Proximity Bias In Remote/Flexible Workers

Many organizations may need some employees to come in full-time. Others may need to come in on a hybrid schedule even if they worked full-time remotely during the pandemic.

Addressing these potential cultural divides is vital to prevent a sense of “haves” and “have-nots” from develop...

Surveys show that two-thirds of large employers intend to have a mainly hybrid schedule after the pandemic ends for non-front line employees, with some fully remote and some office-centric.

Employee surveys show that two-thirds to three-quarters of all workers who can work at least som...

Addressing the problem of 'Facetime with the Boss' necessitates shifting from the traditional, high-stakes, large-scale quarterly or even annual performance evaluations to much more frequent weekly or biweekly, low-stakes, brief performance evaluation one-on-one check-ins.

Supervisees agre...

The “Excellence From Anywhere” strategy addresses concerns about divides by focusing on deliverables, regardless of where you work. Doing so also involves adopting best prac...

Trying to transpose existing ways of collaboration in “office culture” to remote work is a prime example of functional fixedness.

That’s why leaders fail to address strategically the problems arising with the shift to a hybrid-centric culture of work. They thought their pre-existing ways ...

There’s an important retention issue involved in providing employees with their desired level of flexibility, especially in the context of the Great Resignation. The survey indicates that of those knowledge workers not satisfied with the flexibility at their workplace, 72% are li...

Cognitive biases or mental blindspots are dangerous judgment errors that result in poor strategic and financial decisions. They render leaders unable to resist following their gut instead of relying on best practices.

One of these biases is called functional fixedness. When we have a ...

Another cognitive bias, related to functional fixedness, is called the not-invented-here syndrome. It’s a leader’s antipathy towards adopting practices not invented within their organization, no matter how useful. No wonder that...

Why haven’t leaders addressed the obvious problem of proximity bias?

Any reasonable external observer could predict the issues arising from differences in time spent in the office. Unfortunately, leaders often fail to see the clear threat in front of their noses.

You might have hear...