Read the text to answer question.
While financial institutions around the world have called for a full return to the office ∈ the coming months, Synchrony Financial is moving ∈ the opposite direction. The American firm has told its leadership team that they cannot, ∈ fact, return to the office five days a week. Instead, they’re required to work at least one day from home.
DJ Casto, the company’s chief human resources officer, says one of the main reasons they adopted this rule was to put home-working and office-working staff on a more equal playing field. “From a leadership perspective, we want to make sure we look like we’re supporting both groups,” he explains, noting that 85% of employees ∈a company-wide survey expressed a desire to work from home full time.
To address concerns that those same workers might feel pressured to come back into the office to get more face time with their bosses (and thus more recognition), Casto says leadership needed to role-model the non-traditional plan. “The executive leadership team has a lot of influence on the behaviours of the workforce,” he explains. “So, if we set the tone at the top of the house to say, ‘it’s OK [to work from home], we’re going to do it, too,’ then it gives people a lot more trust.
Companies moving to a hybrid-work model are grappling with how to best ensure workers physically present ∈ the office don’t gain benefits due to their proximity to bosses and colleagues. Academics call this phenomenon ‘proximity bias’, an unconscious tendency to give preferential treatment to those ∈ our immediate vicinity. Once a matter of location within the office, the lines of what define proximity are now evolving, leaving workers and leaders ∈ search of new ways of tackling the issue to guarantee that those who choose to work from home remain on track for promotions.
Proximity bias existed ∈ the workplace long before the pandemic. “We all can reflect on occasions where the people we sit near are the people we know the best and feel the most kinship to,” says occupational psychologist Ali Shalfrooshan. This bond can create a halo effect, where we build an inflated view of those nearby while overlooking more qualified individuals further away. This halo effect can also cause leadership to excuse the poor performance of those ∈ their proximity, while not properly valuing the skills and expertise of those with whom they have less contact. Leaders must make sure that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind.
(Mark Johanson. www.bbc.com, 08.08.2021. Adapted.)
In the second paragraph, the concern about putting “home- -working and office-working staff on a more equal playing field” means that, ∈Synchrony Financial,
