A few years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us into the era of remote work without much time to prepare or strategize. But now, with the benefit of time and experience, many organizations are starting to rethink their workplace strategy in order to combine the benefits of in-person interactions as well as the flexibility of remote work. Companies are increasingly looking to hybrid work as a happy medium between working online and on-site.
While hybrid work allows you to reap the benefits of working in the office and working from home, it comes with its own set of challenges. When work is either in-person or fully remote, everyone is automatically at the same level, so there’s uniformity and consistency across the organization. But if some people work remotely while others work on-site, or if different people come to the office on different days, it can potentially create confusion around how to communicate and collaborate effectively. It can also introduce workplace inequities if people have different levels of access to information, for instance, or if some people’s work is more visible than others.
If you’re a C-suite executive or People leader considering adopting a hybrid work policy for your organization, you may already be grappling with these questions. That’s why we asked Stacey Slater, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Oyster, and Brendon Nimphius, Facilitation Manager at LifeLabs Learning, to share their expert insights and strategies for a successful transition to a hybrid work model. In a lively conversation on navigating hybrid work, they offered actionable advice for ensuring a smooth transition, maintaining a strong team culture, and leading hybrid teams effectively.
Ensuring a smooth transition to hybrid work
Making the leap into hybrid work is a major undertaking and a fundamental shift within an organization. If it’s rushed into without careful planning and communication, it can easily lead to confusion and chaos, not to mention dissatisfaction and disengagement. Below are some critical strategies to ensure a smooth transition when implementing hybrid work.
Define your hybrid work model
Hybrid work comes in many flavors, so it’s important to define the hybrid work model that you’re adopting. What’s right for your company will depend on your business needs, your organizational setup, and your workforce. Do you want everyone to come in a certain number of days per week? If so, will there be fixed in-office days or will employees have the flexibility to choose when to telecommute? If you have a distributed workforce, do you want to have employees work in-person in locations where you have offices, while allowing others to work remotely from places where you don’t have an office?
Even more important than the logistical details is to be clear about the reason for switching to hybrid work. Whatever model of hybrid work you choose should be closely tied to your business needs, strategic priorities, and organizational culture. This will help you communicate the decision more clearly and get buy-in more easily.
Create alignment across the organization
When planning the transition to hybrid work, make sure you identify and involve key stakeholders in the process. Engaging as many leaders and managers as possible, and even some individual contributors, will ensure that the hybrid structure you come up with will have buy-in across the organization. Make use of surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one conversations to develop a model of hybrid work that’s based on the input you receive. Implementing change can be difficult, but it’s much easier when people feel included in the process and understand the reasoning behind it.
When rolling out your hybrid policy, be sure to communicate clearly what the new working model will look like. This includes everything from the logistics of office-based and remote work to operational details around communication, collaboration, meetings, and access to information. If this is a fundamental change to their previous way of working, employees will likely have questions or concerns, so make sure leaders and managers are fully equipped to support the transition.
💡 Check out how Latana built a thriving hybrid culture across borders by partnering with Oyster.
Maintaining team cohesion and culture
Since a hybrid workplace combines elements of both office-based and remote work, it requires intentional thought and planning to keep everyone on the same page, both operationally and culturally. If people aren’t sure how they’re supposed to do things, or if they feel excluded, it can negatively impact productivity and morale. The good news is that you can proactively design a hybrid workplace that avoids these pitfalls and ensures a strong and unified culture.
Set clear norms and expectations
If on any given day, some people will be working at the office and others remotely, it’s important to set clear norms and expectations on how they should operate within this setup. Make sure you provide clear guidelines for communication methods, channels, and best practices so that people aren’t left wondering how to go about it.
In addition to putting the tools and mechanisms into place, make sure that people are equipped and enabled to use them. This involves both training as well as buy-in. Create a playbook for how to do things, whether that’s communicating with colleagues, collaborating on projects, or making decisions as a team. You should also clarify at the outset why you’re choosing certain ways of doing things. If people understand the reasoning and the benefits (to them individually as well as to the organization as a whole), it’ll be easier to build and reinforce the new norms and standards.
Create a shared experience
People don’t come to work just for a paycheck—they also want a positive employee experience. When you’re building a hybrid team, it’s important to create a shared experience, with equal access to opportunities, so that everyone has a level playing field and no one feels left out.
