a web of relationships,” Kulik said. “But now we know employees are telling us that they’re less likely to have friendships at work, because it’s hard to develop friendships through Zoom.
“They may not feel as tightly connected to their manager, so it’s really important for managers to proactively help employees develop that network of collegial professional relationships,” she said. “In onboarding, that’s one of the biggest responsibilities of a manager: not just to tell the employee what they need to know to do their job, but also who they need to know.
“Who do new hires need to reach out to and develop a relationship with?”
A sample of Kulik’s AOM research findings:
- Keeping Older Workers Engaged
- Engage Me: The Mature-Age Worker and Stereotype Threat
- Aging Populations and Management
- Physical Environments and Employee Reactions: Effects of Stimulus-Screening Skills and Job Complexity
- Relations Between Situational Factors and the Comparative Referents Used by Employees
