The Future of Work: Navigating the Hybrid Workforce Landscape

The changing landscape of the workplace is becoming increasingly layered. The divide between digital and physical sites of interaction has shifted, and companies are now increasingly embracing the possibilities offered by remote and hybrid work models.

A study conducted by McKinsey in late 2022 revealed that 35% of employees in the United States work from home full-time.

While some companies have adjusted to this changing landscape by going completely remote, others have embraced the hybrid workforce model. But with such a new way of working and engaging, new challenges exist in creating an efficient, cohesive workforce.

In this article, I’ll look at specific best practices that guide how to manage a hybrid workforce, including how to encourage social interaction and engagement, boost productivity, collaborate effectively, and improve employee morale across the board.

What is a hybrid workforce?

Terms like “hybrid employee,” “work from home,” and “hybrid workforce” have come to the forefront of our changing workplace environments over the last several years.

Widespread and ongoing digital transformations have resulted from the huge boost in virtual engagement and interactions caused by the global coronavirus pandemic.

As we explore specific best practices for navigating the hybrid workforce landscape, let’s clarify what we mean by “hybrid workforce.”

A hybrid workforce is not one in which employees work part of the week from home and part of the week in the office. That refers instead to hybrid employees or a hybrid workplace.

Rather, a hybrid workforce includes employees who work remotely during their entire work week together with employees who work entirely in-person from a central location, such as an office or retail space.

This term could include a company with a majority of in-person employees but outsources certain tasks to fully remote employees, such as accountants or remote administrative assistants.

Or, a hybrid workforce could refer to a company with only a few centrally located in-person employees and a majority of remote employees. Most hybrid workforces have more of a mixture of in-person and fully remote employees.

Best practices for managing a hybrid workforce

Advanced project management skills are needed to navigate the complexity of an interdependent hybrid workforce, taking into account the differing needs of employees working from different time zones and situations located potentially all the way across the globe.

New communication styles and approaches to workplace culture can help embrace the benefits of a hybrid workforce and involve every employee.

Let’s take a look at specific practices for creating a cohesive, connected hybrid workforce.

1. Establish clear channels of communication

Navigating the complex and multilayered world of digital communications can be a major challenge facing hybrid companies.

In order to prevent messages from getting lost across multiple channels, establish a clear order of operations when it comes to sending and receiving communications. Define clear rules of thumb for how and when to use which modes of communication.

For quick and urgent messages, employees can use a workplace messaging app, such as Slack, Discord, or Google Hangouts. Within those apps, employees can stay organized via distinct channels: a virtual water cooler channel can provide space for non-work-related chat messages, while particular projects can be organized into their own private channels.

Requests to meet with the boss, project manager, or HR can be communicated via email rather than a phone call or text message.

Similarly, suggested edits on shared documents or feedback on a project proposal should be communicated through the correct channels. Businesses can rely on a PDF SDK (software development kit) that allows PDFs to be modified and processed directly within current company workflows and applications without needing third-party applications.

In addition, each employee should know which video chat method to use for virtual meetings to avoid a lag in productivity as everyone waits for one team member to show up to the video chat.

HR can print out a copy of a document outlining the intended channels of communication for different types of messages and post it in a visible place in the office. And a digital copy can be “posted” in the general essential work documents in the shared virtual workspace.

2. Create an adaptable calendar

One of the biggest challenges facing a hybrid workplace is navigating so many distinct calendars, which can even be spread across time zones, to schedule meetings and communications. To this aim, technology will come in handy.

Choose a digital calendar system that can be tailored to suit your organization’s needs. Individual employees should be able to share their working hours and view their personal work calendar in their own local time zone.

An adaptable digital calendar will provide automatic updates to reflect the latest shifts and changes in availability across the entire workforce.

Employees hoping to schedule a meeting with a collaborator or colleague can view blocked-out time windows, such as paid time off and annual leave, and schedule around them.

3. Embrace slow communication

Unlike an in-office workplace setting where employees or project managers can immediately pop by a colleague’s desk, ask a quick question, get the answer, and then get back to work, hybrid workplace communications often feature a long delay.

Project managers should not expect to receive instant answers from employees, nor should collaborators expect immediate responses to project-related questions.

