office-culture

How to Maintain Office Culture in a Hybrid Office Setup

The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic more than seven months ago. And the future still looks uncertain. We don’t know when our societies will return to normal—or what precisely normal looks like.

 

The pandemic has normalised remote work. Amid the upheaval, many organisations are trying to introduce a hybrid office setup.

 

How will these arrangements affect the way we connect, communicate, and create? Will remote work be the great equaliser in terms of gender equality and diversity?

 

When employees work remotely, building and maintaining a company culture becomes more challenging. How can companies cultivate a culture of productivity and belonging that brings teams together—even when scattered around the world?

 

Keep reading for tips on how companies can foster a positive office culture, even in a hybrid office setup.

Common Types of Work Arrangements

While remote work is proliferating, it’s not a universal working arrangement quite yet. It’s essential to understand the three most common modern work environments as you consider your own office setup.
Co-Located
In a co-located work setup, all employees work inside of a traditional office environment. They communicate with each other in person.
Fully-Remote
A fully-remote work arrangement is one in which everyone operates from a location of their choosing. In this setup, employees communicate via email, chat apps, or video conferencing platforms.
Hybrid-Remote
The hybrid-remote setup is becoming the most popular, in which some employees work from home while others work in an office. Sometimes employees are remote part of the time or alternate days in the office. Hybrid-remote is a middle ground between the other two arrangements. It has several benefits, which is why it’s the arrangement we’ll continue to focus on in this article.

Benefits of a Hybrid Office Setup

Hybrid office setups are gaining popularity due to the constraints imposed by Covid-19, but they’re nothing new. There are several benefits to mixed work. These include attracting more talent, saving money, and improving team morale.

More Diverse Talent

If your employees can perform their jobs from remote locations, your company will have access to more talent. No longer will you have to limit your talent pool to your local area—you can expand to hire talent from anywhere in the world.

According to research, 63% of UK workers enjoy multi-culturally diverse teams. 44% of workers believe their companies should promote cultural diversity within their workplace.

Your employees are the foundation of your organisation, so the best in the world should represent your company. Having top talent in key positions could prove very advantageous.

Cost Savings

When you have fewer people in the office, it leads to cost savings for your organisation. When a portion of your team works from a remote location, you can rent a smaller space, and cut back on utilities.

All these things allow you to keep more money in your business’s bank account. Then, you can spend more on growing your company instead of accommodating employees.

Improved Team Morale

In a survey of 2,000 office-based UK employees, 53% say choosing where they work from has a positive impact on their mental health. 75% of those workers are happier working from home.

When employees are happier, they are more productive. They are more open to collaboration, more creative, and more loyal than those in-office.

By allowing employees to work from wherever they want, you can tap into the power of happy employees and harvest the benefits.

Sharing Company Values

A significant part of any company’s culture is its values. They are the morals that guide your organisation and should sit at the forefront of your employees’ minds.

 

Your company’s values are an understanding of how your business operates and how you produce a positive work environment. Here are a few ways to share and support your values with remote workers:

 

Outline your values from day one: Make sure your values are prominent on your organisations website. Ask candidates value-centric questions during interviews

● News and Updates: Create and share a weekly newsletter for employees and encourage teams to share and promote news and events happening in their area. An intranet site and social media are perfect platforms for this. They can share how they have integrated company values into their workflows

Digital peer-to-peer recognition: Encourage employees to nominate co-workers they feel embody company values. Award kudos to those individuals via team chats which encourages others to join the conversation showing appreciate in the comments or by the use of GIFs and emojis. 

Building Camaraderie

In a traditional work arrangement, the environment employees work in emits your company’s culture. You may have an open co-working space, ping pong tables, or a bring-your-dog-to-work day. Remote employees typically work from their home office, kitchen table, or even their couch.

 

In a hybrid office setup, there’s no watercooler for employees to chat around. This makes it challenging to form and preserve a sense of camaraderie.

 

To implement camaraderie among all of your employees, consider the following:

 

Virtual socials: Start an after-hours video chat, paint night, game night, or virtual cooking class

Chat channels: Use applications like Microsoft Teams to start fun channels for employees to bond over shared interests

Wellness activities: Encourage employees to try wellness activities at lunch. They can practice meditation, pilates, yoga, or virtual biking classes together

Building Trust and Autonomy

In an office-based work arrangement, establishing trust and autonomy is initially a challenge. This is especially true for remote work setups.

 

While you may allow remote work, some managers may not be comfortable with the arrangement at first. The concern is that if managers can’t see employees performing their work, how do they actually know if they’re working?

 

The only way to move past this concern is with trust.

 

Put enough time and energy into your hiring process. Then, you can test an employee’s potential through whiteboard exercises, presentations, and more. If your employees prove themselves early and often, you won’t need to worry about whether they’re actually working or not.

Improving Communication

Communication is often an obstacle to promoting remote office culture.

 

When everyone is working from somewhere different, things can fall through the cracks. Simple interactions now require more time and follow-up.

 

Establish communication norms through response time frames, chat best practices, and email etiquette. Set communication standards to prevent employees from being barraged with messages. This reduces interruptions and makes communication easier.

