How do we deliver engaging hybrid workshops?

It's the start of the new financial year and for many teams, this means alignment and planning workshops to refocus priorities and set the game plan for the year ahead.

The thinking is solid, but getting the design and execution of a workshop right is more than putting an agenda together and booking a room. Workshops are a significant time and energy investment. For example, taking 500 staff offline for 4 hours = 2000 hours = equivalent to +1 full year of an FTE and an effort investment of approximately $130k of staff time based on a department’s profile. That’s a big investment.

When done well, workshops can be valuable in fostering connection, collaboration and clarity. But to get the return on the investment, we should be thinking hard about getting the format and the design right.

Recently, we noticed a significant increase in requests to facilitate and design hybrid workshops. This can look like some people dialling in from different office locations or from home. In theory, it sounds like the best of both worlds, but in practice, many facilitators describe hybrid as the ‘least loved’ format because of the operational complexity and the persistent sense that hybrid compromises the experience of at least one participant group (State of Facilitation Report 2026). Participants don’t love this format either. The flexibility is great, but the opportunities to participate and engage as a group can feel stilted and the opportunities to contribute uneven for online colleagues.  

That’s not to say there is one perfect format but depending on your workshop outcome some formats may be better than others. Below are a few pros and cons to be aware of different formats and to choose the one that works best for participants.

It's worth remembering that you can mix your formats as well – for example, you may wish to do a fully online experience and then bring people in-person together after the session for social/casual/follow-on engagement activities in local locations if preferred. 

But let's say you go with hybrid...what do you do?

We've run our fair share of hybrid sessions over the past few years and we're still learning after each one. We’ve done our thinking about how we take what we know works for in-person workshops to and how to apply this to a hybrid environment. 

We follow a simple Prepare, Design and Communicate method for our workshops and have shared a few considerations that may be helpful to decide if hybrid is the right format for you, and how you can make it a great experience for your participants. 

PREPARE: Start with the end in mind. What are the outcomes we want to achieve and how do we want attendees to leave feeling?

Knowing your workshop outcomes and being clear on your purpose is the first step to designing your workshop and choosing the right format.  

• Know your key outcomes. We often see ambitious workshop agendas trying to cover multiple focus areas to maximise the time. Narrowing to one or two focus areas usually gets better outcomes than trying to solve everything in one sitting, and leaves room for a follow-up conversation. Hybrid workshops need more time to generate discussion, share insights and summarise findings and actions so build this into your agenda and planning.
  
• Define roles and responsibilities. All workshops need strong preparation however, hybrid workshops have an additional layer of complexity so extra prep with defined roles and responsibilities is required. Assigning key roles (e.g. property point of contact for room setup, office leads, facilitators, online facilitator etc) will help your workshop run smoothly. Remember to book in a tech check prior to the day to include all the locations involved to test everything.

We've created a tech checklist that you can use - download here!

DESIGN: How do we design an engaging and inclusive workshop experience to achieve the key outcomes we need?

Being aware of power imbalances is an important part of hybrid workshop design. In-person attendees or larger groups may have a louder say, and as facilitators, we try to actively call on each location or group to ensure there is equal input.

• Make it interactive. Keeping the audience in mind, different people learn in different ways. This means designing a range of activities that accommodate the main adult learning styles and give everyone an opportunity to contribute. A mix of visual, hands-on, discussion-based and written activities tends to keep participants engaged. Make sure you are familiar with the tools you have available (Teams, virtual whiteboards, polls and survey tools) to keep people actively participating regardless of their location.
  

• Design time buffers. In a hybrid environment, we often need to factor in longer time buffers to allow people to come back from breakout rooms or from multiple locations. Building these into your workshop design keeps your agenda flowing and keeps things from feeling rushed.
  
  
• Include breaks. Your online participants are looking at their screens and sitting for long periods of time compared to their in-person colleagues. Scheduling breaks throughout the day allows online attendees to move around, stretch and get away from the screen if they need it. 

COMMUNICATE

Communication can be a challenge at the best of times. Hybrid formats can make it difficult to check that everyone is clear on outcomes and the way forward. 

• Circulate the summary and actions. When you wrap up the session, ensure that participants understand what actions they need to take forward. Include a summary writeup and follow up actions and mechanisms to check-in to ensure there is accountability and for participants to feel like it was a good use of their time.
  
  
• Ask for feedback. The best way to improve your hybrid workshops is to ask your attendees what they thought about the experience. You can keep things broad with a “stop, start, continue” feedback model or get specific and check in on specific components of your workshop 'technology, agenda, activities, facilitator, venue etc.' Best practice is to share what you've heard and how you plan to incorporate any changes into hybrid workshops moving forward.

Of course, nothing is foolproof and all the preparation in the world can’t stop the unexpected from happening – remember to go with the flow! Sometimes the tech may fail, or the activity doesn’t go as planned and that’s okay. A key skill is being adaptable and knowing when to pivot. From our experience, we often plan for a couple of different backup activity options if things don’t go planned.

Hybrid workshops can be challenging but with the right design, they can be engaging, inclusive and genuinely effective.