Balancing Flexibility and Collaboration in Hybrid Work Environments

In this report “Balancing Flexibility and Collaboration in Hybrid Work Environments” we discuss, Since the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid working has been the new reality of work in the UK. More recent statistics indicate that 28% of working adults in Great Britain were hybrid employees in the period of January-March 2025. The transition is even greater in London. The average days in the workplace have gone down to 2.3 days per week, as compared to the pre-pandemic period.

The financial services firms have responded variously to this change. Numerous ones continue with hybrid working, yet several leading banks have been restricting their policies. Indicatively, Barclays reduced its minimum office attendance to two or three days a week because it claimed that its teams would work and learn better when they have more time together in person.

In the UK, hybrid job adverts increasingly require an individual to work at least two days per week in the office, with an increasing interest in face-to-face cooperation.

The impacts of hybrid working are partial. According to the CIPD, 74% of organisations now work hybrid-like, 41% report an increase in productivity, and 16% believe that it has declined, and most employers believe that communication and connection among teams can be more difficult in a hybrid environment.

It is particularly necessary in financial services where teamwork is fundamental in the formulation of decisions, management of risks, and service provision to the clients. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also warned companies that hybrid working should not undermine communication, supervision, and governance.

Research Problem:

Financial services Hybrid working is becoming commonplace in the London financial services industry, although most of the companies have been even stricter about in-office conditions to enhance teamwork and communication.

Nevertheless, it remains unknown whether employees can work in a team when they divide their time between the office and home. This uncertainty provokes crucial questions concerning the impact hybrid working has on the interaction in teams, the sharing of information, and general collaboration.

Research Aim:

“To find out whether hybrid working helps or harms collaboration among financial services employees in London.”

Research Questions:

“Can London financial services employees remain collaborative while working in hybrid environments?”

Research Objectives:

• To understand how hybrid working is organised in London financial services firms.
• To explore employees’ experiences of collaborating in hybrid settings.
• To identify what helps or makes collaboration harder in hybrid work.
• To assess whether hybrid working improves, reduces, or has no impact on teamwork and communication.
• To offer recommendations for improving collaboration in hybrid teams.

Literature Review

One of the major concepts that is frequently addressed in the studies of hybrid work is the significance of physical space in aiding communication and collaboration. This is connected to the Allen curve, which demonstrates that communication is rapidly decreasing with distance.

This idea continues to affect the way organisations consider teamwork since most types of teamwork rely on fast, informal discussions. Recent studies also claim that hybrid work does not merely consist of remote and office workdays, but a complicated amalgamation of technologies, routines, and workplaces, which makes collaboration difficult to foresee or control.

A number of studies challenge the hypothesis that the longer a team spends in the office, the better teamwork is. One of the largest field experiments established that the level of productivity and promotion of employees who worked at home, two days a week, was equal or even higher compared to employees who came to the office every day. It demonstrates that the hybrid work might not decrease the performance, but the performance does not reflect the quality of the collaboration.

There are additional studies that scrutinize the experiences of teamwork. In a thematic investigation of 33 hybrid employees, they reported that effective teamwork was dependent on arranged office days, robust technology, and defined roles.

Most employees further claimed that working hybrid-like made it harder to coordinate tasks and harder to build relations. A different review reported that hybrid work made work more flexible and satisfying, and also more isolated and weakened informal connections and work-home boundaries.

This is the same case with industry-specific studies. A report determined that 64 percent of financial services employees believed that hybrid working increased collaboration, and 61 percent believed they were more likely to seek input when not at work.

Nevertheless, the tightening of attendance regulations in offices remains common in many financial companies, indicating that managers might be concerned about the fact that hybrid working is not always conducive to collaboration. In another study of the industry, it was discovered that 46% of financial employees had never been asked about their favorite type of flexibility, and nearly 70% would think of quitting their employment in case of hybrid availability being removed.

A recent survey of the Swiss financial industry discovered that hybrid work increased flexibility and slowed down decisions, and gave rise to new coordination problems. This implies that hybrid work in a financial sector might not work the same way as in a more flexible industry such as technology.

In general, the literature indicates that there are advantages and difficulties of hybrid work. It can make it more flexible, increase job satisfaction and autonomy, but it may also undermine informal communication, slacken the teamwork, and complicate collaboration.

