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Does remote work hurt your career? That question came into sharp focus for me this week when I read a modeling exercise that attempted to calculate the total economic value of working from home. The premise is compelling: time has real value, and remote work gives a lot of it back. But as I read the piece, I kept thinking about the other side of the ledger.

We are very good at counting what remote work gives us. We are much less practiced at counting what it might quietly take away. And the research, it turns out, has something interesting to say about that.

In this episode, I share my own deliberate choice to work from an office even as a small business owner who could easily work from home. I walk through what four significant research studies found about remote work, career advancement, and how our professional networks change over time when we are not physically present. One of the findings may surprise you: in one randomized experiment, remote workers were 13% more productive, but their promotion rate fell after controlling for performance.

The central idea is career capital: the relationships, reputation, visibility, mentorship, and access that accumulate over a career. Most of it is hard to put in a spreadsheet, but it is not less real because of that. I introduce a simple framework for running the full ledger on your own work arrangement, and share three concrete things you can do this week, whether you work fully remotely, on a hybrid schedule, or in the office every day.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

Is it possible to be more productive working from home and still fall behind in your career? Now I know that sounds kind of contradictory, but I've been sitting on some research that suggests it might actually be true. And as someone who trains leaders and who has some pretty strong opinions about where and how people do their best work, I couldn't stop thinking about this research. Now, just this past week, so August of 2026.

If you happen to be listening at some point in the future, an opinion piece came out in The Hill, which is a newspaper and an online media company that covers not only what's happening on Capitol Hill, but also things that are of interest to a wider population than just Washington D.C. and politics. Well, they reported on a study that attempted to put $1 figure on remote work flexibility. So this so-called study, and I say so-called study, not necessarily meaning to be pejorative about it, but it was a modeling exercise. So it wasn't like a real empirical research study where they collected data from actual humans.

Instead, it was again a modeling exercise where they spun out this idea of if this happened, then this could happen, and so on. So the company behind the report, EconTime Consultants, they were looking to model the real economic impact of remote work. So, in this project, what they did is they took a specific job category. So, in this particular instance, it was a software developer, so a hypothetical programmer who earned $104,000 net salary per year, and what they found is when they looked at the flexibility that remote work affords, his net salary was extended to $162,768 once you assigned economic value to that reclaimed personal time.

So, I'll break this down a little bit more for you, so you understand exactly what they did. But that's a $58,768 difference. So almost, you know, almost a full 60,000 difference. So it was roughly 56% more than his actual net salary, and this was driven largely by recovering about six hours of personal time per week.

Now that six hours personal time per week extended across the whole year, so it's not just those six hours once is worth $60,000, but those six hours across 52 weeks of the year was worth that almost $60,000. Okay, so but I want to be clear on this. This is a modeling exercise. Again, this is not observed data.

This is not collected data from people's actual experience, and that 56% is not actual dollars in the person's pocket, it's the estimated value of the reclaimed time for again this hypothetical worker that this was all being modeled on. So, in a certain sense, none of this is real, but at the same time, the premise is worth taking seriously. Now, imagine, and again, here let's break this down a little bit. Imagine eliminating a 45 minute commute each way five days a week.

That's going to give you seven and a half hours back. That's almost a full workday. And when you think about the reduced spending on gas, on parking, on lunches because you're not eating out as much, you can you know make your food at home, work clothes, shoes-all the different things that go into the office with you and have you spending more money when you are going into the office. So this is including a reduction in all of that, as well as the cost savings of what you can do with that time when you're not in the car commuting and all the other things that go into a work from home model that are different from when you're going into the office all the time.

So you can even add in different things like you know you have more autonomy over that discretionary time, so you can start dinner early. You can be home when your kids walk in from school. You can take a walk instead of sitting in traffic, and these things are genuinely valuable and absolutely worth calling out and naming. But if you know me, you know that I thought there was more to the story that wasn't necessarily being told in the article and in the modeling exercise that this consulting company did.

