The epidemic of the last two years forced every business to resort to remote work to keep their business running. However, with the easing of the epidemic, companies are slowly returning to normal working as before. Many companies are recalling their employees back to the office. Most employees have got used to the convenience and flexibility of working from home and are demanding that it continue. The compromise is a hybrid style of working blending remote work with in-person work. It is quite likely that hybrid work will be the norm in the years to come.
However, this isn’t as simple as setting up a calendar for remote and in-office work. Hybrid work can thrive only by treating everyone as remote. This means that everyone should have access to the tools, information, people and opportunity to succeed regardless of whether they are remote or in-office. It requires consistent action from the organisation, especially in the following five areas.
Embrace asynchronous communication.
Communication with remote employees, especially distributed across the geography, requires special planning to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in team discussions.
- Change all synchronous messaging to asynchronous. Teams in different time zones need to set up a written or recorded communication. It could result in daily quick meetings being replaced with short daily updates on a chat channel.
- Use technology to prepare documents that can be shared. Sometimes meetings may be called to discuss a complex issue. Use the available technology tools to record and share important notes, and meeting minutes so everyone in the team is on the same page.
Define communication boundaries.
With remote across, it may not be clear when team members or team leaders are available for discussions. This can lead to embarrassing interruptions. One of the virtues of in-office work is the ability to have spontaneous interactions. To avoid this, one should
- set rules for engagement. Remote work involves managing emails, chats, video calls, remote meetings and documentation. Teams should define the expectations for each. These rules for engagement can greatly reduce the anxiety and fear of missing out.
- Make working hours clear. Team members should explicitly share their calendars with their working hours marked out. This would allow everyone to know the availability and act accordingly. Members should also block off time in their calendars for deep work.
Documentation.
Create a company-wide culture of archivable, searchable documentation for important decisions. These archives would help new members to understand the decision-making process and also the basis for the work they do.
Companies should also encourage preparing shared documents for proposals and design so others can collaborate and comment. This helps increase employee morale and ownership.
Communication.
In-office there are plenty of one-to-one conversations, and water cooler talks where the information gets distributed. this would be difficult to replicate in a remote work setup. team leaders need to develop a culture of written or recorded messaging to convey important messages/ announcements.
teams should be encouraged to broadcast their achievements on the chat channel. A culture of sharing would encourage others to share more.
Provide the tooling.
Team leaders should ensure that every member has the access to the same tools. This includes common software they use which can be shared, edited, and commented upon – in short, collaborate within the team effectively. Tooling can also be in the form of physical setups they use from their remote desks. Team leaders should ensure that all remote members have the same facilities to work efficiently.
These are only the starting points for building a hybrid culture. It requires changing many small habits that we are used to. as hybrid workspaces become the normal the incremental improvements across these five factors discussed would lead to creating a successful culture in the post-epidemic world.
What Great Hybrid Cultures Do Differently
by James Stanier, Michael Li, and Jesse Anderson
HBR 2022/03
R2G 