5 Challenges of Hybrid and How You Can Overcome Them

New working models like Hybrid working present new opportunities for employees. However, the hybrid workforce model also comes with various challenges along with its benefits.

In a hybrid working environment where teams work half-onsite and half-remotely, you need to come up with new best practices to manage teams effectively. Whether it requires new tools, new work procedures as well as management practices, you must manage everything if you want your efforts to be successful for your business.

Below in this article, you will find new approaches that can help you overcome these challenges.

1: Employees Feeling Isolated While Working from Home

Challenge

When employees are working in the office, then it is easier for managers to look after their employees’ physical as well as emotional well-being. But while employees are working from home or from anywhere in the world, then it becomes more of a challenge to look after employees.

You need to keep in mind that working from home can negatively impact mental health since some people may feel lonely or neglected with no one to support them. Some people might also feel like they are confined in a small space.

A comprehensive wellness strategy should be implemented where you can combine the advantages of working from home with social learning, connection as well as growth opportunities available in the workplace.

Solution

In this regard, business owners must have good management that works regularly to check employees to see how they are doing, how they are managing with the new working adjustments, and if there is anything else they can assist them with. Managers of your organization must be trained so that they are able to recognize warning indicators when things seem going wrong with your employees.

2: Keeping Your Teams Connected

Challenge

It does not matter how large or small teams are, if you want to connect your office team members to the ones that are working from home, then this process can be complicated. Collaboration between team members is more than necessary that holds an organization together and helps in more creative ways. It can be unrealistic to expect employees to solve the problems on their own.

Solution

A solution to this challenge is to use online collaboration and work management tools like ProofHub, ClickUp, Wrike, and Trello. Using tools like this which come with various chat, discussion, and proofing features can help team members to stay connected no matter where in the world they are working from.

3: Unintentional Favouritism

Challenge

Mostly this happens that employees who are working in the office get more recognition, more evaluations, and in some cases even get promotions or pay rises than those who are working remotely or who hardly visit the office.

Solution

As a business owner, you need to make sure that managers have the necessary tools and training to guarantee that all workers are treated equally when it comes to performance reviews. As any unintentional favouritism is complicated to eliminate due to its very nature, it becomes crucial to make sure that employees working remotely have equal opportunities to be successful.

Managers need to be aware of any connection between where someone works and how he or she is being recognized for his or her work. Managers must ensure that employees are evaluated on their results instead of their presence in the workplace. The workplace should be promoted as a place for collaboration and adding value to the organization.

4: Building a Culture

Challenge

One of the largest challenges that a hybrid workforce can face is that it might undermine the development of strong, united company culture. The question comes how you can get all the team members together so that they can accept the same values while they are working from different parts of the world?

Solution

In situations like these, it is necessary that the working culture must align with today’s new hybrid working style. There is no need to abandon everything behind, however make some changes to make it applicable to everyone who works for you.

Celebrations can still be done virtually or any other way. You can make everyone get together at a certain time and place on some occasion. Inviting employees to the office for any kind of event or meeting can help create and maintain a healthy work culture for your organization.

Employees will definitely want to join to collaborate and build relationships if it is appropriate for their objective. This way, the culture of your organization can become much more powerful.

5: Handling Distributed or Hybrid Teams

Challenge

Managers can ensure accountability in the office by closely monitoring employees’ activities. Managers can’t monitor employees each second of the day in a distributed or hybrid team.

Solution

Some managers switch to micromanagement, although it barely succeeds. However, managers must use some other effective methods.

Here is what you can do:

Employees should be held responsible for the results they produce, not for how much time they have spent on a certain task. You must use the same management practices and uphold the very same norms for all employees, no matter where in the world they are working from.

Conclusion

As the organizations are adapting to a hybrid working model, managers have to use the solutions that they have never had before and are unfamiliar with to make this transition successful. They’ll have to shift from conventional leaders to hybrid leaders.

I hope that this post has provided you with a deeper understanding of the most common hybrid working difficulties and helped you with strategies for dealing with them. If you want to take your business to the next level adapting to this new tradition, then you can explore the post explaining how you can create a hybrid work schedule that is capable of meeting modern work requirements.

If you enjoyed reading this article:

Clap: so others can find it
Comment: if you have a question/suggestion you’d like to ask
Follow: ProofHub to read all the articles

Also Read:

1. 5 Awesome Tips For Dealing With Difficult Clients
2. 8 Toxic Behaviors That Cause People To Push You Away and How to Fix Them
3. What Is Work Management Software And How Does It Help Your Team?

5 Main Challenges of Hybrid Working and How to Tackle Them was originally published in ProofHub Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.