For instance, if you’re running a hybrid meeting with both in-office and remote participants, don’t simply gather the co-located folks around a table and have the remote workers appear on a screen. This gives an unfair advantage to those who are physically present and can feel distancing to those dialing in. Instead, the best practice would be to have everyone log in to the meeting individually so that everyone is on the same level.
Similarly, make sure that everyone has the same access to information, regardless of whether they’re on-site or online. Ensure robust documentation practices so that someone working from home can look up critical information just as easily as someone in the office, without having to ask a colleague or waste time and energy tracking down something they need.
Ensure high-quality interactions
People value connection and inclusion, so when designing a hybrid workplace, make sure to build in time and space for high-quality interactions. This includes meetings, manager one-on-ones, team offsites, and everything in between. These opportunities for connection help to combat isolation, build strong working relationships, and reinforce the hybrid workplace culture you’re trying to build.
Be especially intentional about designing the in-person interactions for the days when people come to the office. If someone has to take a crowded subway train in rush-hour traffic to attend an in-person meeting, it’s important that those meetings be interactive and collaborative so that the in-person time is used well and worth the commute. The time spent in the office should foster a sense of connection and shared purpose, so that people don’t feel like they could have just logged in from home.
Leading and managing a hybrid workforce
Transitioning to a hybrid work environment puts fresh demands on leaders and managers who must adapt to a new leadership or managerial style while also trying to support their workforce through a major shift in their way of working. Since organizational change often takes place from the top down, below are some strategies for leaders and managers if your organization is going hybrid.
Be a role model
As with any working environment, hybrid or otherwise, how you show up as a leader makes a big difference. Leaders and managers have to be the first ones to successfully adopt and champion hybrid work in order to set the new norms and standards for everyone else to follow. People will feel more comfortable and reassured if they see the new way of working modeled successfully by leaders and managers.
In addition, it’s up to leadership and management to create and reinforce the hybrid culture they want to build. This includes equipping and enabling people, creating opportunities for connection, ensuring high-quality interactions, and modeling best practices for communication and collaboration. By doubling down on culture and connection, leaders and managers can help maintain continuity and build resilience within the organization.
Measure productivity in terms of outputs
When making the transition to remote or hybrid work, people often find that they’re suddenly in meetings all day. Partly this is due to the pressure to look busy or make their work visible to their managers. But digital presenteeism actually hurts productivity instead of helping, and can easily lead to burnout.
Leaders and managers can avoid this trap by setting clear expectations about performance being measured by outputs. They should define priorities and clarify what success looks like, so that people know what to focus on in order to produce the required end results. Oftentimes, the focus on outputs rather than seeing people at their desk is a mental shift that leaders and managers themselves have to make. Once they’ve made that shift, they need to communicate and reinforce that new model of productivity to their teams.
Support your team’s well-being
Another hazard of switching to remote or hybrid work is that sometimes the flexibility to work from home blurs the boundaries between work and life, so that people end up working at all hours. Once again, leaders and managers should model setting healthy boundaries around work hours, taking breaks or vacation as needed, and taking care of one’s mental health and well-being.
Rather than letting flexibility blur work-life boundaries, leaders and managers should encourage people to think about their personal operating rhythm. If there are particular times of the day when someone is most productive, they might design their workday accordingly. Each team will organically develop its own operating rhythm that ultimately ties into the larger organization in a way that supports everyone’s mental health and well-being.
Ready to adopt hybrid work?
If you’re ready to adopt a hybrid work model for your organization, these expert strategies from Stacey and Brendon will set you up for success. There’s also plenty of support available as you navigate the transition to hybrid work. A global employment partner like Oyster can help you build remote and hybrid teams, while LifeLabs Learning can provide training and coaching for leaders, managers, and teams that are navigating organizational change. Enlisting the help of expert partners will help you fine-tune your hybrid work strategy and ensure a successful transition.
For more tips and insights, check out the full recording of Navigating Hybrid Work: Strategies for a Balanced and Resilient Workforce with Stacey Slater, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Oyster, and Brendon Nimphius, Facilitation Manager at LifeLabs Learning. For a comprehensive resource on hybrid work, download Oyster’s Hybrid Handbook to learn about hybrid work models, policies, communication strategies, performance management, and much more.
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