“Then, there will be the other group which will be people who may be fully virtual, so the lines might become more fraught.” “I think it will become more pronounced when there will be, say, individuals coming into the office and they will start to create some kind of in group, like ‘we are the office people’,” says Shalfrooshan. This could make proximity bias an even bigger issue than before. Less explicitly, leaders may be more inclined to hand an in-person employee an assignment or ask them for input, rather than jump on Slack or Zoom to do the same with someone working from home. On the dramatic end, bosses might view those around them in the office as harder working and more trustworthy than their remote counterparts, rewarding them accordingly. The very notion of proximity is changing in the hybrid workplace. Long-term favouritism like this can break down trust and negatively impact productivity, with employees who don’t see their output adequately acknowledged having little motivation to do more than the bare minimum. This halo effect can also cause leadership to excuse the poor performance of those in their proximity, while not properly valuing the skills and expertise of those with whom they have less contact. A 2015 study, for example, showed that remote workers at a Chinese travel agency had higher levels of performance while simultaneously losing out to in-house staff on performance-based promotions. This bond can create a halo effect, where we build an inflated view of those nearby while overlooking more qualified individuals further away.
“We all can reflect on occasions where the people we sit near are the people we know the best and feel the most kinship to,” he explains. Shalfrooshan says proximity bias existed in the workplace long before the pandemic. Instead, we end up making decisions based on biases rather than knowledge or data. Yet “that prioritisation of safety doesn’t always lead to accurate judgements”, explains Ali Shalfrooshan, a UK-based occupational psychologist at workplace-solutions provider PSI Services. It’s an evolutionary part of our cognitive decision-making process that we’ve used for generations as a mental shortcut to prioritise what feels safest. Proximity bias, like any bias, is a natural instinct. Once a matter of location within the office, the lines of what define proximity are now evolving, leaving workers and leaders in search of new ways of tackling the issue to guarantee that those who choose to work from home remain both an included part of the workforce and on track for promotions. Academics call this phenomenon ‘proximity bias’, which is an unconscious – and unwise – tendency to give preferential treatment to those in our immediate vicinity.
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“What we’ve told our leaders who have chosen to come back to our hubs is that they have a responsibility to have this remote-first mindset,” says Casto, adding that they should make sure remote-working employees keep them honest in terms of engagement.Ĭompanies like Synchrony who are moving to a hybrid-work model are grappling with how to best ensure workers physically present in the office don’t reap benefits due to their proximity to bosses and colleagues.
Synchrony is now working to ensure all employees – whether in the office or at home – feel seen. “So, we said, if we set the tone at the top of the house to say, ‘it’s OK ,’ and candidly, ‘we’re going to do it, too,’ then it gives people a lot more trust.” “The executive leadership team has a lot of influence on the behaviours of the workforce,” he explains. To address concerns that those same workers might feel pressured to come back into the office to get more face time with their bosses (and thus more recognition), Casto says leadership needed to role-model the non-traditional plan.
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“From a leadership perspective, we want to make sure we look like we’re supporting both groups,” he explains, noting that 85% of employees in a company-wide survey expressed a desire to work from home full time. Instead, they’re required to work at least one day from home.ĭJ Casto, chief human resources officer at the consumer financial-services company, says one of the main reasons they adopted this rule was to put home-working and office-working staff on a more equal playing field. The firm, based in Connecticut, US, has told its leadership team that they cannot, in fact, return to the office five days a week. While financial institutions around the world have called for a full return to the office in the coming months, Synchrony Financial is moving in the opposite direction.
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