The normalization of remote and hybrid work fundamentally changed the way office-based organizations operate. But while the shift to a distributed workforce brought a wide range of benefits to both employees and employers, it also introduced new challenges.
On any given day in a hybrid workplace, some workers are in the office, while others are remote. Even if everyone is equally competent and has quality relationships with their colleagues and superiors, it can be easier for people who are physically in the office together to interact and collaborate. Whether managers and employees intentionally overlook remote workers or simply default to favoring in-person workers out of convenience, this is proximity bias, and it can create significant problems for individuals, teams, and entire organizations.
Just how prevalent is proximity bias? A 2021 survey of more than 800 supervisors found that 67% of respondents who managed remote workers considered them “more replaceable than onsite workers.” And 42% said they “sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks.”
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about proximity bias, including:
- A definition of proximity bias
- Its impact on the workplace
- Examples of proximity bias
- How to prevent it
Let’s start with a definition.
What is proximity bias?
Proximity bias is the natural tendency to favor familiar people and situations. It’s defaulting to what’s most convenient and accessible. It isn’t inherently good or bad, but in a workplace with remote workers, proximity bias manifests in ways that reduce remote workers’ opportunities for success by giving preferential treatment to in-person workers.
Every worker naturally exhibits proximity bias and can cause harm by overlooking remote colleagues, but it’s most problematic when it goes unrecognized in leadership personnel. Managers, supervisors, and executives have the most impact on advancement opportunities, task assignments, and employment, so their biases have far greater impact on the workplace.
The impact of proximity bias in the workplace
Intentional or not, favoritism in the workplace will always bring negative consequences for your organization. Proximity bias can cause a range of problems for both employers and employees, including lower quality work, perpetuated discrimination against particular groups, and a decrease in employee satisfaction and retention.
Lower quality work
Proximity isn’t competence. When you allow proximity bias to run the workplace, you inevitably give more tasks and responsibilities to less experienced or less capable workers. If your best writer, designer, project manager, or developer is remote, but you physically share a workspace with someone in a similar role, it’s easy to see the in-person worker as more accessible or more dedicated—or even simply to think of them more often.
Suppose you just finished speaking to a designer on your team, who sits near you in the office. Then you go to a meeting, and a design need emerges. You return to your desk and talk to the designer about the meeting, and they express interest in the work, so you give them the project. Meanwhile, a better designer for the project was available on your team all along had you messaged them. It isn’t a fair way to distribute tasks among your employees, and it doesn’t help your team produce the best work.
These sorts of interactions take place all the time when team leads, supervisors, and managers leave proximity bias unchecked. Over time, this can easily result in lower quality work being produced by the teams that give preference to in-person workers.
It would be absurd to assume that workers with curly hair, glasses, or blue eyes were better at their jobs by default. Presence in the office is no different.
Perpetuating discrimination against groups
Showing favoritism toward in-person workers is damaging in itself. But when you add the fact that many of the people who most strongly prefer remote work belong to protected groups that face discrimination in the office, proximity bias can open the door to lawsuits and work against goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
According to one survey from the COVID-era, 21% of white knowledge workers wanted to return to full-time, on-site work, while just 3% of Black knowledge workers wanted the same. Women of color were one of the groups least interested in returning to office. And it’s no wonder: working remotely can reduce workers’ exposure to microaggressions, racism, and sexism in the workplace.
“Remote workers” isn’t a protected group. But if proximity bias causes your organization to unintentionally overlook them, and they’re more likely to also belong to protected groups, that can have a major impact on your organization’s inclusivity.
Workplace bias harms employee satisfaction and retention
Nobody wants to feel like their employer doesn’t recognize their talent, appreciate their work, or reward their investment in the organization. But when remote employees are continually passed over for opportunities and left out of important conversations simply because they aren’t in the office, that lack of recognition is what they experience, thanks to proximity bias.
