Editorial: Impact of remote work on individual and organizational performance constructs

When we initiated the call for papers for this Research Topic, the world was actively dealing with the COVID pandemic which had a swift and dramatic impact on how people completed their work and the context in which they performed their essential tasks.Notably, remote work became an overnight reality for employees who previously worked entirely at their company's physical location. Specifically, we hoped that our call for papers would encourage research that provided insights into the implications of remote work on worker performance. Across the eight papers that comprise this Research Topic, at least four themes emerge that suggest remote and/or hybrid work goes far beyond just a reflection of a change to where and when work gets done, but also how work gets done in our post-Covid world. These studies emphasize how autonomy, accountability, leadership, well-being, and organizational design interact to shape job performance. Our editorial underscores this breadth by bringing together conceptual advances, integrative reviews, and empirical investigations that leverage multiple methodological approaches and span a wide range of work contexts. A third theme is that hybrid work has important impacts on the work environment including physical, temporal, social, and virtual elements (Vartiainen & Vanharata).Misalignment between these elements, organizational goals, and employee needs is an explanation for inconsistent employee well-being and performance outcomes across studies (Vartiainen & Vanharata; Mabaso). Since the onset of the pandemic and our call for papers related to this Research Topic, hybrid work has moved rapidly from a crisis response to institutionalized practice in modern organizations. Recent reviews and conceptual essays emphasize that hybrid and flexible work arrangements are now pervasive across industries and national contexts, reshaping expectations about where and how work gets done and warranting rigorous scholarly attention (e.g., Leonardi, Parker, & Shen, 2024;Nyberg, Shaw, & Zhu, 2021). As remote and hybrid work continues to evolve, the goals of encouraging research on this topic remain as relevant today as they did when we first launched this Research Topic. Indeed, the most urgent questions are no longer merely descriptive but theory-driven, requiring conceptual precision, longitudinal evidence, and multilevel designs to understand dynamic outcomes (e.g., hybrid work as a multidimensional phenomenon with individual and collective implications). The contributions assembled here represent important early steps, yet recent, encompassing reviews suggest significant theoretical and empirical questions still remain (e.g., Ferdous, Ali, Desouza, & French, 2025;Gajendran, Ponnapalli, Wang, & Javalagi, 2024;Handke, Aldana, Costa, & O'Neill, 2024;Shirmohammadi, Au, & Beigi, 2022).One area concerns how hybrid work impacts the job's tasks. On one hand, working in a virtual environment requires new digital competencies to deal with technologies and other contextual factors. On the other hand, the new context requires re-skilling quite a few non-digital competences that become 'digitalized' given the new context in which they are to be performed such as leading a meeting (e.g., Peiró & Martínez-Tur, 2022). Future research is needed on the implications of these changes on performance and its appraisal in the hybrid environment, as well as on the emerging risks and their prevention.Another area for future research is related to how hybrid work affects collective work processes, especially in settings characterized by reciprocal or sequential interdependence (i.e., teams). Hybrid work reduces access to informal coordination mechanisms that teams may use when working in the same physical environment. Further, the lack of spontaneous interaction may increase reliance on formal structures, explicit documentation, and digital coordination tools. Future research should examine when such formalization enhances effectiveness versus when it introduces rigidity and overload.Longitudinal and multi-level designs are particularly needed to assess whether coordination failures compound over time or whether teams adapt by developing new shared mental models.Hybrid work may lead to the systematic advantage afforded to those who are physically present in organizational spaces (Choudhury, Foroughi, & Larson, 2021). This evidence suggests that remote workers may experience reduced access to informal networks, developmental opportunities, and advancement pathways and is consistent with papers in this Research Topic that demonstrate that hybrid work has differential effects across employees. This raises important research questions related to the how structural mechanisms play a role in producing (in)equality. Intersectional perspectives will be particularly valuable, as hybrid work may differentially affect groups based on gender, caregiving responsibilities, disability status, career stage, and beyond.Hybrid work is not a temporary deviation, or fad, from traditional organizational structuring of work. Quite the contrary, hybrid work is a prominent feature of modern organizations now and in the future. As such, it demands a sustained and theoretically grounded research agenda. The coming years offer an opportunity for scholars to move beyond surface-level research and to generate insights that inform both theory and practice. The challenge is not merely to understand hybrid work, but to understand how organizations can implement it to function effectively, equitably, sustainably, and humanely.