Is proximity bias damaging women’s career prospects?

Words such as ‘hybrid’ and ‘flex­i­ble’ might make the world of work seem more desir­able to some peo­ple than it was before the pan­dem­ic, but employ­ers need to under­stand a key risk asso­ci­at­ed with remote work­ing.

A grow­ing prob­lem for peo­ple who work remote­ly is so-called prox­im­i­ty bias. This is the ten­den­cy among man­agers to rank those employ­ees who sit along­side them in the office more high­ly than those they see most­ly on their com­put­er screens dur­ing video meet­ings.

This inequity is like­ly to affect women dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. Female work­ers bore the brunt of hard­ships when the pan­dem­ic start­ed and could well be at a dis­ad­van­tage when it ends too. The Insti­tute for Fis­cal Stud­ies (IFS) esti­mates that they were about a third more like­ly than men to have worked in an indus­try that ground to a halt dur­ing the UK’s first Covid lock­down. The IFS’s research also sug­gests that, even in cas­es where moth­ers in het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples were in high­er-paid jobs than their part­ners were before the pan­dem­ic, they still had to inter­rupt their paid work more for child­care duties dur­ing the school clo­sures.

A recent sur­vey by FlexJobs has found that 80% of women, com­pared with 69% of men, rank the option of work­ing remote­ly as one of the most impor­tant fac­tors when con­sid­er­ing a new employ­er. Com­pa­nies will increas­ing­ly have to cater for this demand in order to attract tal­ent. But, in so doing, they need to be aware of the poten­tial ram­i­fi­ca­tions and must imple­ment strate­gies to ensure that all work­ers feel con­nect­ed to their organ­i­sa­tion.

Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the key, accord­ing to Rohan Mah­eswaran, asso­ciate direc­tor of tech­ni­cal recruit­ment at Future­heads Recruit­ment.

“If there is good com­mu­ni­ca­tion between employ­er and employ­ee, there is like­ly to be less bias and a bet­ter rela­tion­ship,” he says.

To help employ­ers stop assum­ing that pres­ence equals pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, Mah­eswaran rec­om­mends that they eval­u­ate all employ­ees objec­tive­ly, using data-dri­ven met­rics to mea­sure out­comes rather than focus­ing on how many hours each per­son has spent in the office.

Gem­ma Gor­don is group peo­ple direc­tor at real-estate com­pa­ny Urban Splash, which spe­cialis­es in regen­er­at­ing res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ings. The firm has long allowed flex­i­ble work­ing, but it has recent­ly for­malised arrange­ments to ensure that all employ­ees know exact­ly what’s avail­able to them and where they stand.

“We offer flex­i­bil­i­ty that match­es people’s lifestyles,” she says. 

In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, Urban Splash offered employ­ees who were par­ents 10 days’ extra leave – a perk that has been retained. Gor­don reports that six female mem­bers of her team who’d been on part-time con­tracts before the Covid cri­sis are now full-timers because they can now work when­ev­er it suits them, pro­vid­ing that they hit their tar­gets.

The firm has also recruit­ed 38 peo­ple – split equal­ly by gen­der – over the past 12 months. A recent staff sur­vey has found that all but 2% of respon­dents believe that work­ing remote­ly has either improved or not changed their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­pared with work­ing at HQ.

Gor­don agrees with Mah­eswaran that man­ag­ing the remote work­force effec­tive­ly hinges on good com­mu­ni­ca­tion. “Not com­mu­ni­cat­ing is a real­ly dan­ger­ous thing,” she warns, adding that her com­pa­ny ensures that line man­agers are in reg­u­lar con­tact their team mem­bers. 

Eliane Lugassy, co-founder and CEO of proptech firm Wit­co, says that her organ­i­sa­tion has min­imised the risk of prox­im­i­ty bias by imple­ment­ing a clear frame­work for remote work­ing.

