Tackling proximity bias in the workplace

The con­cept of the office is under­go­ing rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion, but there are con­cerns that work­place bias might not be swept away by all the changes.

Pri­or to coro­n­avirus, many work­ers prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced pre­sen­teeism, the pres­sure to be in the office for longer hours under the wide­ly held, but usu­al­ly mis­tak­en, notion that pres­ence equals pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In the new world that’s unfold­ing – a hybrid style of work­ing that bal­ances home-based and office-based hours – a relat­ed prob­lem is emerg­ing: prox­im­i­ty bias.

Essen­tial­ly, if work­ers are sel­dom or no longer in the office, how do they get noticed and get their con­tri­bu­tion recog­nised?

And how do man­agers over­come their nat­ur­al and uncon­scious bias of favour­ing col­leagues who are either in the office with them or col­lab­o­rat­ing on a project remote­ly?

Humans employ a cog­ni­tive strat­e­gy known as heuris­tics, men­tal short­cuts to help solve prob­lems and make deci­sions more quick­ly.

We use pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences, or bias­es, to assist our judg­ments about things and although this helps us reach con­clu­sions more quick­ly, that doesn’t mean we always end up with the right answer.

“You per­ceive your judg­ment to be log­i­cal, but because you’re using short­cuts, it might lead you to the wrong assump­tion,” says Ali Shal­frooshan, occu­pa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist at work­place solu­tions provider PSI Ser­vices.

In the con­text of the emerg­ing hybrid work­ing mod­el, Shal­frooshan says prox­im­i­ty bias is not so much about being phys­i­cal­ly present, but about being “seen” or “not seen”.

“It’s not so much the con­cept of office/not office but seen/not seen,” he says. “The prox­im­i­ty bias that peo­ple will be deal­ing with is ‘if I do not see your out­put I do not val­ue you’. That’s the bias I see play­ing out.”

Mounting concerns over bias

Prox­im­i­ty bias in itself isn’t unlaw­ful, says Stephen Raven­scroft, head of employ­ment at law firm Memery Crys­tal, but the loca­tions peo­ple choose to work from may be con­nect­ed to dif­fer­ent types of char­ac­ter­is­tics that are pro­tect­ed under dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion.

For instance, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties might find it eas­i­er to work from home, and female work­ers might be more like­ly to ask for flex­i­ble and remote work­ing as sta­tis­ti­cal­ly they are more involved with child­care and home duties.

Of course, prox­im­i­ty bias, real or imag­ined, can have an effect on any­one. “If some­one is feel­ing like they aren’t get­ting the same oppor­tu­ni­ties because they’re work­ing under a hybrid arrange­ment or per­ma­nent­ly work­ing from home, then the most sen­si­ble thing to do is to try and address that direct­ly with their line man­ag­er to under­stand whether their per­cep­tion is real­i­ty or whether there might be oth­er expla­na­tions,” says Raven­scroft.

If that fails to yield results, then employ­ees could speak to their human resources depart­ment or con­sult the con­cil­i­a­tion ser­vice ACAS in cas­es where com­mu­ni­ca­tion between employ­ee and employ­er breaks down.

Raven­scroft says while prox­im­i­ty bias is not a wide­ly per­va­sive issue yet, he expects it to be a “ris­ing con­cern” as the hybrid way of work­ing becomes more estab­lished.

Poten­tial changes to leg­is­la­tion could also have a bear­ing on this. “It has been pro­posed the [draft] Employ­ment Bill [due to be debat­ed] this year will make flex­i­ble work­ing the kind of expect­ed stan­dard for busi­ness­es that can cater for it and the employ­er will have to show why it isn’t appro­pri­ate in cer­tain cir­cum­stances,” Raven­scroft adds.

“That’s a 180-degree turn from now, where the employ­ee has to explain why they should be allowed it and the employ­er has a set of rea­sons under which they can refuse it.”

Addressing the problem

Employ­ers are like­ly to have few­er issues if they clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate their plans to employ­ees and ensure there is log­ic behind any new rules.

It’s unlike­ly all employ­ee requests can be met due to every company’s need to strike a bal­ance between prof­itabil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy and employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion, but gen­uine attempts to take on board input from work­ers is like­ly to lead to a more col­le­giate work­ing envi­ron­ment.

Sal­ly Todd, part­ner at flex­i­ble work­ing con­sul­tants DuoMe, says organ­i­sa­tions will have to devel­op new ways of work­ing to help ensure all team mem­bers are “vis­i­ble”.

“If a man­ag­er can’t rely on peo­ple being at their desk now to keep up with what’s going on, it will be hard­er to gauge how peo­ple are pro­gress­ing with­out sys­tems in place to allow peo­ple to doc­u­ment progress, record actions, and share and retrieve work at dif­fer­ent times,” she says.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex Busi­ness School’s Dr Emma Rus­sell, whose co-authored book Agile Work­ing and Well­be­ing in the Dig­i­tal Age is the first review of research relat­ed to the impact of agile work­ing on employ­ees, backs up the point about vis­i­bil­i­ty, sug­gest­ing remote work­ers can feel “pro­fes­sion­al­ly iso­lat­ed”.

“In a recent study of lock­down-enforced remote work­ers, 64% report­ed weak­er bonds with their col­leagues and 56% felt less well con­nect­ed to their employ­er,” says Rus­sell.

Todd believes plan­ning will be crit­i­cal for organ­i­sa­tions to suc­ceed in an emerg­ing new hybrid world.

This includes plan­ning sched­uled office time to allow col­leagues to net­work, only request­ing staff be in the office when their pres­ence is vital, and to enable team lead­ers to engage with remote work­ers to reduce poten­tial feel­ings of prox­im­i­ty bias.

Focus­ing on out­comes rather than hours at a desk, or logged in, is key and allow­ing employ­ees to work when they want is piv­otal for tru­ly flex­i­ble work­ing.

Dur­ing lock­down, some experts have sug­gest­ed the del­uge of meet­ings on apps such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams means “office hours” have remained the norm, with only work­ers’ loca­tions being dif­fer­ent.

“In a hybrid world, you want to be reduc­ing the bur­den of real-time chats or live videos, because they don’t work unless every­one uses them at the same time, and as peo­ple work in a more hybrid way, they won’t want to be doing the same thing at the same time,” says Todd. “The notion of office and remote hours not hap­pen­ing at the same time is real­ly crit­i­cal.”

Work­places that can make that shift, and enable employ­ees to record their input, have a greater chance of thriv­ing in this emerg­ing new world of work.