The last few years have seen many companies across industries transition into a hybrid workplace model
, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This new working model gives employees the flexibility and freedom to perform their duties, whether from home or the office. The value of a hybrid work model has increased significantly among employees. According to a 2021 survey by Gartner, more than 43% of hybrid workers reported flexible work arrangements helped them achieve productivity, while 30% said less commuting enabled them to become more productive.
Flexible work arrangements increase an employee’s time and productivity at work. That’s because employees are usually more efficient when allowed to work independently from anywhere and as much as they like. However, hybrid workers often face a fair share of challenges that prevent them from achieving productivity.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the effective ways you can boost the productivity of your employees in a hybrid world:
1. Communicate Clear Goals and Instructions
Unclear or ineffective directions from the management can be incredibly harmful to the productivity of your hybrid workers. Typically, employees need to understand their roles and the associated expectations to carry out tasks and become more productive. That’s because unclear instructions and expectations from the management often make employees feel confused, resentful, and less motivated. As such, they focus more on their survival than helping the company achieve its long-term goals.
It’s crucial you maintain clear and consistent communication with your employees when working in a hybrid workplace. To achieve that, clarify the responsibilities of each position and establish clear and realistic performance goals and standards that can guide your employees in performing their respective duties. Be sure to have regular interaction with your employees to help them understand how their roles support the company in achieving its goals. While it can be challenging to keep all your hybrid workers on the same page since they work from different locations, leveraging tech solutions can make communicating and interacting with them easier.
2. Create Professional Development Opportunities
Providing professional development opportunities to your employees can help them keep their knowledge and skills up-to-date with industry trends and work more efficiently. If you give your hybrid employees the resources and training to help them advance their careers, they will perform their roles better and become more productive.
Offering opportunities for professional development in your company is also a huge motivator for most employees since many want to work where they can advance their potential and achieve their career goals. Given the ever-evolving and highly competitive job market, the value of an MBA in advancing an employee’s education and skill set will gain your company a competitive edge in the short term, as well as set them up for growth long-term.
Investing in employee training and development can also foster loyalty to your organization, improve employee performance, and increase your employee retention rate. Develop employee development plans that outline how your hybrid workers will advance their skills through coaching, on-the-job training, formal training, development courses, or mentoring. Follow up on the training by providing your employees opportunities to apply their skills and knowledge to keep them productive and motivated.
3. Utilize Technology Tools
Leveraging the right technology can be helpful in effectively managing your hybrid employees and increasing their productivity. That’s because using the right tools helps eliminate some of the hybrid workplace challenges that could harm your employee’s productivity and maximize the benefits of a hybrid workplace that could boost productivity. Employees need to have the correct tools to perform their duties effectively in a hybrid workplace structure. Some important tools you might need to keep your hybrid workers connected include a messaging and collaboration platform that allows instant messaging between employees and sharing of files in real time when collaborating on projects. You also need video conferencing software to host virtual meetings with your employees.
Some software solutions can provide your human resources and management team with invaluable analytics on the employees they can use to develop plans for increasing productivity in a hybrid workplace. For instance, employee performance management solutions make it easier for your HR and management teams to track the workers’ goal achievement and accountability, set optimized goals for improvement and notify the employees about these goals via the software. Cloud storage can also be helpful for easy file storage and access, making it easier for your employees to collaborate on projects or access the files they need when working from home.
4. Assess and Improve Your Hybrid Model
Regularly assess your working model to identify whether or not it’s working as expected. Gather employee feedback to determine whether the hybrid model is meeting their needs and those of their respective departments. This is crucial since your employees could be working longer hours to perform their duties. Also, evaluate how your employees spend their time to better understand the efficiencies created by a hybrid workplace model. Gaining these insights can help you know the best way to improve your approach to ensure your hybrid model increases productivity.
5. Focus On Employee Well-Being
The new productivity definition demands that employees be included by considering their well-being. Both underworking and overworking will profoundly impact their productivity, which is the main reason you should help your employees achieve a sustainable work-life balance. While implementing a hybrid workplace goes a long way in enabling the creation of a sustainable business environment, business leaders should go the extra mile to ensure their employees’ well-being.
For remote workers, you should encourage them to maintain a healthy routine for their overall well-being. You should encourage them to take rest, build personal fitness, be with their family and participate in personal hobbies during their free time. Try organizing a team coffee or lunch break in person or via video call. By evaluating the number of employees who turn up, you can now organize shorter breakout sessions to facilitate more in-depth and personal connections. You should also consider hosting fitness challenges or virtual exercise sessions to help promote friendly coworkers’ competition to further boost your employees’ well-being.
6. Maintain Open Communication
A hybrid workplace environment’s success is greatly determined by your ability to keep open communication channels. As a manager, you need to understand that the performance of your workers can be rapidly maximized by allowing an open communication channel. Open communication helps nurture trust since employees can easily voice their concerns to their respective managers. Once you are aware of employees’ concerns, resolving issues facing the organization becomes increasingly easier.
If you entrust employees to handle your customers and daily activities, not tapping into their insights will only make you miss out on the valuable information they could possess. Employees’ knowledge could give you an edge in increasing productivity while allowing you to stay tuned with their job routine concerns.
By making your employees feel that they are valuable team members, you can significantly boost their morale. By simply taking your time to listen and find out what’s happening in their lives, you’ll help them reduce their stress and thus increase productivity at work.
Endnote
By effectively restructuring workplace structure, organizations and companies can potentially boost productivity. For instance, a hybrid workplace model allows improved employee flexibility and satisfaction. However, to leap the benefits of hybrid work, workforces must promote open communication, efficient management, and collaboration among team members. You can utilize hybrid work software to measure your organization’s productivity and coordinate a hybrid workforce. Additionally, developing an innovative leadership style that embraces empowerment, delegation, and personal development of your team, will not only boost employees’ morale but give your company a competitive edge.