Now, as I read the piece in the Hill that reported on it, I kept thinking, but we're only looking at like one side of the ledger. You know, you think about a economic ledger or kind of accounting that goes along with this. I just felt like we're only looking at one side. We're calculating what remote work gives us, but what about what it might quietly take away?

What about the subtractions? So we're looking at all the additions in terms of this modeling exercise and the way the article was written up on it. But what are the subtractions? So, as we unpack this, I wanted to share just a little bit about my own personal work situation.

So, again, if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you probably know that I have made a very deliberate choice to work in an office instead of work from home. So, as a small business owner, I could easily work from home and do most everything I need to do in my home office. But I choose to come to an office. I choose to lease commercial office space and drive in my car 15 minutes to get to said commercial office space.

I do that intentionally and deliberately, and I don't have to, but I do it because I like being. I like the separation of my home and my work life. Now that doesn't mean it it's completely separated all of the time. Obviously, I was just doing a task that was part of my personal life just before I sat down to record this podcast episode, but it does help me have more of that separation.

It's easier for me to keep my head in the game about my work when I'm not getting interrupted by my children or my dog or you know a package being delivered from Amazon to my house or whatever. I also love coming to the office because I have an office mate, so I share this office space with another professional speaker, and so she and I can have some collaboration together, accountability, various types of a sense of connection that comes with being in an office and having somebody else here. Working from home, sometimes it just feels like you're working completely in a vacuum, even if you're online in meetings with other people. So it's just nice for me, anyway, to have that sense of community in the office.

Now, this might upset some people, but I'm going to say it anyway. This is my honest belief. When people say they work better at home, I think they're usually describing those flexible benefits that I was just talking about that came out of that study: the lack of commute time, the less money spent on clothes and gas and lunches and all of that. So I think that when they say they work better at home, they're really describing some of those intangible things that come about out of the flexibility, not necessarily the work volume or output.

Now, I understand the appeal of working from home. I still choose to make a different choice because of what the physical presence of being in an office gives me that I can't replicate at home, but now again, when we go back to that modeling exercise, I think there is a missing variable. So that exercise says that six hours are worth $58,000 per year, and the thing that I think is missing again from the ledger, we're just getting the benefits on the one side, but I think the thing that's missing is career capital, and that's where we're going to see some subtractions coming off of that ledger, if you will. Kind of, I'm thinking of this as an accounting, you know, a bookkeeping system.

Work doesn't just pay us in salary; it pays us in career capital. That is relationships with the other people that we work with, both up, down, across the organization, and out to our clients. The reputation that we have, again, with those same bodies up, down, across, out there with our our our clients. Visibility in the office, and not just being like monitored by others.

I'll talk about visibility a little bit more, but I don't mean being monitored. I mean being like out there and known for what we're good at. Learning of about changes in the organization, sharing information, mentorship, sponsorship, access to future opportunities. I think all of that is career capital, and most of those things are hard to put in a spreadsheet.

They are hard to put a price on, but they're no less real because of that. Now, the commute is easy to measure. The amount of money that you spend on clothes is easy to measure. The cost of a lunch from a deli down the street from your office is easy to measure, but the conversation that leads to your next promotion or your next salary increase-that's not so easy to measure.

Now, the proponents of work from home also say that they get interrupted less, and so on those grounds, they say and they claim that they are also more productive. But let's go back to career capital about that just for a moment and and look at those same interruptions. Those interruptions are not merely interruptions. Those interruptions build relationships.

Those interruptions teach a newer teammate something valuable about their role that maybe they didn't know. Those interruptions help you know where things, whether they be like in your instructions to somebody or your coaching or mentoring to somebody else, where things are clear for others and where they're murky and people have questions and so much more. I think there is so much of that career capital that is baked into this idea of productivity and being interrupted. Okay, so let's dive into a little bit more about what the research says because we talked about that modeling exercise, but there is so much more research out there on work from home and what it's doing to careers.