While this may at times be a frustratingly slow communication process, there are benefits to this style of working. Hybrid workforces should place more of a premium on individual self-directed task completion.

Project feedback and other quick communications can be conveyed via comments and tags on shared digital documents.

The responses may not be immediate when two employees are collaborating across time zones. Still, once each employee clocks in, they can instantly read and incorporate the notes left by their distant colleague.

This can create a much more efficient workflow that prevents wasted time during repetitive meetings. Instead, employees will be held accountable for meeting deadlines and making progress on their own time schedule.

4. Use digital tools to stay on task

Both in-person and remote employees in a hybrid workforce will rely heavily on effective project planning software and time-tracking tools to keep track of hours worked, project progress, and task management.

Digital time tracking tools allow managers to confirm how many hours an employee has worked throughout the week, maintaining a general level of accountability for remote employees.

Project planning software include a multitude of features, such as virtual to-do lists that update automatically once a team member has completed a task.

Visual organization tools or idea board software like Trello or Miro can allow employees, introverts and extroverts alike, to participate in visual collaboration, a powerful tool for ensuring that team members are on the same page.

Employees can also use shareable, collaborative digital documents such as Google Docs, ClickUp, or Microsoft Office Online that allow employees to create and share documents, leave notes, tag collaborators, suggest edits, and view updated versions.

5. Establish defined roles and expectations

When employees sign on to work with your organization, they should clearly understand their role, their responsibilities, and how they are expected to work within the company.

Defining the boundaries of each role and establishing clear expectations from the get-go helps to prevent confusion, resentment, or a feeling that any single employee is doing more than their fair share of the work.

At times, in-person employees may complain that remote employees are not as engaged, productive, or hard-working, but most of the time, this is simply because they cannot witness the work that’s being done.

Clarifying job expectations in each employee’s contract creates a safe structure that all remote and in-person employees can rely on and trust.

Look for contract templates with features such as customizable options and remote signing capabilities so that you can easily manage and oversee the status updates for each contract.

6. Create social cohesion with virtual events

In a traditional in-person office space, employees would interact daily without going to any great lengths to do so.

Friendships and friendly professional relationships can evolve spontaneously in that physical setting as co-workers discover things they have in common and strengthen social bonds.

Facilitating social engagement for both remote and in-person employees through team-building activities is important. Create social events that include both remote and in-person employees. Host a virtual quiz night with employees who have never met in person, teaming up in healthy competition. Offer prizes and rewards for the winning team.

Or create a virtual theme night that invites employees to don costumes or arrive with a joke or story to share.

Creating a structure for the event can help lessen the pressure on more introverted employees and boost overall morale. Try sending a gift basket to remote employees so everyone can enjoy the same complimentary food, drinks, snacks, and goodies, creating a more unified festive atmosphere for a company-wide social gathering.

Virtual hangouts and digital office parties are a good way to ensure social cohesion among the entire staff, which is vital to creating a healthy company culture. Employees who feel more engaged in company culture will also feel more included and excited to go to work. And when they feel engaged, employees will be more highly motivated to work better.

Social cohesion creates trust and improves communication channels between employees and management, across project teams, and between individual employees.

Negotiations and interpersonal problem-solving challenges are resolved more easily when there is an underlying foundation of cohesion and inclusivity.

Final Thoughts

Navigating the challenges and changes of a hybrid workforce is made easier today by the fact that we have increasingly advanced technological aids to help facilitate collaboration across time zones and distances.

In a nutshell, follow these best practices:

• engage remote and in-person employees in mixed digital social events to create unity across a hybrid workforce.
• use digital communication and collaboration tools such as digital calendars, visual organization software, project management software, and digital time tracking tools to boost productivity and connectivity for hybrid collaborators.
• embrace new approaches to workplace communication to allow space for both in-person and fully remote employees to thrive, thus completing tasks in a more efficient and streamlined way.

With digital transformation and hybrid work models on the rise across all industries today, it is a great time to navigate and work with the complexities and specific requirements of a hybrid workforce.

Working across geographical boundaries is the future of work, so learning to adjust and boost the potential of the hybrid workforce is key to every organization’s developing success.

First published on August 11, 2023.