The Hidden Emotional Impact Of Hybrid Work Companies Fail To Measure

"The shift has created a new layer of emotional strain that impacts employees who must spend their days interpreting tone through screens, coordinating across mixed schedules, and trying to guess who prefers short messages and who wants more detail. They must deal with different levels of formality and switch in and out of different environments, and that back-and-forth drains energy. When I talk with leaders, they often ask why miscommunication keeps happening even when the workload has stayed the same."

"When people work together in person, they automatically gather information from expressions, tone, and the general mood in the room. They know when someone is stressed or distracted or confused because they can see it. Hybrid work removes a lot of that understanding. Research in social cognition shows that when cues disappear, people rely on assumptions, and those assumptions can take on a life of their own. Employees spend extra energy guessing what someone meant rather than simply asking."

"Another source of strain comes from managing how they sound across different platforms. People wonder if their message looked too short, too formal, too direct, too casual, or too much like they were rushing. They pay attention to response times and try to figure out how their tone will be interpreted by people they may only see in person once a week. In an office, that kind of second-guessing fades because context fills in the gaps. In hybrid work, it can be far more challenging."

Hybrid work removes many nonverbal signals that employees previously gathered in person, creating emotional strain from interpreting tone, mood, and intent through screens. Employees expend extra energy guessing meaning, monitoring response times, and managing tone across channels while coordinating mixed schedules and varying levels of formality. That back-and-forth of context switching and second-guessing drains energy and contributes to miscommunication even when tasks remain unchanged. Social cognition research indicates that absent cues lead people to rely on assumptions that can escalate. Relationships also develop differently without shared environments, reducing spontaneous contextual cues that previously eased interpretation and connection.

Read at Forbes