It’s true that flexible work formats don’t suit everyone and that in some cases the issue really is individual. But if the same pattern keeps repeating across several people, it’s far more likely that the weakest link is the way work is organised and managed.
Warning signs usually appear long before the situation escalates. How can managers recognise when the real issue is leadership?
You manage people as if everyone were still in the office
Hybrid work is not just about doing the same job from a different place. It’s a deliberate way of planning work content, time and location more intelligently. That, in turn, requires a different style of management: clear goals, transparent information flows and agreed ways of working that don’t depend on who happens to be in the office.
Just as hybrid work doesn’t suit every employee, it doesn’t suit every manager if they’re not prepared to adapt their leadership approach.
In a physical office, it’s easy to fall for the illusion of control: the manager sees who is sitting at their desk, who is chatting with colleagues and who leaves earlier or later in the evening. In a hybrid set-up, that visibility disappears.
If a manager is not used to managing by outcomes, uncertainty quickly creeps in. That uncertainty spills over to employees and can undermine both work quality and team cohesion.
That’s why goal-based management becomes especially important in hybrid work. Instead of policing irrelevant details – like whether a green light is showing next to someone’s name in a chat tool – managers should regularly review with each employee whether individually agreed targets are being met. If not, they should work together to identify the reasons.
You forget to agree on hybrid work rules (or fail to communicate them clearly)
A second major warning sign is a lack of clarity around the rules of hybrid work. Many organisations promise flexibility in job ads, but have no shared understanding of what that means in day-to-day practice.
Work patterns often evolve ad hoc, based on habits that emerge over time. If a manager simply assumes that everyone knows how collaboration is supposed to work, then in reality there are likely as many interpretations as there are people on the team.
In hybrid work, teams need to agree – and preferably write down – the principles that guide daily operations: how to participate in hybrid meetings, when to meet in person, which communication channels are primary, and so on. This reduces misunderstandings, talking at cross‑purposes, and the temptation to micromanage every move.
You haven’t thought through what real value in‑person meetings create
A common myth is that hybrid workers shut themselves away at home and work entirely on their own. In practice, they need and value face‑to‑face interaction from time to time. But if a manager’s only solution for bringing people together is to mandate, say, a fixed number of office days per week, it’s usually a sign the issue hasn’t been properly thought through.
At Elisa we have analysed this question in depth and adjusted our hybrid work practices accordingly. We’ve concluded that people’s work habits differ – and so do teams’. You simply can’t assume that one model will work for everyone.
We have teams that meet more frequently, and others that get together once a week or even less. We also have international Estonia–Finland matrix teams that mainly meet for strategic discussions or quarterly reviews. Practices differ, and it would be unrealistic to demand a uniform approach from all. What they share, however, is that everyone values occasional face‑to‑face time. What varies is the timing, the format and the purpose.
That’s why every hybrid manager’s task is to work with their team to define when it genuinely makes sense to meet in person and when it doesn’t. A good starting point is to map situations where being in the same room tangibly helps create value and improves joint outcomes.
This kind of consciously managed flexibility is the basis of effective hybrid work. It means more than “working from home and sometimes dropping by the office”: it becomes a thought‑through collaboration model. In organisations where hybrid work functions well, the focus is on outcomes, on balancing freedom and responsibility, and on trust‑based cooperation.
If, instead, internal debate keeps circling around the question “are people really working?”, that’s a red flag: a sign that management is struggling to keep pace with modern ways of working and is trying to steer a new work model with old habits. Those old habits no longer align well with today’s leadership principles.