The data that got my attention
A 2024 experiment published in PLOS ONE put 937 UK managers through a forced-choice exercise. Each manager saw pairs of otherwise identical employee profiles and picked one for promotion, a raise, or training. The only difference was where the employee worked. Employees who split their time between home and office — two days remote and three days on-site — were 7.7% less likely to be selected for promotion and 7.1% less likely to be selected for a salary increase. Fully remote employees faced a 10.7% promotion penalty, a 9.4% raise penalty, and a 6.6% training penalty.
The researchers, Kasperska, Matysiak, and Cukrowska-Torzewska, controlled for performance rating, age, experience, and skills. The gap did not reflect ability. It reflected visibility.
Why this matters now
Hybrid work is now the dominant arrangement for remote-capable roles, yet promotion and pay decisions still depend on human judgment. Managers form impressions through hallway conversations, spontaneous problem-solving, and informal updates that happen more often with people in the office. Those impressions become stand-ins for performance when formal review criteria are weak.
The result is a quiet tax on flexibility. An employee who delivers the same output from home starts with a lower chance of advancement simply because they are seen less. Over one or two cycles the penalty looks small. Over a career it compounds into stalled progression, pay gaps, and higher turnover among the people organizations say they want to retain.
What the research actually shows
The PLOS ONE study found that the penalty was not tied to how often someone worked from home. Hybrid and fully remote employees faced similar disadvantages, which means the issue is not partial attendance but the fact that remote work is still treated as unusual in many teams.
The penalty disappeared when more than 80% of the team worked from home at least occasionally. In those teams, managers no longer associated presence with commitment. Managers with more personal remote-work experience also showed smaller biases. Culture and familiarity matter as much as policy.
The data also show that high-pressure organizations amplify the problem. In demanding work cultures, male fully remote employees were about 30% less likely to be promoted and 19% less likely to receive a raise than male office-based peers. The figures for women were 15% and 19%. In supportive organizations with family-friendly policies, the penalties were not detectable.
| Work arrangement | Promotion penalty | Salary penalty | Training penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hybrid (2 days remote) | -7.7% | -7.1% | Not reported |
| Fully remote | -10.7% | -9.4% | -6.6% |
A practical framework for leaders
Proximity bias is a system problem, not a manager problem. Organizations that leave it unaddressed will slowly concentrate opportunities around the people leaders see most often. The fix is to make output and contribution visible by design.
- Define review criteria before the cycle begins. List the deliverables, behaviors, and business outcomes that matter for each role. When criteria are vague, presence fills the gap.
- Require written evidence. Ask managers to document project outcomes, client feedback, and peer contributions for every candidate. Memory favors the people who appeared most recently.
- Audit promotion and pay rates by work arrangement. Run a quarterly report that compares in-office, hybrid, and remote employees in the same function and level. Disparities that look small in one cycle become patterns across several.
- Train managers on output-based evaluation. Shift one-on-one conversations from weekly activity reports to results and evidence. Managers need language and examples that separate contribution from location.
- Normalize remote work at the team level. When flexible work is treated as an exception, the people who use it are evaluated as exceptions. Broad adoption and clear policy reduce the stigma that drives the penalty.
The bottom line
Hybrid and remote employees are not asking for special treatment. They are asking to be evaluated on the work they produce rather than the chair they occupy. The 2024 data confirm that without structural guardrails, managers will default to what is easiest to notice.
Organizations that want equity and retention cannot rely on individual managers to overcome a bias that is baked into daily interaction patterns. They must redesign the review process so that visibility is a planned input, not an accident of location.
Where to go from here
Leadership teams can remove proximity bias with structured review criteria and manager training that focuses on results over visibility. leadership workshops →
