SANTA BARBARA, Calif.–With credit unions having adopted a number of different work requirements post-COVID, new data indicates fully remote workers are falling behind in one of the most-prized and important aspects of a career: getting promoted.
CUToday.info had separate reporting here sharing one person’s view on how the new work environment is playing out in credit unions.
According to an analysis of two-million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies, 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.
The gap is especially pronounced for women, the research shows, according to the company and the Wall Street Journal.
The research found 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.
‘Proximity Bias’
“There’s some proximity bias going on,” Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University who studies remote work and management practices, of the challenges facing remote workers, told the Wall Street Journal. “I literally call it discrimination.”
The Journal noted that while many workplaces have adopted hybrid policies or reverted to a fully in-person approach, nearly 20% of all employees with college degrees or higher still work on a fully remote basis, according to December data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
‘Especially Costly’
According to the report, remote work can be especially costly for young women trying to build their skills. Emma Harrington, an assistant economics professor at the University of Virginia, who recently co-wrote a paper that found software engineers at a Fortune 500 company who worked in the same building as their teammates, said engineers who worked on-site received 22% more feedback on their code than engineers who didn’t share an office with their colleagues.
Female engineers who worked in the same building as their teams got 40% more comments on their code than women engineers who weren’t on the premises, Harrington told the Journal. By contrast, men working in the same building with their teams got 18% more feedback than men at other locations.
Some Good News
The Journal noted there is one piece of good news, which is the data show no difference in promotion rates between hybrid workers and those who come to the office five days a week, according to research conducted by Stanford University.
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