Twenty-eight percent of people working remotely feel a connection to their employers’ mission or purpose, the lowest level since the pandemic, a new Gallup poll has found.

Thirty-three percent of those who worked in the office full time reported feeling engaged at work, slightly more than in 2022. The highest proportion of workers who said that their companies’ mission made them feel their jobs were important, 35 percent, was among those with a hybrid schedule.

The findings are from a survey this spring and summer of nearly 9,000 U.S. workers whose jobs can be done remotely, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Many employees’ relationships with their employers are becoming increasingly 'gig-like' and less loyal—which has possible implications on customer and employee retention, productivity, and quality of work,” Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup, wrote as part of his summary of the poll's findings.

A recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey found that a majority of business leaders reported “positive impacts of remote work on employee retention, and roughly half noted that offering remote work helped with recruiting.” Workplace culture, cohesiveness, communication, and training and mentoring of employees were found to be the four areas that suffered from remote work.

“People are a little bit more prone to drift to other employment, feeling less attached to the workplace,” said Howard Liu, chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in an interview with the Journal. At his the medical center, clinicians can work several days each week from home and see patients virtually.

Liu noted that there's a risk that senior faculty may not think to include junior colleagues on presentations or projects if they don’t run into them in person. This concern was echoed by Harter, who told the Journal that most professional roles tacitly include additional functions such as mentoring others or spurring innovation.

“That’s much more likely to happen if they feel they’re part of something significant,” he said. 

Companies are learning to adapt their management techniques when it comes to remote work forces. Using data such as internal research on in-person work and employee surveys, Microsoft, where one quarter of teams now work together in the same location, has made some useful discoveries. One is that new hires who meet their manager in person during their first 90 days are more likely to ask colleagues for feedback and say they are comfortable discussing problems with managers. In addition, these workers are more apt to say that their colleagues ask them for input to inform decisions or solve problems. 

“Think about social connection as a battery—you need to charge that battery every once in a while,” said Dawn Klinghoffer, Microsoft's vice president for human-resources business insights, in an interview with the Journal.

To learn more about telecommuting benefits and issues after COVID-19, attend the Foundation for Accounting Education's Queens/Brooklyn: Telecommuting After COVID and Recent NYS Residency Issues Tech Session Webinar on Sept. 19.