“With employees demanding flexibility, hybrid work has become
a determining factor for attracting and retaining top talent.“
If hybrid working was so 2021, why are we still discussing it in 2025? What was a necessary solution in 2021 has since evolved into a strategic imperative. It is the norm for many organizations, and getting it right matters. It is far more than just where people work – it touches on performance, talent attraction, and organizational resilience. Hybrid working isn’t just a reward or a perk – it’s a foundational shift that intersects with broader themes shaping the modern workplace. Getting it wrong is not an option. In this article, I’ll touch on why organizations mostly get hybrid working wrong and what impact that has, and offer some solutions to get it right.
Why Does Hybrid Matter?
I’m based in the UK, and recent Office for National Statistics data suggest that 28% of UK workers have a hybrid arrangement, and a further 13% work solely from home. That 41%, with some element of remote working, has stayed at a broad level since 2021, suggesting that hybrid working isn’t going away.
Data from the International Workplace Group (IWG), which surveyed recruiters, showed:
- 75% have had candidates reject job offers that don’t offer flexible working.
- 72% noted that businesses that fail to provide hybrid working options are becoming less competitive in the job market.
- 67% have seen a rise in candidates searching for new roles after their current employers enforced a return-to-office (RTO) mandate policy.
The IWG also surveyed 1,000 white-collar workers who commute daily and found:
- 46% were actively seeking jobs that don’t require commuting.
- 21% of those working five days in the office reported daily burnout.
- Only 25% felt that being in the office five days a week was essential for doing their job effectively.
Researchers in the US tracked over 3 million tech and finance workers’ employment histories on LinkedIn and found that firms enforcing RTO policies experienced “abnormally high” employed turnover. This trend was particularly noticeable among females, seniors, and those with advanced skills. After implementing RTO mandates, these firms also took significantly longer to fill vacancies and had lower hiring rates.
How Does Hybrid Help?
The ONS found that working from home saves an average of 56 minutes a day by not commuting. Some of that time is spent on rest, exercise, sports, and well-being. You’ve probably had similar benefits if you’ve done any remote or hybrid work. Fifty-six minutes a day adds up to quite a lot of time over a year. It’s worth a lot.
Aside from the individual benefits, hybrid work offers significant organizational benefits, too. With employees demanding flexibility, hybrid work has become a determining factor for attracting and retaining top talent and opening up access to a more diverse, global workforce. It allows alignment between organizational and personal values by fostering balance, autonomy, and a better purpose. Workers who achieve that alignment are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and performing for your organization.
Hybrid can also help reduce real estate costs and environmental footprint, which organizations can reinvest elsewhere. It fosters innovation by tapping into different working styles and preferences and diverse thinking. Organizations with hybrid models are better equipped to deal with unexpected disruptions like economic challenges, natural disasters, or a pandemic.
Put simply, hybrid working is a strategic advantage – but only if done well.
“Leaders and organizations who embrace hybrid working…
will not just adapt but thrive in the new world of work.”
What Happens If We Don’t Do It Well?
If we think of hybrid working as simply having people work some days at home and some in an office, we approach it incorrectly. That’s the end result—it isn’t the start point. If organizations jump straight to that endpoint, they can make many common and easy-to-do mistakes.
- Culture can be difficult to maintain across distributed teams, and teams that operate hybrid can work well with each other but not well with other similar teams, which risks siloing.
- While using new or enhanced digital tools for collaboration is inevitable and necessary, without thoughtful integration, they can easily lead to burnout and unhealthy working practices.
- A divide could be created between in-office and remote/hybrid employees, with one group favored more for promotions and opportunities than the other.
- Traditional leadership styles often resist hybrid working since that type of leadership is a sensory one, based on what the leader can see and hear – when deprived of that, the leader can struggle.
- Simply allowing employees to work from home on some days can leave too much to chance, reducing collaboration and communication opportunities and not taking into account how work really needs to be done.
So What Do We Do About It?
The answer is to leave little or nothing to chance. Be intentional, purposeful, and act consciously and deliberately as leaders and as organizations.