 

To improve communication among employees and make maintaining company culture easier, try:

 

Sending a company survey: Ask employees for honest feedback. Use it to improve existing communications initiatives and develop new ones.

Leveraging technology: Give employees collaboration tools that incorporate video, chat, screen sharing and that let your team-mates know when you are busy, in a meeting, away from your desk or free to chat. . . If you are using Microsoft Teams consider voice enabling the platform to connect your staff to the outside world making communication frictionless.

Developing weekly “happenings” emails: Share the goals and achievements of employees and departments. This will bring your organisation together.

Communicating Internationally

In a hybrid environment, an 11:00 AM company-wide meeting at headquarters in London is a 6:00 AM conference call for a remote worker in New York City.

 

While this is certainly possible, it’s not ideal. While one group has had the morning to catch up and is gearing up for lunch, the other is starting their day early with a long day ahead. However, missing the meeting may lead to a greater sense of isolation from the rest of the team.

 

If you have team members in Hawaii, they have no choice but to miss the meeting, as it’s 1:00 AM and they’re sleeping.

 

Hiring globally and operating as a hybrid team means you must overcome time zones. To put all employees on equal footing, consider adopting asynchronous communication as the primary source of communication.

 
Asynchronous Communication

 

Synchronous communication is when all participants present at one time. This arrangement falls short for hybrid office setups. Working synchronously across time zones favours those in the office and puts remote employees at a disadvantage. It also negates a flexible work schedule, which is one of the most significant advantages of going remote in the first place.

 

Asynchronous communication allows participants to communicate as they are available. Intermittent gaps punctuate discussion, which serves remote teams well. Employees don’t need to be online at the same time to respond to emails, collaborate in cloud-based software apps, or create conversation threads.

 

To move your team toward asynchronous communication, reimagine your workplace functions:

 

● Could you replace daily or weekly stand-up meetings with a written status update?

● Could brainstorming, problem-solving, feedback, and decision-making move from in-person or Teams meetings to a written thread? How?

● What does your organisation miss when eliminating face-to-face conversation? Can you replicate this asynchronously?

 

Adopting asynchronous communication methods doesn’t just benefit remote workers. It is also beneficial for employees who work at headquarters when they’re sick, take vacation, or miss a meeting. This type of communication benefits future employees as well. They can look back on archives to bring themselves up to speed on all things pertaining to their job and office culture.

Making Face-to-Face a Priority

You can’t demand that all employees meet face-to-face all of the time. However, you can provide more opportunities for team members to see one another via a screen.

 

Seeing and hearing other employees allows team members to pick up on subtle cues such as body language and voice inflection. This helps employees bond and identify any potential issues. It helps people feel like they’re a part of the team, and establishes trust among employees.

 

So, while asynchronous should be the goal, encourage face-to-fact interaction when possible with:

 

Timezone-based video meetings: Set meetings for employees in similar time zones. Assign them to sessions with themes, to learn skills from other employees. They can learn skills such as negotiation, presentation abilities, or grammar 101

Weekly 1:1s: This may not always be possible, but designate time for managers and employees to meet individually. This will help build connections, establish trust, and celebrate accomplishments

Establishing Company-Wide Initiatives

To promote your organisations culture, coordinate department-specific retreats or company-wide initiatives. Use these to bring people from different locations together, virtually or in person.

 

Hold events like this several times during the year to keep your company’s spirit alive. Consider the following examples:

 

Company retreats: Bring everyone together in one location once or twice a year to bond as a team without the pressures of work

Company-wide contests: Begin virtual competitions. Think work-from-home bingo with fun prizes, or host virtual trivia nights

All-hands meetings: Update the entire organisation on milestones and important events. To do this asynchronously, consider producing a video that team member can watch at their convenience

Using the Right Technology

What we’ve learned from the coronavirus pandemic is to accelerate technology infrastructure. Technology should support alternative, remote-first types of working. Business leaders should leverage this opportunity to gauge its impact on employee performance. Then they can build a base for investing in technology and more progressive policies for flexible work arrangements.

 

A recent global poll revealed that 54% of human resources leaders believe poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote work is the most considerable barrier to its success.

 

Your organisation must create and maintain a positive, collaborative, and inclusive culture. Then, you must support that culture through the right technology. If you’re struggling to collaborate with remote workers, it’s not too late. Evaluate and upgrade your current videoconferencing tools, messaging platforms, and file sharing practices.

Choose Tech That Provides a Hybrid Solution

Developing a strong hybrid culture, where employees feel trusted and empowered to complete their work, requires continuous effort to maintain.

 

Make the most out of your hybrid office setup by focusing on technology solutions that support an environment of trust so that you can keep propelling your organisation forward.

 

Formation’s DevOps team embeds cloud communication technology into your existing apps and processes. Born in the cloud, Formation’s first mission is to deliver advanced unified communication. Now, we also apply our transformative model to managed IT services.

 

If your organisation is transitioning to a hybrid office setup, contact us to learn more. Our solutions can alleviate the pain of day to day tech maintenance.

We Are Here To Assist You