hybrid work Archives - Amanda Bernardo

Are team retreats essential in a hybrid environment?

admin — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 20:48:00 +0000

Next week, for the first time in three years, our team members in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, Victoria and Edmonton will all be united for a team retreat.

Even with reduced travel budgets, investing in team retreats remains important in the context of hybrid work. These retreats serve as valuable opportunities to bridge the physical and virtual gaps that can arise in remote collaboration.

By bringing team members together in person, even for a short period, retreats enable deeper connections, strengthen relationships, and foster a sense of unity. They provide an environment for open communication, enhanced collaboration, and team building activities that can be challenging to replicate solely through virtual means.

For us, our retreat will offer a chance to align goals, clarify expectations, and rejuvenate team spirit through shared development opportunities and training to enhance our collective subject matter expertise as human-centred leaders in our organization. We’re also fortunate to build in time with not only our Assistant Deputy Minsiter, but our President as well – a unique and valuable opportunity for our team members.

Team retreats, even if yearly, can therefore support hybrid teams for several reasons:

They provide an opportunity for team members to interact face-to-face and build stronger personal connections. This helps foster a sense of camaraderie and trust, which can positively impact collaboration and teamwork.

They offer a dedicated time for open and effective communication. Discussions, brainstorming sessions, and team-building activities can improve overall communication and understanding among team members.

They create an environment that encourages teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving. This shared experience can lead to improved collaboration even when working remotely.

They allow you to engage in focused discussions and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding team objectives, roles, and responsibilities.

They offer a break from routine, creating an opportunity for team members to recharge, bond, and learn together. This can have a positive impact on morale, motivation, and overall team satisfaction.

They create a change of scenery and an environment conducive to fresh thinking, sparking new ideas and approaches that benefit the team’s work.

Team retreats ultimately create valuable opportunities to connect on a deeper level and strengthen the overall effectiveness of the team. But, if you don’t have the budget for travel, you can still consider a virtual retreat with dedicated uninterrupted time that focuses on similar goals and objectives.

The point here is that in order to achieve results, we need to find time to focus on one of our most important assets, our people. The return on this investment is one you can surely count on.

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Hybrid work needs to be about more than work location

admin — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 22:37:00 +0000

There’s an unspoken reality on hybrid work that we haven’t fully (or have barely) addressed in our change communications that I feel needs our attention …

I recognize there are many realities, barriers and systemic problems that need to be addressed within the public sector – some of which I’ve flagged in the past – but today I would like to address “pleateuing” as a risk to long-term growth of our employees and our ability to retain talent.

While this post uses the example of how plateauing can impact regional employees, the reality is proximity is just one barrier. Other barriers such as lack of diversity and inclusion can also impact one’s ability to see a long-term career for themselves if opportunities are not made available, or employees are not empowered and supported to compete for them.

When hybrid work plans emerged in the public sector, many regional employees became unsure of their fate and long-term careers in the public service. Some of these employees automatically received telework agreements, while others were forced to explore new departments/agencies, and many more questioned what this meant for their careers long-term.

The split among regional and NCR positions has always been there, but hybrid made many more opportunities available – highlighting that talent from across Canada could meet head office needs and the needs of Canadians.

But if we lose what was gained in the pandemic, and revert to a hybrid work culture that promotes proximity above talent, what does that narrative say to those employees outside the NCR or those within it who don’t see themselves here long-term.

If such opportunities are the exception and not the norm, are we really creating a hybrid culture where hybrid employees from across Canada equally, and equitably, take on roles of leadership or other senior roles outside of the NCR?

This is where many employees feel that their career can plateau, in other words hit a wall that would prevent additional growth in their career as a result of the proximity to Ottawa that is still largely insisted upon for many roles, teams, and organizations.

And what do employees often do when they hit said walls? They likely take proactive steps to address their career needs and goals, and pursue new opportunities for growth and development.

If our hybrid culture is the same across the public sector, and roles outside of Ottawa (including those in leadership) are few and far between, the reality is those new opportunities will likely be in the private sector and our ability to retain talent will be diminished.

We cannot think of hybrid work merely as where people work – in office or at home – but rather where talent resides and how we can empower it to meet our needs in serving Canadians.

This requires a much larger horizontal change across government and a new narrative where growth is in fact possible from coast to coast to coast.

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Tips for a return to office

admin — Sun, 18 Dec 2022 02:31:00 +0000

With this week’s return to office announcement for all federal public servants (noting many never left), I couldn’t help but spend the weekend diving deeper into the research on hybrid work available outside of government.

One being this great podcast by Adam Grant with guests Nick Bloom and Tsedal Neeley. Within it are a few key highlights I think are incredibly important as we move forward with our own plans requesting employees to be in office 2 to 3 days a week.

Here’s what they are:

– We’ll need to understand interdependency to determine the number of days onsite (while days can’t be challenged, the interdependencies can be mapped out to improve these onsite days across a department, more specifically a branch or team).

– collecting feedback remains key, organizations need to continue to collect data, and evaluate what’s going on to ensure they can respond accordingly (or potentially pivot).

– we’ll need to confront the challenge of choice versus coordination (will employees choose which 2 days to go in, or will teams take a coordinated approach with fixed days).

– we’ll need to understand and prevent various biases that can arise from hybrid work (e.g. proximity / unconscious biases – to name a few). This will be especially important as we evaluate the individual experience and truly try to address equity across the public service.

– when it comes to equity, real equity, we’ll also need to understand employee feedback and what this reveals and how can we use the various tools that we have today in order to have more diversity, more representation and more inclusion.

– the office should no longer be a destination. It should be a tool (thinking of the office in this way will shift it from a place to an organizational enabler where the benefits can be maximized when used or reverted elsewhere if the benefits are minimal).

– employees will need to feel both your digital and your physical presence (this may require new training for many leaders and managers, consider this as part of your change management plan).

– leaders have to develop emotional trust. People have to believe that leaders see them, that they care about their difficulties, that they care about their preferences, that they care about their careers and career development. They’ll need to convey all of those things through their actions and deeds.

– we’ll need to be explicit around the rules of engagement in hybrid (and pay particular importance in equipping managers with this information as they’ll maintain these rules directly with employees).

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These are just a few of the many findings you’ll find in this podcast and many considerations we’ll need to be mindful of as move into implementing this approach by March 2023.

While many have questioned this approach, though we may not be able to shift it we can improve how it’s rolled out with effective change management. This will be extremely important in addressing the large resistance we’re already seeing.

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Managing a Hybrid Team

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 20:21:00 +0000

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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