The studies on hybrid collaboration in the London financial services industry are highly scarce, even though it requires rigid regulations, secrecy, and communication. The majority of studies consider tech companies or an office in general, which cannot be applied to a well-suited representative of London finance. This generates a major gap that will be filled in this study.

Methodology

Research Approach:

The approach adopted in this project is qualitative since it is focused on the experiences that people have when working and collaborating in hybrid environments. Qualitative research is useful in investigating how and why something occurs, and is therefore appropriate when one wants to research feelings, behaviours, and interactions at the workplace. It will also enable the participants to describe their experiences using their own words, which will provide much more information than numerical data alone.

Participants & Sampling:

The respondents will be employees in the financial services industry of London who work as hybrids (both at the workplace and at home). It will be purposive, which will imply individuals will be chosen since they possess first-hand experience with hybrid collaboration.

The proposed study will interview 12-15 respondents, which is a feasible number of respondents in a small qualitative study, and enough detail will be given. The sample will cover individuals working in various job roles and hybrid patterns (such as individuals coming in 2 days vs 4 days) to be able to capture various experiences.

Data Collection Method:

The data will be collected using semi-structured interviews, which will be either online or face-to-face. The interviews will take approximately 45-60 minutes. The semi-structured interviews are beneficial as they allow the researcher to follow a rough outline of the questions but also to pose follow-up questions in case something significant arises.

It is a process that introduces order and, simultaneously, has space in which participants are allowed to come up with unexpected observations. Interview questions will also concentrate on communication, teamwork, collaboration issues, and their interactions due to hybrid work. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed (written out) with permission to analyze them.

Data Analysis Method:

The analysis of the interview transcripts will be conducted through thematic analysis, which is a common technique of determining trends and themes of qualitative information. This will entail reading the transcripts and coding the relevant points, grouping similar codes, and subsequently obtaining key themes that will respond to the research question.

To balance the research, the researcher will also listen to assumptions and challenging comments. Such tools as Qualitative Software could be used to plan the data. It is possible to enhance accuracy and trustworthiness through member checking, providing a summary of findings to the participants.

Ethical Considerations:

The study will be conducted in accordance with ethical standards. The participants will be provided with clear information about the research and consent to participate in the research. They will be informed that they will remain anonymous and will be allowed to withdraw whenever they want.

All data are going to be kept in a safe place and will not be utilized beyond the research. To be fair, the researcher will not make any leading or pressuring questions. The participants will be safeguarded by not disclosing sensitive remarks about employers or workplaces.

Conclusion: Balancing Flexibility and Collaboration in Hybrid Work Environments

Collaboration in the London financial services sector is the key issue in this research proposal, as it is essential to comprehend the influence of hybrid working on collaboration. Even though hybrid work has several positive aspects, including flexibility and increased satisfaction, it may produce such pitfalls as a slower pace of communication and decreased informal interaction.

Available research demonstrates divergent outcomes, though there is almost no research specifically targeted at London finance, where cooperation is crucial. In this study, the qualitative semi-structured interviews will be employed to understand the actual experiences of the employees.

The results will uncover what facilitates or inhibits teamwork and give useful suggestions on how organisations can manage flexibility and high-quality teamwork in a hybrid work environment.

Literature Review:

The literature review will discuss the impact of hybrid working on collaboration among financial services employees in London. It starts by describing the way hybrid models work within the industry, and then discusses some of the major concepts on cooperation within partly remote teams.

Experience of the employees, factors shaping the collaboration, and the effects on team work and communication are then discussed in the review. Lastly, it points out research gaps that support the need to conduct this study.

Hybrid Work Models in Financial Services:

In financial services, hybrid work has a lot of different forms and is not always as flexible as advertised. According to Lauring and Jonasson, hybrid models can enable employees to work in the office, at home, and at other locations, but with this flexibility, tight schedules or policies can be concealed. As Kohont points out, certain organisations offer hybrid employment as flexible, but they implement tight restrictions on in-office days, which limit actual freedom.

The transition towards hybrid working in the financial sector in London has been accelerated by the pandemic, yet the trends in this area are not consistent and balanced. According to Swinney, the average days attended in the office in Central London decreased to approximately 2.3 times per week in 2023, indicating a permanent agreement of remote work.

