People & Leadership

What is remote and hybrid working?: How can you make it fair and effective?

Learn how to make hybrid working fair and effective with practical tips for clearer policies, equal opportunities and consistent working practices.

Published 28 October, 20267 min read Share

Key takeaways

• Hybrid working remains a challenge: 73% say adapting to remote and hybrid working models is a top challenge.
• Fairness is the central issue: 59% say ensuring consistency and fairness across working practices is a challenge.
• HR is increasingly focused on hybrid working: 68% report greater emphasis on supporting hybrid and flexible working than 2 years ago.
• Effective hybrid working policies are designed deliberately: employees need clear expectations and equal access to opportunity, wherever they work.
• Well-designed flexible working brings business and employee benefits: it can widen talent pools, improve retention, support wellbeing, and drive productivity.

Hybrid working gives employees flexibility over where they work, but making that flexibility fair and consistent can be difficult.

Technology has made it easier for employees to stay connected and work across different locations.

For many organisations, the challenge now is making that flexibility work fairly and consistently for everyone.

According to the HR and Payroll Leaders’ Report from Sage, based on research with 1,000 HR, people, and payroll professionals across the UK, Ireland, and South Africa, 73% say adapting to remote and hybrid working models is a top challenge.

The research included 100 HR, people and payroll professionals from Ireland.

And 59% say ensuring consistency and fairness across different working practices is a challenge.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a fairer and more effective approach to remote and hybrid working.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What’s the difference between remote and hybrid working?

Hybrid working is an arrangement where employees split their working time between a company workplace and another location, usually home.

Fully remote employees, meanwhile, work away from the company workplace most or all of the time.

Both approaches can give employees greater flexibility, but they can also create similar challenges for HR teams around expectations, communication, fairness, and consistency.

Flexible working is broader still: it can cover changes to hours or schedules as well as location.

There’s no single remote or hybrid working model that works for every organisation.

What matters is whether employees understand the arrangements that apply to them and can do their jobs effectively wherever they work.

What are the challenges of remote and hybrid working?

Remote and hybrid working give employees more flexibility, but they can make it harder for HR teams to maintain consistent expectations, employee experiences, and working practices.

The research from Sage shows that this is becoming a bigger focus for HR teams, with 68% reporting greater emphasis on supporting flexible working practices than 2 years ago.

The difficulty is keeping the employee experience consistent when people aren’t working in the same place.

Communication can become less predictable. Managers may have less visibility into workload or wellbeing.

That focus on wellbeing is also reflected by HR professionals in Ireland.

One senior HR manager working in the technology sector said their goal was to spend more time looking after the mental health of the workforce.

Cross-border remote working can also introduce additional questions around employment law, tax, health and safety, or data security.

How can you make remote and hybrid working fair?

Employees need confidence that where they work won’t unfairly affect their opportunities or how they’re evaluated.

The report highlights 3 areas where unequal experiences can emerge: visibility, access to opportunities, and performance assessment.

• An employee who spends more time around senior colleagues may have more opportunities to be seen and heard.
• A remote colleague shouldn’t have to work harder to access development or receive fair feedback.
• Managers also need performance criteria that work consistently across locations.

Fairness doesn’t mean every employee must work in the same way. Different roles may genuinely require different levels of in-person work.

What matters is that those differences have a clear rationale and that the rules are applied consistently.

What are the benefits of remote and hybrid working?

Remote and hybrid working can benefit employees and organisations when they’re implemented consistently.

For example, the report says that well-designed remote and hybrid models can:

• Widen talent pools: Giving people more flexibility over where they work can help you recruit beyond your immediate location.
• Improve retention: A fair and flexible approach can help you create a working experience that supports employee retention.
• Support employee wellbeing: Flexible working can support better work-life balance when it’s designed around clear and consistent expectations.
• Drive productivity: Clear expectations and consistent working practices can help employees work effectively across different locations.

A strong hybrid model gives employees flexibility while giving managers enough clarity to lead effectively.

