There are few silver linings to be found in the last 20 months. But one bright spot has been the expansion of remote work as an option. It has had an impact on everything from traffic congestion to worker satisfaction. The flexibility remote work offers is also a boon to companies competing for workers. However, as companies expand their work-from-home policies, they need to be mindful of how it can affect office culture and promotions.
In an article for the New York Times’ “Dealbook,” Sarah Kessler writes that there is the potential for a new form of bias to appear, one that favors workers who choose to attend work in person. In interviews with experts, workers, HR managers and executives at companies including Zillow, Kessler lays out how this bias might affect workers.
For example, in a traditional office setting, when a meeting ends, many attendees may continue the meeting informally at their desks, over lunch or after work. Some of this facetime invariably is with people who have the power to affect promotions. But, when a meeting is a video conference in which some are working from home and others who are in an office, those who are remote do not have the opportunity to put in the requisite facetime and may not stick out to managers when it’s promotion time.
It’s too early to assume that this is going to be the case, and some companies are already considering ways to eliminate this missing interaction or prevent the scenarios where remote workers are passed over for choosing to work from home. Zillow and Salesforce, for example, are eliminating in-person meetings all together. Thus, even if workers are in the office, they will still attend meetings from their desks. Other companies are trying to find ways to facilitate digital “water cooler” moments.
