Is Your Team Ready to Become a Hybrid Team? Four Tips for Success for Hybrid Teams

What is a Hybrid Team?

A hybrid team is formed of employees that are based both remotely and in the office. As the pandemic is changing the way we work, the chances that your team will become a hybrid team are increasing.

Over the past few months, many have learned overnight what it means to work in virtual teams. Managers have gained initial experience in leading from a distance. There was hardly any room for skepticism: after all, it had to work somehow. The corona pandemic has created a modernisation and digitalisation in many places that has been avoided for years. The topic of home office is more present than ever. And suddenly another topic arises: hybrid collaboration. It means when a team works partly in the office and partly at home. 

Hybrid teams will play an essential role in the working world in the future. But in addition to advantages such as reduced office space and increased productivity, they also bring some challenges. How do you lead a hybrid team? What can a collaboration look like? In this article, we want to highlight the four essential factors for good cooperation in hybrid teams.

Four Tips for Success for Hybrid Teams 

1. Technology

Most companies have now created the technical requirements for working at home. Work and collaboration should be possible for employees, regardless of where they are working. Cloud solutions and virtual resources are in demand, as are good video conferencing tools. 

However, what is not so easily possible when working in hybrid teams is to call out to your colleague over your desks, nor to go quickly to the colleague in the next office to clarify a few things with them. Successful hybrid teams therefore work with messenger and chat programmes, like Slack or WhatsApp. They capture such situations digitally and keep distances short. Project management tools are ideal for working within a department or a project. Assign tasks to colleagues without any problems, set deadlines and see current statuses at a glance: that is no problem at all with tools like this. It also saves time, meetings and phone calls because all those involved have the same level of knowledge with the help of such tools.

2. Hybrid Meetings

Meetings in hybrid teams can quickly become a challenge: some of the colleagues sit together in the meeting room, others are connected from home. There is a risk that such meetings will become less efficient or that colleagues who work at home will not be as involved as those on-site. Physical communication between people has been shown to be more effective than virtual, because facial expressions, gestures and body language are included. For this reason alone, meetings in hybrid teams should always take place with an activated webcam . A 360-degree camera can be installed in the meeting room so that the employees at home have the impression of being a permanent part of the team. This always focuses directly on the person who is speaking. 

It is also important that meetings are not only held for the sake of the meeting, but that there is a defined goal for each meeting. A predetermined agenda and a certain timeframe that must not be exceeded are also necessary. It is confirmed again and again: meetings that are kept short are more effective . The moderator, who leads through the agenda, should not only keep an eye on those in the meeting room, but also keep an eye on the at-home colleagues and regularly involve them.

3. Flow of Information 

Communication is the be-all and end-all. In hybrid teams, it is even more important than in purely virtual or purely on-site teams. As soon as a few employees work in the office, we use the short official channels. But part of the team is excluded from this, namely those who are currently working from home. But how can the flow of information work so that all information reaches everyone?

Hybrid teams like to have a short daily meeting of around fifteen minutes, during which important topics are discussed and status updates are given. There are also logs that are stored centrally in the cloud and that every team member can view. To help ensure a good flow of information, managers can also set up rules of availability or schedule digital events, like a weekly shared coffee break. 

4. Social Exchanges and Team-Building

Sometimes, people chat in the kitchen at work. This means that those at home are left out. But this also means that they are not constantly exposed to their boss's scrutiny in the way that those on-site are. Hybrid structures tend to drive a wedge between the team. It is all the more important that managers react in good time and enable social contacts within the hybrid team. Chatting with colleagues is important. Involve colleagues working from home in good team-building measures. After all, not all employees enjoy working from home. Some feel isolated and left alone there.

So that team spirit does not suffer from a hybrid structure, managers should take action. They should think about things like: What has worked well so far? Would a virtual team lunch break work? Or maybe a regular breakfast meeting? Or even an after-work social? Just keep what works and adjust it so that no one is left out. In some hybrid teams, even shared online games or a virtual pizzeria have proven effective in fostering social exchanges and generating team spirit.

So, how does collaboration in hybrid teams work? In summary, it means creating the technical prerequisites for this and ensuring smooth communication processes. The company culture also plays a pivotal role: the company and its executives must not make any distinction between employees - regardless of where they are currently working.