How to make remote and hybrid working fair and effective

Remote and hybrid working work best when fairness is designed into your approach, rather than left up to individual managers to interpret.

Start with 3 principles:

• create clear expectations,
• provide fair access to opportunities,
• and build trust through consistent policies and outcomes.

1. Create clarity around expectations

Start by removing ambiguity.

Employees should know when they’re required to come into the office (if at all), and what’s expected of them when they work remotely.

Make communication norms clear too, including availability and reasonable turnaround times.

Use the same performance criteria regardless of location.

If 2 people are doing comparable work, where they work from shouldn’t change how their contribution is evaluated.

Keep these expectations somewhere employees and managers can easily find them. Shared policies can also make scheduling decisions more transparent.

2. Create equal access to opportunity

Next, look at whether someone’s working location affects who receives access to feedback or development.

Build those opportunities into your processes instead of relying on informal office interactions.

Use structured goals and regular performance conversations so everyone knows what progress looks like.

Make development opportunities visible to the whole team so remote or hybrid employees are less likely to be overlooked.

Use your workforce data to check whether working location is affecting access to development and progression.

For example, review promotion and development data by work location and investigate any persistent differences you find.

3. Build trust through consistent outcomes and policies

Trust grows when employees know they’ll be judged on what they deliver, rather than how often they’re seen in the office.

Set clear performance expectations that apply wherever someone works, whether they work remotely, in the workplace, or across both locations.

Focus on agreed outcomes rather than presence, while keeping expectations around availability, communication, and remote-working compliance clear.

Make sure employees understand the policies that apply to data and privacy, scheduling, time and attendance, and absence.

Keeping these expectations clear and applying them consistently can help build confidence in how remote and hybrid working operate.

Then, apply policies consistently.

Exceptions may sometimes be necessary, but employees should understand why they exist rather than being left to assume that different managers simply apply different rules.

HR software can help you centralise policies and relevant information about goals, performance, leave, and working arrangements.

This can give managers a more consistent basis for applying policies and reviewing performance across different working arrangements.

This can give managers a more consistent basis for applying policies and reviewing performance across different working arrangements.

Start making remote and hybrid working fairer

If your current remote or hybrid working approach feels inconsistent or unfair, you don’t need to fix everything at once.

Start by identifying one place where location may be creating a different employee experience.

That could be access to development, how performance is assessed, or how different managers apply the same policy.

Choose one gap to address first, agree what needs to change, and make sure employees and managers understand the new expectation.

Then review whether the change is creating a more consistent experience before tackling the next area.

Want to go further? Download the remote and hybrid working infographic and discover practical steps you can start taking today.

Frequently asked questions about remote and hybrid working

What is hybrid working?

Hybrid working is an arrangement where employees divide their working time between a company workplace and another location, usually home.

The exact balance can vary by organisation, team, or role.

What is the difference between remote and hybrid working?

Remote employees work away from the company workplace most or all of the time.

Hybrid employees combine remote work with time in a shared workplace.

Both arrangements need clear expectations and consistent policies so employees understand how they work in practice.

What should a hybrid work policy include?

A hybrid work policy should explain when in-person attendance is required, expectations around availability and communication, how performance will be assessed, and how policies apply across different working arrangements.

It should also make relevant requirements around areas such as data, privacy, scheduling, time, and attendance clear.

How can you make hybrid working fair?

Start by evaluating your current hybrid working challenges.

Check whether employees have the same access to opportunities and are assessed against consistent performance criteria.

Be transparent when different roles need different working arrangements, and make sure managers apply the policy consistently.

How do you know if hybrid working is effective?

Look beyond office attendance.

Combine employee feedback with measures such as retention, absence, performance, promotion, and development data.

Compare the results across working arrangements to identify persistent differences that may need investigation.

Browse more topics from this article

• Employee engagement
• Employee retention
• Flexible working
• HR processes
• HR processes for medium businesses
• Looking after your employees
• Working remotely