Tips for hybrid teams
I was working with hybrid teams way before it was cool. 5 years that is.
There's 5 common challenges your hybrid team is likely to encounter at some point. Based on my own experience, here’s how to overcome them and prevent similar pains from reappearing:
- Keeping communication in one place
Specifically, you’ll want a platform for knowledge sharing and decision making. Pick either a project management software with a complete set of features for your team’s needs or a dedicated knowledge management tool.
- Facilitating social connections [and ensuring no one is left behind]
There’s dozens of activities to consider if you want your hybrid team to stay connected:
- Having mandatory coffee chats for each team and switching teams around every now and then
- Connecting random employees, regardless of the team they belong to, for a virtual
- Regularly holding in-person [or not] events where all employees can meet up
- Re-building team culture from the ground up
The best solution is to finally start working on a Company Handbook and sticking to its best practices.
You can only re-build and reinforce a strong hybrid culture by taking ALL of the above into account and making sure everyone is aware of their role within the team and their contribution to that shared vision.
- Finding talent
The worst mistake companies could make right now is to only advertise their roles as hybrid ones. This automatically removes you from the feed of anyone looking for a remote role. Even from someone open to working from the office for one day a week or a week/month.
- Setting performance evaluation standards
Take a step-by-step approach to tracking and measuring performance in a hybrid team setting. One channel/problem at a time.
E.g.: For seeing if your team’s wasting time: Experiment with time tracking tools to find out if certain tasks are blocking your team. You might want to assign more people to an activity or reorganize your time estimates if milestones are repeatedly missed or postponed.
