Hybrid Remote Work Status Check—Fall 2025: Where Does Your Company Stand Relative to the Competition?
- Paul Falcone
- Sep 4
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 6
Many organizations are asking themselves whether returning fully remote or hybrid workers to the office full-time is in their best interest. Per Gallup, the state of the state when it comes to remote, hybrid, and fully onsite workers has remained steady since the 2022-2023 period. Per this writing in September 2025, the post-COVID reintegration period that we’re experiencing shows hybrid working relationships continuing to work well, attesting to U.S. companies’ agility and flexibility in aligning this relatively new work model with real-world productivity gains and practical results.
The bottom line per Gallup: Hybrid is here to stay and has remained steady since 2022.
While return-to-office headlines may grab attention in light of federal government and high-profile CEO mandates earlier this year, most organizations are navigating the hybrid era with agility and flexibility. And there’s even an added benefit: cross-departmental collaboration tends to increase as hybrid and remote working relationships allow employees to reach beyond their “normal team” within (physical) reach in the office. In fact, Gallup finds that “Even among on-site workers, team distribution is shifting with many now working with colleagues across locations.”
The ”Trust Factor” is the Likeliest Determinant of Healthy and Effective Remote and Hybrid Team Performance
So, as an employer, you need not fear that you’re “missing the boat” in not returning hybrid workers to the office full time. Hybrid has basically remained unchanged since the pandemic ended, and despite highly publicized commands from the CEOs of Amazon, JP Morgan, and a handful of other organizations, it continues to work well—both for employers and workers.
The main driver of successful hybrid working relationships ties directly to the level of TRUST between frontline operational managers and the individual members of their teams working remotely. There are four key focus areas outlined by Gallup that build trust and ensure the highest performance from your remote/hybrid team.
The Results are telling based on the Gallup employee responses. . .
Notice how an affirmative response to these four questions raises the average employee polling response from 57% to closer to 85% in terms of perceived successful performance as well as individual and team achievement.
Four Criteria to Maximize Hybrid Work and Remote Team Productivity and Performance
Gallup research shows that four simple practices can increase employee trust by nearly 30 percentage points. Employees are more likely to feel greater trust and self-confidence when they strongly agree with any of the following:
I receive timely and consistent communication about what’s happening on my team, regardless of whether I’m working from home/remotely or on-site.
My team has a strong sense of community, regardless of whether we are working from home/remote or on-site.
My manager holds me accountable for meeting performance expectations when I work from home/remotely.
When working from home/remotely, I receive the same opportunities for feedback and development compared to when I work on-site.
Turning these four priorities into a simple questionnaire that you can use to poll your remote/hybrid staff members will go a long way in helping you determine how employees feel about the success and effectiveness of their current remote/hybrid working relationships. And remember that “Work-life-family balance, control, and equilibrium” remain a top-five priority for Gen-Y Millennials and Gen-Z Zoomers in survey after survey.
Looked at another way, managers who invest in these basics — communication, community, accountability, and career and professional development —strengthen trust and unlock the potential of high-performing teams. How do can you help your managers get there? Simply by assisting them in setting up team meetings where members grade themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 in each of the four categories above. Starting with communication, ask, for example:
“What score would we give ourselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being highest) when it comes to communication? This could be organizational communication from the C-suite down, team communication, or one-on-one communication between manager and staff member. What score comes to mind immediately when you think about our communication level?”
Assuming you hear responses around 6, 7, or 8, pick the average of the responses and continue as follows:
“Why are we 7 when it comes to communication? In other words, seven is a relative number. Why did you assign it? What does ‘seven’ feel like and why does that number best capture our current level of communication?”
Follow up at that point by asking, “What would make us a 10? What does that gap look like, and how could we move the needle forward in terms of increasing our communication and collaboration levels?“
Continue the discussion by addressing community, accountability, and development. These can be lengthy conversations, so it might make more sense to cover one topic per meeting over four meetings. What’s important is that you’re discussing this with your remote and hybrid team members with the intention of helping them do their best work every day with peace of mind and building their self-confidence.
Likewise, managers can conduct a Start-Stop-Continue exercise covering each of the four core drivers above to determine how to strengthen those areas within their teams. “What should we start doing / stop doing / continue doing to improve our level of communication?” is a great way to start such team discussions. As a good leader and coach, just remember that the best answers can be found within the team. Your job isn’t to tell them what they need to do to improve team communication. Your role is to ask them how to get there quickest, as team members often know best because they’re closer to the action and closer to the client than you, their manager. What gets measured gets managed, and making it safe for staff members to share their concerns and recommendations for improving remote and hybrid working relationships is the wisest place to start.
The Typical Structure of Hybrid Working Arrangements Across Corporate America
Currently, the majority of Fortune 500 employees work three days per week on average onsite in the office. Those onsite days are most often Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays. In comparison, Mondays and Fridays remain remote days for the typical hybrid team.
Gallup breaks this down further:
“If fully on-site work has not increased much, are hybrid employees coming into the office more often? Yes, but slowly. Gallup’s analysis finds that hybrid workers now spend 46% of their workweek in the office, or the equivalent of 2.3 days. That’s up from 42% in 2022. But all that increase happened in 2023. There has been no movement in the past year.”
Team Determination versus Company Determination of Hybrid Schedules
Finally, the Gallup survey found that determining the structure of hybrid working arrangements works best as a “team sport.” Per Gallup, “Hybrid work schedules are now divided roughly equally between (1) those who determine their own schedule (34%), (2) those whose schedule is decided by their manager or team (35%), and (3) those who say their employer determine their schedule (31%).
Gallup continues:
"Control matters. The more say employees have in their hybrid work schedules, the more likely they are to view the arrangement as fair. But there is more than one way to achieve that fairness: 91% of employees who say their team decides their hybrid work schedule see their hybrid work policy as fair —the same rate as those who determine it themselves. (When an employer determines an employee’s hybrid work schedule, only 73% say the policy is fair.)"
The lesson? Rather than “mandating” the hybrid remote schedule’s specifics, allow departments and teams to follow a general guideline but determine their own programs and schedules. Looked at another way, hybrid work models work best when teams, not individuals or the company, decide the rules.
Yes, there are a lot of moving parts to contend with in today’s complex and fast-moving workplace. Keeping your eye on the “hybrid” ball, remaining aware of how your competitors manage these critical working relationships, and approaching this relatively new workplace phenomenon wisely will keep you and your organization ahead of this critical issue impacting employee performance, productivity, engagement.
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For more information from this Gallup report, see:
Hybrid Work in Retreat? Barely.
Work location trends have remained stable since 2022, reflecting the durability of the hybrid work model.
by Ryan Pendell
September 2, 2025
Likewise, for a suggested way of approaching your employees about transitioning to more time in the office, see my blog article: “Remote Work and the Return to Office: A Strategy to Move From 3 Days to 4 Days Onsite per Week” at: https://www.paulfalconehr.com/post/remote-work-and-the-return-to-office-a-strategy-to-move-from-3-days-to-4-days-onsite-per-week
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