Setting up a hybrid workplace
ONE thing the pandemic has positively affected the workplace is the possibility of a work-from-home setup for the work force. Across industries, managers have realized that their teams can fulfill their tasks even without having to physically report to the office. Indeed, some organizations have even acknowledged that their employees are more productive at home, so they allowed for a permanent work-from-home setup by providing them equipment and additional allowances to set up their home office.
Now that the work force is being asked to report back to the office, some organizations are taking advantage of a hybrid setup where they allow employees to work from home on certain days during the week. Some are even allowing their employees to work from just about anywhere they are most productive. In setting up a hybrid work setup for your team, there are some things you need to examine.
First, you need to consider the kind of hybrid setup you want your team to follow. You can either assign which days each of your team members should report to the office, your team can choose which days they can report to the office, or a combination of the two. The best option will depend on your team’s deliverables and how your team interacts with each other. If the team is new, it might be a good idea to have two or three days where everyone gets to report to the office to establish work processes and for your team to get to know each other better. For older teams, it might be better to have a day or two to the office.
One of the benefits of a hybrid setup is that you can hire someone and work with them remotely. In this case, reporting to the office can be a challenge. To mitigate this, set up a weekly meeting where team members can get to know one another and become familiar with the workflows. Exposing remote team members to everyone in the team not only helps them establish good working relations with other team members but also sets clear expectations for the remote team member.
Since visibility of the team is limited, your team needs to have visibility of what everybody else is doing. This can come in the form of a dashboard or a tracker where everybody can see the ongoing projects and who is working on what items. As the manager, your role is to ensure that no one is unduly burdened and the workload is distributed equitably among the team members. Your team needs to understand what they contribute to the overall success of the team, and how their work affects the other team members. Just because they work remotely does not mean that they should not have visibility of the success of the entire team.
Because there is limited face-to-face interaction, you need to ensure that each of your team members know their tasks, timelines and any changes to the project. In an office environment, people can just update other team members verbally as the information comes in. In a virtual workspace, you need to consistently update your team on significant changes to the project so that they can adjust their efforts accordingly. Nothing is more frustrating than finishing a task only to find out the requirements have changed.
You also need to work closely with your IT department for tools in team collaboration. There are several tools for team communication and managing workload for a team so you need to list down what you want in an application. This way, your IT team can create a shortlist of applications they can recommend. In some organizations, they have taken monitoring employees further by installing applications that monitor keyboard and mouse activity, and even monitors which applications you used and for how long. Just make sure that your team knows they are being monitored and they have agreed to the setup.
When I was handling a team in a previous organization, they made us use a software that monitors what applications my team used and for how long. I realized my team’s productivity plummeted because they only did their work when they were in the office, and they stopped exerting extra effort. We stopped for a month and realized that the tool does not capture the time spent in collaborating with team members and tossing ideas on their projects. Make sure you strike a good balance of work demand and extra effort.
Aside from IT, you need to work closely with human resources for best practices in work force management, especially in managing leaves and time away from their work computers. In addition to setting clear expectations on work deliverables, you also need to set expectations in terms of availability and when you can contact your team members. What matters to you should be what they need to deliver at the end of the day, and that they can be reached during the set work hours. Whatever they do in between should not matter as long as they deliver on those two important things.
Since people do not see each other face-to-face often, you need to be creative in your engagement activities. The tendency with a remote working environment is that people are focused more on results that they lose touch with other members of the team. Provide venues where you can recognize team effort and make them interact with each other in a non-work environment. Your team needs to see each other beyond work so that they can have empathy for each other.
You also need to regularly check up on team members. Set individual meetings with your team so you can uncover any issues or challenges they may have with working remotely. This can also be a time to set expectations and discover what motivates them. You can also set this time to discuss their professional development plans and learning interventions available to them remotely.
As in any team setting, you set the work ethic that your team follows. Be it in a full report to the office or a hybrid work setup, you set the work culture for your team. Whatever work setup you implement, your team will rely on you to provide clear directions and guidance so everyone in the team understands how they contribute to the team’s overall success.