Introduction

In November 2013, after several months of internal salary transparency, social media company Buffer took its employee salary information public for the first time.¹ At the time, Buffer's Chief Happiness Officer Carolyn Kopprash admitted she felt scared. ‘There were so many unknowns,’ said Kopprash. ‘We kept going down this rabbit hole of “what ifs”.’² After the public release of the salaries, Kopprash started seeing the positive impact it created on the organization. ‘Our transparent salaries and formula removed the potential for any discrimination’ commented Kopprash. ‘Your value is your value, no matter your ability to negotiate.’ Since releasing their salaries publicly, Buffer received 229% more job applicants. Buffer also saw the quality of their candidates rise after becoming more transparent on their salaries.³ At the time of writing this book, the company is worth US$60 million and enjoys healthy growth rates. Buffer's CEO Joel Gascoigne shared that the company's employees embraced the transition to salary transparency because they liked having a culture of transparency.⁴ As a result, conflicts about compensation are rare. Another benefit of being more transparent about salaries, according to Gascoigne, is that the company now attracts the type of person who is fully onboard with the company's values of transparency.

Buffer didn’t stop at increasing salary transparency. Today, anyone can see the company's equity breakdown, revenue, term sheets, diversity numbers, and the code used by its engineers. Internal emails are also shared and the CEO shares with all employees his interactions with investors. Gascoigne commented: ‘It really helps with having great teamwork and less politics. Taking the extra step and making it public is extending that trust to customers, blog readers, and prospective team members.’

Transparency in the workplace is the idea of openly sharing information and knowledge in an attempt to benefit the entire business and its employees. From executive leaders openly discussing company information with the entire organization, to individual contributors sharing feedback, to the company discussing company data with members of the public. Transparency affects everyone in the organization, not just the CEO or the C-suite executives. When an organization is transparent about its financial position, employees know whether their job is secure. Similarly, when a business is transparent about its salaries, the right type of job applicants are attracted to the company, and candidates are clear about what they can expect from the company. Transparency in the workplace is about cultivating a culture where information can be shared freely between people, departments, and organizations. Most importantly, workplace transparency is a practice, not just a philosophy. It is about being honest and open about the good things as well as the challenges being faced. A transparent workplace cultivates open communication and collaboration without the element of fear of being judged, blamed, or ridiculed. In a transparent work environment, all employees feel that they are being kept in the loop and are given the full context, so they fully understand what is happening in their organization.

A transparent workplace benefits the organization in many different ways and can truly set the scene for a successful team. Although some benefits of a transparent organization are well known, other advantages are less known but still as impactful. Below are some of the top advantages of a transparent workplace culture:

• Transparent workplaces facilitate hiring

  Candidates are attracted to organizations with a transparent workplace culture. In fact, 96% of jobseekers say that it's important to work for a company that embraces transparency, according to a 2017 Glassdoor US Site Survey.⁵ According to ExpenseOnDemand, nearly two-thirds (64%) of millennials believe that complete transparency is the most desirable trait from employers.⁶ Candidates are simply more attracted to organizations that actively promote and embrace transparency.

• Workplace transparency boosts employee engagement

  Transparency at work creates trust and psychological safety, which has often been rated as the top factor of employee satisfaction in many surveys. When the culture of an organization promotes sharing information freely at every level within every department and every team, employees feel more included and in the know and therefore safer. In turn, this promotes openness, trust, belonging, and engagement.

• Transparency promotes innovation

  When information is shared frequently and openly at work, every employee is more likely to get to know about new ideas and projects that they would not normally be aware of. Being exposed to more information and ideas promotes creative thinking, especially in an environment where trust is cultivated, because individuals are more likely to share their ideas about a specific project. When there is a culture of transparency, everyone is more likely to want to share their own contributions to different initiatives, which promotes innovation at every level in the business.

• Transparency raises brand awareness

  Businesses with a strong culture of transparency are much more likely to have employees with a strong sense of belonging and engagement with their workplace. Transparent organizations often have strong advocates amongst their employee base, who feel a greater sense of pride and are much more likely to share it through their social media channels. Proud, engaged employees often share personal achievements related to their work and employer on social media, which increases the brand's awareness in an authentic way.

• Transparency improves communication

  When information is openly shared often and at every level in the organization, every employee is more aware of the latest developments. Any new project, programme, or initiative is shared with the entire organization, which reduces the risks of working in silo and increases the chance of working collaboratively. Every employee is more likely to share their work more often and with more people because this is what the rest of their team members are doing.