Meanwhile, according to Partridge, numerous employers are simultaneously tightening in-office policies, with two or three days a week turning out to be a standard expectation. The existence of these contradicting tendencies implies that companies are unsure of the true worth of distance work and attempt to revert to gaining control instead of defining new models of cooperation.

In the financial service field, practice can be dependent on role, client demands, and managerial preference. According to Quinio, Levingston, and Aliaj, front-office and client-facing positions are likely to have lower location flexibility and support functions may have greater discretion.

According to Kennedy several large finance companies have countered by narrowing the hybrid rules, optional attendance to required office days, suggesting that they think that physical work contributes to cooperation and control. Nevertheless, such an assumption is hardly supported by strong evidence and can be a symptom of managerial complacency with visibility instead of a better team effort.

The regulatory requirements provide an extra platform of limitation in finance that might not be so directly experienced in other fields. According to Sammon, companies should make sure that hybrid arrangements do not undermine governance, supervision or market integrity.

According to PWC, most financial institutions invest in monitoring and reporting systems and tighter hybrid policies in order to meet the compliance requirements. This regulation usually causes the diversion of attention to the employee experience and authentic collaborative quality, with the emphasis on risk mitigation and control.

Although there are formal policies, most organisations work in a hybrid manner in a non-consistent and non-transparent manner. According to Samaddar, many organisations do not have clear policies on hybrid working or implement them unequally among the teams, which results in employee experience and fairness differences.

According to Larson, studies caution that the number of days an office is open can tell you very little regarding the effectiveness of hybrid work as a collaboration tool: the combination of location, routine, and technology is much more crucial than presence itself.

Overall, the hybrid work in financial services in London is not a steady process, but an organisational experiment. According to Fiorentino et al, the recent trend of in-office day requirements implies that companies no longer consider hybrid working an opportunity but rather a concern that should be tamed.

The challenge of providing flexibility and keeping the highly regulated and fast-paced collaboration to which financial services companies are accustomed lies in a dual challenge. In this regard, hybrid working seems not to be a well-thought-out decision but a compromise conditioned by the conflict between self-sufficiency and control.

Collaboration in Hybrid Settings:

In hybrid settings, collaboration tends to be associated with the fact that the distance between people undermines the daily interaction, which was originally observed by the Allen Curve. This curve reveals that any slight increases in distance can drastically decrease communication, and this trend has been observed to affect the teams who divide their time between home and office even today.

Nonetheless, distance is not enough to describe the entire scenario of collaboration since the communication channels that employees are utilizing will determine the degree to which information transfer will be effective according to the Media Richness Theory. Media Richness Theory suggests that face-to-face communication does a better job of supporting complex and ambiguous tasks than the lean digital channels, a fact that Ishii, Lyons, and Carr emphasize in the context of financial services, where decisions need to be made within a limited amount of time.

The social presence studies provide an additional dimension that implies that individuals require a sense of psychological presence with teammates to develop trust and exchange tacit knowledge, but most of the online tools are unable to bring the feeling of presence, as observed by Cui.

These conceptual issues manifest themselves in daily hybrid practice in the form of slower communication cycles, missed signals, and weaker informal connections as noted by Liu, Essen, and Eggen. Industry reports argue that productivity benefits from hybrid work, yet such arguments ignore informal interactions that enable teams to easily resolve issues and innovate, as revealed in Cisco Global Hybrid Work Study.

Hybrid configurations also depend on the regular meetings and online threads, which can assist in the structured updates but decrease the spontaneous coordination and rapid sharing of ideas, according to Sterling. Some of the communication gaps can be minimized through technology, yet overloading employees with various digital tools might lead to a decrease in the level of interaction, which Colbert, Yee, and George emphasize.

Workgroups that have clear communication on when to meet face-to-face and how to utilize communication technologies will be more effective in preserving collaboration, a trend that is observed in several hybrid work studies as per Meluso, Johnson, and Bagrow.

Nevertheless, inadequate coordination of schedules due to office days being treated lightly by teams leads to uneven attendance, which causes a formation of visibility problems as to which members are listened to and which are ignored. When formal meetings are substituted by informal conversations in the corridors, knowledge sharing also decreases as tacit information is revealed in the process of informal communication, as Roth points out.

Hybrid arrangements also increase the expenses of coordination since employees have to spend more time synchronizing schedules, clarifying work, and communicating with each other in various sites, according to Trevor and Holweg.

