How to Get Out of the Hybrid Work Rut

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With some high-profile CEOs demanding workers return to the office five days a week, and others touting the benefits of fully remote work, many companies compromised and ended up somewhere in the middle. But that hybrid compromise can often bring the worst of both worlds. Wharton professor Peter Cappelli and senior HR strategist Ranya Nehmeh have looked deeply at what is going wrong with hybrid - and how leaders can make it right. They explain practical ways to improve meetings, build culture, and inspire commitment from employees in a hybrid model, which is most likely here to stay. Cappelli and Nehmeh are the authors of the forthcoming book In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work and the HBR article "Hybrid Still Isn't Working". For further listening HBR IdeaCast Episode 1025 with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. HBR IdeaCast Episode 877 with GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij.

Transcript

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0:27.4	I'm Adi Ignatius.
0:39.0	I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
0:49.0	All right, so, Alison, I feel like in this age of flexible work, there's still a lot of disagreement as to whether we need to be in the office or not.
0:58.7	Yeah, I completely agree. I think within organizations, there's debate between managers and employees.
1:04.7	I think different organizations are implementing different policies, and no one knows exactly what the right thing to do is.
1:11.6	Right, but they feel strongly.
1:12.6	I mean, you know, there are the managerial purists who feel like you've got to have people in five days a week with this assumption that if we can't watch them, they're not working, right?
1:21.6	It's sort of a trust issue.
1:23.6	Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, has everybody coming back five days a week. I don't think
1:28.6	it's trust for him as much. He's a data guy, but there are things that you can't measure,
1:34.5	but he just feels strongly are enhanced when you're in the office. And that's the things we
1:38.7	talk about, of collaboration, of spontaneous interaction that is good for culture and it's good for innovation.
1:46.3	So, you know, you've got people who feel very strongly about that approach.
1:50.2	And then you have people who feel equally strongly about the other side. As you know,
1:54.4	I am a flexible work fanatic. You are at the office right now on a Wednesday when we're
	...

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