Okay, so one important distinction that I want to make, and I alluded to this before, but that is when you hear the word visibility, sometimes people think about people being monitored or being watched by their boss or by software at their work, but that's not what I'm talking about when I say visibility. Visibility is really about you as a professional staying top of mind to others. It's about people knowing what you're good at. It's about people knowing how you think, how you tackle problems, how you solve problems, and what you'd like to do next, whether that's in a project by project based or in your whole career.

So much of that information has historically traveled through informal interaction with people. When someone overhears you explain something well, that lands for them. That builds your reputation. It could be a senior leader asks opinion your opinion on something after a meeting in the hallway, or a colleague says, "Oh, you should talk to Janel about that.

So those moments aren't in any talent management system. Those moments don't come with $1 value distinctly attached to them. But your career is full of them, especially when you are in the office and being visible. Now, again, if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know.

And I did an episode on this. We'll link it up in the show notes. But I did an episode on being visible when you are working from home because you can be visible working from home. You just it it just takes a lot more intentionality, and it takes you making effort to show up differently.

Okay, but let's look into some research for just a moment. Doing good work and having that work turn into opportunity are not the same thing. And I want to just share what a handful of different studies have shared about this. So the first is a randomized experiment at a large Chinese travel company found that remote workers were 13% more productive, but okay.

So there's that productivity going up. But when you look at their promotion rate after actually controlling for performance, so we're going to take the performance ebbs and flows out of this. And again, there are statistical models to help us do this. I'm not a statistician, so I'm not going to tell you exactly how they did that, but just know that they've accounted for performance level.

Okay, the performance, the promotion rate fell. Okay, productivity went up by 13, but they didn't get promoted as often. So higher output did not protect them from career advances or the consequences of being less visible. So those consequences of being less visible, you maybe have also heard me talk about it right here on this podcast, and I talk about it in some of the presentations and keynotes and trainings that I do.

But the proximity bias. So people who are in closer proximity get afforded more opportunities. That's just the nature of how things work. And if you want to be on the upside of proximity bias, you actually need to be in the office.

Okay. So, and you need to be visible. Okay, because you can't just come into the office, stick in your earbuds and pretend like you're working from home. That's not going to create the same kind of visibility that I'm talking about.

Okay, but so let's talk about another study. So this is in 2024. Oh wait, and let me also mention that other study that I was just talking about. What the one with the in with the Chinese workers that were 13% more productive, but their advance, you know, opportunities for advancement fell.

That was done in 2015, so a full on five years before the pandemic. So that there is no pandemic effect in that research at all. Okay, now a 2024 experiment asked more than 1000 managers in the United Kingdom to evaluate an otherwise identical hypothetical employee. So they've got like here's the person's performance, and they've got all the data related to the person's performance.

Now, so randomly across these 1000 managers who were participating in the study, some of them were told this employee is fully remote. Some were told this employee is hybrid, and some were told this employee is an on-site 100% of the time employee. Okay, so that was the experiment, and again, they're given the exact same data, but they're just told this employee works from home. This employee is hybrid.

This employee is in the office all the time. Okay, so the fully remote employees were about 10 percentage points less likely to be chosen for a promotion. Okay, so 10 percentage, full on 10% of the time, the fully remote employee was less likely to be selected for a promotion. Hybrid employees faced a similar but smaller gap, and importantly, the penalty diminished when remote work was common on the team and when the manager personally worked remotely.

Okay, so they found some demographic data about the managers who were participating in the study. So, if I'm a manager who works remote part of the time, I'm more likely to rate that person higher. Okay. So the and and as you might expect, the person who was in the office all of the time was promoted more often than any of the other ones.

Okay. Fascinating. All right, and then Microsoft, the researchers at Microsoft tracked collaboration patterns among 61,000 employees at Microsoft during right at that time of the shift from working in the office to remote work. So at the beginning of the pandemic, so this study lasted for the first six months of the shift to remote work, so early 2020, and what they found was that networks became more static and more siloed.