Effner and Havrilják find that in hybrid environments, decision-making processes are more likely to stagnate, especially in cases where teams are exposed to unfamiliar problems that need to be addressed in a back-and-forth manner, rather than structured digital meetings.

Even though hybrid work can make people who have to travel long distances or take care of their relatives more inclusive, the same flexible working system can make less visible the people who base their career growth on face-to-face interaction, as pointed out by Fan and Moen.

Furthermore, the general success of hybrid environments relies on the systems structure developed by organisations, the emphasis of teams on certain communication means, and the frequency of their face-to-face interactions, according to Wu et al.

Employee Experiences of Hybrid Work:

Hybrid work is often reported to have beneficial effects, but these advantages are associated with trade-offs that most companies appear to overlook, according to Gibson et al.According to Dale, Wilson, and Tucker, people report being able to have a better control of their day, more time to deep work, and less stressful commuting, which enhances wellbeing. But such gains are not equally felt due to the fact that managers use hybrid rules in various ways and this disparity results in frustration and doubts regarding equity as Akande et al.

Lots of workers enjoy the right to work wherever they want, yet teamwork cannot be comfortably made by autonomy alone, all the routines and predictability in availability are needed, as observed by Touli. Workers working at home usually get tasks done more quickly; however, this is at the expense of the rapid interactions that teams use to get clarifications on issues or rapid changes, according to Rezvani.

This contradiction demonstrates that concentrated work and collaborative work are not inherently compatible, but hybrid schedules must be carefully planned by companies to ensure their synchronization, as identified by Meyer and Fritz.

According to Reed and Allen, employees repeatedly mention that coordination becomes slow when hybrid because now, conversations that previously occurred casually need to be scheduled or organised in long message threads. It is even more difficult when the teams lack agreement on shared days to be spent in the office, and this increases the number of conflicts in the calendar and the number of meetings to fill the breaks created by informal situations, according to Sporsem, Strand, and Hanssen. Technology assists in the documentation and organization; however, it cannot substitute spontaneous coaching or prompt feedback, so tacit knowledge tends to vanish, as Keppler and Leonardi note.

Remote workers also experience a sense of being out of sight, out of mind, and this applies to who is included in essential discussions and who becomes visible to managers, as mentioned by Hough. According to Urrila et al, trust and belonging decline when daily social interaction reduces, since interactions are formed by mini moments, which hybrid environments do not necessarily favor. Consequently, not all employees are willing to seek assistance and present initial concepts, as Urrila et al. emphasize.

Hanzis and Hallo point out that front-office workers can find it more challenging in a hybrid environment, as the speed and high level of trust are needed to meet the needs of clients, and thus, remote work is not the optimal option.

According to Jaß et al, back-office and professional positions are prone to report improved hybrid experiences as their work is more organized and manageable remotely. These differences show that a single hybrid policy cannot work fairly across all roles, as highlighted by Ménard.

Psychological safety and cohesion also drop when teams lack agreed norms about presence and communication, because people need clarity to feel comfortable speaking up across locations, as per social presence theory Coulston et al. Teams that plan in-person time deliberately and protect opportunities for informal interaction report stronger relationships and better collaboration, as noted by Whillans, Perlow, and Turek.

Overall employee experiences show that hybrid working can support wellbeing and deep focus, but it also creates real barriers to fast coordination, relationship-building, and tacit knowledge sharing unless organisations actively design hybrid work around roles, communication norms, and team needs, as per Colbert, Yee, and George.

Factors Affecting Hybrid Collaboration:

According to Rajapolvi, technology and organisation decisions determine the contribution of hybrid work to collaboration, or cause its damage much more than many firms would like to acknowledge. Such mundane issues as the quality of the video, consistent sound, and decent screen-sharing are a big difference since even minor glitches can easily interrupt discussions and diminish productive interaction, according to Volmar, Moskatova, and Distelmeyer.

It is also not unusual to find that many organisations have overloaded teams with a host of digital tools that compel workers to spend time switching between them rather than really collaborating, as Marsh, Vallejos, and Spence note.

Video calls can be useful in preserving face-to-face contact, although they quickly become wearying and superficial when used regularly, according to Johnson and Mabry. Acquiring a greater volume of technology by itself without establishing specifications regarding the application of the technology is not an excellent way to address underlying coordination problems, as Hsieh and Vergne add.

