The 4% Club: Why Hybrid Work Policy Still Fails Most Companies

The landscape of work has evolved before our eyes. More than a quarter of workers say their company changed its work model in the last year. In the US, almost a third of employees now work remotely and a staggering 91% of employers say they now offer some kind of flexible work model.

The one-size-fits-all office job is no more. Jobseekers have come to expect some kind of autonomy over where they work, flexi-time arrangements to adjust their work schedules around family commitments, the provision to work from home some or all of the time, and new technology to help them automate processes and be more productive. It is no surprise then that the number of in-office-only roles in the US dropped from 83% in 2023 to 64% in 2025.

Despite this deep transformation, Croissant data shows that only a staggering 4% of companies have a formalized hybrid work policy. Just because people are changing the way they work, doesn’t mean companies are shaping this transition actively through policy shifts. The reality is much of this shift has been informal, individualized, idiosyncratic and improvised.

But that’s all about to change. Companies making a success of distributed work are going back to the drawing board, understanding their workforce’s strengths and weaknesses and creating a powerful roadmap for the future of hybrid working.

In this article we’ll dig into the policy chasm behind today’s ad-hoc hybrid work patterns. Organizations need a data-driven blueprint to structure and shape how people work, not just where and when. We will explore what makes an effective hybrid work policy and help you grip the future of flexible work with our expert checklist.

The Revolution Will Be Improvised: How Hybrid Work Blindsided CEOs

Let's journey back to 2019. Pre-pandemic, flexible work arrangements were not widespread. Leaders were skeptical about the ROI of these models, many were culturally accustomed to having eyes on their staff, others were locked into legacy office spaces with long-term real estate agreements. So why would employees be able to work wherever they want? One survey suggested that at this stage just over 5% of the US workforce typically worked from home - that's roughly the population of New York City.

This changed overnight as the pandemic and its consequent lockdowns forced organizations worldwide to adopt remote work without warning. There was simply no other way to ensure business continuity while protecting staff and ensuring compliance with national health protocols.

It wasn't a proactive business decision about what might work best for their teams - it was a reactive, kneejerk requirement with lasting impacts. All of a sudden working from home was estimated to account for over 60% of all US economic activity at a time when the global economy suffered seismic shocks.

Global business was not prepared, and how could it be? Key sectors were unable to benefit from these technological workarounds and others were technologically ill-equipped for remote work - whether that was in their cybersecurity assets, the digital maturity of their workforce or their online communication tools. For instance, many organizations reported being unprepared to comply with data-sharing laws like GDPR when working from home.

Managers were forced into new virtual relationships with their staff at a time of personal stress and isolation - often with zero guidance or training on how to navigate remote management. Productivity became highly reliant on individual circumstances: whether staff felt confident with new tech, the conduciveness of their home environment to remote work, the level of added family demands like homeschooling or the skill of their line manager.

In the UK alone, 13 million Brits reported being poorly managed whilst working remotely. Common complaints included miscommunication due to lack of face-to-face interactions (54%), micromanagement or lack of leadership (42%), and managers neglecting mental health (26%).

Fast-forward to 2025 when hybrid work has become the baseline and it's staggering how many of these issues remain - a whole 5 years into the distributed work transformation.

Yes, companies have invested in better tools for remote collaboration, firms have been able to source talent from a wider area than before the pandemic due to remote capabilities, HR leads are more aware of the mental health challenges caused by remote work, CEOs have cut costs by letting go of expensive real estate and cutting down business travel, and marketers have been forced to improve their online offering opening up new markets.

But hallmark challenges persist. Flexible work has stuck around long after lockdowns were lifted because it has the potential to deliver better outcomes for business leaders, employees and global collaboration. But the aftershocks of the pandemic remain - and all too often mean it's governed chaotically and unintentionally meaning leaders are shaving their profit margins due to productivity losses, poor employee wellbeing, a cultural decay and a breakdown in mentorship.