This uses “key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors, so that every­one knows exact­ly what’s expect­ed of them” and how they can progress in the busi­ness, says Lugassy, who also high­lights the impor­tance of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion – in both direc­tions.

If it’s hard for your line man­ag­er and oth­er col­leagues to com­mu­ni­cate with you, remote work­ing “can com­pli­cate things”, she notes. “But, if you’re very respon­sive, it shouldn’t have a neg­a­tive impact on you as an employ­ee.”

Lugassy says that, when the lock­down restric­tions end­ed and peo­ple were per­mit­ted to return to the office, that she made her require­ments clear. After con­sult­ing her employ­ees, she set­tled on ask­ing them to come in three days a week, large­ly to devel­op some cul­tur­al cohe­sion.

Being explic­it about her expec­ta­tions and trust­ing peo­ple to work when they feel at their most pro­duc­tive has had a pos­i­tive effect on staff reten­tion, she says, but recruit­ment is anoth­er mat­ter.

“Employ­ees are seek­ing a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty. As an employ­er, you must decide if that’s good for your busi­ness and be clear about what you can and can­not offer in this respect,” Lugassy advis­es.

Aware­ness train­ing could help to mit­i­gate the risk of prox­im­i­ty bias. Diane Gilhoo­ley, a part­ner and glob­al head of HR and pen­sions at law firm Ever­sheds Suther­land, says that it’s impor­tant for employ­ers with remote and hybrid works to recog­nise the dan­ger, which “will be a fair­ly new to a lot of sec­tors”.

Employ­ers also need to have a strat­e­gy, she advis­es. This should address all employ­ees’ expec­ta­tions, ensur­ing that meet­ings include every­one, regard­less of their loca­tion. It should also include tech­nol­o­gy and skills audits to ensure that peo­ple are prop­er­ly equipped to work remote­ly.

The task of run­ning a remote team will be new to many man­agers, so they are also like­ly to need sup­port in this respect. So says Cheney Hamil­ton, who start­ed Find Your Flex (orig­i­nal­ly called mummyjobs.co.uk) in 2016 after strug­gling to find the kind of flex­i­ble employ­ment she need­ed any­where else. Now she helps oth­er employ­ers to devel­op inclu­sive work cul­tures. 

Hamil­ton says that min­imis­ing prox­im­i­ty bias is about “putting peo­ple first” and ensur­ing that all work­ers, regard­less of their loca­tion, have equal access to things such as career devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Employ­ers must be clear about what types of flex­i­bil­i­ty they can accom­mo­date and ensure that their employ­ment con­tracts don’t unin­ten­tion­al­ly remove flex­i­bil­i­ty, she adds.

Hamil­ton believes that flex­i­ble work­ing should no longer be viewed through the prism of par­ent­hood, giv­en that it has become rel­e­vant to all kinds of peo­ple, not just those with young chil­dren. She notes that some enlight­ened com­pa­nies are “alter­ing their reward mech­a­nisms and turn­ing their busi­ness­es into out­come-focused enti­ties”, cit­ing them as blue­prints for the future.

Before such approach­es become the norm tomor­row, moves such as those being made by office leas­ing plat­form Share­Space are like­ly to attract and retain tal­ent today. The com­pa­ny allows par­ents to bring their chil­dren to the office, for instance, and is recruit­ing for roles that offer pre­dom­i­nant­ly remote work.

ShareSpace’s HR man­ag­er, Olimpia Kicielińs­ka says: “We believe that, whether they’re work­ing from home or in our offices in War­saw, Budapest, Berlin or Lon­don, all of our team mem­bers should have access to career growth oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

If a firm can make good on such aims and prove itself to be tru­ly inclu­sive to all staff, whether they’re office-based, remote or hybrid work­ers, it will show that it has prox­im­i­ty bias under con­trol. This in turn could give it a cru­cial edge in a war for tal­ent that’s show­ing few signs of eas­ing.