In what is one of the first major studies to demonstrate the professional downside of remote work, remote workers may be paying a hidden professional penalty for that flexibility, according to a working paper, "The Power of Proximity to Coworkers," by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the University of Iowa and Harvard University, The New York Times reported.

The study measured one form of interaction at one technology firm, but its authors said their findings have broader implications for white-collar knowledge workers, because the office plays an important role in early-career development. The mentorship and training that people get in person is not the same as that obtained online.

“Remote work … increases output today, particularly from more senior workers. But, it decreases collaboration and training of more junior workers,” the study stated. “Young workers and women, who may feel less included at the firm to begin with, see a particularly large decrease in their ability to collaborate with other workers and they quit more often in response.”

“We find a now-versus-later trade-off associated with remote work,” co-author Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Iowa, told the Times. “Particularly for junior engineers who are new to this particular firm, and younger engineers, they receive less feedback from their senior colleagues when they’re remote.”

The Times interviewed several employees at Verkada, a Bay Area-based technology company that called its workers back into the office five days a week. One of them, Morgan Shapiro, while working at another company, had struggled to manage her team remotely once the pandemic forced employees to work from home. She noted that when she started at Verkada and was back in an office, the relationships she forged through regular interactions with co-workers helped with productivity.

For those who still want the flexibility of remote work, the cost may be more than missing out on promotions or salary increases. “When you’re remote, you’re out of sight, out of mind,” Jackiez Gonzalez, who works in social impact for Best Buy, told the Times. She said that she had been accidentally left off the invitation list for a mentoring program for which she had signed up.

But remote work has benefits for employers, particularly for those with child care responsibilities. A majority of women and men surveyed by remote job search site FlexJobs found that majorities would consider looking for a new job if they could no longer work remotely, and said that better work-life balance was a benefit of remote work.

“Employee sentiment on remote work is crystal clear,” Reyhan Ayas, senior economist at Revelio Labs, which collects and analyzes job postings, layoff notices and other work force data, told the Times. “Employees, if they are able to work from home, would like to work from home.”

Companies have tried to accommodate their own and their employees’ needs by instituting hybrid models, but that model has its drawbacks: the absence of what the paper calls the “power of proximity.”

“If you have even one remote teammate, that can still result in less collaboration between the remaining teammates,” co-author Natalia Emanuel, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist, told the Times.

Shapiro of Verkada told the Times that being in the office had made her a more critical manager. “When I came in as a manager, I was everybody’s biggest cheerleader,” she said. “What I struggled with is having tough conversations.” Now, she said, she was more comfortable with discussing with 19 sales representatives how they can improve.