An increasing number of organisations are transforming into a hybrid workplace – where employees adopt various combinations of working from the office and remotely. Despite potential opportunities and challenges that the organisation-wide adoption of hybrid work arrangements offers to employees and organisations, little is known about the effects for a critical employee behaviour: participation in informal collaboration and knowledge sharing. We advance knowledge on this topic by examining the effect of adopting a hybrid workplace model on network churn - the tendency to reshape individual social networks by creating new ties and dissolving existing ones. We explore whether and how network churn is triggered by the search for efficiency which leads employees to reassess the cost-opportunity trade-off of their relationships. We use longitudinal data that we have collected in a sample of individuals employed in a software house during the COVID-19 pandemic. We combine data on their changing work arrangements across phases of the pandemic with network data capturing knowledge seeking relationships. We derive implications for both employees and organisations.

Paola is an Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour at the UCL Global Business School for Health. She holds a PhD from the Universita' di Milano (IT) and a postdoc from the University of Lugano (CH). Before joining UCL, Paola was an assistant professor at the School of Business - Maynooth University (IE). Her research aims to illuminate individual and contextual antecedents of organisational social networks, addressing dynamics of informal collaboration, knowledge creation and sharing, and their contribution to individual performance and creativity.