The pandemic has weakened strong ties in the workplace.
In the New York Times article, “If You Never Met Your Co-Workers in Person, Did You Even Work There?”, authors Kellen Browning and Erin Griffith interview and report how the ongoing 17-month long pandemic has had an effect on the workplace and employee’s social life. Many employees who have started working remotely at their companies describe how they don’t feel a strong relationship with their co-workers, often because remote work has impeded them from meeting and socializing with them in person. Furthermore, remote-work culture means that being online is simply for work, whereas an in-person environment gives more chances for socialization that are outside just work.
This article unintentionally touches on the topic of graph theory and ties between people. To read how employees feel no attachment to their job, and find it very easy to quit or change jobs due to remote-work indicates that the ties being formed in the virtual workplace are weak or non-existent. It’s interesting to see how this ongoing pandemic has highlighted how almost every aspect of life has changed, down to the quality of one’s relationships with others. Going to an office, although sometimes draining, gives people a sense of routine and a chance of socialization – remote culture has made it so that ‘going’ to work means just that, work. With weakening ties among employees, and “emotional and personal attachments” to one’s job “fraying”, concepts like the Strong Triadic Closure Property are probably less observed or maybe even nonexistent for companies who have job-hoppers. If the STCP requires strong bonds, and little to no strong bonds are formed due to lack of socialization, what property is there to observe? Of course, changing jobs is normal, but as senior economist Heidi Shierholz points out in the article, the rate in which this is occurring is unprecedented – working with people you don’t know is slowly becoming a new normal.
Of course, as mentioned in the article, some companies take initiative and host socialization events, some in person. Maybe the main objective of companies doing this is to keep their employees attached to their jobs (a bureaucratic move), but also inadvertently creates strong bonds between employees. Others have virtual socialization (not the same as an in-person event, but something is better than nothing), which can also change the way employees’ mindset, where Zoom doesn’t always equal work. Nevertheless, some companies acknowledge this trend (which happened so quickly, “there is not even a label for it”) and are trying to act against it.
Overall, it’s interesting to see how concepts in networks and graph theory are present in something as mundane as workplace culture, and how it has been affected by the pandemic.