Navigating Hybrid Workplace Dynamics with Adrian Baillargeon

The hybrid work model, which blends remote work with traditional in-office days, has gained significant traction, with many companies adopting flexible policies that prioritise employee well-being and autonomy. However, as we advance through 2024, a great debate persists regarding the merits and drawbacks of maintaining such models versus a full return to office-based work environments. Proponents of hybrid work argue that it enhances productivity by allowing employees to tailor their work environments to their personal needs, thereby boosting satisfaction and engagement. Conversely, critics highlight concerns regarding the erosion of company culture, difficulties in maintaining cohesive teamwork, and the challenges of effective communication across dispersed teams.

Recent studies reflect a complex picture: while some employees thrive in hybrid settings, enjoying the balance of flexibility and structure, others express a longing for the collaborative energy and spontaneous interactions that office environments uniquely provide. Statistical data reveals that a significant portion of the workforce prefers the hybrid model, yet the debate over its long-term viability continues to shape organisational strategies.

Navigating the challenges of encouraging employees to return to the office has become a critical issue for many organisations in 2024. As companies attempt to strike a balance between flexibility and in-person collaboration, they encounter significant resistance from employees who have grown accustomed to the benefits of remote work.

This hesitance has forced leaders to rethink traditional notions of workplace presence and adapt their strategies accordingly. The challenge lies not only in addressing these concerns but also in devising solutions that sustain company culture and foster team cohesion. As the debate continues, leadership teams are tasked with creating environments that are compelling enough to draw employees back without compromising the flexibility that has become a hallmark of the modern work experience.

In our role as a team building provider, we see firsthand how teams come together after long periods of physical distance. While team building is undeniably effective in reuniting teams and strengthening bonds, the challenge often lies in maintaining that cohesion between events. Which is exactly why we sought the expert advice of Adrian. Now, let’s delve into our conversation with Adrian to explore his insights and answer some of your most pressing questions.

Teams can absolutely shine in hybrid environments. The key to any team shining in any environment, is to focus on strengthening relationships and creating clarity and alignment in teams. When working as groups, relationships matter most. When teammates have strong relationships, they get through issues quicker, everyone gets to work more on what they enjoy doing, and there is less time spent on blaming, gossiping and creating mountains out of mole hills.

Clarity also creates cohesion. Recent research suggested 70% of job frustration comes from a lack of role clarity. Leaders whose teams are aligned get to focus on growth of their business, their team and themselves.

All of this can happen easily in hybrid working environments. However, to ensure everything runs smoothly, leaders and teams must be deliberate and place intentional focus to ensure those two items get the attention they deserve.

The approach to return to the office, working from home and hybrid models varies so much. Some organisations won’t let their leaders ask their people to come into the office at all – it has to be staff lead instead of leader lead. That seems odd to me.

Others are requiring staff to come in two, three, four and five days, while others are simply leaving it up to staff to decide. While there is no best practice – and I’m not convinced pre-COVID was best practice, what I do recommend is that it’s made clear to employees what the expectations of the organisation are. By asking the right questions, leaders can create more human-centric models of work today that will support business success in the future.

Clarity is kind, as Brene Brown suggests. 

When it comes to working together, here is what I know. Conflict is inevitable, and compromise will be necessary.

Everyone will have different views on what works best. The reality is, there is very little certainty in what is ACTUALLY best. It was the same before the pandemic hit. Was working from the office all the time the best for everyone? Who knows. It was simply what we knew at that time.

Conversations about employees returning to the office is a balancing act. Leaders need to be clear about what their ideal outcome is and why, and they also have to ensure their people understand the requirements and have time to adapt to them.

Leaders can take two approaches – they can set their expectations, explain why, discuss with their people about the benefits, and what can be done to overcome the challenges. If employees are not happy with the expectations, employers need to be prepared that their people may leave. There is nothing wrong with that outcome, as long as both parties understand there is a tradeoff and have to be prepared to accept the consequences.

Alternatively, leaders can discuss with their team what is the best way for their team (not just the individual) to deliver what’s expected of them, agree on what that could look like, give it a go, and revisit and refine if necessary. With this approach, both parties may have to compromise and acknowledge there is no ideal, but that they are willing to try something different to support the entire team, and not just their own individual needs.

