New data shows that people who log on from home five days a week get fewer promotions and less mentoring than people in the office
For a while, remote workers seemed to have it all: elastic waistbands, no commute, better concentration and the ability to pop in laundry loads between calls.
New data, though, shows fully remote workers are falling behind in one of the most-prized and important aspects of a career: getting promoted.
Over the past year, remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than people who worked in an office, either full-time or on a hybrid basis, according to an analysis of two million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies. Remote workers also get less mentorship, a gap that’s especially pronounced for women, research shows.
Of employees working full time in an office or on a hybrid basis, 5.6% received promotions at their organization in 2023, according to Live Data Technologies, versus 3.9% of those who worked remotely.
“There’s some proximity bias going on,” says Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University who studies remote work and management practices, of the challenges facing remote workers. “I literally call it discrimination.”
This smells pretty strongly of BS (and besides the fact it’s a WSJ article talking about worker wellbeing). Companies which are fully remote very likely show no such pattern.
Companies which are not fully remote may be a different story. However, RTO mandates tend to be indicative of other things, like real estate obligations the company has for office space. Perhaps tax credits for having a downtown office. Middle management which knows it is less useful in a remote setting. Those are the topics I would expect to hear about, but instead what we get is: RTO is here, so deal with it, and here’s some fluff that should make you feel better.
But the overarching message: in companies where there are remote workers and non-remote workers, the remotes get shafted by the non-remotes. And that isn’t surprising.