Connecting work teams in a remote workplace: an identity leadership perspective.

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift towards remote and hybrid working practices is currently taking place in organizations worldwide. This transition creates an important challenge for workplace management to ensure that remotely working employees feel connected to their team, and the organization at large, despite the loss of frequent in-person, face-to-face interactions. We propose that identity leadership behaviours from workplace supervisors are key to ensuring such feelings of connectedness among remotely working employees. We conducted two studies among working adults in the United Kingdom to demonstrate the importance of identity leadership in a remote working context. Our first study showed that employees preferred identity leadership behaviours from their supervisors more in a remote versus an on-site working context. Results of our second study showed that identity leadership behaviours mitigate against the detrimental consequences of remote working on team connectedness and on various work-related outcomes for employees, such as their work engagement, job satisfaction, work stress and absenteeism. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings as well as directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]