27 Sep Managing a Hybrid Team
When the pandemic hit, the public service asked all of its employees, at all levels, to work remotely with little notice or support. We set up our equipment in our home o!ces, at our kitchen tables or wherever else we could find, and kept working. We allowed many public services and operations to continue uninterrupted and that was due in part to the technology that helped us connect with and support our partners supporting Canadians.
When we look back at this transition, many of us see it as a huge win … and without a doubt, in many respects it was. However, while many teams transitioned easily to remote work, others struggled to adapt to new processes, attitudes, behaviours and team dynamics that would allow them to thrive not only during the pandemic, but long term.
How can we, as managers, work to improve that?
Well, I wish I knew all the answers. but I do have a few recommendations from my own experience that I thought I would share with my fellow managers to help us as we transition to hybrid experimentation.
1. If you haven’t already, consider creating a Team Charter for your group. A Team Charter can help balance individual preferences with team needs and operational requirements. It should clearly describe how everyone on your team can work together when everyone has varying work arrangements.
On my own team, we’ve developed a Team Charter that is embedded in my onboarding materials for new team members. This helps new employees know what our team is all about from the onset and outlines:
- our vision, mission and values;
- how we meet (e.g. team meetings, monthly manager check-ins, team lead bi-weekly touchpoints);
- the tools we use and why;
- email and information management preferences;
- a team organizational chart with roles and responsibilities; and, most recently;
- the addition of a hybrid charter (when we’ll go in office, what activities we’ll conduct onsite, and general best practices to adopt as a team).
2. User Profiles are another great way to highlight individual preferences. They help team members get to know one another better.My User Profile template asks employees to highlight:
- their contact info
- their role
- times they like to work
- how they like to communicate
- what they value
- areas of expertise; and,
- for a little fun, a fun fact.
3. Being intentional with how we connect is paramount. Gone are the days where employees could knock at your door or visit your cubicle for an informal chat. Now, most of their days are filled with regular work meetings, with little opportunities to connect as a team. Managers need to be intentional in scheduling this time. On my own team, we have:
- optional social meetings on Mondays and Fridays for “water cooler” chats
- a mandatory mid-week SCRUM meeting for employees to highlight:
- the tasks they worked on earlier in the week
- what tasks they are tackling for the remainder of the week
- any barriers that may hold them so they can ask for support from management and/or their colleagues
Meetingless Wednesdays to protect employee time and prevent meeting burnout. This allows me to give my team uninterrupted time to focus on tasks, training or other items we classify as “GSD”(get stuff done).
An open calendar approach, which is a great way to create visibility across a team. It helps team members respect boundaries, work hours, breaks (don’t forget those!) and so much more.
4. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a fan of the many Office365 integrations available in my organization. Using the right technologies can help improve your work as a hybrid team.
Here’s how we use four of my favourites:
MS Teams: We created a dedicated MS Teams space with channels
- devoted to each work stream of our directorate
- for social content (e.g. recipes, dog and cat pictures)
- for workplace wellness
- for research and learning
Note: We’ve linked these channels to other key tools like OneNote, Planner and Lists.
OneNote: We created a Teams OneNote to track meeting minutes across all our files. This:
- helps to support leads and back-ups on files
- creates transparency and knowledge sharing across the team
Note: We created a supporting OneNote Protocol so that team members use this tool in the same way, establishing a standard for consistency.
Planner: If you’ve ever created a Kanban (a visualized workflow), think of Planner in the same way. You can set up Planner in a number of different visual ways to support your team. On my team, we organize our board by file deliverables. It highlights:
- new requests
- current requests in progress
- completed requests
Planner also allows you to create tags to:
- identify the type of requests
- add employees to keep track of where work is assigned
- set due dates as a bring forward system linked to your email
Lists: Our team provides a service to many clients across our organization so lists is a great tool to keep track of all our files, as well as capacity across our team. Our list tracks files by:
- category (what level of service we provide)
- assigned employee
- project lead and branch
- timelines for support
- deliverables
It also links to the corresponding OneNote and GCdocs (our information management repository). It’s a great way to see how files have progressed at any given moment and to help assign new requests within our team.
To help with updating this regularly, we also have a weekly reminder set every Friday that reminds employees to update this list as needed so that as I prepare for our Monday team meeting and senior management briefings, I have the most up-to-date information on all files.
5. Not every meeting needs to be an on-camera meeting. Yes, I know, being on camera is a recommended best practice for many virtual meetings, however, when working in a hybrid context, being on camera every single day, for multiple meetings each day can quickly lead to screen fatigue or worse – disengagement. Try integrating new best practices when it comes to meetings. On my team, some of our team meetings include the following header:
This is an audio only meeting. Feel free to keep your camera off and take this as a walking meeting.
These are just a few ways I manage my team in a hybrid context. While this article focuses one the technical tools that can support you, it’s also important to acknowledge the empathy, trust and transparency required in managing a team in any setting … not just hybrid.
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