Hybrid work is the latest buzzword on everyone’s lips. While some companies have been working in a hybrid environment well before the pandemic, it’s a whole new world of work for many organizations. And it can be much more challenging compared to a fully virtual or in-office work model.
Fortunately, there are strategies and tools available to help make the transition to hybrid work smoother. Howspace is a digital collaboration platform that allows you to facilitate meaningful conversations in the hybrid environment. Let’s dive into how this platform can help you solve common hybrid work challenges.
1. Foster Strong Connections Among Employees
A top challenge with hybrid work is not feeling connected to colleagues, according to a 2021 global Howspace survey. Human interaction can be lacking when working remotely, which puts pressure on the mental state of employees.
Building connections among a distributed workforce requires being intentional. Having a shared virtual space within Howspace allows employees to communicate with each other, share ideas, support one another, and feel part of a community.
By paying attention to meeting design and asking check-in and check-out questions within Howspace, you can incorporate relationship building in all your group interactions. For example, simply asking how others are doing as people—not just employees—gives room for everyone to openly share their thoughts.
For more insights from the Howspace survey and strategies to make a smooth transition to hybrid work, get your free copy of the Howspace hybrid work model playbook here.
2. Reduce Presenteeism
Many employers have an underlying “proximity bias,” meaning they favor the employees they see in-person. Presenteeism can cause employees to feel pressured into coming to the office in order to get promotions or better pay—even if working remotely better suits their needs.
One way leaders can reduce presenteeism in the hybrid workplace is by making positive assumptions—which is in line with one of Howspace’s guiding principles. If you don’t understand someone’s decision, you can ask from a reinforcing point of view as to why that decision was made so that you can better understand their intentions.
You can help prevent proximity bias and other biases by having regular open and honest conversations with your employees within Howspace. Enable employees to have difficult conversations by allowing them to share their thoughts in whichever way they feel most comfortable, which could be in writing or anonymously, as seen below:
3. Deal With Digital Overwhelm
Feeling overwhelmed with more meetings and messages was another top challenge with hybrid work, according to the Howspace survey results. While virtual meetings are needed from time to time, they’re playing too heavy of a role in the hybrid work environment.
To combat this challenge, use meetings as the last resort—rather than the default way—to discuss things together as a group. Instead of scheduling live meetings for status updates and recaps, communicate asynchronously on Howspace instead. Howspace enables you to create a transparent dialogue between a limitless amount of people, no matter where they are. This makes it easy for everyone to take part in discussions and voice opinions at any point.
When you do decide a meeting is necessary, make sure participants understand the reason why they’re present and what they’re trying to achieve. You can set the context and agenda well beforehand, and invite participants to do some pre-work within the Howspace workspace to tune into the topic.
4. Overcome Coordination And Scheduling Issues
When employees are working from the office on different days of the week with schedules that don’t overlap, they might miss out on the benefits of face-to-face, synchronous work. But what if you don’t want to enforce rules for when employees should be at the office so as to maintain the flexibility people had during the pandemic when working from home?
Employees will likely feel good about travelling to the office to form meaningful connections for a specific purpose, such as for projects that require collaboration, brainstorming, or group creativity. But they won’t want to travel to a high-distraction environment just to fall behind on their deep-focus or admin work.
There is no cookie-cutter solution for organizations when it comes to the hybrid work model. The key to success is to co-create the model with everyone in your company. And that’s exactly what Howspace was built for—to inspire co-creation and boost engagement. Compared to just working with video conferencing and online messaging tools, Howspace enables ongoing and transparent collaboration between all participants.
5. Break Down The Human Capital Silos
Research has shown that younger workers have especially suffered during the pandemic due to having less time with their more experienced colleagues from whom they can learn new things.
To help you bring talent with different experience levels together, create a mentorship program. Senior employees can mentor newer employees and have regular sessions to track the newer employees’ progress. You can organize these sessions in a Howspace workspace where it’s possible to share resources and videos, have live calls, build custom activities to gauge progress, and create a learning journey for the newer employees.
Howspace differs from other online collaboration tools in a way that facilitators can guide the conversation and empower individuals to use the platform to drive deep change.
If you’re curious about Howspace, why not give it a try? You can access Howspace free for 30 days and experiment with the tips shared in this article by starting your free trial—no credit card required.