The Disconnect Between Remote Workers and Their Companies Is Getting Bigger

People who work from home are feeling more disconnected from the larger mission of their employers.

In a new Gallup survey, the share of remote workers who said they felt a connection to the purpose of their organisations fell to 28% from 32% in 2022—the lowest level since before the pandemic. The findings are from a survey this spring and summer of nearly 9,000 U.S. workers whose jobs can be done remotely.

By contrast, a third of full-time office workers reported a similar sense of connection, nearly the same as last year. Hybrid workers clocked in highest, with 35% saying their companies’ mission made them feel their jobs were important.

The findings have broader implications for businesses worried about remote work’s effects on employee loyalty and team productivity. For now, many workers say remote work affords them the ability to focus on their essential duties and avoid some of the extracurriculars of office life. This leaves it to companies to try to foster that sense of connection.

In short, more remote workers appear to be approaching their jobs with “a gig-worker mentality,” fulfilling the basic responsibilities of the role rather than anticipating the broader needs of their team or company, said Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup, which has tracked worker engagement since 2000. Most professional roles, he points out, tacitly include expectations that go beyond the actual work, 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.

Despite the lack of connection, the Gallup survey showed 38% of people who work remotely full- or part-time are engaged, or enthused about their work, compared with 34% of in-office workers.

The conflicting metrics show bosses don’t have any easy answers as they try to provide flexible working arrangements yet fret about worker productivity. Nearly 30% of U.S. workers in remote-capable jobs work exclusively at home, according to Gallup, a share that hasn’t wavered much in the past year. One reason they score higher in Gallup’s engagement metrics than their office peers is that they say they have a clear idea of what’s expected of them.

Many managers are unsatisfied with the current setup. In a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey of business leaders released this month, the majority said remote work helped in recruiting employees yet worsened workplace culture, team cohesion and mentorship.

“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, where clinicians can work several days each week from home and see patients virtually.

There’s also 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, Liu said. His department now plans large outdoor events each quarter and recently rolled out smaller-group meals, where about 10 colleagues—from clinicians to receptionists—sign up to eat together. The department foots the bill.

Companies are fine-tuning how they manage their remote workforces, adding more virtual check-ins and team-building activities. Some are also bringing them together physically at more critical moments in their work with their teams.

Mr. Cooper, a Dallas-based mortgage lender and servicer, introduced a “home-centric” work model last year, letting staff still mostly work at home while having them come into the office occasionally. But as mortgage rates climbed and business got tougher, the lender’s sales managers asked their teams to come in one to three days a week, said Kelly Ann Doherty, its chief administrative officer.

The managers felt on-site work would help team members learn more from each other, improve individual performance and feel more invested in the organization, she said. It’s paid off: Productivity has improved, and the teams have closed more deals since, she said.

At Microsoft, just over a quarter of teams work together in the same location, compared with 61% of them pre pandemic. The company is now using data from internal research on in-person work and employee surveys to guide managers on when it’s most effective to work face-to-face.

One early finding is that new hires who meet their manager in person in the first 90 days are more likely to ask colleagues for feedback and say they are comfortable discussing problems with managers. These workers are also more likely to say that their teammates ask them for input to inform decisions or solve problems, Microsoft said.

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

Chip makers are fighting to assure investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is racing forward. Wall Street might not believe it until Nvidia’s NVDA -0.98%decrease; down pointing triangle Jensen Huang says so.

When Huang steps up to the mic for his company’s earnings call Wednesday, he will have the world’s attention. What he says about Nvidia’s present will preview the future of AI, dictate the path forward for a tech-crazed stock market and influence an American economy increasingly tethered to hopes that the boom won’t go bust.

The $5 trillion chip maker has provided the key building blocks for AI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 set off a race for dominance among OpenAI, Anthropic and established Silicon Valley giants. Now, as Nvidia backstops sprawling data-center projects and an exotic money pipeline to boost chip demand, the company’s influence is arguably bigger than ever.

But there are signs of trouble ahead. Political pushback to AI is growing. A bond selloff propelled borrowing costs to their highest levels in years. The hyperscalers that include some of Nvidia’s key customers—once cash-printing machines—are relying more on debt. OpenAI recently told investors its revenue rose by a tepid 18% in the second quarter while its losses deepened.

Nvidia is increasingly stepping in to shore up potential weak points across the market. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan, pledging to backstop lending to customers that can’t afford its chips otherwise. The chip maker last week also took a stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which arranges power for data centers, and struck a $6 billion deal with startup Poolside aimed at developing a powerful open-weight AI model.

After watching shares in other chip makers and the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies swing wildly in recent months, Wall Street is hoping Nvidia can beat expectations—again. The countdown is on.

“It’s kind of becoming more and more like the World Cup final than the Super Bowl at this point,” said Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. “It’s just gotten to be that big.”

The company has smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for each of the 14 quarters since the AI boom kicked into high gear. Nvidia posted 210% annual growth in net income in its last three-month period, according to FactSet, making Wall Street’s 126% projection look pedestrian.

Expectations for a blowout second quarter have risen rapidly over the course of this year. All Nvidia will have to do to beat this target: outrun 95% annual earnings growth to more than $51.5 billion. Analysts project the chip maker will report record sales of $92 billion for the period, up from a forecast of $78 billion at the start of this year.

In July, big-tech earnings sparked volatility. Concerns about runaway capital spending spread across the sector after Alphabet’s and Tesla’s results, driving a $890 billion wipeout that contributed to the unwind of hedge fund Situational Awareness. Microsoft posted the largest one-day gain in market capitalization by any company, ever, after a quarter proving that it could still show investors the money. SpaceX rocketed higher after a record-breaking initial public offering, only to see $1 trillion in value evaporate.

Surging memory prices and borrowing costs have fueled fears that those and other companies will be unable to keep plowing more money into supplies including Nvidia chips. Shaia Hosseinzadeh, founder of OnyxPoint Global Management, has recently bought dips in AI-infrastructure stocks when Wall Street has strained to absorb massive debt issued by Silicon Valley.

“The macro data is really quite robust,” he said. “Of course, there’s a level at which everything breaks.”

Investors have kept pumping money into the AI trade despite concerns around chip consumers—and to the benefit of chip producers. That is why Nvidia’s outlook for semiconductor demand could send ripples through counterparts such as Micron Technology and Sandisk, developers of the data centers in which their chips reside, and a supply chain of power producers, contractors and other specialists that underpin the globe-spanning AI build-out.

“We joke internally that we’re all Nvidia analysts now,” said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

The irony is that investors have tended to sell Nvidia stock immediately after blockbuster earnings, with shares falling each trading session after its four past quarterly reports. Some are betting that will be the case this time around, too.

The options market is pricing in a 5.3% swing, higher or lower, in Nvidia shares during the session following earnings, according to Option Research & Technology Services. That is higher than the 4.8% average move in Nvidia’s stock over the last 12 months after the company reports quarterly results.

In recent days, some of the most actively traded Nvidia options have been put contracts tied to the stock falling from its Friday value of $214.75 to $205 and $210 apiece, according to Cboe Global Markets data. Put options give the right to sell a stock by a set price and typically represent a bearish wager.

Many analysts remain optimistic. Frank Lee, global head of tech hardware and semiconductor research at HSBC Global Investment Research, recently raised his price target for Nvidia shares to $360 from $325, citing, among other things, Nvidia’s strategic partnerships with suppliers and its role as a top contributor to open-source AI.

The Disconnect Between Remote Workers and Their Companies Is Getting Bigger

More people who work from home say they don’t feel a connection to the mission of their employers

Nvidia’s earnings will test Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom.