More than one in four working adults in Great Britain worked partly at home and partly elsewhere in July 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics. At the same time, boards are under clearer pressure to show that they understand what is happening to company culture. The 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code, in its first reporting season, requires boards to assess and monitor culture and to show how it has been embedded. The Financial Reporting Council’s 2025 review found that many companies still described culture in generic terms, with little detail on how directors were promoting it.
Rupert Gibb, Partner at Warren Partners, says in-office proximity once covered some of these weaknesses. “Leaders could rely on informal conversations, visible behaviours and shared experiences to reinforce values without thinking too much about them. In a hybrid environment, those moments happen less frequently.”
Where one culture becomes several
Eurofound’s August 2026 study of hybrid management found that over-reliance on individual managers’ discretion had led to uneven practice, inconsistent attendance and perceptions of unfairness. Managers also reported difficulties maintaining cohesion and giving employees equal access to information and opportunities.
A July 2026 study shows how those differences can develop. Researchers spent eight months studying middle managers and their teams in the operations division of a multinational investment bank. Hybrid working gave managers more freedom within their own teams but reduced their contact and visibility with senior leaders. Team members also formed informal groups around when and where they worked, making cohesion harder to maintain.
Gibb sees the same risk. “Individual teams often develop strong ‘local’ cultures, but the wider organisational identity becomes weaker because people have fewer opportunities to connect across departments.”
A company-wide engagement score may hide those differences. The FRC advises boards to use several quantitative and qualitative sources when monitoring culture, in part to avoid conclusions based on incomplete information. Its guidance asks directors to consider the “tone from the middle” as well as the tone from the top.
Who gets seen
Visibility matters when companies decide who is performing well and who is ready for a bigger job. A 2026 study in the International Journal of Human Resource Management found that reduced contact with senior leaders made it harder for middle managers to raise issues and influence strategy. Hybrid working could therefore affect whose knowledge reaches the top of an organisation, as well as who is noticed there.
A UK study of 937 managers found that when they were given no information about an employee’s performance, hybrid workers were 7.7 percentage points less likely to be selected for promotion than office-based workers. When performance information was provided, the gap disappeared – suggesting that managers can make less favourable assumptions about people they see less often.
“Familiarity naturally influences perceptions of commitment, reliability and leadership potential,” says Gibb. He argues for consistent performance criteria and structured talent reviews so that people are judged on comparable evidence, however often senior leaders see them in person.
“In a hybrid environment, new executives can spend weeks attending scheduled meetings without building the informal trust that normally develops through everyday interaction,” he adds. “They understand the organisational chart but not the organisational dynamics.”
A June 2026 longitudinal study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior followed employees through role transitions for a year. Organisational trust dipped before recovering, with a steeper fall among people joining from outside than among internal movers. Strong relationships with leaders and social integration softened that decline.
Gibb says senior onboarding should include introductions across the business, informal time with peers, face-to-face contact in the early months where useful, and a sponsor or mentor who can explain unwritten norms.
Boards can test culture by looking at where results differ. Retention and engagement by team or working pattern can expose gaps hidden by an average. Promotion and succession outcomes show whether visibility is influencing judgement. It is worth checking whether concerns raised by employees are reaching senior leaders and being acted on, and whether feedback from senior hires shows they are building the relationships they need.
“Perhaps the most revealing question is whether employees experience the same culture regardless of where they work,” says Gibb.
Hybrid working means directors and executives have fewer informal chances to see how the organisation really operates. Boards need evidence of where employee experience differs, whose contribution is being overlooked and whether new leaders are becoming part of the organisation they were hired to lead.
