Workplaces are Experiencing Eroding Connection, Collaboration, and Alignment and Employees Lower on the Food Chain Are Falling Behind, New NovoEd Survey Says

Two-thirds of employees feel their organization does not provide optimal support for learning new skills and expanding professional capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 16, 2022) — The shift to remote and hybrid work has resulted in “the great disconnect,” in which workers are feeling less connected to their colleagues, and employees lower on the food chain are falling behind, according to new NovoEd research released today. The survey of 500 senior management, middle management and individual contributors found that more than half (54%) reported feeling less connected than before the pandemic. 

Senior managers fared well with their interpersonal connections, with 80% feeling connected to middle managers and 74% feeling connected to individual contributors. However, the great disconnect has impacted lower level employees on the front lines of executing the organization’s strategy the most. Less than half (43%) of individual contributors and only 50% of middle managers feel connected to their senior managers.

“Leadership’s top priority is to keep their people connected and motivate people to move in the same direction toward a shared set of objectives,” said Christina Yu, Learning Technology Executive, NovoEd. “But in today’s disconnected workplace, achieving that strategic imperative is even more difficult when we’re not always in the same room.”

Eroding connections are also impacting goal alignment, the survey found. Six in ten (65%) of senior managers feel connected to their company and aligned with common goals, yet just 42% of middle managers and individual contributors feel the same.

Compounding these connection and alignment problems is the fact that two-thirds (66%) of business leaders and team members work in an organization that now requires them to collaborate with coworkers differently today than they did in 2019. This poses difficulties for organizations because they are challenged to develop, upskill and reskill their employees to not only keep up but, ideally, to surge ahead.

Learning and development (L&D) has paid the price in today’s disconnected workplace. Less than a third (31%) of all respondents feel their organization provides a great deal of support for learning new skills and expanding their professional capabilities and goals. In addition, four in ten (42%) feel their organization has not enhanced L&D over the past two-plus years. 

“Teams struggling to achieve connectedness require different ways of collaboration and learning or they will become dysfunctional,” said Yu. “The workforce needs a reboot on learning and development with a focus on deep capabilities. Remote and hybrid work itself is not the problem. The right technology can provide powerful opportunities for learners to link up and learn new skills and capabilities – both synchronously and asynchronously and at their own pace.”

About the Survey

NovoEd surveyed 500 U.S. full-time employees across three different functions: senior management, middle management and individual contributors between May and June of 2022. The survey report can be found here.

About NovoEd
Founded at Stanford’s Social Algorithms Lab in 2012, NovoEd is a capability-building platform that uses social and collaborative learning to drive performance readiness at scale. Through cohort-based experiences, NovoEd taps into collective wisdom, placing each learner at the center of perspective, application, and expertise. Large enterprises such as 3M, GE, and Nestlé partner with NovoEd to accelerate their critical initiatives, reconnect teams, and achieve rapid alignment through learning that is deeply felt and experienced and swiftly transformed into impact. Visit novoed.com to learn more.

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Beth Brody
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