Is your organisation ready for hybrid working?
/As we in the UK head into the spring and with people starting to receive the coronavirus vaccine on mass, there is a hope that the lockdown restrictions that we have lived through for most of last year coming to an end. With all of this taking place, this will mean people and organisations have to consider what the future of work looks like for them.
During the last 12 months, many of us have had to change and adapt the ways we have been working, embracing or at least coping with working from home as well as homeschooling and more. As we go into the summer, we as individuals and organisations will have choices to consider what the future looks like. Undoubtedly, for many people, this will be the introduction of a new hybrid and flexible working style. Whilst I am sure some individuals can’t wait to get back into the office full-time, others will desire the flexibility to choose what works for them based on a given day or a task they need to undertake. Organisations will have to consider their posture, the rules, their policy for home working and flexible working, and how they will support a hybrid working environment. There is one thing for sure: the organisations that try and force a complete return to office-based working will likely be met with resistance, and employees will choose to vote with their feet.
In this blog post, I wanted to highlight a couple of the areas for consideration that, as a business leader or technical professional, you will want to ensure your organisation is considering.
What is your policy?
The first big question to answer will be “What is your policy?” undoubtedly, 2020 completely changed the landscape for home working, with many organisations who weren’t considering it or at least seriously considering it, having no further choice but to make it work. When we can start bringing people back into your offices safely, you will need to consider your future policy. Your policy will need to consider several elements, probably specific to each of the roles in your business. Below are my top three considerations to get you started.
Can people remain working from home? Will employees have a choice to remain working from home. Will you be enforcing a specific amount of time that they need to be in the office.
Do they need to live or work within a specific location? Previously employees may have needed to live or be able to commute to your working location or locations. With the lockdown restrictions that have been in place, employees may have moved out of cities, stayed with family or equally been able to work from anywhere with an internet connection. Moving forward, you will need to consider locality in your policy. Whilst you may not dictate that employees need to be in an office regularly, they will still need to come in when required easily, are they required to be able to visit people in a specific location easily, etc.
Will you offer flexible working? During the lockdown, many employees have needed to be given some amount of flexibility regarding their roles. This may be to help homeschool or to look after the family, or to look after their well-being. This could even include taking a walk and talk meeting instead of being sat in front of a screen. You will need to discuss and agree on what flexible working looks like in your organisation and what is your policy.
How will you ensure everyone feels included?
During the last 12 months, I have spoken to customers who have told me how inclusion within their business or their role had improved during the lockdown. Before lockdown, people that didn’t work in an office location may have often felt they missed conversations that were happening in the office, but whilst the majority were working from home, this changed. New ways had to be found to ensure communication still worked whilst people were working out of the office and everyone felt like communication was equal across the organisation.
Your challenge with returning to the office is how do you ensure that all of your employees, irrespective of where they are working, feel included and informed.
Here are just some of the areas you may want to consider.
Company Culture - With a remote or hybrid workforce, great thought needs to go into the company culture and ensure that irrespective of location, employees understand and can feel the company culture. When employees were in the office a big part of this was the look, feel and the facilities available at our offices. In the hybrid world, we need to think about this differently. Indeed the look and the feel of the office space will be important, we will need a reason for our employees to want to come into the office. From a Microsoft 365 perspective, your Intranet on SharePoint and your community on Yammer may help you discuss and build a culture, but these are simply tools available to help. The hard work is how you are going to use these tools to help build company culture.
If you are going to be rolling out Yammer or maybe recently put it into place, you will want to think about how you will use it to create your community. Communities need fuel. Think of Yammer as the place you come to meet. You need to think about the reason people should come and when there why do they stay.
I would recommend discussing and considering what your companies culture is, how should this culture be felt and exhibited within your organisation, consider how irrespective of whether you are in the office, working from home or out and about will your employees feel and be part of your culture. At this point, you can consider how you would like to use tools such as SharePoint and Yammer mentioned above.
Microsoft is taking these tools a stage further, further extending your intranet into Microsoft Teams and allowing you to quickly and easily create mobile-centric versions with Microsoft Viva Connections.
Communication - You want to ensure you have clear communication standards that everyone in the team understands. People need to know how they should expect to be communicated with, what platforms will be used for what purpose and who is responsible for the different communication types.
At ComputerWorld, we recommend and help customers create their own communication framework alongside a communication manifesto to provide clarity and examples for people to understand.
You also need to consider how comfortable everyone is using these platforms, including any new starters that join your business. It is wise to regularly offer familiarisation sessions with the tools your organisation uses to ensure everyone has a baseline understanding and know-how to be most effective with these tools.
Meetings - Largely before lockdown, meetings were frequently an in-person affair for most organisations, certainly small to medium-sized businesses. If you were a remote participant, the experience would often be poor at the very best with maybe audio-only, maybe a view through someone’s laptop placed at the end of the table or the very best, a poor in-room camera. When we have moved meetings online, everyone can have a good and inclusive audio and visual experience, assuming they have a good webcam, microphone, set of headphones and a good internet connection! However, an amount of interactivity was lost due to being remote from one another. This brings us to the upcoming hybrid working environment. We are now going to end up with some people at home, some in the meeting room, and we need to try and unite these participants to stop there almost being two separate meetings or a differing experience.
For the most inclusive experience in your meeting rooms, you are going to want to upgrade to a Microsoft Teams rooms. Ensure that you have designed the rooms to allow people in the room and remote participants to be fully included in the conversation. You will want to ensure that you have microphones that can clearly hear everyone in the room and speakers, to ensure that the remote participants can be heard. In a larger room, I would recommend two screens, one for the attendees to always be seen to be part of the meeting and one to display shared content. If the second screen is a touchscreen, this will improve interactivity with applications such as whiteboard. You may want to consider a whiteboard and a content camera in smaller meeting rooms where two screens aren’t possible. Finally, you will want a good camera that allows those who are remote to see clearly who is speaking and feel like part of the meeting.
You will also want to ensure that the remote users have the right technology. Trying to hear someone clearly when they have a poor audio setup when it is a 1:1 call is difficult enough, but it can be even more difficult when trying to do this in a meeting room. Poly has recently released the P5 Bundles that include a fantastic 1080P camera with either an appropriate headset or speakerphone.
This may also be a good time to revisit some meeting rules, ensure that everyone is sending an agenda and pre-reading content beforehand. Enabling captions in the meeting room by default for inclusivity of those who may need it and agree on who will be taking the meeting minutes and where they will be stored.
Conclusion
These are just some of the areas that organisations will have to be considered as we move from the enforced state of working from home into a hybrid mode of working. I would really be interested to hear what other areas you are considering with this shift. Feel free to leave a comment below or PM me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
If you would like to speak to a specialist at ComputerWorld about hybrid working within your organisation please complete the form below and we will be in touch to discuss your specific needs.
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