Why Hybrid Work Policies Backfire... And How To Fix Them

I once transferred to a school that had a strange and in-your-face rule: No Climbing Trees.

And not just when on school grounds; as long as you attended, it was No Climbing Trees Ever.

This rule had two unintended psychological effects.

First, I now wanted to climb a lot more trees than I had my whole life. And second, I hated the administration.

The rule came about (I investigated) because a student once broke his foot climbing a tree. To prevent future headaches, the powers-that-be made a blanket rule.

Now, as far as I'm aware, there aren't a lot of peer-reviewed studies on the benefits of climbing trees, but this rule simultaneously prohibited something potentially positive (clean fun/exploration/nature/exercise) and created animosity—making it potentially more difficult for the school to get my cooperation on other, weightier matters.

Lately, when I consult with organizations about teamwork—or read articles about the difficulties of hybrid work like this one in last week's New York Times—I have thought about the No Climbing Trees era of my young life.

Remote work was a well-meaning reaction to the dire circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are clear benefits to working from anywhere, many of which, we've discovered, are still benefits in a non-pandemic situation.

But now that the pandemic has largely stabilized, many businesses want the benefits of in-person work back.

The quest to regain in-person work benefits has pushed us into human behavior territory many leaders weren't ready for.

It's like for two years leaders said, "Go ahead! Climb trees! It's good exercise!" But now, they would like us to not be in trees and be in an office sometimes.

Some organizations have reacted with a blanket rule: No Remote Work Anymore.

And given that working remotely has even more benefits than climbing trees, it's easy to see why the human reactions of "I never wanted to work from home so badly as now" and "I hate this company" have come on so strongly.

Seeing some companies step in this cow pie, many leaders have opted for Hybrid Work policies. The rationale is that we can have the best of both worlds, and workers will be happier. And in the right circumstances, this is exactly the case. But from a psychology standpoint, many leaders who attempt this are actually tromping on the same turd.

Hybrid work rules often make the same human behavior mistake as "no remote" policies.

Most Hybrid Work policies I've seen are the equivalent of "No Climbing Trees, Except Sometimes" or "Only Climb Trees 2 Days A Week Or Else." With these kinds of rules, even if workers understand the benefits to the company of some in-person work, nanny-style rules make workers tend to feel like they're being restricted because of someone else's incompetence.

And this reinforces a negative trust loop in their employers.

After all, the ticker tape in the back of your head will say, if your boss truly trusted you, she wouldn't need to put in rules that make you feel like a kid. She'd assume you'll use good judgment and decide when it's best to work remotely and when in-person will benefit your work and your team.

Zero tolerance policies require less thinking... but can backfire.

The solution for leaders who don't want to think too hard, or who see clear benefits to only one type of work, is to make a 100% Remote or a 100% In-Person policy and leave it at that. Some people will not like it. But you won't have to relitigate the issue. And perhaps the cost in some areas of your team (in terms of productivity, resentment) is worth it to you.

This is like the Abstinence method of addiction recovery. Never again. No room for misinterpretation. For better or worse. And I think this is a bargain worth making in some cases. If you never ever ever slip up (or never have an important reason to bend the rule).

Hybrid policies that feel arbitrary can erode trust.

The worst solution, I believe, is to create hard-and-fast rules that are easy to justify good reasons to violate them.

A hard rule of two days a week in-person might seem like a perk—flexibility!—but it can be like an alcoholic deciding only to drink two drinks a week. It works, until you have a lapse—which is easy to do in the absence of training or well-established habits. After a lapse, as the psychology of the abstinence violation effect shows us, it's very easy for people to get into an "all is lost" mentality. It's your husband's birthday, so you have that third drink. Oops. Then you say, "screw it." You're drinking all weekend. Future You can pick up the pieces.

When this happens at work (e.g. someone has a good reason to come in only one day this week), the boss is left to decide how to deal with the violation—or else they risk the rest of the team concluding the rule has no teeth.

Or perhaps worse, they're seen as playing favorites.

And suddenly, the well-meaning hybrid work policy has become more of a headache than it might be worth.

The most effective hybrid work policies require social skills and trust training over strict rules.

The solution for leaders who want the benefits of both Remote and In-Person is to do what successful anti-substance-abuse training programs do. Instead of telling students to "just say no" and leaving them to fend for themselves when high-pressure situations arise (plus risking an abstinence violation effect), as Scientific American reports, effective anti-drug programs "involve substantial amounts of interaction between instructors and students. They teach students the social skills they need to refuse drugs and give them opportunities to practice these skills with other students."

Instead of banning all tree climbing—or not banning it and letting untrained tree-climbers risk their safety—it's more effective to coach people how to safely navigate the ins and outs of climbing trees, how to make wise climbing decisions, or how to use a Navy SEAL style buddy system when you go out on any kind of limb in life.

Likewise, instead of just banning Remote work, or just placing headache-inducing Hybrid rules in place, effective leaders need to spend time with their team members training on how to manage their work in tricky situations.

They need to train them in social and team skills that help them identify how best to pull through for their teammates—and how to help each other navigate work-life integration.

They need to train teams to develop benevolence-based trust and charity-based conflict resolution skills.

They need to ditch easy-but-backfiring rules for more empowering principles.

All of this takes more time and thinking than posting a "No Climbing Trees Ever" sign. But for those of us who are convinced of the benefits of remote work flexibility, it's time and thinking well spent.