What do a 23% increase in profitability and 51% lower turnover have in common (Gallup)? A strong and positive team culture. Think of it as a driving force that improves internal communication and collaboration across departments, and positively impacts employee engagement. When it comes to hybrid employees who are torn between an office and home, it becomes a glue that holds collaboration, trust, and productivity together. Yet many leaders still treat culture as a side element, hoping team morale forms on its own during brief Zoom syncs or office breaks. However, the truth is, it does not.
In this guide, you will find answers to 3 key questions: What is a hybrid team culture? How do you build it? What are the steps to turn it into a competitive advantage? Let’s dive in and explore all the ins and outs of this topic.
What Is a Hybrid Team Culture?
A hybrid team culture is the shared set of values, behaviors, and norms that shape how partially remote and partially in-office team members interact with one another, make decisions, and handle tasks. While it forms organically over time, it has to be intentionally designed, considering all the peculiarities of the hybrid work model. When approached correctly, it helps support clarity and accountability, creating a healthy environment that improves overall employee satisfaction.
Example: A hybrid marketing team across locations sets shared hours for collaboration (10 a.m.-1 p.m. GMT), uses Notion as an asynchronous communication tool, and holds monthly syncs to revisit team norms.
What Are the Benefits of a Hybrid Team Culture?
You can treat hybrid culture as an invisible infrastructure. When it’s strong, it shapes how decisions are made, how managers handle setbacks, and how quickly people align despite working in different spaces. It keeps execution structured and goals reachable even when workflows stretch between Google Meet team syncs and in-office conversations. A poor culture, on the other hand, often creates misalignment, delays important changes, and makes some employees feel isolated.
However, what exactly does this look like in practice? Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of a hybrid work culture:
- Decision-making clarity across remote and in-office employees
- Consistent alignment with company goals, regardless of employees’ location
- Trust and visibility
- Resilience and adaptability
- Fair recognition, retention, and knowledge sharing across all team members
Often, you only notice the impact of hybrid workplace culture when it breaks or when it helps the company grow faster than its competitors. The question is: How do you make it beneficial for your organization?
Core Elements of a Strong Hybrid Team Culture
The key to a strong hybrid team culture? Build it on daily behaviors. In such settings, culture is reflected in how people communicate across tools, how leaders treat both remote and in-office employees, and how consistently values are applied regardless of location.
In this section, we will examine 5 key elements that create a work environment that inspires engagement and long-term success.
Shared Values and Purpose
Shared values act as a compass for teams, especially when employees aren’t physically together. When employees clearly see how their daily work impacts an organization-wide mission, engagement and ownership start to improve. The key is to translate broad company values into daily employee behaviors and help people see how they can work in practice.
Example: For a hybrid company that values “inclusion,” define it in simple terms: every team ritual, such as retros, wins, or birthday shoutouts, must work equally well for remote and in-office team members.
Psychological Safety and Trust
Did you know that only 3% of employees are at risk of quitting when psychological safety is high (BCG)? When team members feel safe voicing concerns and asking questions, they are more likely to share ideas and contribute to the company’s success. However, psychological safety doesn’t just “happen,” especially in hybrid workspaces where distance often leads to silence.
In case you are uncertain about where to start, here are a few tips on how to build an atmosphere of trust and safety:
- Use AI or async tools to collect feedback anonymously from all employees
- Celebrate contributions in both channels: remote and in-office
- Ensure hybrid teammates are included in important conversations, decisions, and shoutouts
Clear Communication Norms
Another component of a strong hybrid work culture is clear communication. When it lacks structure, professionals often face misalignment, make repeated mistakes, and experience emotional fatigue. Unlike in-office professionals, hybrid teams cannot clarify details by knocking on the next door, right? Precise norms, on the other hand, ensure that every employee knows where, when, and how to communicate.
Example: Set up Companion Mode in Google Meet to allow in-office teams to join from their individual laptops alongside the meeting room. Use Sembly for meeting summaries and notes, and shared Google Docs for brainstorming sessions.
Recognition and Feedback Loops
Build two-way feedback loops where leaders celebrate wins and employees feel safe to speak up. The key? Be timely, specific, and include both async and live channels. In hybrid work environments, feedback is about visibility. When some employees work remotely, consistent recognition ensures their efforts don’t go unnoticed.
