Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
- Hybrid work fails when flexibility lacks structure as unclear policies cause confusion and uneven team experiences.
- Strong teams need trust, and trust builds faster in person while remote work requires intentional design and clear norms.
- Success depends on clarity as companies must choose a model, define expectations and lead with transparency.
As companies scramble to make hybrid work “work,” one workplace strategist says they’re solving the wrong problem.
According to Andrew Farah, CEO of Density, who was a recent guest on The Allwork.Space Future of Work® Podcast, hybrid models are often a cop-out; an attempt to appease everyone that ends up satisfying no one.
Based on data from over 1.25 billion square feet of workspace, Farah argues that successful companies don’t compromise between office and remote — they commit. And for most, that means designing a deliberate, purpose-driven return to the office.
The Myth of Hybrid as a Balanced Solution
Hybrid work is often viewed as a compromise — neither fully remote nor fully in-office, and therefore assumed to be the best of both worlds. But this framing masks a structural problem: many hybrid strategies lack clear rules, shared expectations, or operational discipline.
Companies are often reluctant to make strong declarations, fearing pushback or attrition. As a result, they adopt vague guidelines that create inconsistency across teams. Employees are unsure when and where their presence is expected. Meetings become fragmented, collaboration tools multiply, and managers struggle to enforce accountability.
“Hybrid is a cop-out,” Farah said during our podcast conversation. “Companies would do best to decide if they are a remote team that does off-sites periodically, or an in-person team that occasionally works from anywhere. In the middle is where mediocrity goes.”
This “middle” often breeds a culture of ambiguity. While it aims to be inclusive, it can lead to uneven experiences across functions and geographies, eroding the very cohesion hybrid was supposed to protect.
Structure Is Not the Opposite of Flexibility
Many organizations equate structure with control, and flexibility with freedom. But experienced workplace strategists argue that this is a false dichotomy.
Clear constraints, such as set office days or synchronized collaboration hours, enable teams to plan, coordinate, and thrive. Without these, even high-performing teams lose rhythm.
The idea of “freedom within constraints” borrows from behavioral psychology and systems design: people perform better when they understand the parameters of a system, even if those parameters are minimal.
In the context of hybrid work, this means defining things like when face-to-face interaction is essential, what tools should be standardized, and how often team rituals should occur in person.
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Yet many companies avoid codifying such norms, fearing they will be perceived as rigid. Ironically, this avoidance undermines flexibility by creating environments where expectations are unclear and coordination becomes burdensome.
The Culture Gap No One Talks About
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of return-to-office debates is the assumption that employees are returning to a shared past. In reality, a growing segment of the workforce, particularly those hired during the pandemic, has never set foot in a physical office.
These employees are not “returning” to anything. They are arriving for the first time.
This disconnect exposes a blind spot in how companies think about culture. Legacy employees often operate with an unspoken set of norms developed through in-person interaction. Newer hires lack this cultural context.
Without intentional onboarding and norm-setting, organizations risk bifurcating their workforce into two separate cultures: one formed pre-pandemic, the other adrift in the post-2020 vacuum.
Culture is transmitted through observation and repetition, and remote tools alone cannot replicate hallway conversations, casual mentoring, or the subtle dynamics of in-person debate.
Trust Is the Real Productivity Engine
The return to physical offices is often framed as a way to “preserve culture,” a phrase that has become both overused and underexamined. What many leaders actually mean is preserving trust — the kind of interpersonal confidence that accelerates decision-making, supports healthy conflict, and drives innovation.
In-person teams tend to have a much larger trust tank, according to Farah. “You can build trust remotely, but there’s a limit.”
There’s something about being in a room together that accelerates it.
Trust isn’t just a soft concept. It’s measurable in the quality of collaboration, the speed of feedback cycles, and the resilience of teams under pressure.
High-functioning teams tend to debate openly, resolve conflict quickly, and rally around ideas rather than egos.
These traits emerge more readily in environments with strong interpersonal bonds — something harder to cultivate in distributed settings.
The Future of Work Requires Choosing a Lane
The biggest mistake companies make with hybrid work is treating it as a transitional phase rather than a deliberate operating model, according to Farah.
Successful organizations are those that make a clear choice, communicate it consistently, and design their workflows, rituals, and expectations around that choice.
Whether the model is remote-first, office-centric, or hybrid with defined parameters, what matters most is coherence. Vague policies lead to fragmented culture, misaligned teams, and operational inefficiency.