For example, a large fortune 500 firm made its call centre employees fully remote following the pandemic, expecting to make overall cost savings on overheads like office rent and energy. However, the lack of in-person supervision and training lowered call quality, the output per hour of workers declined and overall efficiency dropped, meaning those overall savings silently drained away, resulting in minimal net gain. Or there's the case of an agile fintech startup which chose a fully remote model to empower their employees, but began to measure steep declines in product innovation from a lack of spontaneous in-person brainstorming and creative idea-sharing, which ultimately began to impact its bottom line.

A surge of return-to-office mandates in 2023 and 2024 shows some leaders are trying to default to business-as-usual rather than consolidating their learnings from remote working. The last two years have seen intense policy volatility with around 12% of leaders expecting to change their model yet again this or next year.

Once a knee-jerk reaction, hybrid work is now the baseline. But when it comes to long-term policy making, companies are still managing these work models like they're a quick reactive fix rather than a cornerstone of their infrastructure.

The 96% Problem: What Happens When You Let Hybrid 'Just Happen'

With so many organizations freestyling their remote work arrangements, what are the knock on effects?

The coordination tax

A common failing of improvised hybrid models is that the onus for organizing meet-ups or in-person collaboration falls to the individuals or junior-level managers. In short, they create their own hybrid work structures without clear guidance from their leaders. Whilst this autonomy has its benefits, it's proven over time to come with a high logistical and emotional burden, distracting workers from their actual day-to-day jobs. This also means employees might not organize in line with shared business priorities but instead according to personal goals, creating profound siloes and cultural disconnects.

A culture of mistrust

Leaders of distributed organizations often 'test' piecemeal mandates like returning to the office, a co-working pass or meetups once a month. Research shows that workers often see these as driven not by performance goals but by financial metrics. In fact half of all workers believe their employers are asking them to return to the office primarily to fill empty real estate, not because it's best for business. Whether true or not, this fundamentally erodes the contract of trust between CEOs and their workforce that is essential for a high-performing hybrid environment.

Compliance failure

A Stanford University study has uncovered widespread resistance to changes to hybrid work approaches. Regardless of executive mandates and a rise in return-to-office requirements, data shows the number of days employees stay at home to work has flatlined since 2023 - at around 25%. What's more, 40% of managers say they don't enforce these mandates or engage employees that refuse to comply - leading to inconsistencies in management. This shows a worrying lack of grip from executive teams, making mandates seem arbitrary and contributing to a disorganized and friction-heavy culture.

Employee attrition

Ad-hoc hybrid work structures could be self-destructive when it comes to maintaining a high-value talent pool. A McKinsey survey found that worker desire to leave their current role remains high at almost 40%, a figure that hasn't shifted since the pandemic, despite attempts to shape remote work into a sustainable way of working. Return-to-office attempts, co-working passes as a perk, fully remote rollouts - none of these have inspired workers to want to stick around. This is a strong sign that unstructured attempts to shape hybrid work are failing to prevent churn and employee dissatisfaction.

Staff burnout

When expectations for remote staff are ambiguous, research shows workers feel compelled to overcompensate to prove their productivity, which can foster an "always-on" culture. A key failure of improvised hybrid work; this transforms the offer of flexibility from a source of relief to a driver of mental exhaustion. A lack of clarity in expectations, role definitions, information sharing, channels of collaboration and responsibility is proven to cause stress and mental exhaustion. When compounded by the constant pressure of digital communication prevalent in modern workplaces, we see high levels of burnout in integrated workplace environments. This risks undoing any of the benefits of the workplace transformation in the first place.

It's crystal clear: the financial and cultural risks of hybrid work by chance rather than by operational design are vast. But what are components of a successful hybrid work policy?

Join The 4%: How Your Hybrid Work Policy Could Become a Business Asset

Many HR leaders mistake the offer of flexibility for a coherent, functional policy. The failure here lies in not structuring that flexibility with clearly communicated protocols and expectations. So how can HR leads avoid these errors, and move from disarray to design in the hybrid work landscape?

You must see your hybrid work policy - with all the data, insights and horizon scanning that inform it - as a key business asset. Let's unpack what this entails in a checklist for HR leaders when it comes to building out your hybrid work policy for 2026.

