How’s the hybrid workplace working out? According to a recent study, published in HBR, “Hybrid Still Isn’t Working,” in the July-August 2025 issue, not well. Meetings are less effective, despite being more frequent. The wrong people are getting promoted. The culture of hybrid companies is weaker than in-person ones. The commitment of workers in general is weaker, mirroring the weaker culture. And people are socially isolated, spending little time with any co-workers outside of work.
Each of these issues are a result of the stresses of the virtual world that I described in Can You Hear Me? in 2018. I researched the book anticipating that a few simple techniques would enable us all to use video conferencing (and the other virtual tools available at the time) as an efficient and money-saving alternative to the Road Warrior life that was the norm for many knowledge workers pre-pandemic. I was surprised to find that the problems facing the virtual world were deep and difficult to overcome.
These problems all stem from the lack of feedback we receive in the virtual world – feedback of a specific kind. It turns out that we humans evolved to receive information through our five senses – sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. And there’s a sixth one I’ll get to in a minute that they didn’t teach you in school.
Each of the five senses are compromised in the virtual sphere. Take video conferencing, which is the most interactive of the virtual tools. Sight is compromised because we are seeing in two dimensions, not three. We are literally flatter and therefore less interesting to our fellow humans in two dimensions. Smell doesn’t happen at all, nor does touch or taste. And hearing is weaker because the sound of the human voice that reaches us over computer headphones and speakers is compressed and therefore, like sight, flatter and less interesting than in person.
And then there’s that sixth sense, proprioception, which is how we humans keep track of where we are in space, and where the people around us are. It’s important, and our unconscious minds monitor our proprioception 24/7, in order to keep us safe, and not bumping into people. But in virtual space, our proprioception sense is presented with 2 versions of the people we see – the one on the screen that appears to be about 3 feet away, and the other one, that is expressed by the actual image size, because it looks like it’s about 12 feet away. Try to make sense of that, unconscious mind! It attempts to resolve the apparent paradox, can’t, and soon develops Zoom Fatigue as a result.
As an inevitable result, virtual meetings are inferior to in person ones, and for ancient, evolutionary reasons over which we have no control. Our unconscious minds process the sensory information described above, so we are not even consciously aware of what we are missing. It’s a recipe for making less productive meetings and less connection amongst fellow workers.
In order to survive in this hybrid world, organizations need to step up to the communications challenges they are facing. They need to up the ante on connection both in the meetings and in other ways on- and offline. They need to invest in training virtual/remote workers to be able to use video conferencing effectively by increasing connectivity “proffers” and the language of emotion, to replace what is lost. They need to train workers (and measure them accordingly) to engage in collaborative processes in support of their fellow workers. And they need to figure out how to deliver the culture of the organization powerfully to all workers in place of in-person connection.
Unless organizations can change their approach to hybrid communications, they are dooming themselves to lower productivity, weaker cultural ties, and more work do-overs. The future does not currently look rosy.