Additionally, try to replace vague phrases, such as “Great job,” with “Your proactive client update prevented a [Name of the Issue].” This way, performance discussions become a continuous and impactful dialogue that motivates teammates to show improved results regardless of the location they choose.
Opportunities for Growth and Development
8 in 10 professionals state that learning creates a sense of purpose in their work (LinkedIn). In this case, growth opportunities mean progress, and managers need to ensure that learning works for hybrid workers. Mentoring, upskilling, and cross-functional projects can help employees connect personal goals with organizational success.
Tip: Invite hybrid employees to present what they’ve learned in a live or async session. This strengthens knowledge sharing, showcases initiative, and turns growth into a common value.
How to Build and Maintain a Hybrid Team Culture
Now that you understand the definitions, I suggest that we move to the next step and discuss how to bring the hybrid culture from Notion documents to life. After all, the main challenge lies in sustaining the culture, not creating it on paper.
1. Define and Document Your Culture
Define what your hybrid team stands for, how their actions support these values, and how you can translate them into daily work. Include behavioral examples, decision-making principles, communication & meeting norms, and guidelines on how to resolve conflicts.
The key is to treat your hybrid teamwork culture like a living system: regularly revisit it and improve existing principles using feedback from employees.
2. Hire and Onboard with Culture in Mind
The next step is to hire people who align with your values and onboard them accordingly. You can create a checklist of organizational culture touchpoints, include some questions in recruiting interviews, and use onboarding to explain how your team works together.
You may have heard of Zappos, which offered new hires $2,000 to quit if they felt the company was not the right cultural fit (CultureMonkey). Considering the company’s success, the approach proves to be effective.
3. Lead Hybrid Employees by Example
Employees observe leaders far more than they listen to speeches. When managers model transparency in async updates, admit mistakes in team retros, and actively listen across channels, it sets a behavioral standard. Employees follow what they see, and in a hybrid setup, those signals must be visible and repeatable. However, when words do not align with reality, the hybrid culture feels forced. As a result, employee trust declines, and people are more likely to quit before voicing their concerns.
Example: If “ownership” is a core value, a leader of a hybrid team can start each sprint review by sharing one recent mistake they learned from and how they resolved it. Then they can invite teammates to do the same via a shared Slack thread.
4. Create Daily Rituals That Support Values
Would you like to make your hybrid company culture visible? Start with simple rituals that reflect your values. These moments help teams connect across locations, clarify expectations, and promote consistency in how work gets done. For hybrid setups, rituals also build a sense of presence, even when teammates are apart.
Here are a few ideas you can use for your organization:
- 15-minute “Focus Rooms” on Wednesday
- Monday kickoff and weekly Friday wins thread
- Async standups in Slack or Notion
5. Collect Feedback and Assess Culture Regularly
The hybrid business culture evolves as your team does: new hires, growth phases, leadership transitions, or external factors can affect it. Naturally, I recommended monitoring yours in the way you would your marketing metrics. Regular employee feedback helps find gaps, and timely audits show how the values are reflected in practice.
Here are the key hybrid workplace culture elements to measure with some questions to ask your employees:
- Trust levels: Do you feel equally supported whether you’re on-site or remote? Can you trust team members to follow through, even asynchronously?
- Feedback health: Do you receive timely, constructive feedback regardless of your work location? Do managers make space for upward feedback from hybrid employees?
- Alignment of values with actions: Are our values reflected in how hybrid meetings, updates, and decisions are made? Do both remote and in-office teams experience the same level of inclusion?
- Psychological safety: Do you feel comfortable expressing disagreement on video calls or async chats? Do leaders actively include all voices, regardless of location?
I also recommend using pulse surveys quarterly and layering them with anonymous hybrid retrospectives. Look for patterns in visibility gaps, decision-making speed, or communication declines between remote and in-office teams.
Hybrid Team Culture vs. Remote Team Culture vs. In-Office Team Culture
At first sight, all cultures seem to have a lot in common. You might even start to wonder whether it’s that one-size-fits-all situation. However, the way teams operate (remotely, in-office, or hybrid) shapes their workplace culture. Let’s assess how hybrid culture is different from others and compare it with remote and in-office.
Office-Based Teams
In office environments, culture is often shaped through in-person rituals, visual cues, and spontaneous interactions. Hallway chats, desk drop-ins, or casual conversations during lunch are examples of how employees can connect with one another. However, the problem is that they rely on informal systems that may not scale.