• Transparency promotes alignment

  One of the key challenges of running a successful team is creating alignment between all the different departments. Most organizations struggle with creating alignment internally. When the culture of an organization promotes transparency, alignment is much more likely to happen. This is because the constant free flow of information from every department makes it more difficult to miss what another team is working on and reduces the risk of misalignment between teams and departments.

Those are just some of the most important benefits of workplace transparency - there are many other benefits that could be added to the list. Workplace transparency is a key factor of building a successful team, particularly in a hybrid environment. When employees work in different locations, with some working from home, some working from an office and some alternating between both, it is particularly challenging to foster transparency and sharing information effectively. Promoting a transparent work culture in a hybrid work setting becomes more challenging and more important in order to build, develop, and retain a successful team. In the following sections, we will discuss how to build extreme transparency in a hybrid work environment to build a successful team.

Attract and Retain Transparent People

Adam Wright, CEO, co-founded AGI in 1998. He started noticing some patterns when it comes to successfully attracting employees by using a transparent environment. Adam noticed three strategies that worked really well in order to hire the right people to build a transparent team. First, he noticed that when he shared the good things along with the challenges during the hiring process, he significantly increased his chances of retaining the employee who would be more likely to be attracted to the transparent culture in the first place. Second, Adam found that allowing candidates to shadow existing employees helps reduce employee turnover. Offering jobseekers the opportunity to spend time shadowing current employees gives them a chance to see what the job is really like, and either convinces them it is the right fit, or that it is not. Ultimately, this helps the organization attract the right type of employees who share the same company values, and who are more likely to remain long-term employees. Third, Adam realized that resisting the temptation to fill a position quickly helps attract and retain the right candidate. He found that being open and transparent with his team and letting them know to expect some overtime or extra work while hiring the right candidate ensured better communication, and avoided having to start the hiring process all over again if the new recruit left the organization due to a hasty hiring decision.⁷

Attracting and retaining transparent people who share the same core values of your organization is a cornerstone of building a successful team. But transparency is not just expected of the employer, it should also be expected of the candidate. After all, if your organization goes above and beyond to create extreme transparency in the workplace but you hire a candidate who is secretive and doesn’t share information openly, not only are they going to damage the culture of your company, but also, they are probably not going to be a good fit for your organization, nor stay in the long term. Below are some strategies that you can use in order to attract transparent people during the hiring process:

• Check candidates’ references rigorously

  Although the practice of reference checking during the hiring process is well known, there are still many employers who skip that important step in the hurry to secure a candidate. According to a 2018 HR.com report by the National Association of Background Screeners, only 60% of employers conduct background checks;⁸ employment checks are an important part of background checks, so many employers still fail to conduct reference checks during the hiring process. And when employers actually implement reference checks for their prospective candidates, they often don't hear good things about them. According to a CareerBuilder study, three-in-five (62%) of employers said that when they contacted a reference listed on an application, the reference didn't have good things to say about the candidate, and 29% of employers reported that they have caught a fake reference on a candidate's application.⁹

  When checking a candidate's references, remember to ask permission first. Ensure that the candidate approves the reference check. This is a great opportunity to establish trust with your candidate. Remember to describe the position to the reference contact you are calling so that they have as much context as possible about the role. Ask open questions and listen without interrupting. Remember to confirm dates of employment, job titles, responsibilities, and any achievement that is shared in the candidate's resume as well as any accomplishments the candidate shared verbally during the interview process. Document everything so that you can go back to your notes if needed at a later stage. Contact the references yourself if you are the hiring manager, rather than using a third-party agency, because you are the person who will be working with the candidate and it's important that you speak with previous managers to get as much context and background as possible about your prospective employee. In a hybrid work environment, where your prospective employee might join remotely or in the office, attracting transparent candidates is even more important than in a traditional office setting because the work will be based on trust and reliability. Take the time to check your prospective candidate's references to ensure that they are being as transparent with you as you are being with them.

