Hybrid working – 5 top tips

Without a doubt one of the most challenging elements of Covid lockdowns was to organise home working. Years later, many businesses have continued with the arrangement finding it actually works for them. The most common approach more recently is hybrid working. This approach has been welcomed by both employers and employees. For many employees the novelty of working from home wore off when they started to miss the interaction with their colleagues, found working from their kitchen dining table wasn’t that comfortable or great for home life.

Here are our top 5 tips on hybrid working for you

1. Create a hybrid working policy

We can’t underestimate the benefit of a good, clear policy setting out expectations for both employer and employee. It helps to answer questions, is the reference point that everyone should go to first and avoids confusion and conflict.

Think about how you will manage hybrid working, how will a rota be decided, what happens if someone needs to change their office or home working day, what about those who don’t want to return to work in the office at all or vice versa. Your policy should cover all of these areas.

2. Fair treatment

Out of sight out of mind is the old saying but it’s worrying how quickly that can become the reality when some members of the teamwork from home.

Ensuring how you communicate, which is inclusive of all individuals regardless of how and where they work, will help to foster an inclusive culture. Having regular communication means everyone knows who they can approach if something is a problem. Any concerns in performance can also be quickly addressed.

Try and find ways to have those ad-hoc informal conversations that would occur naturally if everyone was in the workplace. Perhaps arrange a catch-up call during the day, just checking in with people asking them about their plans after work for the weekend, just like those conversations happened around the drinks machine.

Demonstrate that individuals working remotely are still part of the team when considering opportunities for project work and promotion.

3. Consider how you will manage performance

Regular communication and check-ins also help manage performance concerns. We have all become accustomed to video calls and other platforms that have helped us to stay connected and work together.

Managing performance should not be about ‘spying’ on your staff about how much time they have spent logged on but about performance output.  

Setting clear objectives, KPI’s or targets that relate back to the Company’s goals help everyone to understand what is required of them, how they in turn add value to the end goal. As a business you are then monitoring performance outcome instead of a presenteeism culture.

As we always say, having a policy is one thing but nothing beats training your managers on how they can implement the policy.

4. Focus on team happiness

Some individuals are great at working on their own whereas others work better when they are around their colleagues. Knowing your team members helps managers to understand what makes individuals happy and therefore more productive.

Recognising that some may want to be in the office more than others or benefit from more regular interaction and discussing with the individual how that can work in practice is a step that will help to create a focus on team happiness.

Remember those regular check-ins we mentioned earlier? Diarise those into the day, it doesn’t have to be all manager and team member, but team members should be encouraged to catch up between themselves too, just like they would when they were in the office.

Taking breaks, even when working from home, is essential. Taking steps to encourage employee wellbeing improves team happiness. It’s well reported that people working from home end up working more hours than they would if they were in the office. Train managers to look for out for signs of burn-out.

5. Be tech savvy

Some team members will just get on with new ways of working with new technology but not everyone will. Be aware of those who may need additional support to get set up and need training.

Whether you have internal IT support or an external IT provider, they will need to check that the infrastructure allows individuals to securely access Company servers and files. Do people know who to contact if they are experiencing IT difficulties?

Think about providing additional training to help individuals improve their IT skills. Team members who are being developed and improving their skills set are usually more satisfied and productive.

Lunar HR Consultancy

If you would like any further human resource advice or guidance on creating your own hybrid team, or the policies that should accompany it, we’d love to help. Simply give our professional HR consultants a call or drop us an email to arrange a conversation.