This isn’t just about how people feel, either. If less competent colleagues are continually being given better opportunities and work, remote workers will rightfully recognize that their employer isn’t providing them with adequate opportunities for advancement. A remote position with your organization starts to look a lot like a dead-end job. An employer that is taking steps to address proximity bias and treat remote workers more equitably would allow them to continue progressing in their career. They may also simply decide to find a new in-person job.
Allowing proximity bias to dictate the decision-making process in your workplace inevitably leads to lower morale, satisfaction, and retention for remote workers.
Examples of proximity bias in the workplace
Proximity bias can take many forms, and some of those forms are more visible than others. Any time you show preference for in-person workers—whether intentionally, out of habit, or out of convenience—that’s proximity bias. Here are a few examples of how it manifests in the workplace.
Favoring people in the office for promotions and raises
It’s understandable that visibility plays a key role in advancement opportunities. When you need someone to fill a new role, it’s only natural to think of someone you frequently encounter, work with, or rely on. But in most cases, someone’s presence in the office has little bearing on their ability to take on a new role, and it’s no reflection of their dedication to the organization or their productivity. The only exception would be a promotion to a role that can’t be done remotely, and even then, you wouldn’t want to exclude remote workers from the opportunity by default.
According to a 2023 study of remote, hybrid, and in-person workers, fully remote workers were 24% less likely to be promoted at work, despite feeling more productive than their in-person counterparts. While all kinds of circumstances can affect whether someone is a good fit for a promotion or deserving of a raise, employers need to be cautious that an employee’s presence in the office and visibility in the workplace doesn’t affect their perceived competence.
Giving new projects and responsibilities to the people you see most
In the workplace, task assignments and delegation of work often happens informally, based on who happens to be “available” at the time a new need arises. The problem for remote workers, unfortunately, is that while they may be available for assignments asynchronously or with an impromptu video call, it’s still easier or more natural for supervisors, managers, and other leaders to simply speak to someone who’s working nearby and up to the task.
This is especially true with low-stakes assignments that everyone on a team is equally capable of handling, where variations in quality aren’t particularly important. But over time, even these “unimportant” assignments have the cumulative effect of making in-person workers appear more helpful, productive, and valuable than remote workers who never had the opportunity to contribute.
It also means in-person workers get burdened with more than their fair share of extra work. Whether you’re assigning tasks no one wants to do or everyone wants to do, it’s important to make sure the distribution is fair to everyone.
Weighing in-person interactions too heavily in performance reviews
Performance reviews tend to incorporate a lot more than objective performance metrics. And that’s not without reason: this is a time to ensure employees are still a good fit for the organization and their team, not just that they complete tasks and do good work. However, this can become a problematic display of proximity bias when managers have an easier time getting to know in-person employees, and thus provide more favorable (or more thorough) performance reviews.
If in-person employees get better reviews by virtue of working in the office, that’s not fair to remote workers. Even if managers feel like they’re putting in the same baseline level of effort to get to know all employees they’re responsible for, they’re going to have more facetime with the employees who work in the same space as them, and thus, they’ll know more about their personalities, values, and perspectives.
Leaving remote workers out of group decisions and discussions
When people work together in-person, ad-hoc meetings and important communication can happen at any time. Perhaps a supervisor is considering how to handle a situation, and they consult a team member working next to them. Maybe the team is working on a group task, and a few colleagues sit down together to plan how their pieces will fit together. Or a manager wants to decide between a couple different strategies, so they run the options by the team and form a consensus in person.
These are all processes that can easily incorporate remote and in-person team members. When they exclude remote workers, that’s proximity bias.
Some of this is unavoidable. People are naturally going to share thoughts, comments, and questions as they arise, and if they’re already nearby most of the people they want to talk to, it’s only natural to do so in person. But when remote workers are consistently left out or don’t have a say, you’ll need to address that proximity bias before it causes harm.
Investing more in professional relationships with in-person employees
When you’re in the office, it’s rude to ignore your in-person colleagues. Even if you’re not looking forward to seeing someone and catching up with them, the social context of working in the same room can put pressure on colleagues to chat, get to know each other, find common ground, and seek help from one another.
Seeing that someone is online at the same time as you simply doesn’t have the same effect.
