Disruptive Hr Podcasts

In this episode, Lucy digs into one of the big questions right now: if most organisations have landed on hybrid, why does it still feel so clunky? Ranya Nehmeh, senior HR strategist, lecturer and co-author of In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work - joins to unpack why many hybrid set-ups deliver the “messy middle”: full calendars, half-empty offices and confused norms. She makes the case that the office still offers something distinctive: spontaneous interactions, faster trust-building and the sort of collaboration you can’t schedule into a diary. Lucy and Ranya explore the long-term culture risks of ineffective hybrid working such as lower discretionary effort, individualism over collaboration, and promotion decisions skewed by proximity bias. They look at practical ways to make hybrid better including designing anchor days around activities that need co-location, fixing meeting hygiene and measuring outcomes not optics. They also discuss a divide many miss - pre- versus post-pandemic