With many asked to return to full-time, in-person office work, now is the time to ask if there should be a difference between the career trajectory of those who are able and willing to comply and those who can’t or won’t.
Equal Opportunities?
A company with a strict back-to-office mandate said employees within 1.5 hours from the office must return in person three days per week. It was such a rigid mandate that even decades-long employees, who would retire within a few years, were pressured to follow the mandate. I was told this requirement likely hastened the departure of some of these employees.
Yet this same company promoted a person to the head of their department who was wholly remote. They had always been remote, so they hadn’t refused to return to the office. Yet, I still wondered what message it sends when in-person work is prioritized, but a wholly remote employee is promoted to a leadership position. At this same company, an employee who worked the office before the pandemic but became wholly remote afterward was made president of a large business unit. In this scenario, you have two layers of leadership enforcing a back-to-office mandate that does not apply to themselves.
Does Showing Up Still Matter?
When I started my career, I was loathe to travel even locally if it could be avoided. I did an internship at a newspaper in Florida one summer, and my supervisor remarked on my reluctance to leave the office. I was a weak driver who got lost easily, so the idea of having to drive around an area where I didn’t grow up, risking getting lost and in an accident was too much for my anxiety-ridden self. I did push past my fears to drive most places on my own to cover stories in person, but my hesitancy to do so was a strong mark against me.
Fast-forward more than 25 years later and there’s nearly no in-person event I would say no to. I love being in person with colleagues and experiencing the industries I cover while there, rather than watching via a livestream.
I returned to travel for conferences and events the minute they resumed during the pandemic. The mark against me all those years ago for hesitancy to travel wouldn’t necessarily happen today.
The employee I mentioned above who got promoted to a departmental leadership position despite being wholly remote does not travel easily—frequently getting sick after arriving, or in more recent times, not traveling at all due to physical challenges. Health struggles aside, they were never excited to travel. They appeared to view it as a chore rather than an opportunity to interact and have fun with peers and industry friends.
How Well Do You Know a Person Who Is Not in Office?
What is the value of the relationships you build when you are consistently in person in an office with peers? If you are unable or unwilling to do this part of the job, should an organization weigh that inability against you when you are up for a promotion? Sometimes a person’s true character is lost behind a video call screen.
The remote employee who traveled as a chore did once travel enough for me to spend significant time with them on the road. I thought I knew them and considered them to be a good, ethical person. Our shared boss at the time felt the same. Neither of us, however, had spent consistent in-person time with them.
It turned out this was not a good person, but one who acted unethically after being promoted into their new role, using their power as manager to remove an employee under them who they viewed as a rival. It’s possible we would not have perceived these negative traits even if we had been in the office consistently with this person, but it’s much easier to pretend to be other than you are when live performances are rare.
Does working in person versus remotely matter in your organization when deciding which employees to promote?