The last three years have been a learning race for companies and employees to see if the teleworking or in-person format fits better into their production infrastructure. The studies carried out and the data obtained are not conclusive with any of them, which has caused many companies to opt for the best of systems with hybrid work.
However, the results of a survey of 1,190 remote, in-person and hybrid employees reveal that the social distance bias prevails among managers in 2023.
Employees who go to offices tend to be promoted more easily than those who work remotely. “We’ve seen since the advent of the proliferation of remote work, that managers have struggled and often still struggle with how to manage this new workforce,” says Stacie Haller, senior career advisor at Resume Builder.
Less travel, fewer rewards. The Resume Builder survey was conducted on 417 remote workers, 567 hybrid workers, and 206 fully in-office workers. The responses collected reveal that both in-person workers and those who complete hybrid work schedules have more options to receive a promotion or salary increase than those employees who telework.
According to the data collected, 42% of respondents who teleworked in 2023 received a promotion in their job, compared to 54% who received it with a hybrid model or 55% who obtained it working from the office. This means 24% less likely to be promoted when teleworking compared to employees who do so in person.
The difference in percentages grows when we talk about salary increases, where 67% of teleworkers received a salary increase in 2023, compared to 83% of workers with hybrid work hours and 79% of those who went to the office daily.
Schedule flexibility is key to well-being. The study provides data on the effectiveness of teleworking as a tool to attract and retain talent, with positive data in terms of employee satisfaction and well-being.
Employees who go to the office daily are three times more likely to be unhappy at work than those who work from home. The data reveals that only 11% of teleworkers report being unhappy at their job, compared to 37% of employees who work from the office.
The figures on the feeling of stress are also reduced when working from home, where 30% of employees confess to being very stressed, compared to 43% of employees who work in person.
In-person employees are more likely to change jobs. Stress is a determining factor in talent retention. At that point, teleworking has an advantage. The data collected by the survey reveals that 92% of the teleworkers questioned have responded that they are happy with their current job, compared to 52% of in-person employees who affirm that they will probably look for a new job in 2024.
Managers’ social distance bias persists. In a recent article we talked about the cognitive biases that led some managers to impose a return to the office without data for or against supporting it, even when this implied an added economic cost for the company.
The data from this survey on the tendency to promote or reward those close to one more does nothing more than confirm the existence of a social distance bias between managers and intermediate positions.
This cognitive bias reinforces trust between people with whom there is close physical contact, creating relationships of stronger trust than with those who work remotely. As happens with ‘Zoom Fatigue’, the human brain cannot capture non-verbal language and microgestures in the same way through a screen, so the same results are not achieved through a screen that faces to face.