The shift to hybrid working raises a wide variety of challenges and opportunities. Read on for some great ideas from business leaders that you can apply, and some questions for you to reflect on.
“Working from home makes it much harder to delineate work time from personal time. I encourage all of our employees to have a disciplined schedule for when you will work, and when you will not, and to stick to that schedule.”
Dan Springer, CEO of DocuSign to Fast Company, 2021.
The discipline required for working from home is a new skill for many of us:
- Would schedules help you combat the always-on culture?
- What can you do to role model this best practice?
- What else can you do to maintain this work / homelife balance?
“The most important keys to remote work at a startup have been weekly stand-ups. At Hive, we all get on Zoom once a week to chat and give shoutouts to the team.”
John Furneaux, CEO of Hive, in the Hive.com blog, 2022.
Communication has been a key area of challenge for leaders:
- How can you structure your stand-ups so that they are productive? The key is in the name ‘stand-up’ – keep it quick!
- Would a weekly meeting suit your team, or do you need it more frequently? Many places have really short daily check-ins.
“Success in a hybrid work environment requires employers to move beyond viewing remote or hybrid environments as a temporary or short-term strategy and to treat it as an opportunity.”
George Penn, VP at Gartner, in HRExecutive.com, 2020.
So many organisations are enduring hybrid working, hoping it will go back to how it was – or they are relying on the short-term fixes that got them through to now:
- What’s your attitude to hybrid working – do you see it as an opportunity, a short-lived innovation or the long-term future? What impact does your thinking have for you and your team?
- What about your team and your managers – what is their position?
- Are there any opportunities that you are not yet realising?
- What temporary fixes are you still relying on, that you could replace with better long-term solutions?