The Hidden Inequality Crisis in Remote Work: Why Your Colleagues Get to Stay Home While You Don't

For decades, seemingly trivial issues like who gets the best parking spot and office space have ignited officewide tension, exposing deep resentments about favoritism, status, and fairness.

These days, a new "parking spot" fight is emerging – not over the office lot, but over who gets to work remotely and how often. As companies grapple with return-to-office mandates and hybrid schedules, decisions about who works where are becoming a flashpoint. Research confirms what many business leaders already sense: inequality in remote work is growing. High-income, highly educated employees are far more likely to have remote options, while most others are not. For jobs paying around $30,000, remote work is rare; for those earning over $200,000, more than 30% offer part- or full-time flexibility.

Many executives mention fairness (or the lack thereof) as a significant concern associated with work-from-home. Employees required to come into the office feel they are being treated unfairly, which can undermine engagement and morale. In this new world, work will not be uniform — it will be personalized. But with personalization comes the challenge of maintaining fairness in increasingly customized work arrangements.

Why Remote Work Inequality Matters More Than Other Workplace Disparities

In general, there's no shortage of felt unfairness in the workplace. Everyone knows that people within the same organization often earn different salaries. Other benefits — like health insurance or leave policies — are also unequally distributed. So why is who gets to work remotely such a concern?

Research shows that people are more likely to accept unfavorable decisions if they perceive fairness in the decision-making process. In practice, this is difficult because fairness depends on many factors:

• Whether reasons for the decision were clearly explained
• Whether it was applied consistently
• Whether people had enough time and resources to adapt
• Whether their input was solicited and considered
• Whether they were treated with dignity and respect

Even if most of these conditions are met, one or two unfair elements can strongly shape overall perceptions of fairness.

When it comes to remote work, simply stating that a job can be done remotely is not enough to justify why someone gets that benefit. Here are three key factors to ensure custom hybrid work arrangements gain wider support:

1. Clarify how and why the new work structure adds value—for everyone

Unequal treatment becomes more legitimate when it is seen as instrumental to a greater goal. Leaders need to communicate clearly that remote work is a productivity strategy. That means explaining, with specificity, how working from home enables better focus, faster execution, or higher-quality output—and how these benefits help the team or organization perform better overall.

Too often, work-from-home arrangements are framed in terms of individual preference or convenience. Instead, they need to be justified in terms of value creation. If remote work doesn't clearly contribute to better outcomes, it shouldn't be allowed. But when it does, employees—both remote and in-person—deserve to understand why.

2. Involve employees in shaping hybrid policies

People are more likely to accept unequal arrangements when they have a voice in the process. Rather than decreeing top-down policies, companies should engage employees—across roles, functions, and work modalities—in conversations about what hybrid work should look like.

Conversations can take the form of surveys, listening sessions, cross-functional working groups, or even informal feedback loops. The gold standard of involvement is for employees to know that their views were seriously considered. When employees see that their perspectives are reflected in policy decisions, they can directly see that their input was taken into account, leading them to view decisions as fair. The bigger challenge is to show people that their input was seriously considered even when it was not reflected in policy decisions. When this is the case, leaders must provide reasonable explanations in a reasonable tone of voice.

3. Invest in improving the in-office experience—for real

To those who must be on-site, hybrid work can feel like a raw deal. That's why organizations need to go beyond surface-level perks (free snacks won't cut it) and focus on creating meaningful improvements to the work experience in the office.

This could include better-designed spaces for collaboration, clearer schedules for shared presence, or streamlined workflows that reduce friction and frustration. The goal is to make in-office work genuinely more productive and purposeful. Such changes are significant to employees not only substantively, but also symbolically. After all, it conveys to employees that they are being treated with dignity and respect.

Hybrid work is here to stay. But its long-term success will depend not just on technology or policy—but on the fairness of the process of planning and implementing it. By explaining decisions clearly, taking employees input seriously, and improving work for those on-site, leaders can build hybrid systems that feel less like a divide—and more like a shared enterprise.