In most organizations, hybrid work has long been reality: contractually regulated, technically equipped, part of everyday life. What has not arrived is hybrid leadership. In many places, people are still led by a presence logic. Whoever is visible counts as committed. Whoever sits in the office stays present in the leader's mind. The result is not a matter of style, but systematic unfairness.

The imbalance has numbers

41 percent of leaders unconsciously favor employees who work in the office when making promotion decisions (Owl Labs 2024). 85 percent doubt that their employees are productive remotely, even though measured productivity says otherwise (Microsoft Work Trend Index). And only 2 percent of companies have adapted their performance measurement to the hybrid reality (Fraunhofer IAO).

The knock-on costs show up in retention: only 9 percent of employees feel emotionally attached to their employer, only 21 percent trust their leadership (Gallup 2024). Anyone who experiences that presence counts more than results draws the obvious conclusion: less engagement or a move elsewhere. Particularly tricky: the effect does not hit at random. It disproportionately affects those who work remotely for good reasons, such as care responsibilities, place of residence or health situation. Proximity Bias is therefore also a diversity risk.

Proximity Bias is not a character flaw. It is what happens when output criteria are missing and visibility fills the gap.

Where criteria are missing, proximity decides

The decisive point: Proximity Bias is not a moral failing of individual leaders, but a structural problem. People assess on the basis of the information they have. When an organization does not make performance visible through defined output criteria, the remaining source of information is what the leader can directly observe: presence, availability, hallway conversations. Visibility becomes a proxy for performance, not because leaders want it that way, but because they have nothing better.

The same pattern explains the micromanagement that many hybrid teams experience. Whoever cannot measure output controls the process: status pings, short-notice check-ins, presence signals. Micromanagement is rarely a need for power. It is a reflex of uncertainty that arises wherever steering criteria are missing.

What actually helps

Appeals to fairness change nothing about this mechanism, and neither do unconscious-bias trainings, which do name the problem but do not close the information gap. Anyone who wants to address Proximity Bias seriously has to change the structure that produces it. Three interventions have proven effective:

  • Output orientation: performance is defined and assessed through agreed results, not through observable activity. This requires expectations to be stated explicitly.
  • Explicit team agreements: availability, response times, meeting rules and occasions for presence are agreed together instead of tacitly assumed. What is spoken out loud can be applied fairly.
  • Proximity-bias audits: promotions, salary rounds and project assignments are regularly reviewed to check whether remote employees systematically come off worse. What is measured can be corrected.

RTO is a symptom, not a solution

It is striking how many organizations are currently taking the opposite route: return-to-office mandates, often justified by culture, cohesion or productivity. On closer inspection, the RTO pressure is frequently something else: the admission that the organization has not developed any tools for hybrid leadership. If leadership only works in presence, the problem is not distance, but the craft of leadership.

Anyone who mandates return-to-office because hybrid leadership does not work is treating a lack of tools by abolishing the task.

That is risky in business terms: the organization gives up reach in the labor market, loses remote-minded high performers and still does not solve the actual problem. Because in presence, too, the question remains unanswered of how performance is recognized and how expectations are agreed.

Calibrate leadership, don't leave it to chance

Hybrid leadership can be learned, but it does not emerge on its own. And it is not a question of individual leaders: as long as each leader runs their own logic, employees experience fairness as a lottery, depending on whom they end up with. What it takes is a shared leadership logic across the entire leadership circle: shared output criteria, agreed team rules, regular bias review.

Organizations that make this explicit win twice: fairer decisions for employees and more reliable steering for leaders. The invisible risk becomes visible, and with it something that can be worked on.