Here are some tips on how to maintain office team culture:
- Make behaviors visible: Encourage leadership to reflect organizational values in their daily actions. For example, feedback sessions, team meetings, or one-on-ones.
- Structure feedback: Use structured and comprehensive reviews to assess employees’ performance and avoid informal syncs to stay objective.
- Balance formal & informal activities: Try pairing informal team-building activities with structured mentoring or coaching sessions.
Fully Remote Teams
Unlike office employees, work-from-home professionals cannot rely on physical proximity. Instead, they need intentional systems to build connections and create a sense of trust and transparency. Online culture is shaped by 3 “Hs”: how communication is organized, how work is tracked, and how teams celebrate their wins.
I suggest that we take a closer look at the best practices for remote team culture:
- Document information: Record your company values, communication norms, and feedback practices. On remote, undocumented information often equals forgotten or lost.
- Prioritize asynchronous tools: Consider shared documents with live collaboration and commenting, recorded project updates, and meeting summaries to stay aligned.
- Create a sense of belonging: Celebrate milestones, reward contributors, and host informal daily rituals such as virtual coffee breaks or quick-sync Fridays.
Hybrid Teams
Hybrid teams get the best of two worlds: the possibility of in-person collaboration and the flexibility of remote work. This structure enables employees to choose the preferred way of working without sacrificing team alignment. However, flexibility comes with a challenge: hybrid models often divide in-office and remote professionals. Without clear systems, these gaps can grow, and team culture becomes fractured.
Here are some strong culture tips hybrid employees can benefit from:
- Standardize communication channels: Ensure every team member has equal access to shared documents, meeting information, and tools.
- Optimize meeting activity: Switch speakers to ensure both offline & online professionals actively participate in calls, use collaborative tools, and clear agendas to include all voices.
- Balance formal and informal connections: Mix strategic rituals with informal, engaging, or motivational meetings.
Evaluate your culture gaps by role and location. Ask yourself: Are in-office employees getting promoted faster? Are hybrid team members missing out on mentorship programs? If the answer is positive, your culture likely depends on employee location.
|
Culture Element
|
Remote Teams
|
Hybrid Teams
|
In-Office Teams
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Communication Channels
|
Asynchronous communication tools: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Workvivo, Sembly and more
|
Mixed channels: both async tools and in-person chats
|
Real-time, face-to-face
|
|
Performance Metrics
|
Tracked through visibility tools: Sembly, interactive & live dashboards
|
Varies by role and access; performance must be measured regardless of the location
|
Easier to track through direct observation
|
|
Collaboration
|
Depends on tools and their collaboration support: commenting, live co-editing, sharing and more
|
Relies on strong cross-channel planning and meeting equity
|
Easier to maintain high collaboration levels in person; often faster but less documented
|
|
Team Unity
|
Built through structured rituals: weekly wins, async team-building, documented celebrations
|
Depends on fairness across remote and in-office members; mixed rituals
|
Strengthened through spontaneous interaction, shared physical space
|
|
Employee Well-Being
|
Must be monitored via surveys, 1:1s, async check-ins; isolation risk is high
|
High risk of burnout for remote workers if boundaries aren’t respected
|
Easier to detect in person; may benefit from physical workspace perks and structure
|
How Sembly AI Can Help Maintain a Hybrid Work Culture
In every team, whether remote, in-office, or hybrid, culture is reflected in the quality of conversations. However, when critical moments go undocumented or misunderstood, core values start to erode. The solution? An advanced AI meeting assistant such as Sembly. It captures the essence of your team’s discussions, strengthening your culture and reducing friction.
What makes Sembly different? It adapts to every type of team:
- Remote teams: Sembly automatically joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Webex calls and creates transcripts in over 45 languages, summaries & notes, as well as tasks.
- Office-based teams: Sembly supports microphone mode and file upload, letting professionals record offline conversations.
- Hybrid teams: The app stores all meeting information and lets managers share details with their team members.
With Sembly, every important word is captured, and complex conversations are distilled into actionable highlights. As a result, no more repetitions, miscommunications, or misunderstandings. If your company culture is built on transparency, Sembly is the best solution.
Hybrid Team Culture Mistakes to Avoid
Now that you know the best practices, how about common mistakes to avoid? A strong hybrid work culture does not break overnight; it crumbles slowly. What begins as a series of small missteps often goes unnoticed by leaders and HR teams. However, over time, these actions can negatively impact trust and values, and turn your workplace into a performance liability.
