Study on teleworking | Women more deprived of mentoring?

Teleworking doesn’t just offer benefits for women: a new study shows that for a young IT woman, working remotely cuts in half the mentoring received from more experienced IT workers. This impact of teleworking almost does not exist for men.

“We were surprised by the intensity of the teleworking effect,” explained Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia who published her study last fall on the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) website. . “It was far from obvious that teleworking would disadvantage women in this way. One would even think that it would have diminished the importance of the boys club, social relationships focused on more masculine activities. But ultimately, it seems that there is a communication problem in this type of relationship. There is some evidence that women are less likely to ask follow-up questions when they are not physically with their interviewer. »

On average, teleworking decreased the amount of mentoring received by 22%. But for women, the decrease was 44%, compared to 11% for men. And when both the mentor and the junior employee were men, there was no difference in telecommuting mentoring.

The study was conducted among 1,000 IT professionals at a “Fortune 500 retail company.” The IT specialists, responsible for the transactional website and databases, commented among themselves on the new additions of lines of code, with the aim of documenting the systems for their future maintenance. Particular attention was given to the work of young employees by informally appointed mentors. The researchers’ data collection spanned six months before and after the start of the pandemic.

Important detail: before the pandemic, IT workers were spread across two buildings, which meant that some did not meet their colleagues throughout the day. This allowed a comparison with the effects of teleworking.

Warmth and competence

“It’s an interesting study,” observes Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, professor in the department of organization and human resources at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

A downside, however: teleworking was full-time in this case, while “hybrid” mode is rather recommended, says M^me Ollier-Malaterre.

Placide Poba-Nzaou, a colleague of M^me Ollier-Malaterre at UQAM, notes that the study was not published in a journal with a review committee (peer review). But he believes that these results show the importance for companies to better supervise mentoring.

“Teleworking decreases loyalty to a company and increases employee turnover in sectors like IT, where there is a shortage of workers,” says Mr. Poba-Nzaou. We see here that young employees who received a lot of face-to-face mentoring, before the pandemic, are more likely to leave the firm because they are more experienced. This is even more true for young women than for men. »

Why is mentoring not affected in male-male relationships? “One hypothesis is that women are more sensitive to the perception of their comments at a distance, whether written or video,” says M.^me Harrington. We know that men are more on the lookout for what is left unsaid in interactions with women, this could be exacerbated by distance communication. »

Studies have shown that white people are less comfortable around racialized colleagues, for fear that some of their comments will be misinterpreted, notes M^me Harrington. “Perhaps the same effect is at play here. »

M^me Ollier-Malaterre observes that the study of written communications is not very advanced. “We have much less information. We can use exclamation points or emojis to signal kindness, but it remains cold compared to spoken words. »

These results are not encouraging for the impact of teleworking on sexism, says M^me Ollier-Malaterre.

She cites in particular an American study published in 2023 in the journal Meritswhich notes that when teleworking, women tend to take on more family responsibilities (during the pandemic, with schools closed, in particular) and that teleworking increases the feeling of marginalization at work.

Tele-interviews

Small glimmer of hope, a study published in 2022 in the Journal of Organizational Behavior shows that remote job interviews do not penalize mothers.

“We put characteristic signs in the background, like a cup The best mother in the world “, explains Nicolas Roulin, a psychologist at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, who is the lead author of the study. “Our results show that a characteristic sometimes viewed negatively in employment, motherhood, is not negative during video job interviews. »

Mr. Roulin now wants to test for the presence of toys scattered in the background. “It may be that a mother who has an orderly home is viewed more positively,” he says.

It is possible that recording the video is the key factor in countering discrimination. “The interviewer does not want to be seen as biased against mothers by a colleague who watches the job interview video afterwards. This means that it could be beneficial to film job interviews in person. »