The real hybrid work question: How do people learn the job now?

Sep 28, 2026

The remote work debate has become predictable. One side points to flexibility and productivity. The other points to collaboration and culture. Then everyone argues about how many days belong in the office.

That question matters, but it leaves out something more practical: How does someone new learn to become good at the job?

Hybrid work is already a normal arrangement for many jobs that can be done remotely. Gallup found that 52% of U.S. employees with remote-capable jobs worked hybrid in May 2026; another 26% worked exclusively remotely. Those numbers do not settle what any particular team should do. They do suggest that leaders need to design for a workforce that is rarely all in one place at once.[1]

At the same time, AI is changing the work that used to teach people. A new employee might once have drafted the first version of a report, organized the research, or written the follow-up after a client call. Those tasks were sometimes tedious. They were also chances to learn how experienced colleagues think, what good work looks like, and how to recover from a mistake. Deloitte's research on early-career workers raises this concern while also finding that AI can help less experienced employees do better work. Only about a third of the early-career workers in its study said they had a mentor at work.[2]

I don't think the answer is to preserve busywork. And I don't think ordering everyone back to the office automatically restores an apprenticeship. You can sit beside someone for eight hours and learn very little if no one explains a decision or gives you feedback.

The opportunity for HR and business leaders is to build learning into the workweek on purpose. A few starting points:

Give office time a job

When a team is together, use some of that time for the work that benefits from proximity: observing a client conversation, reviewing a difficult decision, practicing feedback, or solving a problem together. Let people know why they are gathering. A calendar full of individual video calls does not make a commute worthwhile.

Make judgment visible

Ask a senior employee to walk a newer colleague through an actual piece of work. What did they accept from AI? What did they change? What would they double-check before sending it to a client? The lesson is less about the finished document than the judgment behind it.

Protect time to try something

I like the spirit of giving employees time to learn and pursue an idea, though a full day every week will not fit every business. A smaller experiment might: two hours a month to test a process improvement, learn a skill, or pair with someone in another function. Give the experiment a clear question, then ask what the employee discovered. Learning time only works if managers truly protect it.

Notice progress, not only the launch

Recognize the colleague who asked a useful question, improved a handoff, coached someone through a first client meeting, or caught an error before it reached a customer. Small wins tell people which behaviors the organization values. A genuine thank-you from a manager can matter more than another campaign or platform notification.

None of these practices requires a companywide return-to-office mandate. They do require manager time and some coordination. HR can help set the expectation and remove friction, but managers and teams have to do the teaching, coaching, and recognition in the actual work.

The question I would ask at the next leadership meeting is simple: If an employee joined your team this month, who would show them how good decisions are made here, and when would that happen?

If the answer is unclear, changing the number of office days will not solve it. Start by making the learning visible.