Cliques at Work: A Hidden Risk in Hybrid Teams

Monday 29th Sep 2025

Leaders and HR professionals spend a lot of time addressing overt workplace bullying. What often slips under the radar is the quieter, subtler version that occurs via workplace cliques. These small, tight groups can seem harmless, even positive, but they carry a hidden cost. In hybrid workplaces, they’re harder to see, easier to ignore and far more damaging.

How cliques form

They develop naturally through shared projects, history or schedules.
They can build trust and cohesion, but when they exclude others, they distort power dynamics.
Hybrid working adds a new layer: people align their in-office days with preferred colleagues, leaving others isolated or peripheral.

Why cliques matter for organisations

Cliques don’t just affect individual morale. They erode the cultural foundations organisations need for high performance:

Belonging and inclusion suffer. Research shows exclusion has the same neurological impact as physical pain.

Information flow becomes uneven, with insiders holding influence and outsiders cut off.

Engagement and retention drop. Excluded employees are less likely to speak up, contribute or stay.

Bullying risk increases. Relational aggression such as gossip, gatekeeping, exclusion, is often dismissed as “team dynamics” but is a recognised form of workplace bullying.

What the research tells us

Hybrid workers report “belonging friction” when their office days don’t align with others (Pentjusä, 2025).
Remote staff describe feeling peripheral due to missed casual interactions (Urrila, 2025).
Working from home is linked to higher feelings of ostracism when organisational support is low (Al Riyami et al., 2023).

For HR and leadership, this means hybrid policies are not neutral. Left unmanaged, they can create unequal access to relationships, influence and opportunity.

Red flags for HR and leaders

The same employees repeatedly involved in decisions or informal conversations.
Social events and chats that systematically exclude certain groups (especially remote staff).
“Us vs. them” language between office-based and remote colleagues.
Declining engagement or wellbeing indicators in individuals outside dominant groups.

What leaders can do

Audit belonging: Move beyond engagement surveys to ask about inclusion, fairness and psychological safety.

Design hybrid deliberately: Align office days to avoid splintering teams into cliques.

Mix collaboration: Rotate teams to prevent entrenched subgroups.

Coach managers: Train them to spot relational aggression and handle it as seriously as overt bullying.

Normalise inclusion practices: Check who is invited, who speaks and who is missing from informal networks.

Closing thought

Cliques might look like “normal team bonding,” but in hybrid settings they can become a structural risk. For HR and leadership, the challenge is not only to spot them but to actively design cultures where belonging is distributed, not hoarded. Ignoring cliques is not neutral, it’s permission for exclusion to grow.

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