• Give candidates an assessment

  According to the Talent Board's Candidate Experience Research report, 82% of companies are using some form of pre-employment assessment test.¹⁰ Pre-employment assessment tests are a great way for employers to test the candidate's skills, work style, and experience before hiring. Assessment tests are a great opportunity for employers to assess how transparent the candidate is based on the information they shared previously on the resume or during the first interviews. Luckily, there are many different types of pre-employment assessment tests that employers can choose from depending on the role that the organization is hiring for. Assessment tests can include skills assessment tests, measuring a candidate's soft skills and hard skills; they can be job knowledge tests, measuring a candidate's expertize in a specific area; they can be personality tests that are helpful to understand a candidate's way of working and communication style; they can also include cognitive ability tests, measuring problem-solving skills and reasoning. Regardless of the type of assessment test you choose, you should make sure that you use some type of test to assess your candidate's skills and expertize based on the information they previously shared with you because this will allow you to measure how honest and transparent the candidate has been with you throughout the hiring process.

• Research the candidate online

  Just like your prospective employee will research your organization online, you should also research your prospective employee online. Online employer brand reputation is one of the top factors a candidate uses to assess if an organization will be the right fit for them. As an employer, you should also assess your candidate's online reputation in order to judge whether they are the candidate they claim to be on their resume. If the candidate is as trustworthy and reliable as they claim to be, their online presence should reflect that and there should not be anything countering what they have been sharing with you about their work experience. According to a 2018 CareerBuilder survey, 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process, and about 43% of employers use social media to check on current employees.¹¹ And according to the statistics, researching a prospective candidate online can literally change your opinion of the candidate: 54% of employers surveyed said they chose not to hire a candidate based on content found on their social media profile(s).¹² Some of the top reasons given for not hiring a candidate based on their online reputation include posting inappropriate photos or videos; posting information about drinking or using drugs; making discriminatory comments related to race, gender, or religion; bad-mouthing a previous company or fellow employee; lying about qualifications; having poor communication skills; being linked to criminal behaviour; sharing confidential information from previous employers; and lying about an absence. Don't skip on researching your prospective employees online because this will help establish how transparent and trustworthy they really are.

• Pay attention to candidates’ body language and tone of voice

  Candidates’ body language and tone of voice can reveal a lot more about them than the words they use during the interview process. In the 1970s, Professor Albert Mehrabian of the University of California in Los Angeles found that words, tone of voice, and body language respectively account for 7%, 38%, and 55% of personal communication. Mehrabian added, ‘The non-verbal elements are particularly important for communicating feelings and attitude, especially when they are incongruent: if words and body language disagree, one tends to believe the body language.’¹³ What this study tells us is that non-verbal communication including body language and tone of voice are extremely valuable cues about the person communicating. When looking to hire a transparent employee, employers should pay close attention to the non-verbal communication of the candidate during the interview process. One key element to look for is incongruence, which is the lack of consistency between what the candidate says with their words and what their body language and tone of voice are communicating. For example, if the candidate says that they have consistently achieved their goals with their previous employer but they are not making eye contact with you, their tone of voice lacks confidence, and they are nervously tapping with their fingers on their desk, you might notice that what they say doesn't seem to match with how they say it. If that is the case, you should probably ask some follow-up questions to dig deeper. Some non-verbal communication red flags you should pay particular attention to include covering their mouth with their hand, repeatedly touching their nose, repeatedly scratching their neck or eyes, maintaining an unusually strong eye contact, or looking away repeatedly. Of course, non-verbal communication is not an exact science and you should use your intuition as well as the context when reading a candidate's body language and tone of voice during an interview. However, paying close attention to a prospective candidate's non-verbal cues during an interview can help you assess their transparency and trustworthiness.

  The good news is that even in a hybrid work setting, where it is not always possible to interview candidates in person, you can still assess a candidate's transparency remotely. Checking candidates' references, giving them a pre-employment assessment, researching them online and paying attention to their body language and tone of voice can be done effectively remotely. Attracting transparent candidates is even more important in a hybrid work environment because employees need to know they can trust their colleagues regardless of whether they work in the same office or not.

While assessing your candidate's transparency during the hiring process, if you truly want to attract and retain transparent employees, you should also work to build a transparent employer brand. Intentionally developing a transparent employer brand will also help you attract and retain transparent employees. Your reputation as an employer and what your previous, current, and future employees think of you is what constitutes your employer brand. The more transparent and trustworthy you appear as an employer, the more you will attract and retain transparent and trustworthy employees.

