Hybrid work in SMEs: where the money leaks away
PLN 1,200 is what a one-hour meeting of eight specialists billed at PLN 150 per hour can cost. In a small or medium-sized company, meetings, misguided attendance rules and unused subscriptions can be a bigger burden than equipment.
66 percent of Polish organizations allow remote work, according to the SD Worx study “2026 HR & Payroll Pulse.” At the same time, 64.1 percent of companies encourage more frequent presence in the office, and 55.9 percent of employers notice that managing distributed teams is becoming more difficult.
The response to these problems is often further purchases: a desk booking system, conference room equipment, wellbeing apps and SaaS tools, meaning software used on a subscription basis. In a company employing 30 to 150 people, however, such expenses do not always have sufficient scale to pay off.
The biggest cost comes from meetings that no one prices
According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2026, the average manager spends about 4.1 hours a day in meetings, and communication takes up 57 percent of employees’ working time. At a rate of PLN 150 per hour, a meeting of eight people costs PLN 1,200. That amount does not yet include the loss of focus.
Research by Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine indicates that returning to a task after an interruption takes on average more than 23 minutes. A company can therefore save money without buying new technology: by shortening the default length of meetings, replacing some status meetings with written updates, and designating blocks of work without meetings.
A rigid return to the office can increase turnover
A randomized study by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University included 1,612 Trip.com employees. People working three days in the office and two at home achieved the same productivity and had the same chances of promotion as employees present in the office five days a week. In the hybrid group, the number of departures was one-third lower.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, analyzing companies from the S&P 500 index, linked return-to-office mandates with a 14 percent increase in turnover. The phenomenon affected women, specialists and senior managers most strongly. For a smaller company, losing one experienced person may be more painful than the cost of maintaining a flexible model.
Hays Poland indicates that the most commonly expected office presence is two or three days a week. Gallup, in turn, recorded engagement in 2025 at 24 percent among hybrid employees and 25 percent among remote workers. In the group of people who could work remotely but perform their duties in the office, it was 17 percent.
Hot desks and expensive rooms need the right scale
Hot desking, that is, using any available workstation, can reduce office space needs by about 30 percent. In a large organization, this brings noticeable savings. In a company employing 50 people, the benefit may be limited to giving up a few desks, while the booking system and operating the solution still have to be paid for.
Employees’ attitudes also come into play. In a Pracuj.pl survey, only every fifth person rated hot desking positively, and nearly 60 percent of respondents considered an office with their own workstations the best option. A cheaper compromise is fixed team zones and agreed days of presence.
A similar calculation applies to video rooms. According to indicative supplier price lists, a bar for a small room costs from about PLN 11,900 net, a wireless screen-sharing system from PLN 4,500 to PLN 13,000, and installation from PLN 2,000 to PLN 8,000. For a smaller company, one well-equipped room with good sound is more often enough than several elaborate setups.
Subscriptions and wellbeing require monitoring of results
Zylo states that SaaS spending increased by about 8 percent over the year, among other things because of surcharges for artificial intelligence features and pricing changes. These are data from a company selling a subscription management system and mainly concern large organizations. The mechanism itself, however, applies at every scale: companies pay for similar apps in several departments or automatically renew accounts of employees who are no longer there.
Ready-made wellbeing programs also have an uncertain return. In an experiment by Zirui Song and Katherine Baicker involving 32,974 employees, participants were more likely after 18 months to declare healthy habits. However, no differences were found in treatment costs, absenteeism, job performance ratings or clinical health indicators. The result did not change after three years.
Before the next expense, a company should therefore review attendance rules, calculate the cost of meetings and assign an owner to every subscription. Only then can it assess whether a new system, equipment or program is needed. In hybrid work, it is most often orderly rules and time for focus that pay off, not solutions copied from corporations.