Remote and hybrid work arrangements provide employees with unprecedented flexibility and revolutionize how people approach their work. For many workers, the days of long commutes, endless traffic, and packed lunches in the break room are in the past. And for those who haven’t completely put the in-office days behind them, hybrid work arrangements allow them to reap the benefits of working from home while also heading into the office several days per week.
Remote work has become widespread, and its popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down. In fact, Upwork predicts that around 73% of teams will have remote and hybrid workers in the next five years. The move towards primarily flexible working styles makes sense when considering the benefits to employees and organizations alike. These include:
- Employees gaining more control over their daily schedule
- Employers saving money on office costs
- Increased productivity from team members
While remote work isn’t the ideal situation for everyone, it seems that the associated benefits are appealing to most. According to the results of a survey by FlexJobs, 97% of respondents indicated that they were in favor of some kind of remote work arrangement, whether that was fully remote or hybrid. Regardless of if you’re one of the 97% who loves the idea of remote work or the 3% for whom remote work doesn’t seem very appealing, remote and hybrid work arrangements seem to be the way of the future.
Updating your toolkit
Whereas managers were previously taught techniques for leading teams working together in the same physical space, this trend of remote and hybrid work calls for the implementation of new tools to get the most out of team members, regardless of where they’re working from. While there are certainly some best practices that apply in any scenario – including respecting and embracing differences and treating your team members with respect – some techniques simply won’t be effective in a remote work scenario.
When working from the office, managers can more easily evaluate their team’s productivity levels and conduct regular check-ins to help resolve problems as soon as they pop up. If an employee has a question, they might find a spontaneous opportunity to ask their manager when they bump into them in the hallway. Impromptu conversations while walking in from the parking lot may spark an idea for a creative solution so that a roadblock doesn’t even have the time to develop into an actual problem.
If issues arise while working remotely however, it’s very easy for managers to miss them – that is, until they become a significant problem. It takes more effort to ask questions or clarify meaning in a remote setup, and there are fewer opportunities for spontaneous conversation. So, while purposeful daily communication with each team member may not be the norm when working in person, it’s a great way to stay informed about problems and progress when working remotely.
Managing team time
Another consideration for managers who are shifting to leading remote and hybrid teams is the issue of helping their employees manage their time. Remote work can sometimes feel isolating, and employees may start to wonder about what they’re supposed to be doing and how it fits into the overall goals of the team and organization.
To avoid having employees feeling disconnected and bogged down, managers should work with team members to develop and clarify the objectives that the team is working towards. In pursuit of these objectives, managers and their teams should also agree on short-term goals to work towards. This helps the team feel like they’re accomplishing things more regularly and may help to motivate team members. It also gives a more explicitly defined meaning to each team member's work.
When working with team members to develop these objectives and short-term goals, there are two types of meetings that managers will want to know about: the goal-setting meeting and the progress-checking meeting. To learn more about what these two meetings entail and what makes them so effective, contact a ServiceSkills representative today. You can request a free demo of Managing Remote Teams, a course that’s loaded with information to help managers make the shift to effectively lead their teams in remote and hybrid arrangements.
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