Scheduling choices also play a monumental role in teamwork, but many employers view scheduling as a design option and not a priority, as pointed out by Sun et al. Predicted overlap can be formed through planned collaboration days or anchor days, but only when the teams agree on them and adhere to them, as observed by Neves.

The rules of attendance in the company usually overlook how various teams ought to work and can compel people into the office at hours that do not guarantee actual cooperation, according to Lundmark and Malm. Scheduling by a team that is based on shared activities is more effective, but it entails managers ‘ intentional coordination, which many companies have still not adopted, as Berntzen and Wong point out.

The design of the office also plays a role in hybrid environments, though it is often ignored by many companies or viewed as an exercise in branding, according to Franklin. The ability to work in spaces where both quick chats and focused work can be supported contributes to restoring the informal interactions that are frequently undermined by hybrid models, according to Danielsson and Theorell.

However, hot-desking messiness, lack of meeting rooms, and noisy open spaces, on the other hand, make office days frustrating and unproductive, thus not giving employees the desire to come to work at all, as described by Danielsson and Theorell.

Managerial behaviour is still among the most significant factors in hybrid collaboration, although most managers would still concur that visibility and performance are synonymous, as Wiatr observed. According to Lenhoff et al, clear expectations, shared decision rules, and support of team norms are much stronger methods of collaboration than attendance policing.

When leaders are consistently available, defend informal interaction time, and apply simple channel norms, teams say that they have a greater level of trust and a well-organized coordination, as explained by Kloepfer and Carbon. In case of failure by managers to do so, hybrid work increases inequalities and favors those who are most visible over the most effective, as it is observed by Sailer, Thomas, and Pachilova.

According to Hill and Villamor, team norms concerning responsiveness, meeting habits, and information sharing have a direct impact on the quality of the functioning of hybrid teams. Excessive number of meetings, unclear agendas, and a lack of follow-ups bring friction and cannot be resolved with the best technology, as pointed out by Hielscher et al.

An example of practical habits that include short check-ins, guarded focus time, and a single place to keep records will shorten the time it takes to coordinate among each other and reduce the number of endless message threads, Zaripour remarks.

General studies maintain that a technology upgrade is not sufficient to enhance collaboration, but rather enhanced scheduling, considerate office layout, frequent management behaviour, and effective team norms have the actual effect, as indicated by Olson and Olson. Unless organisations consider these practical decisions when adopting hybrid work, they expose themselves to the risk of building disjointed teams and less strong collaboration, as emphasised by Drayton.

Impacts of Hybrid Work on Team Performance:

Hybrid working generates some benefits and some disadvantages to teamwork in the financial services sector, and the effect is much more about organisational decisions than many companies realise, according to Williams and Shaw. Hybrid often boosts individual satisfaction because people save commuting time, enjoy more focused hours, and feel greater flexibility, which lifts morale and lowers burnout risks, as per Malone. As noted by Barber, Kuykendall, and Santuzzi, employees who feel rested and in control tend to perform well on individual tasks, which can improve team output in routine work where coordination demands are low.

However, team performance in finance rarely depends on individual output alone. Trading, client conversations, and risk decisions require speed, and hybrid arrangements often slow these fast exchanges, as highlighted by Ménard. As per Barber, Kuykendall, and Santuzzi, decision-making slows when teams wait for scheduled meetings or rely on long message threads instead of quick face-to-face discussions. For financial firms, any delay in judgment can become an operational risk, as noted by several industry studies that point to the high cost of slowed coordination.

Innovation and problem-solving show a similarly mixed picture. Hybrid work can encourage deep, focused thinking, which helps analytical tasks, as per Nabergoj and Uršič. Yet many studies show that the spontaneous chats and idea-sharing moments that support creative problem-solving drop sharply in hybrid settings, as noted by Effner and Havrilják. As highlighted by Larson et al. teams that depend on cross-functional creativity report fewer breakthrough ideas when informal, in-person interaction declines.

Client work in London’s financial sector adds even more pressure. The high-value clients prefer quick reactions and coordinated decisions, and hybrid solutions can destroy it, as pointed out by Larson. According to Gilson et al, companies need to demonstrate that hybrid models do not affect governance or client protection, but those tasks that demand confidentiality or urgent growth tend to be affected when separated teams are distributed.

