Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
PLoS One. 2024 May 15;19(5):e0303307. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303307. eCollection 2024.
Work from home (WFH) has been a part of the professional landscape for over two decades, yet it was the COVID-19 pandemic that has substantially increased its prevalence. The impact of WFH on careers is rather ambiguous, and a question remains open about how this effect is manifested in the current times considering the recent extensive and widespread use of WFH during the pandemic. To answer these questions, this article investigates whether managerial preferences for promotion, salary increase and training allowance depend on employee engagement in WFH. We take into account the employee's gender, parental status as well as the frequency of WFH. Furthermore, we examine whether managers' experience with WFH and its prevalence in the team moderate the effect of WFH on careers. An online survey experiment was run on a sample of over 1,000 managers from the United Kingdom. The experiment was conducted between July and December 2022. The findings indicate that employees who WFH are less likely to be considered for promotion, salary increase and training than on-site workers. The pay and promotion penalties for WFH are particularly true for men (both fathers and non-fathers) and childless women, but not mothers. We also find that employees operating in teams with a higher prevalence of WFH do not experience negative career effects when working from home. Additionally, the more WFH experience the manager has, the lesser the career penalty for engaging in this mode of working. Our study not only provides evidence on WFH and career outcomes in the post-pandemic context but also furthers previous understanding of how WFH impacts careers by showing its effect across different groups of employees, highlighting the importance of familiarisation and social acceptance of flexible working arrangements in their impact on career outcomes.
居家办公（WFH）已经成为专业领域二十多年的一部分，但正是 COVID-19 大流行使其普及度大大提高。WFH 对职业发展的影响相当模糊，考虑到最近在大流行期间广泛而广泛地使用 WFH，目前仍存在一个问题，即这种影响是如何表现出来的。为了回答这些问题，本文研究了经理对晋升、加薪和培训津贴的偏好是否取决于员工参与 WFH。我们考虑了员工的性别、父母身份以及 WFH 的频率。此外，我们还研究了经理的 WFH 经验及其在团队中的流行程度是否会调节 WFH 对职业的影响。我们在英国的一个由 1000 多名经理组成的样本上进行了在线调查实验。实验于 2022 年 7 月至 12 月进行。调查结果表明，与现场工作的员工相比，居家办公的员工不太可能被考虑晋升、加薪和培训。对于男性（无论是父亲还是非父亲）和没有孩子的女性来说，WFH 的薪酬和晋升惩罚尤其严重，但对母亲则不然。我们还发现，在 WFH 流行程度较高的团队中工作的员工，在家工作时不会经历负面的职业影响。此外，经理的 WFH 经验越多，从事这种工作模式的职业惩罚就越小。我们的研究不仅提供了大流行后 WFH 和职业结果的证据，还通过展示 WFH 对不同员工群体的职业发展的影响，进一步加深了对 WFH 如何影响职业发展的理解，突出了熟悉和接受灵活工作安排对职业结果的重要性。
