You know that feeling when you find out a coworker got pulled into a big meeting you didn’t even know was happening? Or when someone at your level gets praised for being “strategic” and you’re thinking, I delivered the same results?
If you work in a hybrid setup, you’ve probably felt this. There’s a word for it: proximity bias. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
What’s Actually Going On
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: hybrid work was supposed to give everyone more freedom. It did. But it also created a world where the people who show up to the office more tend to get ahead faster. Not because they’re better. Because they’re more visible.
Think about it from a manager’s perspective. A project comes up and you need someone reliable. Who pops into your head? The person you had coffee with this morning, or the one you last saw on a Zoom tile three weeks ago? That’s not favoritism. It’s how our brains work. We remember the people we see. We trust the people we bump into. We associate presence with engagement.
In a fully in-office company, everyone shares that advantage. In a fully remote one, nobody does. Hybrid is where things get uneven, and the people on the wrong side of that equation aren’t doing anything wrong.
It Compounds. That’s the Problem.
Getting promoted isn’t just about doing good work. It comes down to three things: people see you around, people know what you’ve done, and people include you in the important stuff.
If you’re in the office regularly, you get all three almost automatically. If you’re mostly remote, you fight for every one.
| In-Office Employee | Remote Employee | |
| Spontaneous access to leadership | Happens naturally | Rarely or never |
| Included in unplanned meetings | Frequently | Almost never |
| Top of mind for stretch projects | Often | Only if actively advocated for |
| Informal relationship-building | Daily, through hallways and lunches | Requires deliberate scheduling |
| Review language tendency | “Strategic,” “leadership-ready,” “engaged” | “Reliable,” “consistent,” “solid” |
| Promotion likelihood over time | Compounding advantage | Compounding disadvantage |
Year one, you get a slightly less glowing review. Year two, you’re passed over for a stretch project. Year three, someone with similar skills but more office time gets the promotion. By year four, you’re questioning whether you have a future at this company.
That’s not a speed bump. That’s the thing that makes good people quietly disengage or quietly leave.
The Anchor Day Trap
Many companies think they’ve solved this with anchor days. Everyone comes in Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sounds fair. But leadership tends to cluster on those same days. The people who live closest show up most consistently. Those days become the real power center. The side conversations, the relationship-building, the informal decisions all happen when the building is full.
If you can’t be there because you live far away, have caregiving responsibilities, or were hired as a remote employee, you’re falling behind. Not because of anything you did. Because of how the calendar was designed.
How to Tell If This Is Happening
You don’t need a formal audit. Just pay attention. The patterns are usually right there once you start looking.
| Signal | What to Look For |
| Promotion patterns | Most promoted employees are regularly in-office |
| Review language | Remote workers described as “reliable” while in-office peers are called “strategic” |
| Project assignments | High-visibility work consistently goes to employees with more office presence |
| Meeting access | Important discussions happen in person without remote attendees |
| Decision documentation | Key decisions made informally and not shared with the full team |
| Leadership exposure | Executives interact mostly with in-office staff |
If You’re the Remote Employee
A lot of advice about proximity bias is aimed at companies. But if you’re experiencing this right now, you need something you can act on today.
- Make your work impossible to overlook. Don’t assume results speak for themselves. Send regular short updates to your manager: here’s what I shipped, here’s the impact, here’s what’s next. Make it easy for them to advocate for you when you’re not around.
- Ask to be included. If strategic meetings happen without you, say something. “I saw the roadmap session happened Thursday. I’d love to be part of those going forward.” Most of the time you weren’t excluded on purpose. You were just forgotten.
- Build relationships outside of meetings. Schedule informal one-on-ones with your manager, skip-level leaders, and cross-functional peers. Fifteen minutes, no agenda. This is the remote equivalent of the hallway conversation.
- Be explicit about your goals. Tell your manager: “I want to be considered for senior roles. What do I need to demonstrate, and how do we make sure my work is visible to decision-makers?”
- Document everything. Keep a running record of your outcomes. At review time, don’t rely on anyone’s memory, especially if their memory is mostly of what happened in the office.
If You’re a Manager
You are the single biggest factor in whether proximity bias takes hold. You decide who gets the project, whose name you mention to leadership, and how you describe someone in a review.
- Check your patterns. Think about the last three stretch assignments you gave. Were they all to in-office people? If yes, you have a proximity habit. Correct it.
- Be careful with review language. Words like “engaged,” “visible,” and “involved” often just describe proximity, not performance. Before you write a review, ask yourself: am I evaluating impact or physical presence?
- Repeat what happens in the room. If a hallway conversation turns into a decision, share it with your remote team members that same day. The office shouldn’t have an information monopoly.
- Advocate for your remote people. When you’re in a room with leadership and names come up for promotions or projects, mention your remote employees. They can’t do this for themselves. That’s your job.
If You’re Running the Company
Individual effort only goes so far if the system rewards proximity. Here’s what needs to change.
- Ground promotions in evidence. If a manager can say “she feels ready” without specific examples, the process has a bias hole. Every promotion decision should be backed by documented contributions. Calibration sessions across managers help catch familiarity-based inflation.
- Make strategic access intentional. Stop letting important conversations happen only when certain people are in the building. Schedule them. Document decisions. Rotate who leads meetings and who presents to leadership.
- Go virtual-first in meetings. When half the room is together and the other half is on screen, the screen loses. Have everyone join from their own device, even the people in the office. It feels odd for a week. Then it just feels fair.
- Distribute presence. If your only workspace is one headquarters, you’ve built one influence center. Consider giving employees access to professional workspaces in their own cities, rotating where leadership travels, or holding gatherings in different locations. Career-shaping moments shouldn’t only happen in one building.
- Measure it. Track promotion rates, project assignments, and review scores by work location. Look at the data quarterly. If remote employees are consistently rated lower or promoted less, that’s not a coincidence. Most companies don’t track this at all, which means proximity bias operates in the dark.
The Questions That Matter
Whether you’re a CEO, a team lead, or someone three years into a remote role wondering why things feel stuck, these are worth sitting with. Where does influence actually live in your company? One floor, one office, one set of days? How are promotions really decided? By documented results or by who feels familiar? Does your hybrid setup give everyone a genuine shot at growth? And if you’re the remote employee, are you waiting to be noticed, or making sure you can’t be missed?
The Bottom Line
Hybrid work isn’t the problem. Unmanaged hybrid work is. Most managers aren’t trying to be unfair. Most companies aren’t trying to create two tiers of employees. But when being close to power is an advantage and you hire people who can’t be close to power, you’ve built in a contradiction.
It takes companies being honest about their data, managers examining their habits and remote employees refusing to be invisible while the system catches up. Your career should be shaped by your work, not your zip code.