I suggest that we briefly review the top 3 typical mistakes to avoid and check some practical examples, so you know exactly what you are dealing with.
Limiting Feedback to Performance Reviews
Do you still rely on annual performance reviews to correct behaviors? It may be the right moment to change the approach. The truth is, if feedback is only provided during annual assessments, your hybrid culture often lacks real-time input from employees. Without it, performance stalls, and people feel unappreciated.
Tip: Set a feedback framework that includes biweekly 1:1 calls for minor discussions, team meetings for major projects, and a shared document for achievements across the organization. Keep the same sync frequency for all employee locations.
Covering Cultural Gaps with Perks
Companies using happy hours or free snacks to cover gaps are another common issue you may come across. However, these perks are merely a gesture from the organization to its employees and cannot serve as a foundation for the team culture. When professionals do not feel safe, respected, or heard, no perk can convince them to stay. Besides, what about professionals who choose to work remotely?
Tip: Reallocate the perks budget to mentoring programs, regular growth check-ins, and internal professional development paths to help employees succeed regardless of their location. Offer both offline and online opportunities.
Overlooking Inclusion, Equity, and Unconscious Bias
When leaders or HR professionals ignore inclusion and equity, only specific employees are heard. In most cases, it is in-office professionals. One of the other common mistakes when building a hybrid team culture is assuming that equal opportunities exist because they are written in a policy. In reality, without addressing unconscious bias, companies risk limiting the diverse development of leadership.
Tip: Add inclusive practices into every meeting by rotating speakers or gathering input from silent participants. Encourage bias-awareness training for executive leaders and hiring managers.
Wrapping Up
Think of a hybrid team culture as a system that is reflected in how professionals make decisions, resolve conflicts, and hold each other accountable. It’s either your biggest competitive advantage or the reason behind employee disengagement and turnover. What is the key to building a culture that works? Focus on clarity around values, consistent leadership, systems for feedback, and inclusive communication.
In this article, we have reviewed hybrid workplace culture examples, their core elements, common mistakes to avoid, and steps to build and maintain organizational values. I hope from now on you will navigate this topic with confidence. Good luck!
FAQ
What are the hybrid workplace best practices?
Here are the 5 hybrid working best practices:
- Set clear communication norms: Define communication channels and determine their use cases.
- Ensure meeting equity:
Design meetings where remote participants are fully included. - Document decisions transparently:
Use shared tools, so knowledge isn’t lost between office chats and remote updates. - Offer flexible growth opportunities:
Provide equal access to promotions, training, and visibility for all team members. - Build connection through daily rituals: Use virtual coffees, hybrid off-sites, or async meetings to strengthen connection.
How to build a team culture for hybrid teams?
Here are the recommendations on how to build a team culture for hybrid working environments:
- Start with shared values:
Define core principles that guide behavior across locations and translate them into daily habits. - Design hybrid rituals: Establish routines that connect everyone.
- Lead by example: Hybrid managers must model inclusive behavior.
- Equalize access to opportunities: Make sure promotions, feedback, learning programs, and visibility are open to all employees.
- Foster psychological safety: Create safe spaces for feedback, recognize diverse work styles, and encourage managers to proactively check in with both in-office and remote teammates.
Can you change a team culture?
Yes. However, it requires intentional leadership and consistency.
To change an ineffective team culture, you need to start with the following steps:
- Identify what’s not working
- Define new core values and behaviors
- Align performance systems and communication habits to new values
- Hold leaders accountable for modeling and reinforcing the change
What are examples of a toxic team culture?
Here are the common examples of a toxic company culture:
- Blame is often used instead of feedback
- Poor communication across teams and departments
- Inconsistent recognition or biased leadership
- Burnout is disguised as “high performance”
What are some examples of good hybrid team culture?
Here are examples of a strong team culture:
- Shared ownership: Everyone understands goals and contributes to the company’s success.
- Open communication: Feedback is welcomed, constructive, and frequent.
- Psychological safety: Mistakes are treated as learning opportunities.
- Visible leadership modeling: Leaders represent the company values, reflecting them in their actions.
- Celebrated wins and growth: Progress is noticed, celebrated, and shared.
- Multi-meeting chats
- AI Insights
- AI Artifacts
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