Hybrid work has become a fixture of modern office life, with many employees splitting their weeks between home and the office. But something subtle shifts when the workday moves from a shared floor to a home desk: the impromptu chats near the coffee machine, the quick catch-ups in the hallway, the “how was your weekend?” exchanged while waiting for a meeting to start. A new study in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology examines what happens to employees’ sense of connection and recognition when those small moments disappear, and what organizations can do to bring some of them back.
The question behind the research
Prior work has suggested that remote days can leave employees feeling less included, but the day-to-day mechanics of why that happens have been less clear. Vera M. Schweitzer of the University of Konstanz and colleagues from institutions in Germany and the United States set out to trace the process step by step. Their central question: how, exactly, does the choice between working from home and working at the office ripple through a person’s social experience during the day?
The team drew on interaction ritual theory, a sociological framework developed by Randall Collins. The theory proposes that people gain a sense of energy and connection from routine social encounters. These encounters do not need to be deep or meaningful in content; even brief, superficial exchanges count, as long as they involve mutual attention, physical closeness, and a shared rhythm. Small talk fits this description well.
The researchers also examined an outcome that goes beyond generic well-being. They looked at what psychologists call social need fulfillment, which breaks into two parts: belongingness (feeling accepted as part of a group) and uniqueness (feeling that others notice and value what makes you distinct). Both are considered building blocks of workplace inclusion.
How the studies worked
The team ran two experience sampling studies, in which employees filled out short surveys multiple times each day for a stretch of consecutive workdays. This approach captures how experiences fluctuate within the same person from day to day, rather than comparing different people.
In the first study, 119 full-time hybrid workers in the United Kingdom completed two daily surveys across five workdays, generating 528 daily observations. Participants reported their work location for the day, how much small talk they had with coworkers in the morning, and how energized they felt after work interactions in the afternoon. In a baseline survey, they also rated the extent to which their organization built informal social exchanges into virtual meetings, using a scale the researchers developed for this purpose (sample items included statements about routinely checking in with each other or looking out for one another during virtual meetings).
The second study extended the design to 171 full-time hybrid workers in Germany, who completed three daily surveys across ten workdays, producing 1,518 daily observations. This study added measures of daily belongingness and uniqueness at work, so the team could follow the chain from work location all the way to social need fulfillment.
The researchers also controlled for factors that might offer alternative explanations, including morning mood, time spent interacting with coworkers, day of the week, and interruptions from coworkers (which tend to drop on remote days and could be considered a benefit of working from home).
What the daily data revealed
On days when employees worked from home, they reported noticeably less small talk with coworkers than on days when they went to the office. This was one of the largest effects in the study. Fewer small-talk moments were linked in turn to lower “relational energy,” meaning the sense of being invigorated by interactions with colleagues.
In the second study, this chain kept going. On remote days, employees felt less of a sense of belongingness at work, and less of a sense that their unique contributions were being recognized, and both patterns ran through the same sequence: reduced small talk, followed by reduced relational energy.
The researchers also checked whether the drop in small talk was offset by other benefits of remote work. Remote days did come with fewer coworker interruptions, and fewer interruptions were linked to a modest gain in feeling recognized as an individual. But when they added up the pluses and minuses, the social costs of remote days outweighed the benefits. The net indirect effects on both belongingness and uniqueness were negative.
A supplementary analysis in the first study also considered whether small talk with people outside of work, such as family members or people at a coffee shop, might fill the gap. Remote days did bring more of that kind of casual conversation, but it did not translate into relational energy at work. The energizing effect appeared to come specifically from coworker interactions.
Where virtual meetings come in
The researchers were also interested in whether organizations could soften the social hit of remote days. They focused on what they call social virtual meeting rituals: routine practices during virtual meetings that make space for informal exchanges, such as reserving a few minutes at the start to check in with each other or asking about non-work life.
In both studies, these rituals reduced the drop in small talk associated with remote days. Employees whose organizations regularly built these check-ins into virtual meetings still experienced fewer small-talk moments on remote days than on office days, but the gap was smaller. That, in turn, translated into a smaller loss of relational energy and a smaller dip in belongingness and uniqueness.
The authors interpret this as evidence that fairly simple, low-effort practices can help compensate for the spontaneous chatter that office life provides. They contrast these low-key rituals with more elaborate corporate attempts at bonding, such as company holiday parties, which other research has suggested can sometimes generate negative reactions from employees.
What it might mean for hybrid workplaces
For employees, the findings suggest that aligning work location with the day’s demands may be worthwhile. Days built around focused, uninterrupted work might be well suited to remote settings, while days when connection with colleagues matters more may benefit from time in the office. That kind of matching, of course, requires that employers give employees real discretion over where they work.
For managers, the authors point to the value of building small, routine social moments into virtual meetings, rather than relying on stand-alone virtual coffee chats or lunches, which they note can feel forced. The idea is to weave connection into the rhythm of existing meetings rather than adding new events to the calendar.
For organizations thinking about office design, the study offers indirect support for spaces that make casual encounters easier: kitchens, lounges, and communal areas that give small talk somewhere to happen.
Caveats worth noting
The researchers are explicit that their design is observational, not experimental. Employees were not randomly assigned to remote or office days, so unmeasured factors that vary from day to day could still play a role in the patterns observed. The within-person design rules out stable personal differences as explanations, but not day-specific circumstances.
The studies were also conducted between 2022 and 2024, a period when hybrid work was still stabilizing after pandemic-era disruptions. The authors suggest that baseline levels of small talk and social connection could shift as hybrid norms continue to evolve, though they expect the within-person patterns to hold.
The team also notes a conceptual limitation in how they measured virtual meeting rituals. Their scale captures whether informal exchanges are routinely prioritized, but not whether those exchanges involve the mutual focus, shared mood, and rhythmic coordination that interaction ritual theory identifies as the ingredients of a true ritual. Future work, they suggest, could observe whether these check-ins actually produce the collective energy the theory describes, or whether their benefits come from something simpler, like just having a scheduled opportunity to talk.
