Hybrid working has settled into everyday business life, but that doesn’t mean the technology supporting it has kept pace.
Organisations are still refining where people work, how often they come together and what they expect from the office. At the same time, employees expect the experience of joining a meeting, accessing information or collaborating with colleagues to work consistently wherever they happen to be.
The challenge is increasingly less about defining a hybrid working policy and more about whether the technology can actually deliver it.
Cisco’s Global Hybrid Work Study 2025 found that less than half of employees believe their organisation supports them with consistent tools and processes to work effectively from any location. The research also found that, on average, 40% of interactions in the office involve at least one person joining remotely.
The hybrid workplace has evolved. Has the technology underneath it evolved too?
What does a hybrid-ready workplace look like?
A hybrid-ready workplace gives people a consistent experience whether they are working from an office desk, joining through a meeting room or connecting remotely.
That experience relies on several parts of the technology environment working together. Collaboration platforms, workplace devices, meeting rooms, networks, identity and security all influence whether employees can work effectively across locations.
Increasingly, AI is part of that picture too.
This means organisations need to look beyond whether they have collaboration technology available. The more useful question is whether those technologies come together to create a workplace experience people can rely on.
Why are businesses still struggling with the hybrid experience?
There is still a noticeable gap between how employers perceive their hybrid workplace and how employees experience it.
Cisco found that 59% of employers believe their organisation provides a seamless experience across remote, physical and in-between working environments. Only 46% of employees agreed. In the UK, that gap was 71% of employers compared with 57% of employees.
That difference matters.
A workplace strategy can look effective at an organisational level while employees are still experiencing friction when joining meetings, moving between locations or using different workplace technologies.
Integration is a particular challenge. Cisco found that only 18% of employees believed their organisation’s collaboration platforms seamlessly integrated with different tools and systems. Across all respondents, 38% reported occasional integration challenges while a further 8% said their collaboration platforms struggled to work with other tools.
For IT leaders, hybrid readiness therefore needs to be considered as an end-to-end experience rather than a collection of individual technology investments.
What technology does a modern hybrid workplace need?
There is no single product that makes a workplace hybrid-ready.
Instead, organisations need to consider how the wider workplace ecosystem supports employees throughout the working day.
For a Microsoft-focused environment, that can include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 as the collaboration layer, supported by appropriate workplace devices, identity and access controls, networking and meeting-room technology.
It also means thinking about what happens underneath the applications employees interact with every day.
If connectivity is inconsistent, joining a meeting becomes harder. If meeting-room experiences vary significantly between locations, collaboration becomes less predictable. If technologies and processes do not work effectively together, employees have to navigate that complexity themselves.
The quality of hybrid work therefore depends on the quality of the whole digital workplace.
Why does meeting-room technology matter for hybrid work?
The modern meeting room needs to accommodate people inside and outside the room as part of the same conversation.
That matters when remote participation is now part of everyday office life.
Cisco’s research found that, on average, 40% of interactions taking place in the office have at least one person joining remotely. The study also found employers are looking towards collaboration investments including digital whiteboards, interactive displays and meeting rooms capable of supporting hybrid sessions.
The meeting room can no longer be treated as an isolated piece of office technology.
It sits within the wider collaboration experience, connecting meeting-room hardware with platforms such as Microsoft Teams as well as the networks, devices and security infrastructure supporting them.
For organisations reviewing their workplaces, the question should therefore extend beyond whether meeting rooms have video conferencing equipment. They need to consider what experience those rooms provide for everyone taking part.
How important is the network to hybrid working?
Network infrastructure can easily disappear into the background when organisations talk about modern work.
Yet cloud collaboration, video meetings, connected meeting rooms and a growing range of workplace devices all sit on top of the network. A modern workplace strategy should therefore consider whether the underlying infrastructure is capable of supporting how people now work. That means looking at connectivity across offices as part of the same conversation as collaboration and workplace experience.
Rather than treating networking and Modern Work as separate technology projects, organisations can assess how they work together to support the employee experience.
Where does AI fit into the hybrid workplace?
AI is rapidly becoming another layer of the digital workplace.
Cisco reports that at least nine in ten employers surveyed are strategically investing in AI and collaboration technologies to enhance hybrid work. The research also found that 49% of employers believe automation and digital transformation will play a significant role in shaping future ways of working.
For Microsoft environments, this creates a broader conversation around technologies such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and how AI sits alongside existing collaboration tools.
However, introducing AI does not remove the need for strong workplace foundations.
Organisations still need an environment where people can collaborate reliably, access the information they need and work effectively between locations. AI then becomes part of improving that experience rather than an isolated technology programme.
How can you tell if your workplace is ready for hybrid work?
A useful starting point is to look at hybrid working from the employee’s perspective.
- Can employees move between locations without fundamentally changing the way they work?
- Can people joining remotely participate effectively when others are together in a meeting room?
- Do collaboration platforms, devices and meeting spaces work together consistently?
- Can the network comfortably support the collaboration experience employees expect?
- Are identity, access and security considered across different working locations?
And as AI becomes more embedded into everyday work, does the organisation have the right digital foundations underneath it?
These questions help shift the conversation from “Do we have hybrid working technology?” to “Is our technology actually delivering a good hybrid working experience?”
The next phase of hybrid work is about experience
The office continues to have an important role. Cisco’s research found that 92% of employees consider collaboration and community very important aspects of office culture. Its study also found that 92% of employees rated the office as important for successful collaboration.
Technology needs to support that experience wherever participants happen to be.
For organisations refreshing offices, reviewing collaboration platforms or planning their next phase of digital workplace investment, this is an opportunity to look at the complete environment.
At Cisilion, we help organisations bring together the technologies underpinning modern work, from Microsoft collaboration and workplace technology through to network infrastructure, security and AI.
The goal is simple: create a workplace where the technology supports how people want to work, rather than getting in the way.