The Hidden Benefits of Social Distancing in the Workplace : Social Distancing Reduces Negative Affective Relationships

Following measures to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing has been introduced in many organizations. Social distancing, however, is designed to reduce personal interactions, and thus it can impact workplace relationships. This paper explores how and when social distancing influences workplace relationships. Drawing on the affect theory of social exchange and the social cognition literature, we argue that when employees have negative affective relationships with their coworkers (before COVID-19), social distancing helps improve such negative affective relationships (during COVID-19), especially when the coworker is warm and competent. We collected data on relationships that individual employees in South Korea have with their coworkers before and after COVID-19. Our hierarchical linear modeling results show that social distancing indeed reduces the negative affective relationships that employees have with their coworkers when those coworkers are viewed as warm and competent. On the contrary, social distancing does not hurt employees’ positive affective relationships. These findings suggest that while the main purpose of social distancing is to restrict the spread of COVID-19, social distancing has important hidden benefits in organizations: it helps improve employees’ workplace relationships.