WLP384 Communication Repertoires in Hybrid Workplaces part of the All the World's a Workplace Expanded season
When we're looking at setting up hybrid workplaces, we shouldn’t just consider where people are working from, but also on how our communication ecosystem is organised. In this episode, Pilar discusses a recent preprint on communication repertoires in hybrid office work, exploring how face-to-face and mediated channels relate to formal and informal exchanges between colleagues.
Any thoughts, or if you come across research in the remote/hybrid space worth sharing, get in touch!
Hello, and welcome to the text version of episode 384 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, put together for those of you who’d much rather read than listen, or who simply want to scan through my thoughts.
As I’ve done in the podcast, here I share what I found most interesting about recent research into the hybrid workspace and what it might mean for those designing remote (including hybrid) ways of working. You will find my own thoughts in italic.
As practitioner of any kind of practice, I always like to go to the source of interesting research I come across. So, for those of you who are like me, here’s the preprint:
Klärner, Kai-David, Sophie-Charlotte Meyer and Anita Tisch (2026). “Communication Repertoires in Hybrid Office Work: Mediated Channels, Face-to-Face Interaction, and Formal and Informal Exchange.” SocArXiv preprint. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/skupm_v1
Here we go.
THE communication repertoire
The researchers draw on the idea of media repertoires: rather than looking at one communication channel in isolation, they look at the patterned combination of different media people use. In this study, that means email, chat, telephone, video conferencing and face-to-face interaction. (We know that there are many other online locations in which remote teams communicate, but that would get just too complicated…) In particular, they looked at:
how frequently colleagues communicate overall;
how that communication is distributed across different modes.
This links back to the idea of the ecosystem architect: the role the team leader plays in ensuring the team has an ecosystem (made up of tools, processes and desired behaviours) in remote and hybrid work.
[More of this in the blog post Key Mindset Changes for the New Remote Manager and in my book All the World’s a Workplace.]
Face-to-face interaction
It’s not surprising to find that face-to-face interaction was associated with more reported formal and informal exchange than technology mediated channels. If we’re in the same physical space, access to each other is easier. Conversations can begin with very little effort. A work question can turn into a personal conversation and then back into work again.
We know this, but we don’t work remotely because we’re looking to make communication easier. We do it because we prioritise other aspects of work: flexibility, location-independence, choice in who we work with…
Formal and informal communication
The researchers distinguish between formal exchange and informal exchange.
• Formal exchange means regular work-related interaction: clarification, coordination and problem-solving. Formal exchange requires convergence on shared understanding, not merely transmission of information.
• Informal exchange means regular personal interaction: social checking-in, side conversations and routine relational maintenance. Informal exchange is particularly sensitive to low-threshold opportunities for contact. Informal communication in hybrid teams has been linked to knowledge sharing and team commitment. Informal exchange maintains mutual awareness, trust and belonging and makes social support more accessible.
Formal exchange centres on task accomplishment, clarification and role-based coordination; informal exchange centres on relational maintenance, mutual awareness and low-threshold social contact.
We really shouldn’t be saying that social interactions are always informal.
Work-related and socio-emotional resources often circulate within the same interaction. A work question can become personal talk, and apparently personal conversation can later matter for coordination.
Formal exchange can often be scheduled, documented and embedded in explicit work routines. Informal exchange depends more strongly on incidental access, perceived proximity and the possibility of moving from work-related interaction into personal conversation.
“Informal contact in remote and hybrid work more often requires deliberate initiation, perceived availability and a plausible reason to contact someone.”
Perceived availability - when we are colocated, it’s easier for us to gauge whether someone is available to us. In the online space, this needs to be communicated. It’s better if it’s not “perceived”.
When people stop sharing a physical space, they often lose many of their informal interactions, but that doesn't mean that other forms of social exchange have disappeared: there are still interactions around the work and across the work. For more on this see my little framework The 3 A’s of Connection in remote teams.
Designing for informal interactions
“Informal contact in remote and hybrid work more often requires deliberate initiation, perceived availability and a plausible reason for getting in touch.”
That “plausible reason” is interesting. Years ago, during a workshop, a manager told me she had just realised that she only phoned one of their remote team members when she needed something from them - or they’d made a mistake. She never called to see how they were getting on.
If informal conversations are important in our team, then we need to design for that. That doesn't mean everyone needs to be permanently available on Slack. It might mean people know roughly when colleagues are around, or that a team has informal channels where conversation can wander away from the immediate task.
It might mean people arrive early to an online meeting and chat before it begins. Or your team might have agreed that it’s ok to contact someone without having a specific reason beyond finding out how they’re getting on.
Recommendations for hybrid workplaces
Hybrid office work, the authors argue, should be analysed as a communication-repertoire problem rather than simply a location problem. Location matters, of course, but we know that having everyone within the same four walls doesn’t always improve communication. And, as I’ve argued many times, the office should be viewed as one more communication tool, not the only space where teamwork can happen. And the collection of tools (spaces) we use should follow the need:
What kinds of exchanges do our team members need, and what combination of spaces, tools and practices will make those exchanges possible?
I think that’s enough for now, but if you want more on this, listen to the podcast episode (or read the transcript in your favourite podcast app), where I go further into the study, including what it found about text versus voice and video, formal versus informal exchange, perceived proximity, deliberate informal contact and some of the questions the research opens up for highly asynchronous teams.
Get in touch!