As leaders, we need to ensure that we design hybrid work rather than leave it to chance. That means analyzing tasks, processes, and workflows to determine what is fixed in terms of time and place and which is not. This should be done for each job and may lead to some job redesign as tasks could be redistributed to best suit skillsets, preferences, or anything else. Tasks with creative thinking and the use of technology such as AI could easily be “unfixed” and open up more opportunities to redesign work.
With each individual, we must ensure that we agree on how they are best managed. Each individual will have different requirements, too, so contracting individually with each one is essential. Leaders need to agree on how regular check-ins will be, what shared goals are being worked towards, and how progress can be assessed against those. Thought should also be given to what healthy working practices are and how both parties will keep their part of the bargain in sticking to those, as well as agreeing on times when a re-evaluation of working practices could be necessary.
Each team should explicitly agree on how it works and how it works together. This would involve discussing how communication works, how the team is optimized to work asynchronously, how problems are solved, how conflict is resolved, and the etiquette around working together. This type of team contract is not needed in an entirely co-located team, but with any element of remote or hybrid working, these types of things need to be made explicit.
Leaders need help to do this; otherwise, our organizations could suffer from biases and lack of inclusion. I recommend rebooting leadership development and providing training to all leaders, no matter their role, on how to lead hybrid teams effectively.
“Hybrid working isn’t a trend. It’s an evolution in how your organization operates.“
Hybrid In The New World Of Work
Hybrid work isn’t just about where people work. It is part of a broader shift in what work actually is and something that, if done right, can improve our organizations and possibly forever.
It is a catalyst for redefining and rebooting leadership, which requires leaders to shift from micromanaging to empowering teams with a focus on trust, autonomy, and outcome-based performance.
It drives equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) since hybrid models can level the playing field for diverse and distributed talent, but only if careful thought is given to how to achieve this. Examples include flexible hours for those with caring responsibilities and different working practices for those with disabilities.
It helps our organizations achieve greater corporate social responsibility and reduce commuting and real estate usage, contributing to sustainability goals.
It also reflects our organizations’ commitment to employee wellbeing and work-life balance, showing that we care for and proactively implement the right experience for all. Done well, and in conjunction with increased and more effective use of technology (particularly AI), it offers a unique chance to redesign our organizations and work completely.
So What Now?
If you want to make hybrid working work in your organization, you can start by assessing how ready it is. What do employees need? What job roles are required in the future? What technological infrastructure is in place? Also, look at the organization’s values and how aligned organizational policies are to these. As there is no one-size-fits-all approach to hybrid working, such policies must be flexible enough to cope with a wide range of working arrangements and practices, so check this.
As we have already mentioned, leaders need to be upskilled or reskilled appropriately. Assess whether your organization has the capacity and capability to do this or the resources and contacts to bring that in externally.
Decide if measuring the effectiveness of hybrid working is important. For some organizations, it doesn’t matter, and it matters a lot for others. However, the precise measurements will differ, so consider what matters most to your organization.
Remember, too, that there is no end point to hybrid working. That means that you shouldn’t expect to get it right the first time or beat yourself up for getting it wrong. Hybrid working is an evolution, an iterative approach, and you should be more concerned with creating the right feedback loops to help you continuously refine your approach.
Making Hybrid Working Work
Hybrid working isn’t a perk or a reward. It isn’t just a trend. It is an evolution in how your organization operates. It is an opportunity to innovate, attract better talent, and drive long-term success. Because of this, leaders and organizations who embrace hybrid working, and with the proper amount of thought, will not just adapt but thrive in the new world of work.
About The Author
Gary Cookson is a father of four, husband to one, and a successful business owner in his spare time. A recognized expert on the world of work and workplace performance, with a proven track record of leading and directing HR, Organizational Development (OD), and Learning & Development (L&D) functions. Renowned for authenticity, honesty, and a people-first approach, backed by extensive expertise across a broad range of skills. A trailblazer in designing and delivering impactful online and virtual training programs and an inspiring and engaging keynote speaker on leadership and HR topics. Recognized in HR Most Influential listings. Published author of HR for Hybrid Working (2022) and Making Hybrid Working Work (2025), both by Kogan Page.
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