Full remote was hard. But at least it was equal. Everyone was in the same box on the screen, dealing with the same constraints. Hybrid is different. Hybrid is three people in a room and two people on a laptop, and the two on the laptop can't hear half the conversation. That asymmetry is the problem nobody planned for.
What You Need to Know
- Hybrid work creates an information asymmetry between in-office and remote workers that pure remote doesn't have
- The biggest risk isn't productivity loss. It's the slow erosion of inclusion for remote team members
- Most hybrid meeting setups are terrible. The technology exists to fix this, but the habits don't
- Successful hybrid teams design for the remote participant first, not the room
The Asymmetry Problem
In a fully remote team, decisions happen in channels everyone can see. Conversations happen in calls everyone can join. Context is shared by default because there's no other way to share it.
In a hybrid team, decisions happen in the hallway after a meeting. Context gets shared over coffee. Someone mentions something to a colleague at the next desk, and by the end of the day, three people know and four people don't. The people who don't know are almost always the remote ones.
55%
of hybrid workers reported feeling excluded from important discussions happening in the office
Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2021
This isn't malicious. Nobody is deliberately excluding their remote colleagues. It's just how physical proximity works. Information flows through the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance in a hybrid office runs through the people who are physically present.
The problem with hybrid isn't technology. It's that humans default to the easiest communication channel, and for people in an office, that channel is the person sitting next to them.
Tim Hatherley-Greene
Chief Operating Officer
The Meeting Tax
Hybrid meetings are worse than fully remote meetings. There, I said it.
In a remote meeting, everyone has the same setup: camera, microphone, screen share. You can see everyone's face. You can hear everyone equally. The playing field is level.
In a hybrid meeting, the room has a shared camera that shows a wide angle of five people. The audio comes from a conference speaker in the middle of the table. Someone at the back is having a side conversation that the microphone picks up but the camera doesn't show. The remote participants see a blurry room and hear muffled speech, while the people in the room see each other clearly and forget the laptop on the table is a person.
43%
of remote workers in hybrid setups reported difficulty participating in meetings with in-room colleagues
Source: Owl Labs State of Remote Work, 2021
We've tried every configuration. The only thing that consistently works is the "everyone on camera" approach, even if some people are in the same room. If everyone joins the video call from their own device, the asymmetry disappears. It feels silly. It works.
What Actually Works
After a year of experimenting across our own team and watching our clients figure this out, here's what we've landed on.
Design for the Remote Person First
Every process, every communication pattern, every meeting format should be designed as if the remote participant is the primary audience. If it works for the remote person, it works for everyone. The reverse is not true.
Make Context Explicit
If a decision was made in the kitchen, put it in the channel. If a conversation happened at someone's desk, summarise it where the remote team can see it. This takes discipline. It feels redundant. It matters.
Default to Async
Not everything needs a meeting. In fact, most things don't. Default to written communication with clear async expectations, and save synchronous time for things that genuinely benefit from real-time discussion. This isn't a remote work principle. It's a hybrid work survival strategy.
Accept That Some Days Are In-Person Days
The teams that do hybrid well tend to designate specific days for in-person work. Not because remote doesn't work, but because the value of being in the same room compounds when everyone is there at the same time. Random office attendance creates the worst of both worlds: you're there, but not enough people are there to make it worthwhile.
The Management Shift
Hybrid requires managers to actively resist proximity bias. The people you see every day feel more present, more engaged, more productive, even if the data says otherwise. Performance needs to be measured on output, not visibility. Promotion decisions need to account for the fact that remote workers are less visible by default.
This is a change management challenge, not a technology one. And it's one that most organisations are underestimating.
The question isn't whether hybrid works. Most organisations want the flexibility without the discipline.
Isaac Rolfe
Managing Director
Still Figuring It Out
I'd love to end this with a definitive playbook. We don't have one. Nobody does, no matter what the LinkedIn thought leaders tell you. We're still iterating on our own approach. What I can say is that the organisations getting hybrid right are the ones that acknowledge it's hard, measure what's working, and adjust. The ones getting it wrong are the ones that declared a "hybrid policy" and assumed the problem was solved.