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Remote Workers Are Less Likely to Be Promoted Than In-Office Counterparts

Published Mon Mar 29 2021

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While remote work seems appealing for many—and indeed, most would like to continue working remotely after the pandemic is a distant memory—there is one drawback that many may be unaware of. In a hybrid work model where some employees are working from home while others are going into the office, it’s significantly harder for the remote worker to get promoted. It’s a simple case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind in most instances, and this phenomenon has been studied long before COVID-19 was a household name. A 2015 study conducted in China found that while remote workers were more productive, they weren’t promoted at the same rates. “It was striking that promotion rates plummeted,” says Nicholas A. Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford and the study’s lead author. “It was roughly half the promotion rate, compared to those in the office.” Ioana Cristea, a Zürich-based remote-work expert, says this tendency is a type of unconscious bias. “People are not necessarily doing this on purpose, but even though on some level I know the person at home is working just as hard as the person working in the office, \[the remote employee’s\] name’s not in my mind when I’m making a decision about who gets the promotion,” she says. “Visibility plays a super important role in the way we get ahead.”

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