Remote Work: The Problems of Social Integration of Employees

The technological progress enables a lot of jobs to be done remotely. Nonetheless, chats, phone calls and other means of distant communication had always produced doubts of its effectiveness. Despite the employees wish to reduce their physical presence in offices, the scientists argue that the distance creates huge problems in terms of control over remote workers and building trust within teams. In this study we aim to describe the problems of social integration that people face in the process of communication with colleagues at the long distance. The theoretical basis of the research consists of the articles on communication published by the work environment researchers and sociological studies of the social integration. The empirical basis of this study consists of the analysis of 15 interviews with remote employees. We expect to find out the types of social integration of the remote workers and to identify the main problems that remote employees face.