In-person employees have numerous daily encounters where it’s expected that they’ll interact, and the friction of synchronous interaction is low enough that if people enjoy talking to each other, they have ample opportunity to do so.
Working in-person makes it so easy to develop professional relationships that it’s almost impossible not to. Remote employees, on the other hand, may go days without having a reason to talk to a colleague. This is proximity bias, too.
Providing additional perks to employees in the office
Employers don’t need to recreate every office amenity for remote employees. You don’t have to buy them all ping pong tables and recreational equipment just because you have it on campus. But there are plenty of other situations where in-person employees may receive extra perks that don’t get extended in some way to remote workers. Like a team lunch, for example. When the team goes out to eat and a manager pays for it with a company card, do remote team members simply miss out?
Proximity bias can lead you to disproportionately reward in-person employees for their efforts or spend time and resources to show them appreciation.
How to prevent proximity bias
Proximity bias is natural and often unconscious. And that means if you want to prevent it from taking root in your workplace, you need to take proactive, deliberate steps to resist it. Here are some ways you can ensure remote workers feel as included, supported, and valued as in-person workers.
Establish regular check-ins for all employees
Meetings should always serve a purpose. And if you’re managing remote workers who you have fewer opportunities to interact with, it’s essential that you establish a rhythm for having purposeful time together. Check-in meetings to discuss work, goals, needs, and mental health are important with every team member, whether they’re in-person or remote, but this time will be especially valuable for keeping remote workers on your radar.
If you keep a pulse on what remote employees are working on and how they’re progressing, you’ll be more likely to consider them as you make decisions that affect them or give out new tasks and responsibilities.
Create opportunities for meaningful interaction
Don’t let proximity be the only path to familiarity. It does take work to make remote workers feel included, but with intentional effort, you can remove friction and help them develop valuable professional relationships (and develop your own relationships with them, as well). The right choices will depend on you, your teams, and the people you manage, but there are many different approaches. Here are some ideas:
- Incorporate an optional team coffee break or happy hour at a time in the week that tends to be less busy.
- Give people opportunities to share their interests outside of work, and if possible, make an effort to try those activities or learn more about them.
- Find central locations that are more convenient for everyone to spend time together at, then schedule a “work retreat” that involves a combination of collaborative work activities and social experiences. Alternatively, these can take place at more appealing destinations—just be sure that travel and time off is accommodated.
- Divide projects into multiple parts and assign them to groups that include remote and in-person workers.
- Try playing online games together. Even if people aren’t interested in video games, many board games can be played online. If you find something with rounds that are short and replayable enough, this could even be a component of regular meetings.
- Encourage team members to take turns leading meetings to walk through work they’re especially proud of (or that you’re proud of them for), or to teach a new skill.
Whatever you try, it’s a good idea to talk with your remote workers about what you’re hoping to accomplish and why this time matters. Remote workers may be hesitant to add commitments that don’t feel like they directly pertain to work, so help them understand why even these interactions are important, and make sure that if you’re taking away time they need to work, you’re compensating for that by reducing their workload or providing other accommodations.
Define clear criteria for advancement
In an ideal world, every time you give a promotion, you want everyone to be in agreement about who is the best fit for the job. At the very least, you want to have objective rationale you can point to when anyone asks where they stand or why someone else got an opportunity they didn’t. Creating openly-shared, widely-known criteria for advancement helps everyone evaluate for themselves whether the process is fair and will work for their career. It also leaves less room for non-performance-related factors to influence important decisions, which helps level the playing field for remote workers who don’t have the benefit of proximity.
Prioritize digital communications
When you have something important to share, it’s easy to raise your voice and get the attention of everyone working nearby. But prioritizing digital communications helps ensure remote workers are always included and there’s always a clear record of what was said to whom and when. If your discussions, meetings, and key conversations take place on workplace messenger apps, email, or video calls, you don’t have to worry about in-person employees having better access to information or more influence on important decisions. And when you demonstrate this behavior (and ideally communicate the intent through policy or guidelines), team members will follow suit and communicate more inclusively as well.
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