The outdated concept that's biasing managers against remote work

Imagine a world where your manager gauges your productivity by the number of hours you spend at your desk.

Sounds archaic, right? Yet evidence shows that’s exactly how managers who are taught to “manage by walking around” tend to evaluate their employees. This management style, of looking around to see who is working, systematically causes managers to undervalue the productivity of hybrid and remote workers.

The resulting "proximity bias" is the ghost in the machine — the unseen hand pulling managers back to outdated office-centric models, whether in the federal government or in the private sector.

The reality of productivity and retention in hybrid and remote work is quite different. Nick Bloom, the most prominent scholar on hybrid and remote work, collaborated with other scholars at Stanford University to study call center employees at a NASDAQ-listed company with 16,000 staff. Their paper was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Staff at the call center were offered a chance to apply for a work-from-home arrangement. Post-application, the researchers randomly selected half of the applicants to work from home while the other half continued their roles in the office environment. The company did not train managers in overseeing work-from-home staff, nor did it make any other substantial alterations to adapt to the new setup. 

Over a span of nine months, the work-from-home group showed a 13 percent performance increase compared to the in-office group, all while maintaining quality metrics. This was mainly due to the remote workers working more minutes (fewer sick days and breaks) and taking more calls per minute. They also had a lower attrition rate during the study than the in-office group — 17 percent versus 35 percent. 

However, a major downside came from manager assessment of performance. Remote work reduced rates of promotion conditional on performance. In other words, based on the improved productivity of the work-from-home group, they should have been promoted at a substantially higher rate than what the scholars observed over nine months. Unfortunately, with no management training to assess the performance of remote staff, the managers adopted the natural and intuitive “out of sight, out of mind” attitude, underestimating the higher productivity of the WFH group. 

Bloom ran another study, this time focusing on hybrid work, with 1,612 employees from two divisions in a company with 35,000 employees. Staff with even-numbered birthdays were assigned to a full-time Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 schedule in the office. Their odd-numbered birthday counterparts got a flexible hybrid work arrangement. Again, the company made no substantial changes to adapt to hybrid work or to train managers in assessing hybrid work performance.

What did they find? The hybrid work group exhibited a 4.4 percent increase in lines of code written, which aligns closely with other research. The hybrid group also had a 33 percent leap in retention, fewer sick days, and a surge in job satisfaction.

But there was a hiccup — again, lower managerial satisfaction. To quote the researchers, “we found no significant impact of hybrid treatment on employees’ performance reviews or promotion rates,” In other words, their higher productivity should have resulted in better management reviews of hybrid workers. Yet their managerial assessments remained unaffected compared to their in-office peers. 

This unchanged lens through which managers evaluated employee performance in hybrid settings reveals a significant oversight. The traditional parameters and biases held firm, overshadowing the actual productivity gains achieved in a hybrid work setup.

These studies highlight a critical gap in the current managerial approach to evaluating remote and hybrid workers: the reliance on outdated, office-centric metrics and the failure to adapt evaluation practices to the realities of remote and hybrid work. To bridge this gap, organizations must invest in targeted managerial training that focuses on the nuances of remote and hybrid work environments. Such training should emphasize the importance of setting clear, measurable goals for remote and hybrid workers and using objective performance metrics rather than subjective impressions of productivity.

Furthermore, organizations should encourage managers to adopt a more continuous and dynamic approach to performance evaluation. Traditional annual performance reviews are not sufficient to capture the full scope of an employee's contributions in a remote or hybrid setting. Instead, managers should engage in regular, structured check-ins with their team members, providing ongoing feedback and support. These check-ins can serve as opportunities to set and review short-term performance goals, discuss any challenges or obstacles, and adjust work plans as needed.

In addition to formal training and revised evaluation practices, organizations can also leverage technology to support remote and hybrid work arrangements. Digital tools and platforms like WebWork or Hubstaff can facilitate time-tracking, communication, collaboration, and project management, helping to bridge the physical distance between remote workers and their managers. However, it is crucial to use these tools wisely, ensuring that they support productivity and engagement without contributing to burnout or excessive surveillance.

Ultimately, overcoming proximity bias requires a cultural shift within organizations. It involves recognizing and valuing the contributions of remote and hybrid workers on par with those of office-based employees.

This shift necessitates a move away from equating physical presence with productivity and towards a more inclusive, results-oriented work culture. By embracing this cultural shift, the government and private sectors can harness the full potential of remote and hybrid work models, driving innovation, enhancing employee satisfaction, and fostering a more diverse and resilient workforce.

Gleb Tsipursky serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the author of Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.