We have to remember – not everyone is struggling with hybrid working environments. Some have worked remotely,for years. Having different team members across various states, or countries is not a new concept. Often, some of those teams aren’t as interdependent on each other as others, which has made it easier to work that way.

That being said, here are some of the challenges I am seeing for leaders. 

Working in hybrid environments requires leaders to deliberately focus and take actions to ensure relationships strengthen and people are clear about objectives, who is doing what and which behaviours are critical to the team’s success. This may require additional effort and focus from the leader and their people.

Conflict is inevitable in any environment, however hidden issues seem to fester longer in hybrid arrangements because people (and issues!) are easy to avoid. Meetings are much more transactional than relational as well, making it harder to have a tougher conversation. When issues fester too long, it’s like when I cook pasta at home. If I’ve got the water boiling with pasta in the pot, and the water gets too hot and I don’t deal with it, eventually the water boils over and I’ve got a mess to clean up. It’s the same at work. When issues bubble away for too long, and nothing is done to address them, the outcome is never pretty and people have to clean up the mess.

A lack of alignment is poisonous. When people aren’t on the same page, it causes chaos and frustrations.

For hybrid working environments, it’s been hard to get everyone aligned on which days to come in. The world we now live in provides us with so many individual preferences, that we are used to getting what we want without having to compromise. Smartphones allow us to watch whatever we want, when we want. The same with music. Restaurants provide a plethora of options for what’s included or not in one single dish. The craziness of all these options remind me of the movie Borat, where at the end, Sacha Cohen Baron’s character is being given a tour of an American supermarket by a very proud manager, and the two stop in front of the cheese section.

“What is this?”,  Borat asks.

“Ah that’s cheese,” responds the supermarket manager.

“And this what is this?” asks Borat, pointing to the product next to the previous one.

“Ah, that’s cheese too.”

“And this one over here?”

“Yes, that’s cheese too.”

Borat asks the same question at least 25 times,  over and over, pointing to a number of different cheese products, and every time he gets the same answer. “That’s cheese too.”

I feel like this is what’s happening in life – there are too many options, which can make things complicated.

It can be in the interest of both leaders and team members to remember Mick Jagger’s famous words “You can’t always get what you want”. Compromise can be good. It’s a life skill and for a team to truly succeed, the good of the team needs to be put ahead of the good of an individual at times.

When organisations, leaders and teams can have a productive discussion, explore options, agree to disagree but move on, then you’ll create an environment where the team – and the individuals can truly shine. And who knows, they may find out they like a new cheese, regardless of their initial preference!

The key is to be very deliberate with your time together , regardless of if you are in the same room or not.

When together, there are obvious opportunities to connect, like grabbing a coffee together, having lunch together or having some fun with play based activities.

I also have seen the power of changing how traditional meetings work that can help create deeper, stronger relationships. In Teams that Swear, I share various connection activities that are great for when new people join the team AND for those who have worked together for years. Whether it’s the Map of Life, HHH, or sharing a photo from your teenage years, doing this when in the same room creates a completely different vibe and sets the tone for a productive meeting, but doing it remotely can also have a positive affect too. And the great thing about these activities is that it only takes 7-10 minutes.

Learning together is another under-appreciated opportunity to develop stronger relationships. Discussing an article about a certain topic, watching a Ted Talk, or listening to a podcast together and sharing individual takeaways and experiences with that topic brings a different side to people, allows the group to share different perspectives and work on different skills rather than just do the same day to day, week to week reporting.

The great things about these activities, is that these activities work well regardless of where people are sitting.

When participating in virtual meetings, engagement is critical.

Throughout COVID, having completed virtual workshops for 1000s of people, what I learned was that engagement and participation is key. When delivering a workshop, our goal was some sort of engagement with all participants every seven minutes. That could be with an open-ended question thrown out to the group; it could be having different people lead different parts of the meeting, or using the chat function. If you’ve got more than 10 people in a meeting, asking people to respond with chat actually gets more people involved than if you were doing the meeting face to face.