Colleagues at one professional services firm opened up after going remote, a management scholar reports
In 275 interviews and about 330 hours of observation at one firm, a management scholar found colleagues more open after it went mostly remote. The study covers a single professional services company, so it documents one case.
The Scientist · Science desk
Key figures: most staff the author followed at one professional services firm worked from home four or five days a week. As of August 2026, 36% of U.S. workers in management, professional and related jobs did some work from home, per BLS. The study drew on 275 interviews.
| Figure | Value | Note | Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days a week at home, most staff followed, at least | 4 days a week | four or five days a week | 3 |
| U.S. management, professional workers, some work at home | 36% | as of August 2026, per BLS | 16 |
| Interviews in the study | 275 interviews | 1 |
What happened
- Most people in the groups the author followed ended up working from home four or five days a week and joining meetings by video.
- Before the shift, the author found people mainly saw one another as work colleagues and sometimes felt uncomfortable sharing parts of their lives that might limit their ability to work.
- Once remote, people told the author they learned more about one another through children yelling in the background, pets crossing the camera and a spouse stopping to say hello on screen.
- Over time, remote work seemed to improve psychological safety for many of these coworkers, the author writes.
- In one case the author reports, a colleague called Brooke took over tasks she and a coworker had planned to do together after his father fell ill.
Why it matters
- What doesn't add up contradiction The author assumed, as many prominent researchers of workplace relationships predict, that leaving the office would break social ties. The interviews at this firm pointed the other way.
- Who has to decide decision A return-to-office policy justified by lost closeness rests on a premise that a peer-reviewed study, by the author's account, contradicts at one firm.
- What it sets up precedent Publication in Organization Science puts a documented counterexample in the literature, and later studies can test it against firms that stayed in the office.
The design is the study's strongest feature. The author, writing on Phys.org, was already studying the firm before the pandemic began, then followed its staff from mostly in-person to mostly remote work through 2024 [2]. That gives a before and after in one workplace.
The baseline is specific. One worker, Patrick, feared letting colleagues know he couldn't stay late one evening because he was helping his mom; the author says every name in the piece is a pseudonym [7]. Tamara, an exhausted parent of two young children who was still commuting regularly, said: "Even though you didn't sleep last night, you're expected to show up and smile and be fine" [6].
After the move, the home came into view. Tamara told the author: "Everyone has noises in the background, or they have something going on or whatever, and so we get to know each other quicker and on a deeper level than we would otherwise" [9]. Leah said people became "less afraid to talk about the interface of their personal and professional lives" [13]. She added that in the past, nobody would have offered up that a breakup was getting to them and that they needed a day off to decompress [14].
We think the plausible explanation is that video moves the first disclosure from the person to the background. Nobody has to volunteer anything for a child to wander into frame. In some cases the closeness reached people who had known each other for years [10]. That weakens the simplest alternative, that new teammates were just getting acquainted.
The author defines psychological safety as "the sense that you can take an interpersonal risk at work, such as admitting a mistake, asking for help or raising a problem, without being judged negatively" [11]. The evidence for it here is what people said and what the author observed.
The piece does not say how many people the 275 interviews covered or whether a comparison firm stayed in the office [1]. The thing this design can't separate is remote work from the years it happened in. Remote work surged during the COVID-19 pandemic [17], and the study window spans that period [2]. We would take the result as a well-documented case at this firm, with the general claim waiting on comparison firms.
Scale matters too. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in August 2026, 36% of American workers in management, professional and related occupations worked from home for at least part of their work [16]. That figure counts anyone with any home work. The firm's staff sat near the intensive end of that range, so the result speaks least directly to teams that come in most days [3].
What to watch
- The Organization Science paper itself, for the number of participants behind the 275 interviews and whether any in-office firm served as a comparison.
- Follow-up studies at firms that went hybrid or stayed in the office, to see whether the same shift in disclosure appears.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption36
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
The study included 275 interviews and about 330 hours of observation.
- [2]
Before the pandemic began, the author was studying a professional services company and followed its staff as they moved from primarily working in person to mostly remote through 2024.
- [3]
Most people in the groups the author followed ended up working from home four or five days a week, joining meetings by video.
- [4]
The author assumed, consistent with the predictions of many prominent researchers of workplace relationships, that moving people out of the office would break down social connections, and found that assumption wrong.
- [5]
In the office, before the shift to remote work, people primarily viewed one another as work colleagues rather than whole people, and workers sometimes said they felt uncomfortable sharing aspects of their lives that might limit their ability to do work.
- [6]
"Even though you didn't sleep last night, you're expected to show up and smile and be fine," said Tamara, an exhausted parent with two young children, when she was still commuting regularly to the office.
- [7]
One worker, Patrick, was afraid to tell his colleagues he could not work late one night because he was helping his mom; all names mentioned are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people involved and their employer.
- [8]
People told the author they learned a lot more about one another once they began working remotely, including children yelling in the background, pets wandering in front of cameras, and a spouse arriving home who stopped to say hello on screen.
- [9]
"Everyone has noises in the background, or they have something going on or whatever, and so we get to know each other quicker and on a deeper level than we would otherwise," Tamara told the author.
- [10]
In some cases, the increased sense of closeness happened to people who had known each other for years before switching to remote work.
- [11]
Psychological safety is the sense that you can take an interpersonal risk at work, such as admitting a mistake, asking for help or raising a problem, without being judged negatively.
- [12]
Over time, working remotely seemed to improve psychological safety for many of these coworkers.
- [13]
People became "less afraid to talk about the interface of their personal and professional lives," Leah said.
- [14]
Before the shift, Leah added, no one would have volunteered that a breakup was affecting them and that they needed a day off to decompress.
- [15]
When one worker's father fell ill, his colleague, Brooke, took over the tasks the two had planned to do together.
- [16]
As of August 2026, 36% of American workers in management, professional and related occupations did at least some of their work from home.
- [17]
Meetings that use Zoom and similar software are a fixture of remote work, which surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains prevalent.
- [18]
The findings were peer-reviewed and will be published in an upcoming issue of the management journal Organization Science.
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Sources
1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.
- phys.orgRemote work made these colleagues more open with each other, not less
1 article · October 16, 2026
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Topics
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Entities
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- The ConversationFollow
- US Bureau of Labor StatisticsFollow
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