Top 5 tips for hybrid work

Hybrid work schedules are becoming the norm at many businesses. Tom Merritt gives us five tips for making it work.

Working from home some of the time, and going into the office at other times—hybrid work—looks like it will be with us for a while.

So, how do you manage this dance of partially remote work? Here are 5 tips for hybrid work.

1. Be clear about expectations. Yes, you should have been doing this already but now it’s even more important. Give clear directives, make clear assignments and ask for reviews as needed. And make it clear what things need to be done in the office and which ones are fine to do from elsewhere.
2. Set people up for success both physically and mentally. Help employees have the equipment they need to easily move between home office and work office. That can mean good desks and chairs at home as well as good devices and services.
3. Pick the tools that work best for people. Zoom fatigue is real so maybe don’t do absolutely everything in Zoom, or any one tool. The old way was to pull everybody into a conference room for everything. The new way can be an ongoing Slack thread, a group chat or yes, a Zoom call. Even collaborative editing of documents can be sufficient for some things. Know when making a call is the right call.
4. Encourage good time management. The complexity of multiple workspaces and separation from the rest of the team makes scheduling more complex. You may want to offer classes in this and even take some yourself.
5. Be flexible. Yes you should have clear expectations and clear work boundaries but that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment a little with how things get done. That flexibility should include listening to employee feedback and including workers in decision-making.

Nobody expected this. So, be easy on yourselves as we all learn how to best do this new way of doing everything. And if you want some more tips, check out “Hybrid work is here to stay. The new challenge is making sure it’s not the worst of both worlds,” by Veronica Combs.