King's College London

Racial disparities in working from home (WFH) raise concerns that return-to-office mandates introduced since Covid will not be enforced equitably, according to new research.

The study, published in the Industrial Relations Journal, comes as the House of Lords recently announced the creation of a special inquiry committee on home-based working in the UK to assess the ways it may have exacerbated existing inequalities.

The new research finds that despite a rise in home-working across all ethnicities in the UK since before the pandemic, in 2022-23 certain groups were still less likely than others to be WFH – even after controlling for factors that might affect their access to WFH policies, such as employment sector and occupational level.

The researchers found that the “intersection of ethnicity, gender, migration and parental status all mattered” for rates of WFH:

• Black men were significantly less likely to be WFH than white men. By contrast, Black women were just as likely as white women to be WFH.
• Chinese and “other Asian” workers – both men and women – were significantly less likely to be WFH than white men and women.
• Black fathers were less likely to be WFH than white fathers.
• Chinese and “other Asian”, as well as Pakistani/Bangladeshi childless men, engaged in WFH at lower rates than their white counterparts.
• Migrants belonging to ethnic minorities – and particularly those from Chinese and Black backgrounds – were less likely to be WFH than white workers, both UK-born and migrant.

The findings, which are based on analysis of the UK Labour Force Survey from 2017 to 2023, show that although workers of all ethnicities now have a greater opportunity to engage in WFH compared with the pre-pandemic period of 2017-19, certain groups are still being left behind by this shift, missing out on the potential benefits of WFH, which previous research has shown is valued highly by employees.

There are several possible reasons for these disparities in WFH, the researchers say, including that managers may have (unconscious) biases against Black and minority ethnic (BME) workers, particularly Black or migrant workers, limiting their access to WFH policies because managers do not trust them to WFH in a productive way.

The disparity may also reflect the weaker bargaining power such groups often have, leading to a reluctance to WFH for fear that it will negatively impact their career progression.

While some BME workers – particularly BME men – may be making the personal choice not to take advantage of flexible working arrangements, their lower uptake is more likely due to a stigma around doing so and a perception that it could harm their careers, the study says.

On the other hand, the researchers say some of the gender differences in the findings may be due to ethnic minority women choosing to WFH despite the potential negative career outcomes, as it allows them to work longer hours, stay in more lucrative jobs, and better enables them to meet family demands, as well as the home office providing workers with a safe haven away from micro-aggressions that might take place in the office.

Professor Heejung Chung, Professor of Work and Employment at King’s Business School and Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King’s College London, said:

”On the one hand, it is great to see that much of the gaps in homeworking we found in pre-pandemic periods across workers of different ethnicities have reduced significantly with more workers being able to work from home. Having said that, it is still concerning that some worker groups with the least bargaining power in the UK labour market are unable to access the great resource that is working from home. Especially in light of the return-to-office mandates we are seeing more recently, our results indicate that we might end up with a greater disparity between workers with different levels of bargaining power. This may result in greater inequalities in the labour market between workers of different ethnicities and migration backgrounds.”

Shiyu Yuan, PhD candidate in Social Policy at the University of Kent and Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, said:

“The racial disparities in working from home that we found are more than a policy matter – they reflect deeper structural biases in the workplace. Even in this post-pandemic era, when homeworking has become more widespread, BME workers — especially men and migrant workers —still lag behind. They often worry that taking up home-working could reinforce negative stereotypes or hinder their career progressions, particularly if they already face added pressures as ethnic minorities with migration backgrounds. It’s clear that simply offering WFH options isn’t enough: employers and policymakers have to tackle these biases and do more to ensure equitable access to homeworking for everyone.”