A defining principle

All too often, leaders fail to define - and explain to their teams in language they understand - why they want to work the way they do. A hybrid policy must be underpinned with a clear and well-communicated sense of its objectives, contextualized within a forward-looking vision that workers can buy into. Following a trend or saving on real estate alone just isn't a good enough reason.

Data over instincts

Too many leaders disregard data in favor of their instincts or legacy assumptions about what work 'should' or is 'supposed to' look like. Many companies have failed to adopt the necessary data infrastructure to manage a distributed workforce effectively. Leaders continue to focus on traditional metrics—such as real estate cost per person, security, and cleaning—when their decisions should be driven by space efficiency, usage, employee wellbeing and inclusivity scores. This means real estate decisions and strategy should be aligned with HR strategy, making people rather than places the driver. It's time to ditch nostalgic perceptions based on an outdated business landscape, and craft a new way forward that's informed by actual real-life insight about how your staff work.

Employee input

Only 11% of employees report having helped shape the policies that govern their working model. This lack of buy-in can stop employees voicing concerns or discussing challenges down the line, hindering their progression and dismantling worker loyalty. A good remote work policy starts with the principle that "one-size-fits-all" mandates are ineffective. For instance, roles requiring deep focus and independent tasks often thrive remotely, while roles relying on spontaneous innovation and mentorship benefit most from in-person collaboration. A 2026 remote work policy must move beyond general employee preference to identify specific functional requirements by role and department.

Practice over place

Policies that focus too narrowly on location or physical places are doomed to fail because they don't address the underlying organizational issues of collaboration and connectivity that make remote work inefficient or even deficient. HR leads should be wary of an over-emphasis on proximity over practice. Most successful companies replicate the collaborative aspect of an office in their remote work practices, and increasingly offer a "third space" for employees when they don't want to work at home or in the office.

Consistency for staff

Research shows that when workers perceive their employer to be constantly 'changing the rules' that dictate how and where they work, they disconnect. Whilst iteration and refinement of remote work is essential, leaders need to do this in a way that also provides a stable foundation for employees to refer to and a clear structure to follow. For example, in a randomized control trial of 1,600 workers at Trip.com, a structured two-day work-from-home policy resulted in a 33% reduction in employee resignations. This might mean publishing, communicating and enacting a remote work policy that you can confirm will apply to the next year, with transparency about the points at which it will be under review.

In-built bias reduction

The effectiveness of any hybrid policy is mediated by its managers. Overall, remote workers are promoted 31% less frequently than employees who spend some time in the office. As hybrid work becomes the norm, it's essential that policies disentangle physical visibility from career progression to avoid inequity and unconscious bias taking hold amongst managers.

The Bubble Map Revolution: How Data Visualization Will Define the Next Generation of Hybrid Policy

The next generation of policymaking will move from reactive, impulse-based mandates to infrastructural improvement guided by data. Moving forward, organizational leaders must see hybrid work policies not as an HR compliance document but as a strategic business asset worthy of time, resources and input from all areas of the organization.

This transformation will see HR leaders and CEOs take a detailed view of not just where their employees are working, but how they work together, how department tracks into work patterns, what tools they're using, the impacts of management styles, the levels of equity and wellbeing. We can think of this as a living-and-breathing bubble map of every employee, whether they work in the office two days a week, work from home on Fridays, organize to go to their local co-working space on Tuesdays or work fully remote on flexible hours.

A hybrid work policy must be a living and breathing entity, that can evolve and be optimized as your business grows. This optimization can only be based on profound insight on employee ways of working. This interactive bubble map can inform a truly intentional approach to building a hybrid policy. This can transform flexibility from a source of chaos reminiscent of the shock of the pandemic - into a framework for sustained competitive advantage and employee excellence. It can also be highly valuable to underpin other areas of the business - such as real estate strategy which must be informed by how people actually use the assets a business holds, or talent acquisition strategy which should be led by data on retention and wellbeing.

That starts with an expert partner like Croissant that can work with you to design a hybrid work policy that targets the symptom not the cause of failing remote work. Whether that leads you to new offices in locations that are actually convenient for a distributed workforce, a shared flexible office space that can grow with you or a co-working pass that could unlock seats at 1000s of spaces worldwide - Croissant can help make your hybrid work policy work for you in 2026.