Men are more likely than women to be rewarded for supporting coworkers, research finds

“Social support is definitely an important part of what binds people to work, and to each other in the workplace,” Nancy Baym, a senior principal research manager at Microsoft Research, told me. “It allows the flow of information, the exchange of knowledge, and the seeking of advice, and all these things have an impact on the results for the company. It is important for your bottom line.”

However, men may be rewarded more for supporting coworkers than women, even though women do so more often, says Baym, a co-author of the newly released research on MIT Sloan Management Review.

The authors set out to investigate the career benefits for employees when providing multiple forms of social support to co-workers. They identified 13 behaviors divided into the following five categories: emotional support, esteem reinforcement, social interaction, information or advice, and instrumental support (providing tangible goods or services ).

Both men and women surveyed offered social support to their partners, but men more often offered social companionship and instrumental support. Meanwhile, “supporting each other emotionally, whether that’s making people happy, or listening to them, or reaching out to see how they’re doing, those are the things that women tend to do,” she said. said Baym.

All of these actions, by men and women, “show a certain amount of empathy,” he said. “What’s important about social support is that you go beyond saying, ‘I feel your pain’ to saying, ‘I’m going to try and do something to alleviate that.'”

But the overall rating of men on the level of motivation and rewards for social support available at work is 11% higher than that of women. “The questions we asked were specifically about rewarding bonuses and promotions,” Baym said.

Women report a higher frequency of providing social support than men but a lower potential return of organizational rewards and recognition. “This gender inequality is cause for concern, especially when women continue to show higher levels of stress at work, as well as a greater willingness to leave jobs and change employers,” wrote the authors.

The findings are based on a survey of 836 respondents who self-identified as men (438) or women (398), working in 15 or more industries in companies of various sizes. Sixty-one percent were managers, and 39% were individual contributors. Forty-four percent work full-time in an office, 39% work full-time remotely, and 17% are hybrid.

“We found in our data that women are more likely to go out of their way to welcome a new partner, while men are more likely to offer career advice. Which behavior is more important?” according to the report.

The question then becomes, says Baym: “What kind of support does the company appreciate?”

However, another factor to consider is, “a long-standing finding with gender is that even when people perform the same behavior, it appears very different when it’s a man performing and then if it’s a woman performing it. ,” he said.

Solutions for companies? “One thing that’s really important to clarify: What behaviors are we trying to encourage here?” Baym said. Other suggestions include “making the invisible more visible.” For example, in one-on-one meetings, managers can ask the employee if someone in particular has been supportive—and how.

“Maybe some of the ways in which women support other people don’t get them to recognize that maybe they deserve how much effort they put into building the social fabric of their workplace,” Baym said. “Some of these things that women do may not be very visible, like I can’t make you happy in front of our boss.”

“The suggestions we offer are really meant as a starting point, not as an end point,” Baym added, “because what works in one environment may not work in another.”

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Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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