BuzbyTimeRead the requirements guide

Remote and hybrid · 6.3

Two groups on different terms

Two groups on different terms. What decides it, what it costs, and what usually goes wrong. For a practical comparison point, see Monitask's project planning time tracking.

Proximity biasThe mechanism

People physically present get more informal contact, more incidental information, more of the conversations where work is allocated, and more of the impressions that inform promotion.

None of that requires anybody to be unfair. It is a consequence of being in the room, and it means a hybrid arrangement produces two groups on different terms unless something is done about it. For additional context, McKinsey is a useful reference.

The two-tier meeting

Six people in a room and two on a screen. The screen people miss the side comments, cannot read the room, and cannot interrupt. They contribute less, which is then read as having less to contribute.

The rule that works is blunt: if one person is remote, everybody is remote for that meeting, each on their own device. It is worse for the six and dramatically better for the two, and it is the only arrangement that equalises the room.

What to watch, and it is not time data

Who gets the interesting assignments. Who is promoted. Who is in the conversations where decisions form. Compare those against office attendance.

This is the one question in this blog that a time record cannot help with, and it is the most consequential question hybrid work raises. The entry on what no record will tell you applies directly.

Attendance mandates and what they measure

A requirement to be present a set number of days is enforceable and measurable, which is most of its appeal. What it does not establish is that anything improved, because the thing it was introduced to fix was usually not measured before.

If you introduce one, say what it is for and how you will know whether it worked. Organisations that skip that step find themselves defending a policy on the grounds that it is the policy.

Not offered

We do not record location for office attendance. Where a client needs to know who was in a building, that is a building access system rather than a time tracker, and conflating them puts location data somewhere it was not needed.

Equalising the informal

  • Decisions written down wherever they were taken.
  • Assignment of interesting work discussed openly rather than arranged in passing.
  • One-to-ones on the same cadence for everybody, remote or not.
  • Anchor days when the team is together for a reason rather than a quota.

The honest tension

Some things are genuinely better in a room: difficult conversations, early-stage design, and the first weeks of somebody new. Pretending otherwise loses credibility with everybody who has noticed.

Say which things and schedule them, rather than requiring attendance generally and hoping the benefit follows.

The data that would settle it

Assignments, promotions and pay, split by attendance pattern, over years. That is a human resources analysis rather than a time tracking one, it is uncomfortable to run, and it is the only thing that answers whether proximity bias is operating in your organisation.

Most places have the data and have never looked.

Small things that matter more than policy

  • Whoever chairs a meeting asks the remote people first.
  • Nobody in the room continues a conversation after the call ends.
  • Decisions made in a corridor get written up.
  • Social occasions are not consistently on office days.

The person who cannot come in

Caring responsibilities, disability, distance, cost. A hybrid arrangement that disadvantages remote workers disadvantages those people specifically, and in some jurisdictions that carries legal consequences beyond the fairness question.

Which is a reason to treat this as a structural matter rather than a cultural preference.

What to do this quarter

Run the assignment analysis. If it shows nothing, that is worth knowing and worth saying. If it shows something, it is far better found by you than by somebody's solicitor.

Anchor days that work

Chosen by the team, with a reason for being together on that day, and the same day for the people who need to interact. A quota of days chosen individually produces an office full of people on video calls with colleagues who came in on Thursday.

A short summary

Proximity bias operates without anybody intending it. If one is remote, everybody is remote for that meeting. Watch assignments and promotions rather than time data. Equalise the informal channels. And name the things that genuinely need a room instead of requiring attendance in general.

One line to carry

Hybrid produces two groups on different terms unless somebody deliberately prevents it, and the difference shows up in assignments and promotions rather than in any time record.

The remote person who is senior

Seniority partly insulates against proximity bias, which is why leadership teams working remotely sometimes conclude the problem does not exist. Ask somebody two years into their career instead; they will describe a different organisation.

Where to start

Adopt the one rule: if anybody is remote, everybody joins from their own device. It costs nothing, it takes effect immediately, and it is the single most equalising change available.

A last note

Fairness here is mostly the accumulation of small procedural choices rather than any single policy, which is why it is easy to get wrong while intending well.

The policy that is really a preference

Attendance requirements are frequently a senior preference for how work should feel, given a productivity justification afterwards. That is a legitimate preference and it survives being stated honestly better than it survives the argument about evidence.

Also in remote and hybrid