A truce of sorts has quelled the return-to-office wars that have raged in the post-pandemic workplace.
Hybrid work policies, which require some in-office work while allowing flexibility to work from home, have become commonplace. In 2023, only 20% of companies had implemented hybrid policies. That number had shot up to 38% in 2024 and to 42% in 2025, according to the workplace survey Flex Index.
Hybrid work supporters can point to research suggesting that hybrid policies improve employee retention and decrease turnover. Some human resource professionals agree, citing their personal experience, with some job seekers seeing hybrid work as a bare-minimum expectation as they consider opportunities.
As business scholars who study management and communication technologies, we have discovered a more complicated picture. Our research shows that employees actually have more mixed feelings about hybrid work, with some becoming disillusioned. In fact, a hybrid solution may not always be the sustainable compromise it’s hyped to be.
A changing workplace landscape
We tracked a group of employees from three large companies in the financial services sector starting in 2022. Coming out of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, one company decided to go fully back to the office, one chose to stay fully remote, and one adopted hybrid policies.
In each case, not surprisingly, employees had mixed responses to whatever the policy was. It was clear, though, that the hybrid policy had the fewest fans. While office work was preferred by 50% of employees in the back-to-office company, and remote work by 62% of employees in the fully remote business, only 44% of employees in the hybrid workplace told us they were happy with their company’s policy.
When we checked back with our participants in 2025, it looked like most employees in each company were now on board with their company’s chosen policy: The share of approval rose to 60% for back-to-office, 72% for fully remote and 63% for the hybrid format. Notably, these companies also experienced very low turnover, so the sample of workers remained largely the same.
At first glance, the almost 20-percentage-point jump in the approval rating for hybrid work would suggest it had turned into a golden compromise over time. But a closer look reveals an unstable support base.
In the other two scenarios, all of the employees who preferred in-office or remote work back in 2022 were still on board with their company’s policy in 2025. In contrast, in the hybrid company, only half of those who preferred hybrid in 2022 had the same outlook in 2025. The other half now said they preferred either in-office or remote work. The hybrid policy had gained new support, but it had lost half of its original fans.
Those who now embraced the office spoke about better collaboration and relationship building opportunities. “Because I like my team and my work is somewhat collaborative, I tend to find it more enjoyable and productive to be in most of the time,” said one worker who said their preference changed from hybrid to in-office.
Meanwhile, those who switched to preferring remote work often spoke of personal arrangements as a key driver. “My wife and I have made decisions about childcare based on me being able to work from home,” is how one employee put it.
Sticky versus fluid preferences
The upshot: Back-to-office and fully remote work policies create more durable, or “sticky,” preferences for those respective types of work. In contrast, hybrid policies form preferences that are more fluid.
In our book “The New Workplace,” we explore this divergence through the eyes of employees. One reason the nonhybrid policies create sticky preferences is that they help employees set routines with predictability. And people like predictability in their work and life.
But going to the office every day isn’t just predictable. It offers an added bonus of work-life separation. “I need structure!” was a common refrain we heard from office-preferring participants, who spoke of work and life “bleeding together” without workplace boundaries.
Working remotely every day is predictable in a different way. It offers the added bonus of increased autonomy and freedom. Remote-preferring participants prized their independence so much they described their employer’s remote policy as “golden handcuffs” that kept them there even though they otherwise might leave.
Hybrid policies, in contrast, create competing demands that challenge employees, forcing them to constantly switch between work and home modes. This requires both personal flexibility and adaptability – psychological traits that few people naturally possess.
Even hybrid-preferring employees spoke of having to “train my brain” and “flip my mind” as they tried to adjust to the format’s unpredictability. In the long run, some adapted to hybrid successfully by developing a new skill we called task-location fit. They learned to do focused, heads-down work at home and collaborative work at the office. This was the crowd that remained on “team hybrid.”
But others got tired of trying to adapt to the competing demands of hybrid – what we called paradox management fatigue – and decided either fully in-office or fully remote work was best for them. This fatigue, in the end, is what made the hybrid preference fluid.
“I still value the flexibility to be able to work from home when needed, but I think getting out of a consistent rhythm has made me prefer working in the office,” said one worker who came to appreciate full-time in-office work.
A second reason hybrid policies lose fans is poor implementation. One error, we believe, is when companies hire across geographies. Most participants worked on teams where at least some, if not most, team members were in a different city, state or even country. This defeated the purpose of an in-office requirement, as it effectively required remote team meetings. “I can Zoom from my home,” many participants said.
Another mistake, in our view, is letting employees choose their in-office and remote work days. While this lives up to the flexibility promise of hybrid, it leads to a half-empty office that’s lonely for those who come in.
Furthermore, employees know they’ll find their teammates in the office under a back-to-office policy, or that their teammates will be available online under a fully remote policy. But a “choose-your-adventure” hybrid policy removes the certainty of how, when, and where to reach teammates.
The worst of both worlds?
With these challenges, no wonder Dropbox recently called hybrid work “the worst of both worlds” and declared the company will stay fully remote.
At the same time, given the rising adoption of hybrid work, employers that are jumping on that bandwagon need to figure out how to prove the critics wrong and make hybrid work more sustainable.
For example, employers can implement a structured hybrid schedule by setting one or more days when employees have to come in. While this may sacrifice some personal flexibility, structured hybrid solves the coordination challenges. When everyone’s in the office at the same time, it won’t feel empty – and co-workers will collaborate more smoothly.
Managers can also make the physical office a place of community where people want to be. This means investing in livening up the office.
In our research, participants’ stories were steeped with nostalgia for the days of company picnics, Oscar-style end-of-quarter celebrations, and disco-at-the-office parties. They said they also appreciated the little things, like pizza at the office or a food truck in the parking lot. Participants wished these social activities would come back, even with a hybrid work schedule.
Finally, companies can better align hiring and team design practices. Hiring across geographies allows locally unavailable talent to join the ranks. But geographically dispersed teams aren’t hybrid – they’re fully remote. To solve this contradiction, managers should assign employees to teams based on geographic location. When that’s not possible, they should provide teams with a generous travel budget and encourage periodic in-person team gatherings.
These are just some tactics that can help companies make hybrid work. As one manager, a believer in hybrid work from the start, said: “I continue to see huge benefits for my team members feeling like they can show up as their best selves at work because hybrid allows for work-life integration.”
Radostina Purvanova, Professor of Management and Organizational Leadership, Drake University and Alanah Mitchell, Professor of Information Management and Business Analytics, Drake University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
