“Hybrid is just a phase.”
“People working from home are less committed.”
“People just want remote so they can slack off.”
We all hear these phrases daily, some of us may have even said them. But I believe these assumptions are not only outdated and proved otherwise, but actively damaging a company’s talent strategy. Let me show you my thoughts.
Workers Want Hybrid, Why Not Believe Them?
I have recently run into a McKinsey survey that covered over 4,700 workers and paints a clear picture: the vast majority prefer hybrid work. Not fully remote, not fully in-office but hybrid. A flexible rhythm between connection and concentration.
Across key knowledge-based sectors such as tech, finance, administration and sales, over 60% of respondents say they’d like to work remotely at least some of the time. But as you see from the chart, many aren’t getting that option. In sales for example only about half of the employees who want remote, actually get the chance. Even in traditionally in-person sectors like education or healthcare, the desire for at least some remote work is substantial. I believe, this isn’t just a mismatch but a missed opportunity.
Biases at the Top
There’s a pattern that keeps resurfacing from my coaching work and leadership workshops: leaders interpret hybrid work through their own biases. Some of them tend to believe that culture needs the office, that visibility equals productivity and remote means disengaged. But these beliefs often reflect a long ineffective management habit rather than workforce reality. In fact, many of the senior leaders already have great autonomy over when and where they work and we consider them capable of deciding what to do with their time. The resistance to hybrid, then, becomes a subtle power asymmetry: “I can be flexible, but my team is not disciplined enough to work from home”. Or: “We pay way too much for the fancy offices, we cannot let them stay empty for most of the week”. For leaders with these thoughts, hybrid seems as a compromise that someone has to pay a high price for.
Hybrid as a Strategic Talent Magnet
The data shows that occupations with the highest demand for hybrid flexibility are also the most mobile. These are your high-skill, high-impact roles, exactly the people you don’t want to lose in this time of constant changes. Decades of research shows that people who feel trusted are less likely to jump ship, still, by refusing to modernize work models, some companies are effectively telling their top performers: “We don’t trust you.” No bean bags or in-office pool tables can substitute that feeling. Rather, if you design a workplace rhythm that respects time, autonomy, and trust, your kind of hybrid will become a real recruitment differentiator.
Making Hybrid Work: A Leadership Reframe
I often suggest a simple three-step reflection sequence for leadership teams, it is the Mirror – Map – Move model (that also works well with 1:1 discussions, making a note here to craft an article on that too 🙂 ).
- Mirror: Are we listening to actual employee preferences, or just reinforcing our assumptions? How can we make sure they are heard?
- Map: Where are we aligned and misaligned with what today’s talent expects?
- Move: What’s the smallest shift we can make that signals real trust and flexibility?
Using this model will help you have a look at the situation a bit more from the outside, without giving in to your inherent biases. I am not saying that you have to let everyone work from home for most days, but I do say that you have to have a goooood rationale behind asking them to come back to the office. Hybrid, to me, seems as a halfway point, a bridge between rigid legacy systems and fluid, future-ready organizations. The hybrid model isn’t perfect but the data tells us it’s wanted and it’s worth doing right. I say we better stop stop calling it a phase and start treating it as an opportunity.
