By Benjamin Laker Senior Contributor
Employees working remotely face growing career risks as visibility replaces performance in promotion … More decisions.
For all the talk of flexible work and borderless teams, there’s a different reality settling in: where you live is beginning to matter more than what you do.
Remote work was supposed to change that. It promised freedom from geography, letting companies tap into talent from anywhere. But recent patterns suggest the opposite is taking hold. Employees who aren’t physically close to their bosses (or don’t live in the same city as the headquarters) are noticing fewer opportunities coming their way. Not because they’ve underperformed, but because they’ve become less visible.
New research by Deel, a global HR and payroll platform business, shines a light on this. A third of workers across Europe say they’re worried that being physically distant is hurting their career. The number is even higher in the UK. And while this data is European, the implications stretch much further. Any leader running a global or hybrid team should be paying attention.
Location Over Performance?
It turns out that the return-to-office movement may have less to do with collaboration and more to do with control. Many workers say they’d be willing to move farther from city centers, or even across borders, if it meant more affordable housing or better support from family. Some would work irregular hours just to make it work. But the message they’re receiving is that performance alone won’t protect their trajectory.
Managers, consciously or not, tend to reward the people they see most often. Office conversations turn into opportunities. Proximity becomes a shortcut for trust. This wasn’t always intentional, but in many cases, it has become institutional.
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And this presents a risk. Organizations that still treat location as a condition for advancement are ignoring the bigger picture. They’re building two classes of employees—those who are considered promotable because they’re nearby, and those who are left out of key decisions simply because they chose to live elsewhere.
This isn’t about preference. For many professionals, relocating isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s driven by caregiving, cost, or citizenship. Companies that assume everyone can be present all the time are not only misunderstanding their workforce, they’re also limiting their reach.
When Leadership Defaults to What’s Familiar
One reason this is happening is simple: old habits. Many leaders came up in an era where climbing the ladder meant being in the right place at the right time. That’s still how some think about loyalty and readiness. If someone isn’t in the room, they’re seen as unavailable. If they’re working remotely, they’re thought to be less invested. These assumptions can be hard to shake.
Even with the best intentions, leaders often revert to the familiar. It’s easier to manage what’s close. It feels more natural to give feedback in person. But these tendencies can quickly become bias, especially when they influence who gets promoted and who doesn’t.
The Deel study hints at this tension. While employers say they want broader talent pools, many still avoid hiring people outside their country of operation. They say they want flexibility, yet continue to favor the people they can see.
This creates a contradiction. Firms claim to support remote work but penalize those who embrace it too fully. That gap between policy and practice can push strong performers out the door—not because they’re disengaged, but because they sense the game isn’t being played fairly.
A Hidden Problem for Inclusion
There’s another angle that doesn’t get enough attention. When proximity becomes the standard for advancement, some groups get left behind more than others. It’s not a coincidence that many of the people looking for location flexibility are women, caregivers, first-generation professionals, or workers managing chronic health issues.
For them, being near the office isn’t always possible, nor should it be the price of admission. If leadership pathways quietly depend on location, those most in need of flexibility end up paying the highest cost. This isn’t just a workplace issue. It’s a structural flaw in how talent is evaluated.
Diversity initiatives won’t go far if they fail to address the role of proximity in career progression. Visibility, in many cases, is mistaken for reliability. Being present gets conflated with being committed. And so the workplace starts to favor those who can show up, not necessarily those who can lead.
The real challenge is that this bias doesn’t always look like discrimination. It hides inside promotion patterns and project assignments. It surfaces in who gets invited to the next strategy session. Unless leadership makes a deliberate effort to change how decisions are made, proximity will keep driving outcomes, even in organizations that claim to be remote-first.
Rebuilding the Career Ladder for a Distributed World
If this is the problem, what’s the fix? It starts with being honest about how leadership works. Many companies invested in tools for remote collaboration. Far fewer invested in training leaders to evaluate people based on output, not proximity.
Accountability needs to become location-neutral. This means measuring what matters—results, not availability. Performance reviews should reflect contributions, not calendar presence. Leadership programs must include people who operate outside the main office, not just those who have a desk near senior executives.
This also requires a shift in how potential is identified. Informal recognition still plays a big role in promotions, but informal access is where distance creates the greatest divide. If talent development continues to rely on who’s seen, it will miss those who are making an impact quietly or from afar.
The companies that get this right won’t just have happier employees. They’ll have a more sustainable talent strategy. They’ll be able to draw from a wider range of candidates, operate across time zones more effectively, and respond to crises with greater resilience. In a world where skilled labor is increasingly mobile, proximity-based leadership is a risk, not a safeguard.
This isn’t about replacing offices or banning in-person meetings. It’s about being intentional. If location keeps deciding who moves up, then distance will keep pushing people out.
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