Hybrid Work: Management Best Practices

Temps de lecture: 4 minutes

According to this Adecco study, nearly 80% of the world’s leaders believe that their companies will now organize themselves according to a hybrid work model. How will managers have to adapt? And what skills will they have to develop to cope with this new work environment? Here are all the management best practices to effectively manage hybrid teams:

[This article is taken from our White Paper “Future of Work: Here Comes Hybrid Work! “>>> access the full white paper for FREE]

Developing your skills

The Adecco Group study also revealed that 75% of all employees believe the most important soft skill of hybrid managers is the ability to trust their team. This is followed by agility in work organization, remote communication, and the ability to create team cohesion. In addition, for 63% of employees, the manager must also show empathy. These are the soft skills they need to succeed.

Also read: [CEO Voice] Philippe Pinault: Hybrid Work Best Practices

Strengthening Communication

At a distance, it is necessary to communicate more and be more explicit than in person. Plan regular individual and group meetings to monitor the progress of your projects and provide feedback on everyone’s work. If possible, take the time to greet all your team members every day on your internal social network, and to check in with them on a regular basis. This will allow you to stay connected remotely and foster a positive work environment.

Moreover, try to make yourself more available to your teams so that they can ask for help when they need it.

Finally, we must not forget the importance of physical communication. According to the work of Albert Mehrabian, 93% of communication is non-verbal, involving body language, facial expressions and voice intonation. The manager must therefore give priority to physical interactions as much as virtual exchanges, as the former are often richer and a source of creativity.

Focusing on the informal

To foster team cohesion, the manager can recreate informal interactions using a video conferencing tool. A good practice is to organize virtual coffee breaks or happy hours with team members or other departments. If you like to go off the beaten track, you can also suggest fun challenges: a contest for the best photo of the week, a blind test, a riddle game, etc. These team building activities will strengthen the bonds between the members of your team.

Empowering teams

The manager will also have to adopt a less hierarchical management style. Indeed, if the directive management style works well in person, this is not necessarily the case remotely. According to the McKinsey consulting firm, small teams function better with a management style that empowers them because it pushes them to give the best of themselves. This is what Netflix has put in place: a culture of freedom and responsibility, where employees are encouraged to make decisions independently.

Managing by results

When managing teams remotely, it is not possible to have real visibility on how much time employees spend working. In this context, you can no longer manage in a “visual” way: it is necessary to build a results-oriented culture. Employees must therefore be evaluated according to the quality of the work they deliver, and not according to the number of hours spent at the office.

This method has several benefits: it reduces interruptions to work, reengages employee, restores confidence in management, but also saves time for the manager, who spends less time monitoring what everyone else is doing.

Also read: [Expert opinion] Bertrand Duperrin: Toward a Hybrid Work Model

Leading by example

Understand that a good manager is a manager who leads by example. For example, if you telecommute a few days a week, you’re telling employees that they don’t need to be at the office every day to be productive. Moreover, if you want to promote the right to disconnect, try not to solicit employees outside of their working hours.

To discover more management best practices, we invite you to watch the replay of our webinar on “How to manage hybrid teams?“.

[Testimony] Managing hybrid teams at Relaytion

At Relaytion, an international group specialized in customer relations, managers manage and monitor the work of their teams using the Talkspirit collaborative platform. Deployed in just three weeks among 500 employees, the tool facilitates the dissemination of information between the group’s different sites, simplifies the daily management of teams (both remotely and face-to-face) and allows managers to coach their teams easily.

When employees have a question, they can ask it directly on the chat to get an answer, whether their manager is physically present or not. For Adeline Larrieu, Operational Manager, “it is often much more efficient and faster than sending an e-mail“. The platform also facilitates exchanges between managers: videoconferencing, in particular, allows them to share information and make group decisions.

In addition to being a collaborative tool, Talkspirit is essential for maintaining cohesion between remote teams. Since its adoption, Adeline Larrieu notes “an increase in chat messages between consultants and managers: we created several groups to stay motivated and strenghthen the bonds between day shift and night shift teams. […] The Talkspirit platform has allowed us to maintain a group dynamics and to bring the team closer together, both face-to-face and remotely.”

Also read: Centralizing exchanges within an international group: the testimonial of Relaytion

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Managing in a hybrid work model means strengthening your communication skills, showing empathy and giving more autonomy to your teams. In addition, this new way of working requires employees to adopt tools that facilitate remote team collaboration. With features such as chat, videoconferencing and document sharing, collaborative platforms are therefore ideal for meeting the needs of hybrid teams.

Access White Paper

This article is excerpted from our White Paper “Future of Work: Here Comes Hybrid Work!“, where you will discover: the 8 main challenges of hybrid work; the best practices to follow for managers, HR, internal communication, IT and employees; as well as the tools to implement to facilitate hybrid working.

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Author: Emmanuelle Abensur