According to Meluso, Johnson, and Bagrow, coordination costs are always increasing whenever there is poor design of hybrid systems. According to Schrøder, Cederberg, and Hauge, personnel waste their time aligning diaries, defining assignments, and reconciling various versions of documents. The unaccounted expenses can erase the productivity benefits of targeted working at home, particularly in high-paced financial departments where time is of the essence. Other companies attempt to resolve that by having office days, according to Schroder, Cederberg, and Hauge, but merely dragging people into the building does not reverse the informal discourses they lose when teams are not organized and not supported by office culture.

The issues of fairness also play a prominent role in hybrid research. The hybrid models may also form the visibility bias whereby employees who come to the office more often receive informal mentoring, superior information, and increased promotion opportunities, as noted by Otte. According to Ravanera, Kim, and Kaplan, this closeness bias has the potential to increase inequality and affect the flexibility of hybrid work, particularly in the case of people who have to take care of children or who have to take long trips to work.

The comparison of findings made by different studies demonstrates that the fact whether hybrid is beneficial, neutral, or harmful is determined by what is measured by researchers. The research that presents the advantages is often concentrated on personal well-being and productivity, according to Telu and Kumar. Harm studies emphasize reduced team speed, less effective knowledge exchange, and increased coordination expenses, according to Bissani. The neutral results are more likely to be an indicator of mixed teams, whereby some of them adapt, and others do not, as pointed out by Rouhelo.

In the case of the London financial services, the stakes are particularly high since the work is based on the necessity to make a decision swiftly, resort to confidentiality, and powerful internal controls, as Bryce et al. state. As noted by Gao, Heckman and Lynch, average office attendance figures hide the moments where in-person presence is crucial. Overall, hybrid can support individuals and some team tasks, but without careful planning around schedules, office design, management behaviour, and fairness, hybrid risks slowing decisions, fragmenting communication, and widening inequalities across teams, as highlighted repeatedly across recent research.

Research Gaps:

This review shows several important gaps that limit how useful current evidence is for guiding London’s financial services on hybrid collaboration. Most existing studies look at broad office-based sectors or tech environments, not the highly regulated, fast-moving world of London finance, so the findings do not always fit the realities of trading floors or client teams, as noted by Spreitzer, Cameron, and Garrett. As per Aloisi and De Stefano, financial work requires rapid decisions, confidentiality, and close supervision, which means evidence taken from other industries cannot simply be applied to this sector.

The other gap is that most of the studies are overly dependent on the view of the managers rather than listening to the employees who do the job every day. This only represents one side of the coin, since managers tend to perceive hybrid arrangements in a much more positive light than employees do, as Dale, Wilson, and Tucker point out. According to Wang et al, workers and supervisors usually report their experience of very different dimensions; hence, studies that tend to lean towards managerial stories are likely to overlook the actual problems of collaboration.

Research about particular scheduling decisions and collaboration quality, and subsequently concrete team outcomes, is also quite scarce. According to O’Leary and Cummings, it is common to find most studies simply state the frequency of work in the office without examining the impact of those patterns on informal discussion or the pace of decision making. According to Kwon and Raman, there are virtually no studies that trace the chain of the type of schedule to the quality of collaboration to the errors, delays, or performance, which makes arguments that office days automatically resolve the issues in collaboration weak.

The other gap is the absence of evidence in the UK. Most of the literature focuses on US or European samples, and the actualities of the local situation in London, the impact of long commutes, FCA regulation, and client demands have been understudied, according to Gajendran and Harrison. According to Manner et al, the existing research in the UK is also based on average attendance, but there are no critical points in time when face-to-face coordination is particularly essential.

There is also limited qualitative research that examines day-to-day behaviour. There is a dearth of studies that focus on the nuanced yet significant interactions, hallway coaching, informal problem-solving, or clarifying a small issue that is keeping financial teams running at a steady pace, as Terrell and Hughes note. According to Hinds and Bailey, in the absence of deep qualitative insight, the research can never be in a position to fully comprehend how the hybrid work undermines tacit knowledge or slows down decision-making.

Collectively, these gaps demonstrate that there is a necessity for research that is specific to London financial services, employs employee voice, addresses scheduling decisions, and investigates actual collaboration behaviour. According to Bechky, it is only research that encompasses the daily work and correlates it with team results that will assist firms in designing hybridized models that will allow them to retain the speed, trust, and supervision that the financial sector relies on.