We’ve all heard the phase, “it’s not what you know, but who you know that matters”. In an era of unprecedented change at our workplaces, it might now be where you are that matters.
During the pandemic, many companies have discovered both the benefits and drawbacks of a fully virtual workforce. Not wanting to lose some of those advantages, while mitigating disadvantages, we now see the implementation of many different hybrid working arrangements.
Hybrid work takes many forms, but all generally entail some employees working from home, while others work in the office. The division of ‘at home’ and ‘in office’ employees may be the case indefinitely, or vary across different days of the week/month/year.
When those responsible for evaluating employee performance work in the office, it poses greater risk of proximity bias – the tendency to evaluate those closer to us more favorably than those farther away, all other things equal.
Evaluating employee performance is already notoriously difficult, even before hybrid work arrangements came to the fore. Accurate and fair performance evaluations only occur with valid (actually measuring what you intend to measure) and reliable (consistency over time and across different people) measures, but all too often suffer from subjectivity, favoritism, and a range of unconscious biases.
Now, with the advent of hybrid work, we need to be even more mindful of the role proximity bias might take in the world of work going forward. For those evaluating others, actions must be taken to ensure both in office and at home workers are treated equitably and fairly. For those considering whether to work from home (or not), it adds another consideration to what is, already, a complex decision.