6 Insights From Our Latest Hybrid Work Webinar [Full Recap]

Hybrid work keeps shifting because the wants and needs of employees keep changing. Just when the pattern looks settled, the data moves again.

Hybrid work is a model where employees split their week between the office and a remote location, usually home, instead of coming in five days a week.

OfficeRnD CMO Samantha Kenney sat down with the Akelius Team Leader of Applications and Systems, Lars Eliasson, during the “Embracing Change: Navigating the Transition to a Hybrid Work Model” webinar.

Here’s a quick look at the topics they covered and the insights from the panel. To get the full detail, watch the recording here.

Understanding the market

Leading up to the webinar, OfficeRnD ran several polls to read the climate of the workforce. The results:

• 46% of respondents weren’t considering hybrid work at all
• 28% were actively planning to switch to a hybrid model
• 16% were just envisioning the idea
• 10% needed more information to decide

It surprised the panel that so many companies weren’t moving in the hybrid direction. The caveat: the poll didn’t capture which companies or industries those answers came from.

Hybrid and remote work fit IT, sales, and other desk jobs. For manufacturing and similar verticals, they often aren’t possible at all.

The panel also polled the live audience to gauge who was in the room. 82% of attendees were already working in a hybrid model, a sign that most of these organizations see value in it.

That picture still holds. Hybrid work statistics show that among US employees in remote-capable jobs, Gallup puts 52% in hybrid roles, 26% fully remote, and 22% on-site. Hybrid is the majority arrangement for people who can work remotely, and Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom estimates about 100 million people work hybrid worldwide.

What’s the draw to hybrid work?

Eliasson spoke about the benefits of a hybrid model and how it connects to company values at Akelius.

Hybrid work has been an option at Akelius for over ten years. Their technology supported the model long before many companies thought it possible.

A good work/life balance has always been a core value at Akelius. For most of that time, the setup was in-office with the option to work remotely when needed.

As a community-forward organization, they know kids get sick and personal matters come up during the workday.

To give employees flexibility, they let people work from home when it made sense.

The idea of hybrid work was always there, but nothing pushed it forward until the pandemic hit in 2020.

That’s when the model became concrete. Not every role could run 100% from home, so Akelius moved to bring people back to the office a few days a week.

It wasn’t until they started using tools to manage remote workers and build guidelines and policies that their hybrid model worked.

How do you transition to hybrid work?

Whatever the model, fully remote, fully in-person, or hybrid, employees, stakeholders, and leadership need to agree on it. The guidelines and policies have to be adopted across the organization from the start.

Any new policy, tool, or change comes with a learning curve. Many organizations struggle to adapt to new ways of working, especially when support from the top is thin.

Good management leads by example. When actions and stated policy don’t match, adoption stalls and culture erodes.

So before you introduce hybrid work to the wider organization, get leadership and your primary stakeholders on board first.

Clear guidelines and expectations matter just as much. When the rules are loose and unenforced, the office turns into a free-for-all.

A lack of structure makes it hard for people to coordinate, and nearly impossible to track metrics or collect clean data. Define expectations at the start and save yourself the cleanup.

What technology supports hybrid work?

Technology carries a lot of the weight in hybrid work. There’s a duty of care in knowing where your employees are, and software helps manage that.

Tools keep advancing to fit how people actually work. The COVID-19 pandemic sped up that development, and software companies are now better able to follow industry trends and support what remote and hybrid workers need.

Collaboration tools show this clearly. Where teams once used Skype, they now use a single platform like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to message, video conference, and share documents in one place while staying secure.

Scheduling software has also matured. OfficeRnD Workplace lets employees book hot desks, meeting rooms, and other spaces on a visual floor plan. It gives teams desk booking, room scheduling, and visibility into who’s in on any given day, so in-office and remote colleagues can plan around each other.

Eliasson noted:

We are utilizing the desk booking system from OfficeRnD but we had another solution in the past which we started to use during Covid.

Their main goal after the pandemic was getting people back to the office.

Eliasson continued:

OfficeRnD Workplace perfectly suits the needs we have today. I know there are competitors doing similar software but we are really happy with what OfficeRnD Workplace is offering especially in this desk booking part.

Kenney also raised access control. From Wi-Fi to security clearances, access control was a piece of hybrid work that few people planned for in the early stages.

With more experience behind them, organizations now support remote and hybrid workers better and give them a smoother day-to-day.

How do you measure the success of a hybrid model?

Akelius and OfficeRnD agreed that space utilization is a key metric for hybrid work, though there are different flavors of utilization to watch.

Akelius takes a lighter touch with data, but they track occupancy rates and available spaces.

That tells the team which days draw the most demand, which rooms and spaces people actually use, and whether they need more options or can do with fewer or smaller ones.

Many companies are not renewing their original leases and are opting for smaller offices as headcount in the building has dropped. Occupancy metrics are the clearest way to see those patterns.

Utilization is now the norm, not the exception. CBRE put global office building utilization at 53% in 2025, the highest since March 2020 and up from 38% in 2024. CBRE also found that no organization now targets one desk per employee, and the average occupancy ratio sits at 111% employees per desk, since not everyone comes in at once.

Kenney shared that OfficeRnD works with hybrid companies that also factor in meeting room analytics, catering requests, and budgeting reports.

Common hybrid work objections

The panel polled attendees again on the biggest challenge in their transition to hybrid work. The results:

• Communication and collaboration: 42%
• Technology and infrastructure: 8%
• Employee engagement and morale: 25%
• Management and supervision: 25%

Kenney and Eliasson were glad management and supervision didn’t rank higher, though a little surprised given challenges they’d seen before.

They put that down to more organizations investing in middle management, senior leadership, and coaching.

On the top concern, communication and collaboration, they concluded that 1-to-1 communication is rarely the problem. The trouble starts when there are multiple channels and things slip through the gaps.

That looped back to the earlier point about tools: you need clear guidelines for how communication software gets used.

What’s next?

This webinar featured an organization operating under a hybrid model sharing what it has learned, with practical support for teams making the same move.

FAQ

What is hybrid work?

Hybrid work is a model where employees split their week between the office and a remote location, usually home, rather than working on-site five days a week.

How many people work hybrid?

Among US employees in remote-capable jobs, 52% work hybrid, 26% work fully remote, and 22% work on-site, according to Gallup. About 100 million people work hybrid worldwide.

How do you transition a team to hybrid work?

Get leadership and stakeholders aligned first, then write clear guidelines and expectations before rolling the change out to the wider organization. Loose, unenforced rules make coordination and data tracking harder, so define expectations from the start.

What software do you need for hybrid work?

You need tools for collaboration and for managing the office itself. OfficeRnD Workplace covers the office side with desk booking, room scheduling, and visibility into who’s in on any given day.

How do you measure whether hybrid work is working?

Space utilization is the core metric: occupancy rates, peak-day demand, and which spaces people actually use. CBRE put global office building utilization at 53% in 2025, and many companies pair that with meeting room analytics and budgeting reports.