Editorial
The shift to hybrid work redefined how businesses operate, offering both opportunities and challenges. While hybrid models promise flexibility, productivity and employee satisfaction, organizations still grapple with implementing them effectively — and in some cases choose to return to office mandates over grappling with the challenges, with Dell being the latest big-name case.
The findings of the author’s recent Hybrid Experience Survey, conducted across 19 organizations from eight sectors, the majority large multi-nationals, revealed critical insights for leaders and technology professionals on how to provide an effective hybrid experience.
The State of Hybrid Work
A well-designed hybrid experience fosters employee satisfaction, engagement, productivity and retention. Conversely, poor experiences can increase stress, reduce performance and limit growth opportunities.
Hybrid work has become well-established in modern workplaces, with nearly a quarter (24.9%) of full-time employees in the U.S. working in a hybrid manner in late 2024 and another 13% fully remote, according to the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. However, achieving a positive hybrid experience isn’t just about balancing remote and in-office time — it involves rethinking communication, collaboration and technology.
And whilst hybrid work offers the potential for truly flexible work, organizations are struggling to provide this combined with a degree of consistency in how their teams work. As a result, office days mandates are a common solution — which are neither particularly effective or popular.
The main challenges are skill gaps in using digital tools, ineffective hybrid meetings, disconnected working, poor communication and how to foster informal connections. Without clear goals for hybrid work, many teams risk confusion, inefficiency and disengagement.
Technology as an Enabler — But Skills Are the Missing Link
Respondents largely agreed that existing technologies, especially Microsoft 365 and Teams, are well suited for hybrid work. However, many employees lack the digital skills needed to use these tools effectively. Key barriers include:
- Skill Gaps: The nuances of collaboration tools are not well understood, with a resultant reliance on email or chat.
- Poor Tool Integration: Both individual behaviors and the roll-out of more technology is hindering effective integration.
- Overwhelmed by Choice: Uncertainty about which tool to use and when leads to significant time wasted and poorer collaboration.
“Technology is only as powerful as the people using it. Digital literacy is not a luxury — it’s a necessity for hybrid work,” said one respondent.
Respondent organizations actively working to deliver a positive hybrid experience provided training on collaborative tool use for their employees, including techniques such as asynchronous working. Crucially, teams were allowed to make decisions on how best to use technology to meet their needs rather than offering generic solutions.
Hybrid Meetings: A Work in Progress
The survey highlighted persistent issues with hybrid meetings, including poor engagement for remote participants, a lack of facilitation skills, and over-reliance on meetings for routine tasks or distributing information. Better meeting room technology and asynchronous meeting practices were seen as ways to improve the meeting experience, although improving overall communication rather than relying on meetings is essential to allow more autonomous and flexible working.
Communication – Formal and Informal – Is Key
Hybrid work can mean that colleagues become more disconnected as they spend less time in shared spaces. Communication is key to overcoming this. Formal communication — such as manager check-ins and senior leaders visible and accessible in networking tools — ensures that remote workers are connected to the wider organization and their team. Informal communication allows colleagues to build and maintain relationships, something that has suffered since the pandemic.
Survey respondents remarked that remote colleagues can be difficult to contact and shared reluctance to reach out to remote colleagues for fear of disturbing them. While deep focus time is a clear advantage of remote work, lack of communication can be counter-productive to collaboration and delivery. Fundamentally, improving trust between team members was seen as the most effective way to overcome communication barriers, opening up the activities of the team and being honest about when people are and aren't available.
Rethinking the Role of the Office
Respondents overwhelmingly preferred offices as hubs for collaboration, networking, and team-building rather than mandatory workspaces. Effective practices included:
- Organizing intentional in-person events like mentoring sessions, interest groups and strategic meetings.
- Creating desirable office environments with social areas and smart technology.
- Coordinating office schedules to ensure that collaboration opportunities aren’t missed.
- Having clear expectations within each team as to what necessitates office collaboration, and what can be done remotely.
The challenge lies in coordinating how employees get together intentionally. There is still a disconnect in how team members work together, which is making organizing office time in a flexible yet valuable way a difficult proposition.
The Essentials of a Positive Hybrid Experience
The survey findings found three clear foundational practices for improving hybrid work:
- Digital Literacy: Providing targeted training on collaboration tools and creating team-wide agreements on their use. Teams being able to better understand how to leverage tools like Microsoft Teams for visibility, task management and communication.
- Communication and Trust: Open and consistent communication — both formal and informal — was essential to build trust and ensure greater alignment. Clear expectations for availability and regular check-ins were also crucial.
- Team Autonomy: When teams could design their way of working it fostered flexibility and engagement. Frameworks like team charters are helping to align goals while protecting individual needs.
Improve the Overall Employee Experience, Not Just Hybrid
Organizations keen on a positive hybrid experience need to change their perspective of viewing hybrid work as an aspirational goal and start embedding it into everyday practices. This requires intentional work design, better training and frameworks to guide teams in aligning tools, behaviors and goals. The most effective way, as gathered in the survey, is to allow teams to make these choices themselves, with some of the respondents using a framework that supports these aspects.
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What the survey also surfaced is that certain measures enable people to meet their work goals in a way that is flexible enough to improve the individual experience, but also prioritize collaboration and meaningful productivity. This can improve both the employee experience and work outcomes. Therefore, many of the findings are applicable to the employee experience of those who are unable to work remotely in addition to hybrid workers, with digital literacy and communication key to any role. If organizations don’t adapt in this way, it will become harder to attract and retain key talent.
Read more into on the topic of where we work:
- CEOs Blame Work From Home for Company Failings. Here's Why They're Wrong — Work from home has become a scapegoat for all sorts of company shortcomings. Here's what those claims leave out.
- How Your Workplace Can Keep — and Keep up With — Tomorrow’s Employees — Employees want not just pay, but clarity and work-life balance. If you want to keep your employees, you have to meet them where they are.
- Mapping the Hybrid Experience: An Exercise in Human-Centered Design — Gaining empathy for individual perspectives through mapping can help you create more successful employee experiences.
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