Out of sight, out of mind: Designing equity into your workplace strategy
The workplace has always been an anchor of collaboration, focus, and getting things done. However, the emergence of the hybrid workplace model has challenged and changed that, as those physically working together is a constantly moving feast. Thus, a new challenge for organizations is to achieve presence equity – the idea that every employee, wherever they are working from, is given equal priority and consideration.
Proximity bias – the need for a hybrid management mindset
Proximity bias is the idea that we naturally tend to favor those within our immediate vicinity. This could translate into preferential treatment toward employees that work often in the office vs. those working remotely. This preferential treatment is unconscious – for example, you are more likely to ask someone for input if they are seated next to you rather than jumping on a virtual call to ask someone else – but could have more dramatic consequences in the long-term, with on-site employees receiving faster promotions or being evaluated more highly in their performance reviews.
In contrast, employees who prefer working from home could risk being left out of important discussions or not encouraged to speak up during calls, potentially becoming perceived as less effective workers than their on-site peers. This is not a new phenomenon and could apply just as well to those located in headquarters where senior leadership is present vs. a satellite office and is also one of the reasons for the pre-COVID culture of presenteeism in Asia.
How can we break the bias?
75% of global CEOs anticipate that their organizations will adopt hybrid workstyles, according to KPMG’s Quarterly Global CEO Survey at the end of 2021, which means proximity bias will become a more critical issue.
Here are a few thoughts on how a carefully considered workplace strategy could be the key to avoiding the pitfalls of unconscious proximity bias.
While a large part of the equation rests on leadership, business priorities, and HR practices, there are deliberate ways the hybrid workplace can be designed as a more equitable and inclusive environment:
1. Change how we manage teams
More than ever before, it is critical that HR, leadership, and workplace strategists make a combined effort in creating unified change management programs for a hybrid workplace. Management training should be updated to consider distributed teams by providing managers with tools to manage occupancy planning that ensure equal access to leadership. Another critical area to train managers would be in the creation of an intentional communication strategy that allows all team members to be updated, regardless of location.
Without the right management training, proximity bias can unconsciously creep in via unconscious communication gaps, with managers forgetting to recap information gleaned from informal water-cooler conversations to all team members, not giving remote workers a chance to give their input on key projects, or by not giving hybrid workers adequate facetime with senior management.
2. Use tech as the great equalizer
As hybrid workplaces inherently create a distributed workforce, technology is increasingly becoming the main medium to give everyone visibility and a voice, levelling the playing field for workers, regardless of their location.
This is a complex challenge to resolve, but here are some ideas that may help:
– You may have experienced how certain administrative requests are processed faster in-person in the office, while digital requests hit more road bumps along the way. Leveraging automation for administrative processes like IT / Finance etc, can allow for all requests to be considered equally – irrespective of whether the employee is in the office, home or a third space.
– Flex space aggregators that allow staff to book various spaces in the city to work from (including the traditional office) and find where their team members are located make it easier to collaborate with everyone equally.
– When scheduling meetings, the option to join via video call should be made mandatory. By extension, all meeting rooms / collaboration spots in the office should have high-tech video call facilities to ensure everyone has a seat (virtual or literal) at the table.
3. Keep a finger on the pulse
Overcoming proximity bias can’t be done overnight and will take consistent long-term effort. Organizations can put systems into place, like a regular pulse survey, to solicit employee feedback on engagement and monitor whether they feel affected by proximity bias. This can be incorporated into performance reviews to identify gaps and find solutions. Pre-COVID, the norm was to send annual HR surveys which can give a deep insight into employee sentiment but are not agile enough to enable proactive strategy changes.
How have we worked to overcome this pitfall?
Creating a hybrid strategy that allows equitable communication, collaboration, productivity, and an engaging experience to employees, wherever they choose to work from that moment, is what will differentiate good strategies from the great ones. However, its design cannot be left to chance and requires deliberate strategy, as we’ve stressed within our own workplaces:
“At Knight Frank, our ambition is that every member of the firm feels they can bring their whole selves “to work” wherever they think they will be most effective. Under our approach to hybrid working, our people are encouraged to do work where it is best done – in the office, at home, or elsewhere. We complement that by our own Knight Frank Velocity surveys which give us a ready gauge on how our people are feeling and our values-based appraisals which target a level-playing field for all our staff, regardless of their preferred working environment.”