Hybrid work has become commonplace for businesses in America since the pandemic. Hybrid work is a flexible working model where employees work both in the physical workplace and remotely. Many employers have decided it's a better way to run a company, and job candidates are often drawn to hybrid or remote jobs. This system can work just fine for some businesses, but challenges can arise. The following are five hybrid work problems and how to combat them.
1. Impersonal Communications
When working in a hybrid or even a fully remote environment, the majority of communications among team members is likely to be through texts, instant messages, email, or text-based through some other platform. While text-based communication is convenient and can generally be effective, it does remove some of the personality from a conversation. You can't always convey a tone of voice, for example, so sometimes people can take comments the wrong way.
To help combat this problem, when sending a message try to always be conscious of how it may come across in text form. Think about what it would sound like if you were on the receiving end. Could it be misconstrued? Be clear about what you mean. Audio or video calls can remove much of the ambiguity. Remind your team that it’s sometimes good to take a little extra time to speak with each other this way.
2. Things May Not Happen as Quickly
A hybrid work environment can mean that not everyone is working on the same schedule. Some of the team are working from home, while others are at the office, and depending on how your company operates, staff might be setting their own hours. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can sometimes lead to delays in getting things done. If you ask an employee to take care of a certain task, they may not even get your message for hours, whereas if you were working together in the office, you could walk over to them and tell them what you need.
To deal with this problem, you can set a schedule and have employees stick to it, but this might actually interfere with the hybrid work concept that attracted them to your business. Another solution is to let them set their hours, but let you know so you have an idea of when you can expect them to take care of the task at hand. This knowledge can also help you more effectively delegate work to your team.
3. Work May Be Harder to Track
If you don't have the proper tools, it can be difficult to track the work being done remotely, even if some work is being done in the office. You may simply be trusting that your team is staying on task during their working hours at home, but it's entirely possible that they're doing other things when they should be working.
You can use software that tracks time and manages projects so that people are held accountable for their work. Ultimately, their output is the most important thing, so whether or not that is adequate should be your main concern. If someone isn't getting work done as needed, have a talk with them about how they can improve their performance. Have them work more from the office if needed, and see if work output improves. If it doesn't, the issue likely lies elsewhere.
4. Not Everyone is in the Same Environment
With hybrid work, workers may be doing their job from different environments at any given time, which may present challenges in some cases. For example, you may need to call an impromptu meeting, but while that might work for employees in the office, one remote worker might be working from a Starbucks or while getting an oil change at the car dealership. Another might have their young kids in the room. These aren't great environments to participate in a meeting, which might affect everyone on the call.
When you need everyone on the team together at once, set up a meeting well in advance so that everyone can be prepared and be where they need to be. You might also have regularly scheduled meetings at the office.
5. Some Team Members May Not Be Up to Speed
With workers scattered due to your hybrid work environment, some team members might not be well-informed on certain issues. If important information was emailed, they may not have received it right away, or perhaps you gave the information to a few staff members in-person, but remote employees didn’t receive it.
It can help to have a centralized place where all important information is posted. A productivity platform like Slack, Flock, etc. can be beneficial. You can create separate channels for different topics or teams, and everyone who needs to know can keep up with the latest information.
You might face challenges with hybrid work, but that doesn't mean you have to abandon it. With problem solving you can try to get things running just as efficiently as a fully in-person business.
