After a years-long tug-of-war between bosses and workers over return-to-office mandates, millions of Americans have settled into a compromise: Hybrid work.
The number of hybrid roles steadily increased after the pandemic hit, climbing from 18% in May of 2020 to 53% in November of 2023, according to data from Gallup. Since then, while the number of fully remote roles has nosedived, the share of hybrid jobs has held relatively steady, and a working model that would have been unthinkable to most people just a few years ago has become a fixture of modern life.
But managing these hybrid employees has become a leadership problem that companies have yet to solve, according to a new survey from software company TechSmith and research firm Global Workplace Analytics. Only about one quarter of companies have trained their people managers to successfully lead hybrid and distributed teams. And just one quarter of employees feel their organization has adequately supported them as they attempt to change how they work in hybrid environments. Those statistics mirror a recent Gallup report that found 70% of managers say they’ve received no formal training on how to manage hybrid teams.
“The problem is that while a majority of employers have embraced a change in the ‘where’ of work, many have not adopted new practices and processes to support it,” the TechSmith report reads. “This mismatch lies at the heart of many of the problems organizations and their people are struggling with today.”
The hybrid challenge
Managing hybird employees comes with its own particular set of challenges.
When teams are spread out rather than consistently working together in the same space, there’s a greater chance that workers will feel disconnected from each other and disengaged from the company when they’re not properly managed, experts say. But there are some key qualities that managers can be trained in to avoid these pitfalls.
Hybrid managers need to be intentional in every aspect of the job, Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, tells Coins2Day. That includes setting specific goals, and being crystal clear with employees about what those are. “What is it that you’re expected to produce in a given week?” She says. “What’s the level of cooperation you need to do that? And how am I going to measure it?”
Jim Harter, chief scientist of workplace management at Gallup, adds that setting up a workflow in which each member of a team understands their responsibility is key. “What often gets forgotten in hybrid work is the accountability,” he says.
Teaching bosses how to communicate well—even if they’re speaking through a computer screen—is also a critical part of battling a sense of detachment on hybrid teams, according to Lister. That means being a careful listener, having meaningful and inclusive conversations with employees, and tailoring the approach to each individual.
“We have to be much more mindful about how we’re bringing people into the conversation,” she says. “How different people communicate, and how they learn, and how they want to be rewarded.”
In 2023, Gallup studied managers who were trained to have more meaningful conversations with employees in the hopes of improving engagement in a hybrid environment. When managers began implementing these practices, engagement for their team as a whole rose as much as 18%, and engagement for managers themselves was as much as 22% higher. Turnover also dropped as much as 28%, and managers had a 28% higher likelihood of improved performance relative to their peers.
“It’s important for companies to be thinking about [how teams are managed] because the trends are not going in the right direction,” Harter says. “It’s not a difficult switch to flip, but once you do, a light just goes off in managers and they start to really listen and learn things about their teams and what they need to succeed.”
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