Executive Vision + Employee Insights: Hybrid working winning formula
When organisations implement hybrid work models, the difference between success and struggle often comes down to one factor: how they manage the change process.
A recent study published in the Journal of Change Management provides compelling evidence that top-down change approaches fall short when transforming workplaces.
The pitfalls of top-down change
The 2024 longitudinal study, one with a more ethnographic lens, examined "Digibank," a major Parisian bank implementing activity based working between 2016-2019. Despite extensive planning and communication campaigns, the bank's top-down approach created additonal tensions and overlooked the human side of change.
As one Digibank employee noted, "I feel the way the change is handled has segregated the top management and their allies [..] from those of us without management positions who lack a say in decision-making." This sentiment wasn't isolated. Another employee called the workshops "a pity" due to the perception that staff were "here to watch a show and applaud the project's progress while learning how to execute the committee's plans."
The consequences? Widespread subversion of the new systems.
Employees tricked motion sensors to maintain sedentary work habits, marked fake activities in their calendars to avoid interruptions, and continued printing documents despite paperless mandates. Their embodied routines, tacit knowledge, and informal practices were seen as obstacles rather than insights. Instead of being supported through the transition, they were expected to adapt silently.
The case for employee engagement
The Digibank study reveals a crucial insight: employees possess invaluable expertise about how work actually functions in practice. When examining how teams managed tensions in the hybrid workplace, researchers found that employee-driven solutions were often more effective than management directives. Teams developed sophisticated systems for using different communication tools based on context and need. They found creative ways to balance paperless mandates with practical work requirements. They adapted spaces to support both focused work and collaboration, despite rigid guidelines.
These weren't acts of resistance, but practical responses born from operational knowledge that management lacked.
The research clearly demonstrates that these employee adaptations weren't simply preferences, they directly addressed workflow challenges that top-down planning had missed. When organisations view employee feedback as valuable intelligence rather than resistance to change, they unlock more sustainable, practical approaches to hybrid work.
A key lesson from Digibank is that management overlooked their most powerful resource: the collective wisdom of those navigating the hybrid workspace daily.
A better approach to change management
The research suggests several key principles for more effective change management:
Value diverse perspectives: Include frontline employees in the planning process, not just as recipients of change information but as active contributors to workspace design.
Embrace tensions: Instead of trying to eliminate contradictions through top-down rules, acknowledge tensions as natural to the change process and encourage creative solutions.
Learn from improvisations: When employees develop workarounds, treat these as valuable feedback about design flaws rather than compliance issues.
Enable flexible adaptation: Create space for teams to customise implementations based on their specific work needs rather than enforcing rigid, uniform standards.
True transformation requires more than spatial redesign and digital tools. It demands trust, dialogue, and responsiveness. Employees are not passive recipients of change; they are the people who make it work. If their voices aren’t heard, the most sophisticated plan can falter under the weight of real-world complexity.
Hybrid work isn’t just about where people work, it’s about how people change. And successful change starts by listening.
