Last year, around 74% of businesses in the US had moved to some form of hybrid working, meaning that this team model is the new norm. While hybrid teams may present a new set of challenges to overcome, they can deliver great things for the employees, the employer, and the end consumer.
Hybrid teams tend to enjoy significantly greater morale and higher levels of staff retention compared to traditionally structured teams. However, managers new to hybrid working are often concerned about maintaining productivity, fearing that this could go downhill. No need to worry, though: use the guide below to ensure your team is working both as productively and happily as possible.
Ensure Your Team is Well-Connected
Increasing productivity begins with ensuring you have a strong, well-connected team – which is even more of a challenge in a hybrid setup. In this scenario, it’s especially important to ensure that every member of staff clearly understands their roles and responsibilities and those of their colleagues, wherever they’re based. Hybrid teams can also be at risk of developing a ‘them and us’ attitude between the employees working remotely and those who are office based, with both sides under the impression that they’re bearing more of the burden of work. Resentments can easily simmer until they reach boiling point.
Consider bringing on board one of the free webmail clients available that allows colleagues to switch between messaging and video meeting in-app for better workflow and more natural conversations. This means that your team members will be able to stay connected with their colleagues wherever they are, whether at home, on the go, or in a hotel, for free. Look for a client that allows you to access supported IMAP solutions for even greater convenience to negate the need to log into a plethora of other accounts separately.
Prepare for the Metaverse
There is a huge range of tech solutions out there that can boost your hybrid team’s productivity and get everyone working both on the same page and smarter- many of which you’ll already be using.
But the metaverse is starting to make an impact in the world of collaborative working, and deploying some of the tools and solutions it offers to boost your team’s productivity will put you ahead of the curve. What does this look like on the ground? It’s about providing an immersive, collaborative experience to better connect your team in a more functional manner.
Multipurpose virtual environments, avatars, and virtual reality headsets are already beginning to be used by businesses around the world, and this number is growing. Meta is heavily promoting its Horizon Workrooms platform, which aims to entirely reimagine remote collaboration, while Nvidia’s Omniverse working tool is being advertised as a ‘digital twin’ designed to both mirror and bolster collaborative processes. While we can’t be sure of the exact direction of tech over the next few years, one thing is for sure: the future is the metaverse.
Consistently Promote Equity
We all carry certain biases, however much we try to be aware of this tendency, and the very nature of a hybrid team can exacerbate this. It’s easy to fall into a pattern of expecting the best work from the employee who consistently delivers and to suspect the historically less-well-performing staff member of not putting in quite as much effort as they could. And we will naturally make more of a connection with those we spend more time with – which is likely to be those employees who are office based.
Paying close attention to how we already regard team members is the first stage of ensuring equity. It’s difficult, but ask yourself if you’re fully recognizing the needs of those employees who you find irritating while giving to others the benefit of the doubt
Next, consider how the workload is currently being divvied up and allocated, with parity in mind. Are there certain staff members that you tend to spend more time with during the?day. Resist easy patterns of thinking, and use objective data to assess performance, to guard against personal feelings coloring your judgement.
Prevent Burnout
It may sound counter-intuitive, but one of the best ways to boost productivity within your hybrid team is to ensure that your team takes regular time out! For your in-office staff, this means providing a restful room or even an outdoor space to relax in and making sure that your employees actually take the breaks they’re entitled to.
Staff members working remotely could potentially be at more risk of burnout due to a blurring of the lines between work and home. Help avoid this by stressing the importance of remote employees having a set switch-off time and resisting checking emails or logging onto the system on days off or out of hours unless absolutely necessary.
Successfully Managing a Hybrid Team
Hybrid teams present a unique set of challenges for those managing them but also provide many great opportunities, too. Research consistently shows that hybrid teams have, overall, higher morale and are more productive than their traditionally structured counterparts.
If you manage a hybrid team, use the tips above as a springboard to ensure your employees are working smart, enjoy a great work-life balance, and love their job, too.