Hybrid working – for managers
With the coronavirus pandemic came the need to reassess the workplace and our entire way of working. Today, many people have a hybrid working life that offers flexibility in terms of where, when and how to work. This places new demands on the business and on your skills as a manager.For the past year, many of us have found ourselves in uncharted territory in terms of working from home, on the go or some hybrid of these. As a manager, this may have felt particularly demanding as you have had to manage your employees remotely and the distance between you may have seemed greater. As we have gradually returned to the physical workplace, is everything then back to normal?
The answer is no. You and your employees have acquired new skills and preferences in your working life. Some of you have embraced working from home and holding meetings online, whereas others have counted the days to when they would see their colleagues again in person, and then again others have felt somewhere in between the two.
As a manager, it is important that you set the course for how to benefit from your experience and enable your employees to find a work model where they perform their best. We can help you with that.
Below, you will find our recommendations for how you as a manager can get the most out of hybrid working. The recommendations were made in collaboration with Hybridledelse.dk.
Tips on hybrid working
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2. Establish a clear framework for hybrid working
Example I: You should give your employees the opportunity to work from home two to three days a week. Leave it up to the individual team to arrange when and how.
Example ll: You could choose to have “Work-Away Wednesdays” or “Flexible Fridays” where employees work within a special flexible framework. It might be arranged, for example, that no meetings are to be held on these days, which are to be used for tasks requiring full concentration. -
3. Make sure everyone is on board
Listen to your employees’ preferences and make allowances for individual needs. Your employees are likely to have different preferences and needs. Some might prefer to work from home permanently, while others might want to work at the workplace full time. Try to accommodate individual needs while staying true to the agreements made within the organisation or in your team. Communicate broadly and clearly, so everyone understands how the opportunities of hybrid working will be of great benefit. Have patience with your employees. Adapting to change always takes time. -
4. Prioritise the management task
It requires targeted efforts to build a strong team spirit within hybrid teams. In the coming period, management will be a complex task with many dilemmas. Managers need to learn how to navigate between two worlds and also find ways to have frequent, short, informal interactions online with employees who are rarely in the office. It is therefore crucial to free up the manager’s time, allowing he/she to focus on getting the employees and the company adjusted to the new reality. -
5. Make the office attractive
When the employees have more flexibility to work from home, you should reconsider how you can arrange the office to ensure that it functions optimally. Consider how to foster creativity when you are together in the office. How can you strengthen team spirit and promote cohesion? How can you make it more attractive to be in the office, and do you have the framework to hold meetings when some members of the team are working from home? -
6. Be open to new ideas
We are all in uncharted territory, and it is important that you do not set things in stone too quickly. It is okay for managers to try out different things. Test and evaluate frequently. Measure regularly not only employee satisfaction, but also your company’s productivity and cohesion.
Read more
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As a manager, you play an important role when an employee is showing signs of not thriving, and likewise when an employee is absent due to illness or is returning to work after a long period of absence.
Hybrid working
There was a pre-corona working life, then a new one emerged during the pandemic, and now you and your manager have the opportunity to create a more flexible working life based on your shared experience – a hybrid working life with a good work-life balance.
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