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What is hybrid working?

Fundamentally, “hybrid working” describes an arrangement whereby employees work a proportion of their time at one or more workplace (a traditional office, client building, manufacturing facility, building site, or co-working space) with time also spent working from home (anything from a kitchen table or desk in a spare room to a separate home office building). Hybrid working has rapidly replaced previous terms such as “flexible work arrangements” or “teleworking” for describing people who spend at least some time working outside of a traditional workplace.

While businesses report that hybrid working is overwhelmingly the new normal for their office workers, our research has shown that this can mean widely different things in practice. We have identified five types of hybrid working: free hybrids, timeless hybrids, nomadic hybrids, fixed hybrids and balanced hybrids. Each form of hybrid working has implications for the type and amount of office space required.

Typology showing 5 types of hybrid working: timeless hybrid, free hybrid, fixed hybrid, nomadic hybrid and balanced hybrid.

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