Making Hybrid Work
Is Hybrid working, or is the “great return” imminent?
A lot of companies are tightening hybrid rules. You can feel the mood shift. Leaders are asking the blunt question again:
Has productivity dipped? Has accountability softened?
Sometimes the answer is yes, but not for the reason people think.
In my experience, hybrid doesn’t fail because people are at home. It fails because the operating system is vague. Expectations get fuzzy. Decisions get slower. Managers default to what they can “see”. The office becomes a place to do Zoom calls with slightly better coffee.
So let’s treat this properly: what does the evidence say, what’s the hard truth, and what do you do if you want hybrid to actually perform?
The uncomfortable bit: hybrid can hide poor management
If you’re honest, hybrid working has exposed things that were already weak:
Unclear goals: teams aren’t sure what “good” looks like this week, let alone this quarter.
Soft accountability: follow-through relies too heavily on informal nudges and corridor chats.
Too much meeting time: coordination expands to fill the space, leaving less time for actual work.
Microsoft’s work trend research has consistently pointed at the growth in meetings and digital “noise”. In one Work Trend Index update, the average Teams user saw a huge increase in meeting time and number of meetings versus early-pandemic baselines.
That doesn’t prove hybrid reduces productivity. It does show how quickly hybrid can become meeting-heavy if you don’t redesign how work flows.
And accountability gets tangled up with visibility. When people are unevenly present, leaders can slip into proximity bias: the people you see feel more productive, even when the work says otherwise. Harvard Business Review has written directly about the risk this creates in performance assessments in hybrid settings.
So if you’re sensing a dip, don’t assume it’s the location. Start by checking the management mechanics.
The evidence: productivity isn’t the simple “office good, home bad” story
There’s a decent body of evidence now showing that hybrid can work without harming output, when it’s designed well.
A particularly useful reference point is the large randomised trial run by Nicholas Bloom and colleagues at a major tech company. The headline result: hybrid improved job satisfaction and cut quit rates significantly, while performance measures over subsequent reviews were not negatively affected.
That doesn’t mean every hybrid arrangement is productive. It does undercut the lazy argument that hybrid automatically causes performance to collapse.
The real question is this:
What conditions make hybrid productive and accountable?
Hybrid is here to stay, whether leaders like it or not
The genie is out of the bottle. You may win a short-term compliance battle with mandates, but if you’re trying to attract and retain strong people, full-time office as the default is increasingly hard to justify.
We can see this in the data:
The UK has a meaningful and sustained hybrid population. The Office for National Statistics has tracked hybrid working patterns across age groups and roles.
At a macro level, office attendance in many cities remains below pre-pandemic norms, and McKinsey Global Institute has argued there are reasons to believe it has stabilised at lower levels.
Leaders can dislike this reality and still have to deal with it. The strategic choice is not “hybrid or office”.
It’s:
Do we design hybrid properly, or do we let it happen to us?
The shift leaders miss: the policy matters less than the practices
One of the most useful recent takes comes from McKinsey: stop obsessing over the number of days and focus on the work environment you create.
They highlight five core practices that drive performance across models:
Collaboration
Connectivity
Innovation
Mentorship
Skill development
That list is refreshingly practical. It’s also where many hybrid set-ups quietly break down.
If you want hybrid to work, build those five things on purpose.
Operational steps that make hybrid actually work
Here are the moves I see working in leadership teams and portfolio businesses. None are complicated. All require intent.
1) Define the purpose of being together
If people come in “because policy”, you get resentment and noise.
Better framing:
In-person is for: decisions, creativity, sensitive conversations, relationship building, coaching, onboarding.
Remote is for: deep work, focused delivery, individual problem-solving, admin.
Then design the week around that. If you can’t explain why Tuesday matters, don’t mandate Tuesday.
2) Set anchor days by team, not by personal preference
Letting everyone choose their own pattern often maximises flexibility and minimises overlap. Collaboration becomes accidental.
Anchor days create shared time. They reduce coordination cost. They also make mentoring more predictable.
3) Agree “how we work” rules in writing
This sounds basic. It’s usually missing.
Examples that help:
Response expectations: what’s urgent, what isn’t, what channels mean what.
Decision rules: who decides, how fast, and how disagreement is handled.
Meeting discipline: agenda required, owner required, decisions captured, actions visible.
When these are explicit, accountability improves without surveillance.
4) Measure output, not presence
Hybrid forces a healthier question: what did we ship, decide, close, improve?
If you can’t describe output clearly, the team will drift into performative busyness and “being seen”.
5) Upgrade the manager cadence
Hybrid punishes passive management.
Practical rhythms that work:
Weekly 1:1s: short, consistent, focused on progress and barriers.
Team weekly plan: outcomes for the week, dependencies, risks.
Monthly retro: what’s working, what’s not, what we change next.
This is where accountability lives. Not in office attendance.
6) Protect mentoring and onboarding
This is one of the genuine risks in hybrid: newer people can struggle to absorb context and build relationships.
So build it in:
Buddy systems
Scheduled shadowing time
Office days designed around coaching, not just desks
Harvard Business Review has also pointed out the importance of making in-person time intentional for culture and connection in hybrid contexts.
So, is hybrid work working?
Yes, when leaders treat it as an operating model, not a perk.
Hybrid is harder than full-time office in one sense: you can’t rely on the building to create alignment. You have to lead more deliberately. Expectations must be explicit. Communication needs design. Managers need to manage.
But hybrid also has upside when it’s done properly:
It widens your talent pool.
It improves employee autonomy and balance.
It can reduce attrition without harming performance, based on strong research.
The “cold hard truth” isn’t that hybrid makes people lazy.
It’s that hybrid makes weak management obvious.
Book an Intro Call
If hybrid is causing friction in your organisation, I can help you tighten the operating system: clear expectations, stronger routines, and an approach that improves accountability without turning the place into a compliance exercise.