A poor employer brand with a secretive reputation will prevent you from attracting and retaining transparent employees. One way to build an attractive and transparent employer brand is to leverage company review platforms such as Glassdoor. Glassdoor is a website where current and previous employees can anonymously review employers. Other websites, such as Comparably or Indeed, also offer employees the opportunity to rate their employers. By actively using these platforms and updating your company information, you will increase the chances of building an authentic employer brand that will attract and retain trustworthy employees that can relate to your company values. Leveraging social media platforms is another powerful way to create a transparent and attractive employer brand. Ensure that you regularly share stories on your social media channels about the day-to-day life at your company. Share pictures and videos of your team celebrating company milestones or celebrating someone's birthday. Use social media to make announcements about your organization. Engage with your company followers on social media as they interact with your posts. Participate in online conversations about your products and services so that you build trust online. Emphasize stories and announcements that showcase your company culture and core values to share an authentic look at what it's like to work for your organization. Communicate clearly about your core company values and your company culture with your existing employees as well through internal company emails and Slack messages. Discuss the importance of transparency with your existing employees, as they become your company's brand ambassadors and will also refer to their friends as potential candidates if they feel connected to your company's values.

The more unique and authentic your communication is with members of the public, the more your employer brand will stand out as unique and authentic and attract and retain transparent people who value your company's transparency. There is no one-size-fits-all way to communicate transparently about your employer brand, and there are many different ways to do so; the most important element to remember is to proactively think about your employer brand's transparency and to act on it as often as possible. The more time and effort you spend communicating externally and internally about your company's transparency, the more you will create transparency and the more you will attract and retain transparent people. Creating transparency and trust in your organization with prospective candidates is a two-way street. Just like in a relationship, you must be intentional about building trust with your brand ambassadors and with prospective employees. By nurturing a transparent image internally and externally, you are attracting the type of employees who deeply value transparency, and this will be a key factor of your success as an organization. As a hybrid organization with some employees working in the office, some employees working from home, some employees working both from the office and from home, and some employees spread around the world, attracting and retaining transparent employees is becoming more essential than ever before because without transparency and trust, you will struggle with communication, collaboration, engagement, and productivity. Remember to prioritize communicating about transparency to attract and retain transparent people.

Encourage Leaders to Embrace Social Media

When Richard Branson published his autobiography Finding My Virginity in 2017, he talked openly about the huge role social media played in the success of his company. Branson recalls starting his Twitter account and his blog to connect with people and to highlight causes he cares passionately about, including boardroom diversity and ocean conservation. Branson recalls ‘We've basically started our own in-house, online publishing operation, and thanks to social media I'm back in the editor's chair.’ The business magnate recognized early on how important social media was for customer service, which is something that was always a key differentiator at Virgin. Branson recalls that in 2008, he received a letter from an unhappy customer that is now referred to as the ‘funniest complaint letter of all time’. The customer didn't enjoy his meal on a Virgin flight and famously wrote to Richard, ‘Well, answer me this, Richard, what sort of animal would serve a dessert with peas in? How can you live like this? I can't imagine what dinner round your house is like; it must be like something out of a nature documentary.’ When Branson read the letter, he immediately called the team in charge of menus to ask they be changed back to top standard. He then called the unhappy customer to apologize and shared that his funny letter made him laugh. This story spread like wildfire on social media. Today, this story can still be found online as reported in many different online media outlets including Metro.co.uk under the title ‘The five best customer complaint letters of all time’. When business leaders embrace social media in an authentic way to connect with their customers, beautiful things happen. Not only do customers and members of the public appreciate the brand more but business leaders connect with their customers in more meaningful ways. This strategy seems to be working well for Virgin, as Virgin Media's employee engagement score was 79% in 2019.¹⁴

Richard Branson and Virgin are not an exception, as there are many other business leaders who have fully embraced social media. Sara Blakely, founder and CEO of Spanx, is arguably one of the most influential business leaders and someone who has fully embraced social media as a platform of choice to connect with members of the public. Named in Time magazine's ‘Time 100’ annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Sara Blakely founded the now internationally recognized shapewear company Spanx in 2000. In 2012, Blakely was named the youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes. Sara Blakely admitted herself that she is ‘the DNA’ of her company. Her personality is a big part of Spanx's marketing. Sara has mastered the art of social media by sharing honest behind-the-scenes moments of both her personal life and her company Spanx. Sara comes across as approachable and relatable, whilst giving prospective employees a sneak peek at what it's like to work at Spanx. Sara also shares important life lessons on social media that inspire both her customers and her employees. She often talks openly about letting go of fear, loosening up, and using humour. Sara Blakely's Instagram account is full of engaging insights and tips for business owners and entrepreneurs. Her stories are very relatable, honest, and helpful. Sara uses a lot of funny stories and humour to match her personal style. Clearly, embracing social media has been working well for Sara because she gained 1.5 million followers on LinkedIn, and was named among the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes in 2015.

