Remote employees are less likely to be promoted, recognized, or heard in hybrid meetings than colleagues sitting in the room, according to recent workplace research. The cause has a name: proximity bias. Fixing it starts with how meetings are designed, not just where people sit.
Is Proximity Bias Real, and What Does It Cost Remote Employees?
Research points the same way: people who are physically visible tend to be noticed, mentored, and promoted more often, quietly and regardless of actual output.
Peer-reviewed research helps explain why. In a study published in Human Relations, Kimberly Elsbach, Daniel Cable, and Jeffrey Sherman found that simply being seen at work during normal hours, with no interaction at all, led observers to judge an employee as dependable, and being seen outside normal hours led them to judge the employee as committed. Their experiment suggested these judgments are made spontaneously, without the observer intending or even noticing it.
In practice, this means two equally strong performers can end up on very different career paths simply because one sits closer to the decision makers.
Does Hybrid Work Actually Boost Employee Engagement?
It depends on the mix, but the data favors flexibility over rigid mandates. As of May 2026, exclusively remote employees have the highest engagement rate at 37%, followed by hybrid employees at 34% and in-office employees in remote-capable jobs at 29%, according to Gallup's hybrid work indicator.
| Work location | Engagement rate (Gallup, May 2026) |
|---|---|
| Hybrid | 34% |
| Fully remote | 37% |
| Fully in-office (remote-capable jobs) | 29% |
Gallup's analysis also found that hybrid work models work best when teams, not individuals, decide the rules for scheduling and coordination, since shared norms make people more productive and less anxious than top-down mandates.
Do Return to Office Mandates Actually Improve Performance?
The evidence says mostly no, and they carry real costs. After implementing return-to-office mandates, S&P 500 companies experienced abnormally high employee turnover and longer time-to-hire when filling job vacancies, according to University of Pittsburgh research. On average, the time to fill job vacancies increased 23%, and the hire rate decreased 17% after RTO mandates, with the increase in turnover more pronounced among women, senior employees, and more skilled workers.
The same study found that abnormal turnover rose by an average of about 13% to 14% after firms announced RTO mandates.
| RTO impact metric | Change after mandate |
|---|---|
| Time to fill vacancies | +23% |
| Hire rate | -17% |
| Abnormal turnover rate | +13% to 14% |
In an earlier 2024 study, the same researchers concluded that RTO mandates not only hurt employee satisfaction but also failed to boost company profits, noting that their findings were consistent with employees' concerns that "managers use RTO for power grabbing and blaming employees for poor performance."
Is Zoom Fatigue Still a Real "Employee Experience" Problem in 2026?
It is more nuanced than the 2021 headlines suggested. Stanford University researchers argued that video meetings demand greater cognitive processing than in-person meetings, largely because participants must manage their own image, read social cues that come across as flat, and stay "on camera" for extended periods.
However, a more recent study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology suggests the phenomenon may have faded: the findings indicate that video meetings are no longer significantly more exhausting than other types of meetings for most employees in the post-pandemic workplace. The takeaway for employers is that fatigue risk depends heavily on meeting design, camera norms, and meeting length, not the platform itself.
How Can Employers Build More Equitable Hybrid Meetings?
Meeting equity, giving remote and in-office participants an equal shot at being seen and heard, is a fixable design problem, not an inevitable side effect of hybrid work.
- Give every attendee their own camera tile, even people sitting in the same conference room, so no one is reduced to a shared wide shot.
- Let teams, not managers alone, set shared norms for cameras, response times, and meeting structure.
- Capture decisions in a shared, real-time log during the meeting, not in a hallway conversation afterward.
- Rotate who joins remotely, including leaders, so proximity advantage does not always sit with the same people.
- Tie recognition and promotion criteria to documented outcomes, not to who leaders remember seeing most.
FAQ
Does working remotely hurt your chances of a promotion?
It can, but the likelier cause is proximity bias rather than any real gap in performance. Peer-reviewed research on passive face time shows managers tend to judge people they simply see at work more favorably, which can put remote employees at a disadvantage without anyone noticing, even when their output is equal or stronger.
Are return-to-office mandates actually increasing productivity?
The available research does not support that claim. University of Pittsburgh researchers found RTO mandates raised turnover and slowed hiring at S&P 500 firms without a corresponding profit benefit.
What is proximity bias in hybrid meetings?
Proximity bias is the tendency for managers and colleagues to favor, trust, and remember people they physically see more often, which in hybrid teams usually means in-office employees get more visibility, mentorship, and advancement opportunities than equally capable remote colleagues.
Is Zoom fatigue still a real problem in 2026?
It is more situational than universal at this point. Older research, including Stanford's nonverbal overload analysis, argued that video meetings demand more cognitive effort than in-person ones, but a newer 2025 study found the exhaustion effect has largely faded for many workers, suggesting fatigue now depends more on meeting length and camera norms than the platform itself.
How can companies make hybrid meetings more equitable?
The most effective fixes are structural: give every participant an individual camera tile, let teams set their own hybrid norms instead of imposing them top down, log decisions in real time so remote employees are not briefed after the fact, and base recognition on documented outcomes rather than in-person visibility.
Meeting equity is just one window into your employee experience. If you are curious where your teamwork, leadership, or organization as a whole could grow, book a free consultation. We'll look at where you are today and point you to the changes that matter most. Book your free consultation
Disclaimer: This article summarizes third-party research and industry surveys for general informational purposes and is not legal, HR, or organizational design advice. Figures reflect the sources and capture dates listed below and may change as new research is published.
Sources:
- Gallup, "Indicator: Hybrid Work" (engagement by work location, May 2026 data), captured September 26, 2026
- Ding, Y., Jin, Z., Ma, M. S., Xing, B., and Yang, Y., "Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain," SSRN working paper, research summary by Baylor University Hankamer School of Business (hankamer.baylor.edu), captured September 4, 2026
- Ding, Y. and Ma, M. S., "Return-to-Office Mandates," University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business (business.pitt.edu), captured September 4, 2026
- Elsbach, K. D., Cable, D. M., and Sherman, J. W. (2010), "How passive 'face time' affects perceptions of employees: Evidence of spontaneous trait inference," Human Relations, 63(6), 735 to 760, captured September 4, 2026
- Bailenson, J. N. (2021), "Nonverbal overload: A theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue," Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2(1), captured September 4, 2026
- Nesher Shoshan, H. and Wehrt, W. (2025), "'Zoom fatigue' revisited: Are video meetings still exhausting post-COVID-19?," Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 30(5), 353 to 364, captured September 4, 2026
- Gallup, "Hybrid Work in Retreat? Barely." (gallup.com), captured September 4, 2026