You may think your hybrid strategy is going well, but do your employees agree? Jabra, a Danish audio equipment company, recently surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers around the world and found that just over half of employees believe their companies are prepared for hybrid work—compared to 74% of leaders.
There’s a lot at stake to getting hybrid right. For one, talent retention: Over half of employees are saying they don’t want to work for a company that requires full-time onsite work. A well-executed hybrid strategy can also improve employee engagement, productivity and satisfaction, thereby strengthening company culture.
A poorly executed hybrid workplace, on the other hand, could lead to talent loss and cause employees who stick around to feel unmotivated, isolated and burned out.
My company has worked with clients on designing and executing hybrid workplace strategies. The following are what we’ve seen as the biggest warning signs that your hybrid strategy needs help:
Employees feel like they’re always “on.”
If employees are feeling isolated or burned out because of poor work-life balance, you need to help them set healthy boundaries by clearly communicating the company’s expectations for hybrid work, modeling the behavior as a leader and empowering employees to follow suit.
Setting away hours on chat platforms, not sending emails in the middle of the night, taking breaks and vacation days—and being upfront about all of this—are just a few examples of how you can demonstrate to employees that they have some autonomy in designing their day. Just because their home and office are one and the same doesn’t mean they never get to leave work behind.
Noticeable dips in performance could be another indicator of dwindling employee wellbeing. If people are regularly using avoidance techniques such as showing up late to meetings or opting out of using their cameras during videoconferences, it could mean that people are feeling depressed—and that your hybrid strategy needs to better connect them to their teammates.
You’re losing the talent war.
You’ll know your hybrid strategy is lacking if your attrition rate is suddenly up. When an employee doesn’t have strong ties to the company or their teammates and is logging most of their hours from home, the friction to switch jobs is dangerously low—especially when you add in a hot job market.
For hybrid to work, you must foster strong relationships among your teams and help employees feel connected to the company’s mission. This is more difficult when people aren’t physically together, so your hybrid strategy must include intentional relationship-building.
During a big transition such as the move to permanent hybrid work, it’s also a good idea to dig into what makes employees stay. Is it because they love your mission and find their work meaningful? Is it the people? The opportunities for career growth? Whatever the reasons, reinforce those to make sure your best people have a good reason for sticking around.
Employees seem confused about what hybrid means for them.
The Jabra study referenced above also found that 28% of employees feel there’s a lack of clarity around when to work onsite and what work should be done there.
This perhaps isn’t surprising, as “hybrid” is a nebulous term, and companies are using it in several different ways. It could mean anything from going into the office a few designated days a week to having complete autonomy to choose when and where you work.
In other words, it’s critical to clearly define your hybrid vision and then codify the workplace definitions of hybrid as well as any associated workplace norms. What does hybrid mean for your organization overall? What does it mean for each role? What are the expectations for being in the office? How will collaboration work? What’s the protocol for a meeting with some people on site and others logging in remotely? If you’re requiring people to be in the office some of the time, why?
People are searching for an anchor in their work life, and it’s important they know the extent they’re free to manage and define their own workday.
Your leaders measure employees by hours worked, rather than productivity, outcome and results.
Seventy percent of employee engagement is driven by their manager, yet in the hybrid world, leaders can’t rely on the same playbook that worked when everyone was in the office all the time. They must know how to build intentional touchpoints with their people and maintain strong relationships virtually.
Organizations must coach leaders to reframe their perception of what makes for a hard worker. High visibility—the worker who comes early, stays late, answers emails at all hours of the day—is no longer relevant (and never should have been in the first place).
Instead, managers should focus on the results employees produce. They should retool productivity measures, tying them to the work that gets done, not the hours logged. Leaders must know how to set and cascade goals and hold regular progress meetings so people know where they stand before it becomes performance review time. Above all, leaders must demonstrate trust in their people, so employees aren’t anxious about being “seen” as a hard worker.
Hybrid is the future, but going hybrid isn’t a simple feat. It requires intentional action that builds into a new culture of performance. If you’re noticing any of the symptoms above, it may be a sign that you need to finetune your strategy to begin reaping the rewards in talent retention, employee engagement and culture.
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November 23, 2021 at 07:00PM
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4 Signs Your Hybrid Strategy Isn’t Working - Forbes
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