Habits To Ensure Equality In Your Hybrid Team

Originally published in Forbes by Laurel Farrer

As hungry as we all are for stability, 2022 will be the year many companies go through yet another monumental change, from working fully-remote to hybrid, as offices reopen and leaders prepare to welcome employees back to shared spaces. The hope is that this time around, organizations will have done the legwork to prepare for this next big transition. 

Hybrid is the new normal, at least for now, with the majority of employers in the U.S. in support of it as the preferred workplace flexibility model, according to a recent survey by salary.com. But is it a sustainable change? Unfortunately, going back to the office is likely to mean going back to old habits, which are inherently location-dependent and open the door for proximity bias. How will daily habits of the team support or sabotage the design of a workplace flexibility model? 

Without intentional change management and equality support, hybrid models can be riddled with complications and potential blindspots, but with proper attention to virtual-first, location-independent methodologies during change management, any organization can be successful and sustainable as a hybrid team. Based on case study research of veteran hybrid organizations like Microsoft, Dell, and GitHub, here are 10 habits that all hybrid teams should be building to ensure equality and unity, regardless of workspace location.

Hybrid Habit 1: Adjust Productivity Tracking 

When working in an office, “working” often just means that you’re “at work,” or present in a certain location. A more accurate measurement system for performance is long overdue, and is uniquely critical for hybrid teams in which some members will never be “at work.” Transition from the outdated office-based mentality of evaluating productivity and loyalty based on working under the same roof, prioritizing proximity and presence, by ensuring that productivity measurement is based on output and results, regardless of work location. 

Essential Strategy: Use project management systems to assign tasks and monitor results.

Hybrid Habit 2: Standardize Meeting Experience

The only thing about video calls worse than “Zoom Fatigue” is being in a meeting where you have no idea what is going on. Unfortunately, that’s a common experience for many remote workers who are trying to virtually participate in a meeting that is happening in person. Awkward camera angles, poor audio, and lack of visibility make the participant experience imbalanced and frustrating. Instead, commit to making hybrid meetings better by regularly auditing how meetings are going, including equality in team contributions, agenda and note taking practices, and digital tools used to support an environment of collaboration. Or better yet, all meet on the same platform to equalize participant experience.

Essential Strategy: Default to digital platforms if people are attending remotely. 

Hybrid Habit 3: Use Public Channels

When working in an office, a primary channel of information is merely the opportunity to observe operations. We can sense a vibe of urgency or watch an increase in meeting volume to learn that a big announcement is on its way. But when working virtually, contextual cues are lost if we’re just sending emails and direct messages to each other. Fortunately, we can recreate a similar observational experience online by using public communication channels (like Microsoft Teams or Slack) to increase transparency and keep everyone in the loop. Commit to giving remote team members the power of observation by setting proper notification rules, tagging, and threading, to make following along easy and actionable. Be sure to reserve direct messages (DMs) for highly sensitive topics only. 

Essential Strategy: Default all interpersonal communication to public channels instead of emails or direct messages. 

Hybrid Habit 4: Digitize All Resources

In colocated work environments, the go-to “source of truth” for answering questions is usually your nearest officemate. So, if remote workers can’t contact their in-office colleagues as immediately as someone who is working on-site, the result can be informational isolation. To keep company knowledge as accessible as possible, document information around processes, goals, and essential resources, and maintain a digital knowledge management system, like a digital handbook. Even when you know the answer, point team members to the digital resources that are equally available to all employees (regardless of time zone or location) to help reinforce utilization and encourage independent problem solving. 

Essential Strategy: Create and maintain a digital handbook as a source of answers about operations and company information. 

Hybrid Habit 5: Design Consistent Workplaces 

Companies invest millions into the design of safe and creative work environments for their workforces. Yet, their remote workers are sometimes working in stuffy closets or chaotic coffee shops with spotty wifi, and are expected to yield the same results. Instead, consider how you can distribute your cultural work environment as much as you’ve distributed your people. Extend the design principles of your workplace far beyond the walls of your office to make sure productivity, safety, training, and brand representation are consistent between all locations, including home and mobile offices. 

Essential Strategy: Setup home and HQ office spaces to be as similar as possible, prioritizing seating, internet, & equipment.

Hybrid Habit 6: Diversify Company Rituals

Many business leaders are anxious to get back to the office to “develop company culture.” But does that mean off-site team members won’t be part of the culture? Make sure key players aren’t excluded from team development by offering a combination of physical and virtual culture development activities. For optimal inclusivity, prioritize asynchronous rituals that are able to be accessed by anyone, even if they are working in a different location and time zone. Don’t worry, all-team retreats aren’t going anywhere and still yield great results, but culture building shouldn’t be reserved for just a few days a year. Instead, think about how you can ensure daily rituals are inclusive and help to facilitate the connection of your distributed team. 

Essential Strategy: Revisit your cultural values and use them as the basis to design location-irrelevant team building experiences using virtual tools. 

Hybrid Habit 7: Offer Equal Rewards

There’s nothing quite like getting a round of applause from your colleagues to boost confidence and morale. So, how can that experience be replicated virtually for a hybrid team? Show employees you care by going the extra mile with frequent announcements, gifts, and rewards using mail, email, and shared communication platforms. Just remember, in hybrid teams, you’ll need to take extra care to avoid the “there’s some cake in the break room" mindset by shipping gifts and perks to each employee. 

Essential Strategy: Distribute all gifts, rewards, and recognition equally using virtual-first channels or shipping services.

Hybrid Habit 8: Coordinate Team Schedules

If you’ve chosen to be hybrid, people will most likely be coming to the office based on personal reasons, like childcare availability or strength of their internet connection. That’s fine for deciding on an individual level, but what about on a departmental level? If team members will be coming and going as they each see fit, it can compromise the efficiency of communication and collaboration. Instead, think strategically about real estate overhead, team rituals, employee wellbeing, and project roadmaps to identify certain times that may be more beneficial for team members to gather together on-site than others.

Essential Strategy: Coordinate schedules of hybrid workers to be on-site on the same days for key meetings and events. 

Hybrid Habit 9: Repeat Important Announcements

Office gossip is not just valuable for hearing about the latest romance scandal, it’s critical for sharing and reinforcing operational updates via word-of-mouth. Without hearing chatter in the break room or passing a memo posted on the bulletin board, remote workers are more likely to miss news or an announcement. To ensure all employees are equally informed, create reinforcement opportunities in your virtual channels, like adding reminders to the agendas of all video call meetings, and posting two or three times on the community forum.  

Essential Strategy: Repeat news and announcements on at least three virtual channels (i.e. email, chat platform, project management tool) to confirm knowledge transfers.

Hybrid Habit 10: Seek Frequent Feedback

Measuring the success of your workforce’s remote work experience is like trying to hit a moving target. Whether or not employees are satisfied with working from home is dependent on so many x-factors, like the percentage of team members in the office, a child’s learning-from-home status, internet speeds, or support for workplace flexibility from industry and company leadership — all of which have changed frequently over the past two years. So, if you conducted a pulse survey early in the pandemic to collect opinions about workplace flexibility, your data has long since expired. New feedback needs to be collected at least quarterly to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of our post-pandemic society. 

Essential Strategy: Create a secure communication channel where employees can share any concerns about your WFH and your workplace model, and increase frequency of pulse surveys to at least quarterly.

It may feel inevitable that the future of work is hybrid, but whether or not your team dives or thrives in that model isn’t dependent on policy terms, it’s going to boil down to the ability to nurture a culture of connection, equality, and empathy. Without a commitment to change daily habits, your organization will be just building and operating on yet another contingency plan.