(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

 

HONG KONG - Work from home could be a prelude to a diversity disaster. Women are likely to embrace flexible work policies offered in the post-Covid-19 new normal. If mismanaged though, the intended benefit could threaten their prospects for promotion.

Expectations of how much time will be spent in the office have changed. The average person anticipates working from home one in every four days after the pandemic, according to a December study based on surveys of some 15,000 Americans over a period of five months. Before the health crisis, the norm was one in twenty.

Women can benefit from the shift. Cutting the commute could make a career more manageable for mothers of young children, for example. Around a third of women in the United States surveyed by Pew Research last year said they would like to work from home all the time, compared with just over a fifth of men. That’s an extreme choice but, anecdotally, many senior female executives reckon flexible work has helped them succeed over the years.

Chinese technology giant Trip.com illustrates a potential pitfall, however. It found remote working boosted overall employee retention and productivity in a 2010 pilot. But executives who stayed home paid a price: they were half as likely to be promoted as those who showed up at the office five days a week. When the firm extended the experiment to its then-all 16,000 employees, many returned to their desks, citing concerns over career advancement. Stanford academic Nicholas Bloom, who co-authored the 2020 survey and facilitated Trip’s early experiments, told Breakingviews he fears that women may face a similar fate as the world shifts to new ways of working.

Employers could manage the risk by capping time at home or by making a concerted effort to reward results rather than presenteeism. Trip.com figured it out by focusing on output, and it also allows staff to appeal decisions on performance and promotion. Today, the chief executive, chief finance officer and chief operating officer of the $24 billion company are all women: in 2010, only the CFO role was held by a woman. Out of office needn’t mean out of mind.

 

CONTEXT NEWS

- Some 25% of workdays will be conducted at home, compared to 5% pre-pandemic, according to a study published in December by Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, academics at the Instituto Tecnol?gico Aut?nomo de México, Stanford University and University of Chicago. The conclusion reflects a series of surveys conducted between May and October 2020, involving 15,000 American employees.

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

(Editing by Una Galani and Sharon Lam) ((katrina.hamlin@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: katrina.hamlin.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))