For a while, remote workers seemed to have it all: elastic waistbands, no commute, better concentration and the ability to pop in laundry loads between calls.
New data, though, shows fully remote workers are falling behind in one of the most-prized and important aspects of a career: getting promoted.
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, according to an analysis of two million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies. Remote workers also get less mentorship, a gap that’s especially pronounced for women, research shows.
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.
“There’s some proximity bias going on,” says Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University who studies remote work and management practices, of the challenges facing remote workers. “I literally call it discrimination.”
In the four years since the Covid-19 pandemic upended the way Americans work, forcing companies and employees alike to grapple with what it means to collaborate, leaders and rank-and-file employees have engaged in a tug of war over return-to-office efforts. 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.
Nearly 90% of chief executives who were surveyed said that when it comes to favorable assignments, raises or promotions, they are more likely to reward employees who make an effort to come to the office. In the online survey of 1,325 CEOs of large companies in 11 countries, conducted last year by professional-services firm KPMG, almost two-thirds of respondents said they expect most employees will be working in offices full-time in another three years.
Erin Villela, 26, moved last year to Tampa, Fla., to work on a fully remote basis and be closer to her family. Since then, Villela, who works for a staffing company based near Charlotte, N.C., says she hasn’t been copied in on as many emails and has had trouble staying abreast of company news. When she was up for a promotion, she says she was passed over after being told the company wanted leadership to be in the office.
“I feel a little lost,” she says.
During one recent tricky call with a client, she missed not having a co-worker nearby to discreetly coach her through the conversation.
“I just didn’t realize the impact of not being able to grow as much, being hands-on in the office,” she adds.
Remote work can be especially costly for young women trying to build their skills, says 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 received 22% more feedback on their code than engineers who didn’t share an office with their colleagues.
The drop in feedback—delivered in the form of online comments—was more conspicuous for women, Harrington says. 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. By contrast, men working in the same building with their teams got 18% more feedback than men at other locations.
Some workers who aren’t required to do their jobs on site say they are opting for the office anyway, mindful of the impact on their careers. Marylynn Rodriguez lives in Sacramento, Calif., 130 miles from her company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, but she still goes in at least twice a week. She leaves home around 4 a.m. to beat the traffic and gets to the office 2½ hours later.
“Because I’m a little earlier on in my career, I feel like it does benefit me to show up,” says Rodriguez, 30, a technical accounting manager at Egnyte, a software company in Mountain View, Calif., adding that she also enjoys collaborating face-to-face. “I definitely have a lot more face time with leadership this way.”
As the white-collar job market has tightened, more company leaders have been vocal about the need to show up in person, with high-profile employers such as Meta Platforms and Google calling workers back to the office several days a week.
Egnyte is using badges to track attendance in several of its offices, and has asked employees within a 50-mile radius of its offices to come in three days a week. The company says that 46% of its more than 1,000 workers are assigned to offices, with the rest remote.
“People may not like it, but I can’t build a company by playing to the lowest common denominator,” says Vineet Jain, Egnyte’s chief executive. “If you don’t show up and work with the rest of your colleagues, it’s showing a lack of connectivity and a lack of ownership.”
Egnyte’s chief people officer, Dean Chabrier, says the company works to ensure fully remote employees have the same access to advancement opportunities as those living near its offices, with senior leaders making a point to meet with remote workers in other regions. At this time, attendance will not affect employees’ career prospects or development, she adds.
For Americans who are still fond of working from home, one piece of good news is that data shows no difference in promotion rates between hybrid workers and those who come to the office five days a week, says Bloom, the Stanford economist, who co-wrote a related 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research paper.
Bloom’s research has found that fully remote workers are more productive than their fully on-site peers, but because remote workers miss out on casual in-person conversations around the office, relationships suffer, and their promotion prospects tend to take a hit. Remote work tends to be a better fit for people who are already more established in their careers and have the skills and relationships to help them win promotions, Bloom and other researchers who study workplaces say.
“Three days a week is enough,” Bloom says. “You’re not out of sight and forgotten about.”
Particularly when promotions mean an elevation into management, where in-person meetings have long been the norm, remote employees can face disadvantages. At the same time, those happy with their all-remote status may also be disinclined to put their hands up for opportunities that require more of an office presence, Bloom notes.
Some fully remote workers are comfortable with the professional trade-offs. Christy Tabors, 35, says she worked remotely from Van Alstyne, a small town outside Dallas, as a contractor for Meta in user experience until she was laid off last spring. She says staying close to her family matters more than the ability to get ahead.
“If I can make enough money to pay my bills and have a balanced life for me and my kid, I’m fine doing that,” she says. Tabors now works remotely for a financial-services company.
Remote workers exhibit higher levels of overall well-being, says Ben Wigert, director of research for Gallup’s workplace-management practice. Twenty-three percent of remote workers report feeling very often or always burned out at work, compared with 28% of hybrid workers and 31% of fully on-site employees, Gallup’s data finds.
Write to Te-Ping Chen at Te-ping.Chen@wsj.com