Hybrid and Virtual Teams Bring Change
Key Takeaways
- Hybrid teams face challenges such as cliques, uncertainties around benefits, and a harder time accessing some resources.
- Workplaces must be intentional about building culture on virtual teams, where it’s easy for people to feel disconnected.
- Clarity is key in both communications and policies. Team building efforts can help establish and maintain healthy communication habits.
Organizations can’t ignore the trend toward more hybrid work and the effect it has on teams. Even though slowness in the economy and inflation are making workers more concerned with salary and security, work-life balance and flexible work arrangements are highly valued.
When establishing an organizational normal for hybrid or virtual teamwork it is important to consider the values and culture the organization needs to be successful. It’s probably not a time for command and control leadership, but rather more collaborative and creative management. It’s a time to set well-considered expectations and ask for employee commitments that are rational, supportive, and healthy.
Managers, rather than C-suite leaders, are in the position to know what their employees and teams need. But they have to walk a tricky line, trying to align those needs with leadership priorities or demands. Managers need to be equipped with the time, resources, and training to maximize the potential of hybrid work.
Sara Sutton, chief executive, FlexJobs
Teamwork challenges of the hybrid office
- In-groups: Colleagues might resent a coworker who isn’t available at the office. Or a remote team member might be left out of a conversation that’s taken into another room after a difficult meeting. Those who see each other in person can create their own in-group, forming relationships and holding information not available to the remote worker.
- Uncertainties around pay and promotion: Should employees in the office get an extra stipend to reflect the cost of commuting and other expenses? Are in-office workers more likely to get promoted because managers observe them working every day? Even if leadership isn’t having these discussions, you can be sure employees are.
- Networks: Mentorship, sponsorship, and networks are also of concern. Networks make moving from one team to another a smoother transition and keep employees connected to leadership. “Ensuring equitable access in a hybrid environment cannot be emphasized enough,” said Tina Gilbert from Management Leadership for Tomorrow at a Future Forum event. Their survey found that “for every person who’s found it easier to find an executive sponsor while remote, 12 people have found it harder.”
Culture and virtual teams
With hybrid or virtual teams, culture is no longer shaped or maintained by walking through an office, offering clarifications, praising current work activities, doing quick accountability checks, and getting updates on workers’ lives. It has to be much more intentional and structured.
Kathleen Hogan, chief people officer, Microsoft
Communicating expectations
Managers can become stuck between the expectations of their leadership and the expectations of their employees. Managers often need additional coaching and training, which is not always available. They can be uncertain about their ability to influence change on their teams or about the resources they have available to them. Leadership needs to provide support to managers, and they can do this by making their expectations clear and achievable.
Managers need to offer that same clarity to their teams. Any gaps between worker preferences or styles and the manager’s or leadership’s expectations need to be addressed and resolved. Expectations need to be addressed around everything from promotion standards to how the team will celebrate birthdays. Clarity doesn’t necessarily mean certainty, but it does signal that these issues have been considered and there might be opportunities to reshape them in the future.
One-on-one conversations between manager and employees have become even more important in hybrid and virtual teams. Managers can no longer assume that even a big announcement they shared with several people will make the rounds to everyone who needs to know and understand. Managers should avoid making check-ins look like checkups. These personal meetings provide opportunities to communicate on professional and personal levels, both of which can foster trust.
Many employees today are prioritizing their health and well-being. Managers must find ways to accommodate this priority or it can become a source of tension. There’s a new digital exhaustion felt by many that managers should acknowledge and collaboratively find ways to combat it. Missteps will be made, and managers who help their teams see these as growth opportunities and who focus on finding new solutions will model a healthy growth mindset.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2022 Annual Report
Policy changes
As teams adapt to changing ways of working together, clarity is also needed around how, when, and where work is done. Teams are all different and they need to come to new agreements on how they will work together while meeting the expectations of their organizational leadership and managers.
When and why should employees come in to the office? Will managers or team leads need to come in more often? How will those off-site be kept in the loop and engaged?
Meetings have changed as more teams are hybrid or remote. There is a trend toward more frequent, but shorter meetings. Will this work for your team? What types of meetings does the team need? How often will the team revisit their need for meetings? What’s the team’s meeting etiquette?
Constance Noonan Hadley, organizational psychologist
How will the manager or the team prioritize time for members to connect in more personal and authentic ways? How will the team build the psychological safety needed for a team to engage in productive conflict and to hold one another accountable for assignments and displaying productive behaviors?
Is digital monitoring occurring? This can be a large source of tension, or micromanagement, and a trust issue. The issue of accountability is one the team should consider together.
Remote workers are justifiably concerned about their ability to have their work and achievements recognized as well as how they can advance in the organization. Managers should be initiating conversations on opportunities for learning, growth, and internal career transformation. They should be working with any learning and development (L&D) professionals to identify which skills are lacking on their teams and then to create or offer the type of learning their teams or the individuals on them need, which could lead to career advancement.
To do right by their remote and hybrid employee, managers must find new ways to build team culture and create new practices to make flexible work patterns sustainable and functional.
DiSC® assessments and virtual team building
Good communication is one of the biggest factors in the success of hybrid and virtual teams. You can use the tools of Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors® to establish and maintain good team communication habits.
Everything DiSC Comparison Reports provide information about how each team member compares to their colleagues. They show where you and a coworker or manager fall on behavioral continua (outgoing to private, tactful to frank, etc.). Teams using Everything DiSC® on Catalyst™ can simply navigate to the Your Colleagues section to see these comparisons.
The Five Behaviors® Team Development helps teams shape new, more productive behaviors, whether in-person or remote. Team members gain interpersonal skills and a common language for ongoing success.
Everything DiSC® Management guides managers to more effectively manage, motivate, direct, and develop staff. This tool will help remote managers tailor their approach to what each employee needs from them to find success.
Rather than just hoping hybrid and remote teams will cohere, managers can be proactive. They can use the framework of DiSC to have important conversations with their team and build a strong culture.
Posted 12/02/2022
