Hybrid work: the new rules of a healthy organisation

In 2024, 34% of French employees practise remote working regularly, of which 60% in hybrid mode (alternating office and home). What was an emergency measure in March 2020 has become a permanent component of work organisation.

Yet, five years after the great shift, many organisations are still fumbling. Hybrid work is not simply the office with WiFi at home, it is a radically different mode of organisation, with its own managerial requirements, its own risks and its own opportunities.

« Hybrid work is not a question of place, it is a question of connection. »

— Ethan Bernstein, Harvard Business School

The specific risks no one wants to see

The public debate on remote working oscillates between two extremes: unconditional supporters (flexibility, autonomy, quality of life) and sceptics (loss of social connection, productivity hard to measure, fragile company culture). The reality is more nuanced.

Research identifies several specific risks that emerge in poorly managed hybrid configurations.

Hyperconnection and erasure of boundaries: without the physical constraints of the office, work tends to spill over into the rest of life. Studies show that remote workers send on average 18% more emails outside normal hours than their in-office colleagues.

Relational isolation: the office is not only a place of work, it is a space for informal socialisation. Coffee machine conversations, impromptu lunches, spontaneous regulation moments disappear with remote working. This relational impoverishment is not only a wellbeing issue, it weakens cohesion and trust.

Digital presenteeism: the fear of being invisible while working remotely pushes some to be constantly online, to multiply signs of activity, to respond immediately to every message. This is presenteeism transposed to the digital realm, with the same deleterious effects.

The 3-2-2 rule: a simple and effective framework

Faced with these risks, several large companies have experimented with structuring frameworks to organise hybrid work intentionally.

One of the simplest and most effective is the 3-2-2 rule: 3 days of work on high-stakes subjects (the first two for collaboration, the third for concentration), 2 days remote, 2 days of complete switch-off.

This framework forces teams to ask a fundamental question: what type of work truly requires physical presence? Creative meetings, cohesion moments and sensitive topics benefit from being in person. Deep concentration, administrative work and some progress meetings work very well remotely.

The challenge is not to fix the number of remote days, it is to be intentional about what is done together and what is done separately.

The right to disconnect: from legal obligation to cultural practice

In France, the right to disconnect has been enshrined in law since 2017. Seven years later, HRDs are unanimous: this legal obligation has not been enough to change practices.

The reason is simple: the right to disconnect is a matter of culture before it is a matter of internal regulations. As long as the manager sends emails at 11pm, even without expecting a response, they send a clear cultural signal: engagement is proved through permanent availability.

Organisations that successfully establish an effective right to disconnect share three characteristics: their leaders impose visible rules on themselves (not sending emails at weekends, scheduling delayed sends), they have explicit collective norms on expected response times, and they measure perceived workload through regular indicators.

« Disconnection is not a question of technology. It is a question of cultural permission. »

— Arianna Huffington, Thrive Global

The remote manager: seeing without surveilling

Hybrid management requires a profound transformation of managerial posture. The classic equation, visible presence = engagement, no longer works when half the team is remote.

The effective hybrid manager learns to distinguish activity (is the person online?) from performance (are the results there?). This shift from control-based management to objective-based management is often presented as a consequence of remote working, but it should be the norm in all circumstances.

They must also actively compensate for the effects of distance. Weak signals, the employee who seems demotivated, the one who no longer speaks up in meetings, are harder to detect remotely. What was regulated naturally in a corridor must be managed intentionally, through regular one-to-ones, structured team rituals and explicit attention paid to each member.