So when you think about the various people in your organization that you have network connections with, they found that shrinking and and becoming far more siloed just in the areas that you work so cross group collaboration fell by about 25% as they looked at and this isn't you know survey data they're looking at actual actual meetings and emails and exchanges that they could see in the data across the organization so people weren't losing colleagues that they already knew they just weren't adding new ones again. When they looked at the data, that was the those were the trends that they saw. So remote work preserved the people that they already knew and knew well, but it made it harder to accidentally build more network connections. Basically, the network that they will need next, whether that's on the next project or in the next role, the next promotion and so on.

Okay, so there are some pieces of the research. Now, I'm not trying to make an argument for a full day, a full five day return to office. There's also another piece of research here that I think bears to that, to why I'm not making that argument. So this is a more recent randomized trial at Trip.com found that hybrid work-that's three days in the office and two days working from home-reduced employee attrition by 1/3 and increased satisfaction with no detectable difference in performance reviews or performance ratings over to a two-year period.

Now, before the experiment, managers predicted that hybrid work would, in fact, hurt productivity by about 2.6% but it didn't. So, after experiencing it, they predicted now a positive effect. Now, what does all of this add up to? So, we've got research sort of on both sides of the coin here, but what this adds up to is the research doesn't necessarily say that remote work destroys careers, but it says that the potential cost of working from home isn't productivity, it's career capital, it's the relationships, the information exchange, the visibility of people knowing who you are, what you stand for, and what things you're really good at, and the opportunities that sometimes never materialize for the folks who are working from home because the right people never had a chance to notice them.

So again, proximity bias-that is when people get rewarded for being nearby. That is a real thing, and it is unfortunate, but it is a real thing. Opportunities go to the ones who are seen, who are noticed, and who are remembered for the good work they do. So, if you are working from home, either part of the time or all of the time, remember that proximity bias and make yourself visible so that you are seen and noticed and remembered for what it is that you do best.

So the research is also suggesting that hybrid work, when done intentionally, may be where the trade-off of not being present all the time starts to disappear, starts to taper off. But that means you need to be visible. So you need to play your cards right, and you need to play your cards where people can see them. You absolutely need to be visible if you are going to work a hybrid schedule or a fully remote schedule.

Okay, now let's start to think about how you can put some things in action around this. So the first thing is just run the full ledger. Okay, so most remote work conversations are calculating only the return on your life, the extra time, the autonomy, the energy, being there for your kids, reduced time commuting, and that is real, and it is worth counting, and it is worth calculating. But there is a second account that needs to go in that ledger, and that is the career return.

So, really, are you building still? Are you still taking the time to build relationships outside of the immediate folks that you have to work with? Are you meeting new people at work? Are you gaining visibility?

Are you out there in front of the right people-the people who need to know that you are doing great work in the organization for your career mobility, so we need to get that career capital. Okay, so are you gaining visibility, accumulating sponsorship opportunities, organizational knowledge, mentors in your organization? Are you growing your network into parts of the organization that you will need later when it's time for you to advance or time for you to make a lateral move, so you want both accounts funded. It's great to have extra time because you're not commuting, but we also need to make sure the other side of the ledger is being attended to, so that you're still visible and that you're not sacrificing potential income down the road because people don't know who you are, and you're not getting promoted, and you're not getting raises in the same measure as those who are more visible.

Okay, so make your presence earn the commute. So if you're hybrid or only occasionally in the office, don't reproduce your remote workday when you come to the office. So presence has value, specifically when you use it for what proximity does well: getting up out of your seat, walking around, talking to people, and building relationships. So you're also going to use that proximity and talking with people for informal learning, whether you're the learner or you're the teacher, mentoring others or being mentored by others, cross-functional connection, being known not only for your immediate role but for what else you know how to do.

