Managerial bias — not remote work — is sabotaging today's workplace 

Imagine a hidden tax draining your organization of its most valuable assets. This tax does not appear on any financial statement, yet it quietly saps productivity, fuels turnover and stifles innovation.

It is the tax of outdated managerial intuition, a toll exacted on employees who dare to work outside the traditional office walls.

This is not a hypothetical problem. In the post-pandemic tug-of-war over the future of work, a groundbreaking 2025 peer-reviewed study published in “Work, Employment and Society” reveals the shocking extent of this issue. It exposes the deep-seated nature of what “Harvard Business Review” terms proximity bias — the tendency of leaders to favor employees who are physically closer to them at the expense of flexible workers. It often leads managers to penalize their most effective people, thus directly sabotaging their workplaces.

This is not a story about lazy employees; it is a story about leaders clinging to a bygone era, unable to see performance when it is not physically in front of them.  

The research, a sophisticated experiment involving nearly 1,000 UK managers with significant supervisory responsibilities, uncovers the flawed mental shortcuts and discriminatory patterns that cloud professional judgment. These managers, tasked with building strong teams, are instead actively damaging them by making career-altering decisions based on gut feelings rather than objective results. They are failing to capitalize on the enormous, well-documented benefits of flexible work, and the cost to their organizations is staggering. 

For years, we have heard the argument that being seen in the office matters. This new research proves it, but with a damning twist that exposes a fundamental management flaw. The study shows that managers automatically assume hybrid workers — those who split time between home and the office — are less productive than their fully on-site colleagues.  

When performance information was not provided in the experiment, hybrid workers faced a 7.7 percent lower probability of receiving a promotion and a 7.1 percent lower probability of getting a salary increase compared to office-based workers. This penalty stems from what economists call "statistical discrimination." Managers, lacking direct productivity data, make negative assumptions about a whole group of people based on a single characteristic — in this case, their work location.

The truly stunning revelation came when managers informed that a hybrid worker’s performance was identical to a similarly situated on-site worker. Suddenly, the penalty vanished entirely. This demonstrates that the disadvantage faced by hybrid workers is driven purely by a managerial assumption of underperformance, not by any actual difference in output.  

So in the absence of data, managers default to a lazy and deeply flawed proxy: the proximity bias of physical presence. This reliance on "face time" over measurable contribution represents a critical failure in management, punishing employees for their location rather than rewarding them for their work and creating a culture where visibility trumps value. 

While hybrid workers suffer from misguided assumptions about their productivity, full-time remote workers face an even more insidious form of bias. The study found that even when managers know a full-time remote employee performs just as well as an on-site one, they are still less likely to get a promotion or a raise. This baffling penalty has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with a manager’s perception of employee dedication. The researchers proved this penalty is almost entirely driven by the belief that full-time remote employees are simply less committed to their jobs.

This proximity bias is rooted in the "ideal worker" norm, a toxic and outdated expectation that employees signal devotion through constant availability and face time in the office. Choosing to work from home full-time directly violates this unwritten rule.  

According to signaling theory, physical presence in the workplace acts as a powerful, albeit often misleading, signal of engagement and work quality. Because full-time remote staff cannot provide this signal, they are stigmatized as lacking dedication, regardless of their actual output.

When controlling for this perceived lack of commitment, the career penalty for high-performing, full-time remote workers disappeared. This is a clear indictment of leaders who equate commitment with physical visibility, a charade that forces employees to perform loyalty rather than produce results.

Managers’ misperceptions look even costlier when set beside the hard business outcomes rolling in from national statistics and corporate trials. A six-month hybrid pilot reported in a peer-reviewed study in “Nature” cut attrition by 33 percent and shifted executives from skepticism to support after they witnessed a productivity increase. 

The “Work, Employment and Society” study’s most disturbing findings emerge when examining how these biases intersect with gender and parenthood, revealing a chaotic web of contradictory and discriminatory standards.

Fathers and childless men who work from home face penalties because managers question both their performance and their commitment. These men are punished for breaking the "ideal worker" mold, which traditionally demands their undivided presence at the workplace. Their request for flexibility is not seen as a strategy to increase focus but as a sign of shirking core responsibilities.

Mothers, however, are trapped in a different, more complex bias. Initially, they are not penalized for working remotely. But the moment managers learn a teleworking mother is performing only equally to her on-site counterpart, she is punished for not being more productive. This reveals a shocking double standard whereby managers expect mothers to deliver extra output — perhaps by working longer hours or more intensely — in exchange for the "privilege" of flexibility, a burden not placed on other groups.  

Childless women who work remotely often escape these penalties. Researchers suggest this could be a form of "reverse discrimination" where managers maintain "moral credentials" by favoring one group of women to offset their bias against mothers, or because they view childless women as exceptionally dedicated to their careers. 

Ultimately, these findings paint a grim picture of a managerial class struggling to adapt to the future of work. The biases against remote and hybrid employees are not just unfair; they are profoundly damaging to their organizations. Leaders who rely on these outdated instincts are actively discarding talent, suppressing productivity and fostering a culture of mistrust.

The path to a thriving modern workplace does not require forcing everyone back into a cubicle. It requires training managers to abandon their biases, manage by objectives and build a culture based on the only thing that truly matters: tangible, measurable results. 

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and authored the best-seller “Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.”