Four years post pandemic, organizations continue to refine their work arrangement policies—balancing employee feedback, industry trends, and leadership preferences across in-person, hybrid, and remote models. As they navigate this evolving landscape, one thing is clear: there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. To help our customers better navigate the world of hybrid work, Viva People Science dove into our data pool of insights from global leaders and people managers to better understand whether work arrangement policies impacted leaders’ perceptions of their organization. The Viva People Science team’s High Performing Organizations survey was used for this analysis, which studied 1,100 global leaders and people managers across 10+ industries.

For this month’s research drop, we aimed to gain a deeper understanding of how leaders viewed their ability to meet performance indicators, their evaluation of their organization’s effectiveness, and their perceived top barriers to high performance.

We grouped leader perceptions based on how they described their organization’s work arrangement policy. There were four categories:

Fully flexible – these organizations require no days onsite (21.5% of the sample)
Partially onsite – these organizations require 1-2 days onsite per week (31.3% of the sample)
Predominantly onsite – these organizations require 3-4 days onsite per week (40.7% of the sample)
Fully onsite – these organizations require 5 days onsite per week (6.9% of the sample)

It’s important to note that this categorization allows us to compare leader perceptions from organizations with various work arrangement policies. It doesn’t provide context on how employees at these organizations manage their time and location based on the policies or how co-located the teams are at these organizations.

Our data revealed an interesting trend! Leaders’ perceptions of their organization didn’t shift in a straightforward or linear way as the level of flexibility in work arrangement policies increased or decreased. In fact, we found that leaders from organizations with fully flexible or predominantly onsite reported higher organizational performance and effectiveness than leaders from organizations with partially onsite or fully onsite policies. This trend persisted throughout our analysis – suggesting that it’s not a battle of “remote vs. in-person” but that there is a level of nuance to work arrangement policies.

Top performance ratings come from leaders within fully flexible and predominantly onsite organizations

When exploring leaders’ perceptions of their organization’s performance, leaders at fully flexible and predominantly onsite organizations reported achievement of performance indicators more consistently than leaders at partially onsite and fully onsite organizations.

This pattern of leader perceptions indicates that we can’t assume that flexibility and weekly in-person time are the only variables at play in the impact of work arrangement policy on overall organizational performance. For example, more in-person time may be thought to connect to higher levels of collaboration1. However, while we do see that leaders at predominantly onsite organizations rate their collaboration the highest, this isn’t the case for all work arrangement policies with an in-person element. When crafting and implementing a work arrangement policy, consider more than just the number of days onsite.

Finding the right balance of work routines may influence perceptions of work practice effectiveness

Taking a deeper look into fully flexible and predominantly onsite organizations, we saw that these organizations may offer a sense of stability and balance in work routines and environments, driving higher leader perceptions. When asked to evaluate their organization on a set of organizational effectiveness factors, the pattern of stronger feedback from leaders at fully flexible and predominantly onsite organizations reigned consistent among leaders.

We’ve seen in previous research that being intentional with how and where you plan certain in-person work activities can facilitate effective work and productivity by increasing high-quality connections between employees2. But when we look at the above organizational effectiveness indicators, leaders from partially onsite and fully onsite organizations reported lower levels of vision, collaboration, innovation, and efficiency.

So, what is causing lower perceptions of these imperative work conditions? When considering how work arrangement policies may play a part, it may be that leaders who are onsite 1-2 days feel their work week is fragmented and leaders who are required to be onsite five days feel overwhelmed by in-person expectations. We’ve also seen in research that even as work arrangement policies evolve to include more in-person time, not all work routines are evolving accordingly. In fact, regardless of work arrangement policy, the volume of virtual meetings has not reduced3. This suggests that being in-person doesn’t reduce time spent collaborating in a virtual work environment, highlighting a need for effective collaboration habits regardless of where the work happens, such as effective meetings, intentional communications, and productive asynchronous work.

Unique strengths of fully flexible and predominantly onsite policies

Fully flexible and predominantly onsite policies both relate to higher leader perceptions and evaluations, but these policies each have certain areas where they stand out.

Perceived manager effectiveness and alignment are higher in fully flexible environments.

Leaders at fully flexible organizations rate their organizations higher on manager effectiveness and goal alignment, suggesting that those with fully flexible policies have created an environment that deepens the impact that leaders can have for their teams, such as providing great clarity and alignment in the flow of work. Research shows that virtual work can reduce the impact of traditional power dynamics, facilitating an environment where employees are more confident in bringing up sensitive topics and breaking down departmental silos4.

The perceived impact of “face time” is not consistent for in-person environments.

Between work arrangement policies with an in-person element, leaders at predominantly onsite organizations report the highest levels of confidence that their organization’s employees know what is expected of them and how to grow within the organization. It’s interesting that this benefit of being in-person doesn’t extend to partially onsite or fully onsite leaders’ perceptions, suggesting that there may be a bell curve of in-person impact.

Leader ratings suggest that being in-person only 1-2 days may not provide enough opportunities to network with cross-functional teams and identify performance goals for internal mobility, but that being fully onsite may introduce location-specific limitations on internal mobility, such as location restrictive job openings. Consider the moments that matter most to being in-person when crafting your work arrangement policy and the impact that you want those moments to have, such as generating team cohesion, supporting employees through onboarding, or facilitating effective project kick-offs2.

Overburdened managers and inefficient cultures stand in the way of high performance, regardless of work arrangement policy

Leaders also reported the barriers they feel slow their organization’s progress toward high performance. All four categories of work arrangement policies shared a common barrier in their top three: overburdened managers.

Leaders with different work arrangement policies reported the same barriers to high performance.

Inefficient work culture ranked as the top barrier for all flexible policies, suggesting that getting the processes and culture right is still a work in progress.
For predominantly onsite organizations, accumulation of tedious tasks and inefficient organizational practices ranked second. It may be that consistently being onsite comes with the greater expectation for leaders to perform routine and tedious tasks while they are in-office.
For fully onsite organizations, inefficient tools and resources ranked third. It may be that being fully onsite limits leaders’ ability to perform necessary focus work and leverage their time most effectively.

This research advances our understanding of how work arrangement policies shape leaders’ views on organizational performance and effectiveness. A key takeaway is that these policies drive noticeable differences in some areas of work but have little effect in others. This suggests that regardless of work arrangement policy, leaders should focus on getting foundational priorities right: 1) support overburden managers, 2) set up collaboration norms that are location-agnostic, and 3) invest in the moments that matter. hat matter.

While these takeaways reflect leaders’ perspectives, the employee viewpoint is also needed to shape effective work policies. Recent research shows that US employees expect their organizations to allow them to work from home around 2.3 days per week in the coming year, with employees on average wanting to be able to work up to 3 days per week from home5. Connecting leader and employee perceptions are essential to understanding the holistic experience of your organization and critical when strategizing work arrangement policies to facilitate high-quality employee experiences and expectations.

Stay tuned for our November Research Drop to keep up with what the Viva People Science team is learning!

1 – Gallup, How Important Is Time in the Office? March 2, 2023.

2 – Microsoft WorkLab, In the Changing Role of the Office, It’s All about Moments That Matter. 2024.

3 – Harvard Business Review, Hybrid Work Has Changed Meetings Forever. June 17, 2024.

4 – Deloitte, Inclusive or isolated? New DEI considerations when working from anywhere. May 25, 2023.

5 – Barrero, Jose Maria, Nicholas Bloom, & Steven J. Davis, 2021. “Why working from home will stick,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 28731.

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