MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Unequal Rewards of Peer Support at Work

Supportive relationships with colleagues are critical to job satisfaction, retention, and productivity — but with the dramatic shift to remote work over the past few years, those ties have weakened for many employees. Our latest research suggests that as leaders focus on strengthening organizational culture and encouraging social ties, they should proceed with greater care and intentionality than they have in the past. The results of our investigation indicate that men may be earning a higher return on their social investments at work than women are.

Concerns about inequity in the way relationships are built and maintained in organizations are not new. Community-building and social support activities are rarely written into job descriptions or compensated, making them easy to overlook. Scholarship has previously highlighted the likelihood of gender bias in expectations and rewards for “organizational citizenship” and “emotional labor” behaviors at work. For example, research found that women are more likely than men to be asked to engage in extra-role activities such as organizing a holiday party, and they are more likely to say yes when asked — often at a cost to their career progression and job satisfaction.

About the Author

Nancy Baym is a senior principal research manager at Microsoft Research. Constance Noonan Hadley is the founder of the Institute for Life at Work and a lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

Learn more about MIT SMR.