As organizations around the world continue their return to the office transition after almost two years of remote work, they are taking a variety of approaches to bridging the experience gap between working on-site and working from home. As a result, hybrid teams have emerged over the past year as the future of work.
73% of employees have returned to work using a hybrid work model, working from the office at least one day per week, which brings its own set of challenges to achieving collaboration. Leaders need to make sure that all team members feel included, can participate and collaborate effectively, and have the tools they need to communicate with colleagues.
As leadership teams, people managers, and HR teams work together to develop plans for rewiring the office to support hybrid work, they need to consider the ways to set their hybrid teams up for success. The first step is to be intentional about setting workplace policies and procedures to align with a flexible company culture, then managers can guide their teams to use collaboration tools to their full capacity and implement hybrid workplace best practices. Here’s how.
Is hybrid work the future of work?
The modern workforce has undergone a facelift. The employees being welcomed back into the office this year are not the same people who left for office for the safety of remote work way back in March 2020. Their roles and responsibilities have changed and they have developed a heightened sense of adaptability.
And it’s not just the individual employee who is operating on a different frequency than in a pre-pandemic world, hybrid teams and their leaders have also been tasked with adapting to new forms of communication and collaboration. As a whole, hybrid work has evolved how team members work and succeed together.
Our 2021 State of Remote Work found that almost 1 in 2 people (48%) would seek out a new job if they were no longer able to work remotely, and 81% expect a hybrid or remote work style when the pandemic is over. According to Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, the future of work is hybrid, but getting to that future is going to take a complete, organization-wide concentrated effort.
"The data is very clear from this perspective that worker flexibility is here to stay and companies need to start thinking with a remote-first mentality. Going forward, it will almost always be the case that at least one person will be in your meeting on a screen," Weishaupt says.
Hybrid work is the future, and it’s no surprise that the future is arriving quickly. To ensure that you and your team are prepared for what’s to come, here’s everything you need to know about hybrid teams.
How do you engage a hybrid team?
Effectively managing hybrid teams isn’t about teaching your employees how to re-adapt to the workplace of their memory, but to support them as they continuously evolve into hybrid, flexible workers of the future. Listening to employee expectations and adjusting accordingly will distinguish the companies with engaged employees and those where folks are leaving for more flexible options.
Engaging a hybrid workforce requires team leaders to reimagine almost everything they know about managing a team. Hybrid teams require more strategy than simply combining remote work and in-person work, especially in flexible office environments. It takes policies, technology, and company culture to create a successful hybrid work environment, which starts with leadership.
So, how do team leaders effectively transition to managing hybrid teams? And how do companies create the ideal hybrid workplace? The secret to successful hybrid team leadership boils down to how well people can engage with each other and their work, independent of location or working hours.
Low engagement leads to poor performance and high turnover rates. On the other hand, high employee engagement leads to more satisfied and efficient team members. Team leaders who put an emphasis on boosting engagement generate better results from their hybrid teams.
In order to keep hybrid teams engaged, team leaders should:
- Set clear expectations for all team members, regardless of where they may be working from on any given day.
- Create an inclusive meeting experience, where remote attendees are provided the same level of access as their on-site counterparts.
- Establish “team rules” for communication best practices, such as dictating which tools are used for which communications purposes.
- Provide all team members with the freedom to continue evolving their individual work style, in addition to growing as hybrid teammates.
How to Set your Hybrid Teams up for Success
Every hybrid team is a sum of their parts. What sets the successful hybrid teams apart from all of the rest lies in their ability to grow as a team, without ever losing sight of the strengths of individual team members.
Setting your hybrid team up for success takes a comprehensive approach to hybrid work and adopting new collaboration tools. Read on for tips for leading hybrid teams.
5 Tips for Successful Hybrid Teams
The secret to success for hybrid teams is to establish a trust-based environment in which all team members feel like active and respected participants. To do so, hybrid team leaders should keep these strategies in mind.
