When Academics Ignore Research (and Reality)
A Teardown of "Hybrid Still Isn't Working"
"Hybrid isn't working; remote work isn't working; return-to-office isn't working." Pick your headline—too many stories chase magic number solutions instead of addressing the real challenge: we've underinvested in management skills while technology has fundamentally changed how work gets done.
The latest entry is "Hybrid Still Isn't Working" by Wharton's Peter Cappelli and Ranya Nehmeh, who have a book coming out called In Defense of Offices. The article tears into remote and hybrid work in ways that will frustrate anyone who's studied this space seriously.
Cover art from “Hybrid Still Isn’t Working” in HBR
I've consulted Stanford's Nick Bloom, Harvard's Prirthwiraj Choudhury, and Atlassian's Annie Dean—researchers and leaders who've conducted multiple peer-reviewed studies across companies—to fact-check their claims.
I agree with Nick’s take that this piece reads like someone asked ChatGPT to "write an HBR article attacking hybrid work in Jamie Dimon's style. Ignore inconvenient data. End with balanced advice that applies to all work styles."
The real problem? Their recommendations are basic management practices that work regardless of location—many drawn from successful hybrid and remote organizations, which undermines their own thesis.
A few examples of companies that have found a way to make flexibility work…maybe you’ve heard of NVIDIA?
Cherry-Picked Research, Questionable Claims
Let's examine their starting positions:
Everyone's going back to five days a week. The authors claim organizations are "forcing employees to return to the office for the entire workweek." But Flex Index data shows full-time office policies jumped modestly from 31% to 33% among 8,500+ US companies. The real trend? Hybrid work now dominates at 43% of firms, up from 36% last year.
Recent studies show problems with remote and hybrid. Stanford's Nick Bloom told me their research review "ignores almost all peer-reviewed research. It's like assessing Liverpool's winning season by watching only the 4 games they lost, ignoring the 34 they won or drew, and claiming they play badly.”
Even the three working papers they cite have limitations:
Feedback and mentoring: The study showing feedback drops for remote workers found identical impacts when teams are spread across buildings on the same campus. The issue isn't remote work—it's distributed teams, now the norm in large organizations. Microsoft went from 39% distributed teams pre-pandemic to 75% by 2023. I4cp has surveyed leaders, 86% of whom said that teams are now mostly distributed.
Productivity: Their single productivity study examined data entry workers in India during peak pandemic 2020—people tethered to phones in small apartments fearing death. Recent studies show positive results for remote and hybrid workers; that’s ignoring older research showing similar. Meanwhile, US productivity growth is up while office occupancy remains flat and office space shrinks.
Innovation: Their single innovation study examined one IT firm in India through 2018-2021, theorizing that watercoolers work virtually or in-person, but not in mixed modes. This contradicts research showing distance no longer impedes innovation, and data showing that business creation rates are up. Innovation depends more on diverse perspectives and psychological safety than location, not to mention past research bursting the watercooler myth.
They also ignore research on return-to-office mandate impacts: no financial benefit, no stock market boost, but declining engagement and retention issues among experienced talent and women at 3X the rate of men.
Phew, but other than that, it’s spot-on, right?
Real Challenges, Wrong Solutions
The authors studied 725 people at one financial services firm experiencing genuine issues. Some challenges they identify are real, but location isn't the only (or even primary) culprit. A few examples:
Individual focus over teamwork: This happens in any setting—I've seen it for decades in Sales unless actively managed. Effective hybrid programs center on teams: goals measured at team level, with rhythms set by teams, not top-down mandates.
Social isolation: Lower engagement can be an issue, but it's worse when organizations don't intentionally bring distributed teams together. Several case studies and research show that even quarterly gatherings impact engagement more than chance office encounters. Tellingly, another HBR study found highly lonely participants conducted 47% of interactions in person—more face time doesn't automatically reduce loneliness.
Slow feedback cycles: Yes, people sometimes need quick responses when they can't tap a shoulder. But thank goodness for DND settings—Atlassian found 65% of workers prioritize quick message responses over actual progress. What's worse—delayed feedback or Cal Newport's Hyperactive Hive Mind run amok?
Having worked in offices for decades, the shoulder I wanted to tap was often in a meeting or behind a closed door. Not exactly a solution.
The authors' suggestions—teams defining urgency protocols, effective meetings, and dedicated sync time—are solid. But these work regardless of location.
The Real Issue
The article's core flaw: assuming most work happens in co-located manager-and-direct-report teams. That may work for autonomous functions like Sales, but today's complex, creative, interdisciplinary work happens across locations, buildings, cities, and time zones.
If "hybrid isn't working," maybe your problem is distributed teams. And if distributed teams aren't working, forced office returns won't solve what spans multiple locations anyway.
The authors even undermine their own thesis—they cite successful practices from organizations like Atlassian, which they call "virtual" but actually operates offices globally and conducts extensive workplace research.
Most leaders – even those that aren’t fans of flexibility – get that you can’t unscramble an egg, and for global organizations distributed teams are here to stay. We have to learn to lead them well.
What Actually Works
Instead of debating days per week, focus on what drives results: clear team goals, intentional collaboration rhythms, and management practices that work anywhere. The magic isn't in the location—it's in how well you lead distributed teams doing complex work.
Because that's the world we're actually working in.
I’d love your feedback on this piece; it was pulled together quickly!
What an incredibly shoddy piece of work. Makes you wonder about the quality of the rest of what's in HBR.
What I've taken away from this is the major shift has been to distributed teams. To say it is to hybrid working is a misdiagnosis. The problem is that managers have not been trained to succeed in this environment and many processes and structures have not been adapted.
You might have pulled this together quickly but it's an excellent summary of the key issues and backed up with data. Great work.
I share your emphasizing the importance/power of engaging teams collectively to articulate how they do their most business-critical work and what spatial attributes or cultural norms would best support their processes and interactions. When they develop team agreements and share them with us workplace strategists/designers, we get way better data/insights about designing workplaces and teams are heard and seen - and they become influencers for their various work locations.