Flexible work is the new normal. And yet, adopting it may still hurt your career.
Some 58% of knowledge workers are now in hybrid working arrangements, according to a new survey of more than 10,000 workers around the world by Slack’s Future Forum. Despite the wide adoption of flexible work, executives say a top concern is possible inequity between remote and in-office employees.
Proximity bias — the idea that employees with close proximity to their leaders are seen as better workers — may affect how managers evaluate performance. And this will penalize women, people of color and working parents the most, as these groups are spending less time in the office than their peers.
84% of men work in the office all or some of the time, compared to 79% of women, according to the survey.
“Flexibility offers a lot of opportunities for equity,” said Slack’s Vice President Sheela Subramanian. “But if left completely unchecked, it could lead to inequalities when it comes to career mobility, access to opportunity and development.”
The fact that women and other underrepresented groups are choosing to work from home at a higher rate than their male peers is not surprising to Nicole Sanchez, a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant. The office environment simply didn’t work for many underrepresented groups prior to the pandemic. As a result, employees of color in particular have expressed an increased sense of belonging while working remotely.
Also, the fear that flexible work will limit career success is not new. A March 2020 survey by LinkedIn found that 52% of women felt concerned or very concerned about being judged for asking for flexible hours. What has changed is the stakes: Companies risk losing talent because of proximity bias, said Sanchez. With some 4.5 million people voluntarily leaving their jobs in 2021, leaders are acutely aware that diverse employees may head for the exits.
Leaders — who can be slow to adopt new ways of thinking — now have to figure out how to help workers thrive, regardless of how much time they spend in the office.
“People who have had great success at companies do not believe they need a new skill set,” said Sanchez. “They are using yesterday’s solutions on today’s set of problems.”
Senior leaders also may be unconsciously making the problem worse by going into the office more than their employees. 71% of executives told Slack they currently work from the office three or more days a week, compared with 63% of non-executives.
Some executives have begun to recognize this problem, and they’ve opted to make a change. Quinn Slack is the CEO of Sourcegraph, a code searching tool for developers. He decided in January 2020 to take his then 80-person company entirely remote, in part because he felt he was favoring workers who came into the office. While he doesn’t think a majority of executives are intentionally trying to penalize remote workers, Slack shared that it is challenging to not favor those who you spend more time with.
Since going fully remote, Sourcegraph has grown to 250 employees. And Slack says the company is performing better and it has become more diverse.
“The key word in proximity bias is bias,” he said. “Even well-meaning people have a bias and they don’t know how to do it better. You have to be really intentional and you look at outcomes and not time.”
To make hybrid work effective, Slack’s Subramanian says companies need to put in place guardrails beyond just the number of days workers are expected to be in the office. Slack (the company) has implemented “core team hours” where employees are expected to be online and responsive to their colleagues. And to level the playing field for those who are not in the office, if one person dials into a meeting via video conference, everyone does.
“Some people would say that prior to the pandemic, we thought we had work ‘figured out,” said Subramanian. “We were not evaluating what was working and what wasn’t as much as we should have.”
Source: Linkedin
