Hybrid work works when organisations are clear about why people come together and what decisions are made when they do.
Hybrid work was sold to us all as the best of both worlds. Flexibility for individuals. Collaboration for organisations. Productivity for everyone. What followed was something less promising. People moved between home and office without a clear sense of why they were in either place. Days filled with meetings that decided little. Decisions slowed down. Culture became harder to navigate, let alone maintain.
The failure was not hybrid work itself. It was the absence of design.
When Coming In Stops Making Sense
When offices closed, work moved online quickly. That was necessary at the time. When offices reopened, many organisations reopened space without clarifying purpose. People were asked to come in but not told why. Not for which conversations. Not for which decisions. Not for which kind of work. Attendance became routine rather than useful. People were present without purpose.
Hybrid work cannot survive on habit. It needs structure and intent.
What Changes When People Have a Place to Think Together
That structure is increasingly found in the form of hubs.
Traditional offices were built for compliance and control. Hubs are built for sharing ideas and mixing with others. In effective hubs, people do not come together to sit at desks they could sit at anywhere. They come together to talk and think. Meetings are fewer, but more focused. Collaboration is encouraged. Presence has a reason for those who engage.
Picture a team that works remotely most of the week, executing well and moving fast. Once a fortnight they gather in the hub. Phones put aside. Discussion and decisions are the focus. Unfinished work is considered.
Disagreements are surfaced and resolved. By the end of the day, priorities are agreed, ownership is clear and people leave knowing what happens next. That work is hard to do through screens alone. It is exactly the work hybrid models fail at when left unmanaged and undesigned.
When Rules Fail and Judgement Matters
Many organisations tried to manage hybrid work with rules. Two days in. Three days remote. Fixed patterns. Attendance tracked. Rules create compliance, not commitment. Hybrid work does not need more rules. It needs purpose and clarity.
Hubs provide that element. They act as decision points, learning environments and places of exchange. They give teams a shared space where time and attention matter. Without this, hybrid work underperforms and people underachieve.
Judgement is not only individual. It is collective and organisational. People decide better when they can read the room, sense hesitation, test ideas and build on what is unfinished and unsaid. These conditions exist online, but they are harder to create and sustain there. Remote work excels at execution. Hubs restore the conditions for learning and sharing. Expecting one to do the work of both damages each.
The hybrid models that work share three features. Purposeful presence: people come together for decisions, design, learning and review. Hub-led design: the hub is treated as a strategic asset that adds value, not a convenience. Trust-based flexibility: deciding what needs to be done, how and when.
If you are unsure whether your hybrid model is working, ask one question: do we bring people together to discuss and decide, or simply to be seen together? Hubs succeed because they provide space for people to meet, think together and solve problems.
Hybrid work does not fail because people work remotely. It fails when organisations are unclear about why people meet at all. A hub is not about the office. It is about coming together to discuss and decide. It is where priorities are set and responsibility is clear. Without that, hybrid work loses focus. With it, flexibility works for everyone.