1. Create a communal schedule.
Hybrid teams are composed of employees working on hybrid and flexible schedules. Therefore, not all team members will be operating on a standard Monday through Friday, nine to five schedule. To ensure that all team members have the same understanding of when their team is available to collaborate, hybrid teams should start by creating a shared calendar that outlines when each team member can be reached, when they are “on the clock” but working independently, and when they are unavailable.
Consider implementing a mutually agreed upon meeting-free day, or core working hours where everyone is available for real-time collaboration. Having flexibility in times where folks are tied to their laptop can help alleviate childcare or caregiving stress and provide more freedom for scheduling appointments, avoiding a lengthy commute, or other lifestyle improvements.
2. Establish communication standards.
Adapting to hybrid communication best practices can be a challenge for individuals used to a year of solely remote communication. To ensure that all team members are on the same page about when and with which tools it is appropriate to contact them, establish communication standards that outline when synchronous communication is used or expected and when asynchronous methods are preferred.
For example, team members working on a core hours flexible schedule may prefer to only be directly contacted between the hours of 8am and noon, reserving the afternoon for uninterrupted independent work during which time they prefer to only be contacted through email, rather than Slack.
3. Build a trust-based atmosphere.
Being a hybrid team member may not come naturally to every single worker. For those comfortable with fully remote or completely in-person work lifestyles, hybrid work may even be viewed as intimidating or inaccessible.
To ensure a smooth transition onto the hybrid team for all employees, begin by crafting a team atmosphere built on trust and open communication that allows all team members to feel comfortable asking for help and support during this transitional time.
4. Establish a strong team culture.
Being a fully remote worker can be a lonely affair. Coming off of the great remote work migration, many employees are eager to reestablish themselves as active team members. To best support the transition from fully remote to hybrid teams, work to establish a strong culture on your hybrid teams that isn’t dependent on physical location.
Take this as an opportunity to have team members reintroduce themselves to one another. Remember, after nearly two years of fully remote work some of your team members may never have met one another in person before. Hybrid team leaders should run hybrid team-building activities or ice breaker exercises to ensure all employees become acquainted with one another and feel comfortable communicating in a variety of ways.
5. Create opportunities for connection.
Depending on the specifics of their schedules, some employees may be members of the same hybrid team and never have the opportunity or explicit reason to meet one another in real life.
To ensure that all hybrid team members feel comfortable working with one another, team leaders should emphasize the importance of interpersonal connection between hybrid team members by creating opportunities for them to get to know one another outside of their professional responsibilities, such as virtual happy hours or holiday celebrations.
Top Hybrid Collaboration Tools for 2022
Pivoting to and from remote work in the past few years has required modern employees to adapt to a collection of various tech tools. During the ongoing return to office, many of these same employees are wondering which tools they will continue using as hybrid employees.
The best hybrid collaboration tools remove any barriers that working remotely presents employees. They seamlessly connect teammates to one another without frustrating setup or confusing UI, streamline virtual communication processes, making people more keen to use video conferencing tools, and allow for a heightened degree of collaboration from any distance.
In addition to the classic tech tools used by hybrid teams, such as video conferencing platforms and remote team communication tools there comes a variety of new tech designed to further simplify collaboration for hybrid teams.
Tools such as the Whiteboard Owl have made the hybrid meeting experience even more inclusive and collaborative, particularly for remote teammates. A dedicated smart whiteboard camera, when paired with the Meeting Owl Pro the Whiteboard Owl allows remote meeting attendees to see what’s on the whiteboard, even when someone is in front of it, allowing them to participate actively in discussions with the full picture of what’s happening in the room.
Hybrid Team Best Practices
To set your hybrid team up for success at every stage of growth, abide by these best practices:
- Establish clear expectations for how success is measured on your hybrid team.
- Create a structure for how projects are completed, then abide by that structure.
- Enforce transparent workflows and organizational best practices in order to optimize remote collaboration efforts.
- Create shared short and long term goals in order to have a concise framework for measuring progress.
- Establish a team culture that celebrates having a healthy work-life balance.
- Treat all team members equally, regardless of how often they work on-site.
To begin supporting your hybrid teams with collaborative video conferencing technology, The Owl Labs Premium Pack has everything you need to start hosting integrated hybrid meetings today.
