Remote workers 35% more likely to be fired than those who return to office: ‘Out of sight, out of mind’

Brooke Kato
·2 min read
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Woman sitting at desk with laptop, inset image of Zoom screen with multiple people in a meeting
Woman sitting at desk with laptop, inset image of Zoom screen with multiple people in a meeting

Everybody, back to work.

As memories of pandemic era workplace norms fade, companies are not only pushing employees back into the office — they’re getting rid of those that won’t.

New data shows that full-time remote workers were 35% more likely to be laid off than their in-office peers in 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Data from Live Data Technologies found that 10% off remote employees were laid off last year, compared to just 7% of in-office or hybrid colleagues.

The results follow last year’s surge of layoffs and a recent wave of job cuts spanning sectors, affecting media outlets like Business Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork and Sports Illustrated, commerce sites like Ebay and Wayfair, alongside tech giants like Microsoft.

“When a hiring manager gets news they have to cut 10% of the staff, it’s easier to put someone on the list you don’t have a close personal relationship with,” Andy Challenger, the senior vice president at the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told the Journal, attributing the emotional distance to the difficulty of establishing rapport virtually.

“Simply put: it’s out of sight, out of mind,” said Kropp. fizkes – stock.adobe.com
“Simply put: it’s out of sight, out of mind,” said Kropp. fizkes – stock.adobe.com

George Penn, managing vice president at the advisory firm Gartner, says this comes as no surprise. A 2021 survey from the firm revealed that managers and execs think of in-office employees as higher performers.

“Managers believe employees who work remote are lower performers than those that come to the office,” Brian Kropp, the chief of human resources research at Gartner, previously told The Post.

“They will on average be more likely to lay off those who are working remote than those who are coming into the office.”

“Simply put: it’s out of sight, out of mind,” he noted.

Speaking the Journal, San Antonio talent acquisition specialist Alyssa Ciesky confirmed there is little “personal connection” to remote workers, making them “easy to get rid of.”

That’s why it was unsurprising when Ciesky, 40, was laid off in 2022 from her fully remote role, at which her boss was based in England.

Fully remote employees were 35% more likely to be laid off than their colleagues who came into the office. vectorfusionart – stock.adobe.com
Fully remote employees were 35% more likely to be laid off than their colleagues who came into the office. vectorfusionart – stock.adobe.com

But the results from Live Data Technologies also found that remote workers are more likely to quit a job, with 12% of remote employees leaving their company and finding a new job within two months last year. Only 9% of hybrid or in-person workers did the same.

“We warn them, easy come, easy go,” David Risch, a recruiter working in the supply chain industry, told the Journal. “A company’s going to invest in someone who’s investing in them.”