7 tips for creating a successful hybrid work culture
7 tips for creating a successful hybrid work culture
Hybrid working is here to stay. Ninety-seven percent of employees in 2025 said they wanted to continue working remotely. While hybrid work can yield higher productivity, employee well-being, and increased runway and profitability, many business leaders are concerned about maintaining a healthy company culture when staff and collaborators spend less time in person.
Hybrid work poses challenges, including overcoming roadblocks to communication and collaboration, retooling productivity management, and ensuring engagement and equity.
Here, CANOPY offers seven tips for building a successful hybrid work culture around your company’s shared strategic mission, beliefs, values, and attitudes.
1. Emphasize Outcomes, Not Hours
Hiring the best talent, no matter where they live, is a huge benefit of a hybrid model—employees appreciate not having to relocate while working around family and other commitments. However, when working across time zones, you must redefine business office hours, accounting for when workers can reasonably be online for collaborative work.
While presenteeism doesn’t equal productivity, managers play an essential role: Gallup notes that management accounts for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. Managers must set tasks and objectives with clear deadlines, ask questions about progress, be available to offer real-time guidance during “in-office” periods, and measure results through clear performance evaluations and feedback protocols.
2. Communication, Communication, Communication!
In the hybrid workplace, communication channels must always be open so team members can easily stay in touch and collaborate as needed. Leaders must communicate their mission and objectives, and a clear path to achieving them, to keep workers engaged. They must also confer responsibility and autonomy so workers have a sense of ownership and accountability, empowering them to collaborate effectively and solve problems creatively.
Communication goes both ways. Leaders must be open to feedback from their team members when something isn’t working and flexible about trialing new tools and methodologies, restructuring roles and responsibilities to ensure everyone feels valued, motivated, and effective.
Virtual meetings and events foster team cohesion through communication, building trust, and camaraderie. Inviting feedback in one-on-ones and check-ins with employees about workload is important to both monitor how your hybrid model is working and keep morale high.
3. Provide Tools That Work
The right tools and technologies are essential in providing a seamless workspace that supports in-person and remote work. Video chat and instant messaging tools like Zoom, Slack, and Discord are already fixtures of the virtual office environment. Still, remote teams might need support to access them effectively—best-in-class tools are no use if your team’s home Wi-Fi is lagging. Offering desks or offices at a coworking space with lightning-fast internet in desirable neighborhoods is a great way to bridge this gap.
4. Establish Clear Goals And Continuously Assess Achievements
In hybrid work, goals must be set and assessed continuously rather than via annual performance reviews. A good manager excels at setting objectives, delegating responsibilities, ensuring open communication, and reporting feedback to employees to get the best from each team member without sacrificing mental and physical well-being—all of which can be trickier when workers are remote.
There are several ways to gather critical data to do this well without intrusive keystroke loggers or screen monitoring. Team members can track their hours spent on various tasks via a project management dashboard for 24/7 transparency around active tasks, so managers can identify inefficiencies without meeting online or in person. If something isn’t working, leaders must be open to reviewing and redefining that process quickly. Team to-do lists and stand-ups are simple, effective tools to keep everyone aligned and work moving forward.
5. Recognize And Reward Team Members
People want to feel seen and appreciated. Seventy-eight percent of employees in a recent study said they would work harder if better recognized. A combination of praise given one-on-one and in a team environment, plus promotion and performance-based bonuses or rewards, will help keep teams on task and motivated to achieve their goals for success.
This can be even more effective when recognition comes from peers rather than management. In addition to company policy, consider a scheme where team members can award gift cards to colleagues they appreciate the most over the year.
6. Make Time To Connect In Person
It’s easier to communicate in person than via a screen, so it’s important to prioritize engaging with team members in person as regularly as possible. Creating hot desking or coworking opportunities allows you to bring together diverse groups of individuals and cross-team office workers on a realistic schedule for your company structure and location. Quarterly team-building activities and social events are essential for cohesion and engagement and must be equitable. If members of your team can’t participate in a lunch because they don’t live nearby, you can provide gift cards or have food delivered through local services like Uber Eats or DoorDash so that they feel included.
Rather than taking on the added pressure of organizing successful gatherings, consider joining a shared office space with diverse event programming so teams can socialize while networking with leaders in your field.
7. Provide Flexible Office Space Aligned With Your Company Culture
Providing dedicated ergonomic desks or a private office within an elevated coworking space is a flexible way to enhance your hybrid company culture. A coworking membership can bridge that gap between entirely in-person and remote work for teams and individuals who prefer a professional setting without distractions over a home dining table or coffee shop.
This story was produced by CANOPY and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
