The question shouldn't be where we work together but how.
Whiplash
It’s hard not to get whiplash with the spate of recent announcements by companies that they want employees back in the office. In many cases, the same organisations were hailing the rise of remote work in 2020 as COVID-19 emptied workplaces around the world. While the pandemic sped things up, it has brought into focus the decades-old challenge of creating the ideal balance between
- collaboration and focus work
- privacy and public engagement
- shared workspaces vs infividual offices
While there are undoubted benefits to in-person collaboration, a full return to office is likely to be a pipe-dream as employees have seen the benefits of working from home. There continues to be a substantial gap between how employees and their employers feel about the benefits of remote working. In any case, I don't think that it's about where we work in the future. It's about how do we bring people together to do their best work.
Think about the future
To be successful, companies will need to design working practices around the three basic modes of attention:
- Controlled attention, where flow is important, and you can focus on a task that requires full attention, e.g. writing or thinking deeply. In this mode, distractions, interruptions and external stimuli are unwelcome.
- Stimulus-driven attention, switching focus as things grab your attention, e.g. routine tasks, dealing with Slack messages, emails, etc. Distractions are tolerated or even welcomed. These tasks lend themselves to being completed in open settings where social interaction is readily available.
- Rejuvenation, where the person takes periodic breaks to recharge. Depending on personal preference, this may involve social interaction, or taking some quiet time for yourself, or a mix of the two.
Research from Gartner underlines how flexibility can benefit knowledge work:
- 62% of knowledge workers are high performers if given significant flexibility in how to work. This falls to 27% if they are given little flexibility.
- People are 3 times more likely to be high performers if they can choose where, when and how they work.
- Fully remote teams of knowledge workers most commonly have high levels of enterprise contribution
- High levels of inclusion are most highly associated with hybrid teams. Fully on-site teams are least likely to show high levels of inclusion.
While a high number of organisations claim they are promoting return-to-the office to encourage innovation and to promote organisational culture, Gartner data shows that fully on-site teams are least likely to show high levels of engagement, trust or discretionary effort. These teams are least comfortable taking risks as well as least likely to seek chances to innovate outside of meetings.
Value the work, not the place
It seems self-evident that people should structure their time so that they can focus on work requiring controlled attention at home, and leave meetings and more mundane tasks for days when they are in the office. Some companies are trying to enable this through an ‘anchored hybrid’ model where teams agree to be in the office two days a week, usually Tuesday and Thursday, and perhaps one other. While this is a step in the right direction, it still seems to value where work gets done over how work gets done.
In-person collaboration is a fantastic way to drive value, deepen relationships, and exchange ideas. Flexibility can enable some people to boost their productivity while balancing their work and personal commitments. For others, the social benefits of and structure of an in-office environment enhances their working experience. How do we best manage the polarity between in-person collaboration and the benefits of working remotely?
What should companies think about so that they can find their best path and enjoy the benefits of the new world of work.
1. Foster Deeper Connections
Act inclusively. Women and other marginalised groups are most anxious about the return to office. Make sure you’re reaching out and actively listening to your staff’s concerns.
If not everyone is in the same room, each individual in the meeting should dial in from their computers. Having a group or groups in a room on shared video and some individuals dialled in puts those who are remote at a disadvantage. It’s easy to avoid this.
If teams are split across multiple locations, consider re-aligning team memberships around hubs or save some money on office space and invest in regular offsites team members can travel to instead.
The best predictors of a team’s productivity is its energy and engagement outside meetings. Ensure that you’re creating opportunities for your team members to interact (online or in-person) frequently, and give room for social ties to grow. Social time and ties are critical to a team’s performance.
The highest-performing teams have some things in common when they meet.
- Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.
- Members face one another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic. This is arguably easier online and emphasises the need for everyone to use their camera if some people are remote, even if most of the people are sharing a physical space.
- Members connect directly with one another—not just with the team leader.
- Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
- Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.
2. Respect Team Autonomy
Trust your teams to arrive at the right mix of in-person and remote collaboration for them, bearing in mind the make-up of the team and its geographic spread. If you’re currently asking people to hot-desk when they come in, think about whether you would be better served creating dedicated team co-working spaces within your office. If you want to maximise the benefits of in-person collaboration, it makes sense to give teams a small area with some standing desks and whiteboards where they would be able to collaborate and leave artefacts in the office.
With hot desking, it’s hard to know where people will be. If teams had their own hubs, it would always be easy to know where to expect to find someone from a particular team.
Different types of work are best suited to different environments. Groups will work most productively in a dedicated shared space, while individual creative endeavours are best suited to more flexible/home-based working. Think about the kind of work the team will be doing and help them understand when and where they can get the most from their work location.
Each team will have a different sense of where they can get most value from in-person collaboration. Be curious - ask your people leaders what works for each of them and make sure good practice is shared.
3. Create Personal Growth Opportunities
If you’re investing in your people’s working space, make sure you invest in them too. Everyone working for you should have a career development plan. Put systems in place that enable you to evaluate and reward people based on outcomes, not presenteeism. Watch out for signs of proximity bias.
4. Prioritise Wellbeing
Be serious and show you’re serious about work-life harmony. Invest in mental health first-aid training. Train people leaders to hold honest conversations about mental well-being, stress and burnout with their team members.
One common concern raised about working remotely is the blurring of work and personal time, with the risk of working extra-long hours and burnout. Encourage your people to keep regular hours, take lunch, take calls while out for a walk, and watch for signs of burnout.
Give people space. There’s no point marching people back to the office so they spend the whole day on Zoom. One of the benefits of co-location is serendipity – the random connection and chance meetings that can aid collaboration.. Make sure people leave space in their calendars so this can happen.
5. Pursue a Shared Purpose
Make sure everyone in the organisation understands the company’s goals and how the work they do contributes to it. Establish regular two-way communications with regard to the business, its evolving strategy and cross-functional dependencies. Don’t just broadcast. Make sure you’re listening too, whether that’s through surveys, town halls, Ask-Me-Anythings, etc.
Every meeting should have an agenda, or at the very least a stated purpose. If the meeting is online, consider the attendance carefully - does everyone need to be there, or can a representative group meet, to minimise context-switching?
In a hybrid environment, it can be harder to ensure everyone has the same context/shared understanding. Take notes in meetings and share them with the whole team so that everyone has the same information about progress and decisions that have been taken.
6. Keep Trying to Get the Balance Right
The most valuable form of communication is undoubtedly face-to-face, with videoconferencing not far behind, though the value of video calls falls the more people there are on the call, so really think about who needs to be on the call - who can catch up asynchronously, or how else you can communicate if you need a large meeting.
Experiment and share your learnings with your team and other people leaders.