The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
The world is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. It has left the world to deal with the changes that it has brought about. The changes that we talk about here are not just in the medical sphere of life but in every other aspect of it. Work, entertainment, travel, education, and everything else has taken a hit and has been subject to change. In the business aspect, a major change was seen in the form of work from home. This promoted a new hybrid work culture which the world is still learning to adjust to.
But what is this hybrid work culture?
Well, to understand the hybrid work culture we can look at any office that has employees following the work from home culture. The employees in this business are not physically present at the office all the time. They sometimes work from the office and sometimes they work from home. The hours are not divided and in most cases, it is up to the employee to segregate the amount of time he/she will spend at home in the office. By doing so the company, as well as the employees, enjoy the benefits of working from home as well as the positives of coming to the office. This is the hybrid work culture that has risen from the pandemic and is taking the world by storm.
Since this hybrid work culture is quite new there are no set principles that the new managers and company owners can work on. If you are in the position of managing the team at an office you are going to face some very obvious and prominent new challenges as the members of the team will not be available to you physically under one roof at one time. You are going to face a mammoth task in coordinating, meeting deadlines, assigning tasks, keeping a check, and so on.
To be able to pull off managing a business under such conditions you will need this checklist-
The Checklist
Infrastructure
Before the pandemic It was quite easy to make sure that all the employees in your business get the required infrastructure at their disposal for the best possible results. With the hybrid work culture setting in, the employees are now working from home and that means that they would also require all the equipment at home.
Make a small list of all the things that are essential for proper working for the employee. Usually, these are things like a laptop, internet, company phone and so on.
Software
While infrastructure is important to the new working conditions there are also other requirements that need to be fulfilled if one wants the productivity to stay. Since the work culture has changed you will also need to change the softwares and technology that are used for smooth communication. The hybrid culture will surely require new softwares like work slack and others to ensure quick and efficient coordination between different members of the team. Coordinating things like deadlines, tasks, comments, suggestions, alerts, important dates and so on also need new technology as they can not be done efficiently on old mediums like emails and calls.
The new form of working, i.e. the hybrid work culture, is new for everyone and it will take some time for the people to settle into it. Since everyone is not the same, there will be some employees who will take a little longer to adjust to the new work conditions. It is highly necessary to make sure that every employee feels comfortable working in such conditions. They will need help and support from time to time and might also feel overburdened by the work. It obviously gets harder to monitor the stress situation of employees when they are not in front of you while working.
You will need to construct a certain plan by which you can regularly monitor the stress levels of the employees. A certain way of doing this is to make sure you remain in direct contact with them. Make sure you provide a safe space for them to talk and share how they feel. You could do this yourself or you could appoint a counselor who can do this work for you. For corporations that have more than 50 employees, you would definitely need one or more counselors to monitor the employees.
Get-togethers
While the hybrid work culture is working out well for the companies so far we must not forget the importance of bringing all the people of the company together every now and then. This will increase the team spirit and will also keep the employees motivated to achieve the targets set for the company as a whole. Regular events and compulsory physical appearances might do the trick. The events can be anything from a casual party to a team meeting to address certain matters.
The new working environment may not be the best for everyone but it is definitely here to stay. It is better to make peace with it and try to take out as much as we can from this. You can look to this checklist for any sort of guidance regarding your business needs for hybrid working.
