Align your hybrid workplace strategy
in five questions

Written by Dr. Darja Smite
Researcher of distributed working, Blekinge Institute of Technology

The million-dollar question for business owners today is no longer whether to provide flexibility or not, but which hybrid setup best fits their business. After studying remote and distributed work over the last twenty years, I help clients determine the ideal hybrid approach for them. Here are five key questions I ask to get them on the right path. 

Question 1. Are your employees able to carry out their work remotely? 

Perhaps it’s obvious, but you must ask yourself if the nature of your business is compatible with hybrid working at all. Many companies feel like they have to incorporate hybrid working, even when it might not be a great fit.  

If you're in manufacturing, healthcare, tech support, or any field that requires hands-on work with equipment or customers, hybrid could be tricky. These sectors need people physically present to get the job done. However, if your employees can work from anywhere, and hybrid is feasible for your business, then you’ll want the right strategy to maximize the benefits. 

Question 2. Is employee satisfaction a priority for your business? 

If you’re still reading, hybrid might be for you. Now it’s important to ask yourself tough questions about your corporate priorities. Of course, employee well-being is always important, but for some companies it is much more urgent than others.  

When employee happiness is key for business success, it is reasonable to ask employees about their preferences or introduce more flexible schedules so they can decide when they want to work where. The tricky part is that everyone tends to have very different preferences and making everybody happy even with the most flexible strategy is a challenge. Still, more flexibility in working schedules often provides the most satisfaction with employees, although it can be a mixed blessing. 

Research insights: Our study with Storebrand found two distinct definitions of work/life balance. Employees who prefer onsite work see work/life balance as a strict separation of work and life, i.e., the ability to leave the office and disconnect. Employees who prefer remote work see work/life balance as an integration of work and life, i.e., the ability to employ preferred rhythm in the morning hours, to spend hours with the family during the day, to spend time with spouses who also work from home, etc. So, it’s important to be mindful of these differences when increasing flexibility in the name of work/life balance. 

Question 3. What defines your corporate culture? 

To find the best fit between your hybrid setup and corporate culture, you will need to dig into your core values and behaviors, and how they are affected by remote or office working. Culture is king. If your company culture thrives on trust, accountability, and open communication, hybrid work is a natural fit. Many modern tech companies in the last few years embraced hybrid models because their cultures are built on flexibility and self-organization.  

However, if your company leans towards management through chains of command and supervision or where rigorous compliance is essential, you might opt to limit remote working. Or, for these companies, hybrid work might not be suitable at all.

Research insights: Remote working is causing many corporate cultures to massively transform. For example, some companies had a cultural identity as employee-centered, playful offices to attract emerging talent. Now, they must reinvent their value proposition to continue being attractive for young people. Other companies may have previously relied on a word-of-mouth culture to maintain corporate knowledge. Now, with less in-office presence, they must find a way to incorporate a culture of complete, up-to-date documentation, purposeful onboarding material, and planned events for social integration. 

Question 4. What contributes to the successful delivery of your products or services? 

If your company’s products or services solely rely on individual performance, a flexible hybrid setup can allow employees to optimize their work environments and schedules for maximum productivity. But if team results play a role, you'll need to think hard about how much remote work you allow. Technology does enable collaboration from a distance, but it will likely never be the same as face-to-face interactions.  

Research insights: Our research finds that digital meetings and remote presence can cause participants to feel isolated and disconnected, despite being in a shared meeting. Challenges include reduced non-verbal cues, increased cognitive load, digital fatigue, technical issues, delays, challenges in speaking up, turn-taking, reduced spontaneity, reduced informal interactions, and the lack of feeling “there” with others.  

For companies where work depends on tight, day-to-day collaboration and knowledge exchange between team members, your team's success hinges on physical proximity. In this case, emphasizing office presence might be the best option. This could mean choosing a fixed hybrid schedule on a corporate level, or perhaps a tailored, synchronized hybrid schedule for each team. 

Research insights: In a study on collaboration in a large telecommunications company, we tracked individual office attendance and calculated team co-presence using access card data. The findings were surprising: high individual presence did not equate to high co-presence within teams. None of the teams had fixed or synchronized office schedules. Some teams showed high co-presence among a few members, while others had high attendance rates but rarely saw all their members in the office simultaneously. Learning from experience, the company moved from relatively relaxed flexible hybrid to a more restricted fixed one. 

Question 5. Is employee-driven innovation critical for your company? 

Hybrid work can be a double-edged sword for innovation. On the one hand, it offers the freedom for employees to work where and when they feel most creative. On the other hand, it hinders spontaneous in-office interactions that facilitate exchanges of ideas and knowledge.  

Research shows that most breakthrough innovations came from tightly organized co-located teams. That’s why innovative companies may benefit from fixed or synchronized hybrid schedules with designated office days for brainstorming and teamwork.  

Research insights: There are three fundamental problems with digital brainstorming sessions. First, to run digital meetings effectively, we often prepare a detailed agenda or a solution candidate for discussion. This limits ideation. Second, not everybody is comfortable expressing their opinions freely in a digital meeting; the discussion cannot just flow since people have to raise their “hands” to take turns. Many people end up withholding potentially important input. Third, brainstorming sessions require considerable time, and meeting fatigue often appears before the discussion of ideas and solutions converges. Sometimes it is simply easier to go with whichever idea seems the best in the moment, rather than booking another online session to continue the discussion. 

Turning your answers into a hybrid strategy 

When answering these questions, it’s important to remember that your hybrid strategy should reflect how strong your answers are. There is a spectrum of policies between fully fixed and fully flexible schedules, as well as fully in-office working and fully remote working.  

Let’s look at some examples. If employee satisfaction is a business priority, but in-office collaboration is essential to your business, a 100% remote-first strategy is off the table. In that case, introduce slightly more flexibility and measure the results. Or, if your company mainly works remotely today, but increasing innovation is a business priority, it may be wise to start moderately increasing office co-presence by a day a week, or a few days a month.