So, before going in to the office or while you're driving in or commuting, however you get there, ask yourself, what can I do today that's easier or better because I'm physically there. Schedule lunch with somebody from outside your team that you don't usually talk to or don't know that well. Leave white space in your calendar for some of those unscheduled conversations, those hallway conversations. Spend 10 minutes with your manager talking about something other than what's on your task list or your to-do list, and if you're commuting, like make the commute earn it.

Like make that time, that 45 minutes or that 20 minutes, whatever time it is you're spending in the car or on the train or the bus, make it worthwhile so that there are some payoffs for actually going into the office. All right, and then the third thing I want you to do is audit your career capital. Does remote work hurt your career? Well, let's find out with this audit.

This will take you five minutes for questions. Really simple. Question number one: Who knows what I'm capable of beyond my immediate team, like make the list, write down the actual names of people who knows what I'm capable of beyond my immediate team. Question number two: Who outside my day-to-day work have I built a real relationship with recently?

Okay, who list the names, not just generally or a tally of tick numbers. I want you to actually write down their names. Number three, who is actively helping me learn or grow in my profession or in this company? Again, I want real names.

And question number four, who might think of me, me, when an interesting opportunity comes up. Now, if the answer to these questions, or even just one of them, starts to make you uncomfortable, don't automatically just add an office day. Do something richer. Add a connection, create, you know, set up a lunch date with somebody because the goal isn't just to be in the building; it's to actually be known for something, to have a professional reputation that is known inside your organization.

Okay, so here comes the part of the podcast that I call "Put It to Work, and this is where you are going to take action. So this week, run the career capital audit again. Five minutes, four questions. We put them in the show notes.

Those four questions, we put them in the show notes so you can easily find them. So if you're listening while driving or doing something else where you just can't take notes, go grab the questions from the show notes page, that's Janel anderson.com forward slash 284 for episode 284. Okay, and then pick one answer that makes you the most uncomfortable, and then do something about it. Send an email, schedule lunch, schedule a conversation.

Go out of your way to find that person and connect with them the next time you're in the office, all right. Honestly, we have spent years arguing about how many days people should be in the office, and maybe that's the wrong question. I think the better question is, what are we going into the office to get? What's the payoff?

Because if you commute 45 minutes, sit down, put on your headphones, and spend eight hours on video calls with people in other cities. Well, what the heck did your commute actually accomplish? Absolutely nothing. Okay.

So again, we are not needing to argue about how many days of the week it is. Instead, it is when you are going in. What are you getting out of it? Make sure you are getting out of it.

The things that are going to advance your career, that career capital, so important. Presence has value when you use it for the things that proximity does especially well. Flexibility has value when you protect it for the things that you genuinely benefit from in that flexible schedule. Both are real, both matter, but only one of them is easy to put in a spreadsheet.

Remote work absolutely gives you back time. Just make sure you're not accidentally giving away opportunity at the expense of that extra time. All right, my friends. If you enjoy the show, if you know somebody else who would benefit from hearing this episode or just knowing more about the show, please help me out in a couple of ways.

One, send it to that person. If you know somebody, maybe it's your manager, maybe it's your HR director, or your somebody in senior leadership in your organization send this episode to them so that they start to think differently about those days in the office and how you really maximize the value of them so that you are not losing career capital on the days that you're in because they could inadvertently schedule you back to back meetings all day okay so share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it but then also, if you're enjoying the show, please rate it and review it on the podcast platform of your choice. Apple Podcasts is probably the best one. Or if you're listening on YouTube, that's another great place to drop a comment in the chat.

And when you do that, it really does help me because it helps me reach a wider audience, and that's one of the things that I am up to with the work that I'm doing. Because there's no point in me doing this work if people don't find out about it. So please share it widely, rate and review on your podcast platform of choice. Drop a drop a comment on on the YouTube feed.

I would appreciate it so much. All right, my friends. I will catch you back here in next week for the next episode of the Working Conversations podcast. Take good care.

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