Hybrid Working Quietly Changed How Insight Teams Learn

Hybrid working changed how insight teams learn. Not because people became less capable, and not because flexibility is a bad thing.

In many ways, hybrid working has been hugely positive. People have more balance, autonomy and space to think. Few genuinely want to return to five days in the office, and realistically, most businesses don’t either.

But something important did quietly change, because capability in insight has never really developed through formal training alone. It develops through proximity.

Through listening to how experienced researchers handle difficult conversations. Watching how they challenge a brief without alienating a client. Seeing how they navigate ambiguity, pressure and politics. Observing judgement in action.

A lot of that learning happened accidentally: across desks, after debriefs, on the train home from groups. In moments senior people often didn’t even realise were developmental.

And while hybrid working brought flexibility, it also reduced many of those moments almost overnight.

Now, many teams experience senior thinking mainly through scheduled calls, edited outputs and delivery checkpoints. The work still gets done, often brilliantly, but exposure to how decisions actually get made has narrowed.

At the same time, senior teams are under more pressure than ever. Client demands have accelerated, AI is increasing expectations around speed and output, and the people carrying the deepest experience are often stretched across delivery, commercial leadership, mentoring and strategy simultaneously.

Which creates a tension many agencies are quietly wrestling with:

How do you develop capability properly when the natural mechanisms that once supported it happen less often?

Because this is not really solved by mandating more office days.

Hybrid working suits many people’s lives, including senior leaders. And even where teams are happy to spend more time together, it only works if the people they need exposure to are there too.

So, the answer probably isn’t reversing hybrid working. It’s recognising what disappeared alongside it and rebuilding it more intentionally.

And importantly, not everybody develops in the same way. Some people learn through observation, some through discussion, some through stretch and live problem-solving while others need space to build confidence away from performance pressure.

Which means capability-building cannot rely on one format or occasional training sessions disconnected from the reality of the work.

The strongest development tends to happen inside delivery itself: through shared thinking, collaboration, challenge and supported decision-making.

Increasingly, agencies are also recognising that not all support has to come from inside the business. External mentoring and embedded expertise can create developmental space that is often more flexible, contextual and open than internal structures naturally allow.

“One of the biggest risks in fast-moving environments is assuming development will continue happening organically simply because it always used to.”

In reality, many teams are operating so close to delivery pressure that capability-building becomes something everyone values, but nobody has enough time to properly hold.

And when that happens, the effects are significant: confidence gaps widen, strategic thinking gets concentrated in fewer people, and senior leaders become bottlenecks without intending to.

That’s a big part of the reason Between exists.

We work alongside insight teams inside live delivery, helping create the kinds of developmental exposure, support and challenge that hybrid working and increasing pressure have quietly made harder to sustain organically.

Not through classroom training removed from the work itself, but through embedded collaboration, mentoring, shared problem-solving and access to experienced thinking in real time.

Because for many agencies now, capability-building is no longer just a people challenge. It’s becoming a strategic one.