Navigating Flexibility Through Stability: Emerging Practices in Hybrid Work Coordination

Hybrid work arrangements have become widespread in today’s work environments, promising employees flexibility in choosing when and where to work. However, this flexibility introduces new coordination challenges as workgroups must navigate collaborative activities across different locations and schedules. Through a longitudinal diary study and interviews with workgroup members operating under a shared hybrid work arrangement, we examine how work is characterised differently across locations, which activities are preferred where, and how members coordinate with each other as they regularly move between office and home. Our findings reveal how the group’s shared work arrangement shaped temporal and spatial coordination among the workgroup members. We identify emergent coordination practices to manage the inherent friction of hybrid work's temporal and spatial flexibility. The shared hybrid work arrangement provided stability and guided new work practices and temporal structures to navigate the flexibility of hybrid work; including strategic structuring of time and planning around predictable co-presence.