Distant But Engaged: The Impact of Remote Leadership Communications on Work Engagement

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 50% of the working population in Europe, the United States, and China ever turned overnight into mandatory working-from-home employees. This led to a massive change in workplace dynamics, and particularly a shift towards remote leadership as the physical distance between supervisors and subordinates suddenly increased. We investigated the impact of remote leadership communications on employee’s work engagement during this prolonged pandemic in both China and the U. S., with 641 full-time employees in total. Drawing on leader distance theory, we hypothesized that the frequency of regular communications from supervisors overcome the increased physical distance, positively affected work engagement among remote employees. This finding was supported in two field survey studies and a daily diary study. In addition, the frequency of remote communications enhanced the supervisor’s prestige (yet not their dominance), which positively influenced employee’s work engagement. Finally, interaction frequency was particularly important for employees who had a high level of social distance (i.e., low-quality LMX) with the supervisors, suggesting that regular contact offset both the physical and social distance between supervisors and subordinates in remote workplaces during the pandemic. We discuss the implications for increasing the effectiveness of remote leadership during and beyond the pandemic.