If you are more of an introvert and usually keep your personal life separate from your work life, you can still use social media in a way that is both authentic and meaningful. You don't need to share family holiday pictures or videos of your morning run if this doesn't feel natural to you. However, as a business leader, you should definitely use social media platforms regularly to connect with your customers, employees, and members of the public, and to build extreme transparency. There are many benefits to the organization when business leaders embrace social media platforms:

• It creates a transparent environment

  When CEOs post LinkedIn updates, employees at all levels in the organization feel that their CEO is accessible and also more relatable. Everyone values open communication because it creates trust, transparency, and rapport. Customers also prefer a CEO who often shares updates on social media rather than a secretive CEO who never shares anything, because they are more likely to trust a CEO who is fully present and who often shares information. Overtime, CEOs who share updates often on social media gain a better brand reputation, which benefits the organization.

• It sets the tone

  Business leaders' attitudes online and offline influence employees' attitudes, as well as customers' attitudes and most people around them. This is because business leaders hold a position of authority, and what they say, do, and how they act is often regarded as the standard by the people around them. So when CEOs, managing directors, or vice presidents share an update on social media, what they say and how they say it often becomes what their employees will say and how their employees behave. The most influential leaders such as Richard Branson, Sara Blakely, and Arianna Huffington all share a positive attitude on social media. Richard brings his fun and upbeat attitude, Sara shares her inspiring energy and humorous tone, and Arianna brings her wisdom and shares her positive habits on social media. As a result, they all run successful organizations that have often been voted the best places to work, best customer service, or both!

• It provides direct and honest feedback

  When business leaders embrace social media, one of the benefits is that they will automatically receive feedback. Customers, prospects, and other members of the public usually comment on CEOs' social media posts. From customer complaints to customer praises, from prospective customers' questions about a product or service, to prospective employees’ comments, many people will engage with the conversion online. This is a good thing because it keeps the conversation going and it provides a unique opportunity to act on customer and prospective customer's feedback on areas for improvement. Much more cost effective and direct than a formal customer poll, social media feedback can help your organization improve your products and services, sell more, and improve customer satisfaction.

• It boosts employee engagement

  When Richard Branson successfully completed Virgin Galactic's first space flight, one of the first things he did when coming back was to share an online praise about his team:

  ‘Life is all about people, and so are businesses – even the world's first commercial spaceline. From the astonishingly calm and skilful pilots Mark "Forger" Stucky and CJ Sturckow – now astronauts – to the talented and diligent ground crews and support teams. From the people who have worked behind the scenes over the 14 years of Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company's journey so far, to the people supporting us from the flightline and all around the globe.’¹⁵

  Branson also famously shared on Twitter: ‘Be kind, praise more than criticise and you might change somebody's life and make a huge positive difference to your business too.’ Praising employees on social media boosts employee morale, encourages peer-to-peer support and fosters a culture of praise.

• It helps connect with employees and customers

  Most people use social media as a way to connect with others. When you are the leader of a team or an organization, you also get an opportunity to connect with people through social media. Leaders who engage with other people's comments, questions, and feedback develop a rapport with these people and with their community. Social media is a two-way street and requires listening and responding to what others are saying online. When business leaders invest their time and energy into engaging on social media, they develop rapport and connect with employees and customers in a more meaningful way, which creates more transparency and trust.

If your leadership team is not sure where to start with social media, here is a guide that can help them:

• Share valuable information for your customers

  Start by sharing content that actually adds value for your customers. Focus on helping your prospects and customers improve their work or life by giving them tips and tools that will actually help them. This can be done with any format of your choice, whether you share video content, a blog post, a news article, a research paper, a survey, a white paper, or any other form of content, as long as you provide value to your audience. Many business leaders who have no experience with social media tend to focus on the benefits of their products and services, or why their brand is superior to others. That strategy is very self-driven and doesn't add any value to their audience. Instead, focus on helping your community in any way, shape, or form. This will organically build trust with your customer base because they will respond to the value you bring to their life, and you will also build credibility and thought leadership within your community.

• Read and respond to people's reactions

  Social media is a two-way communication; it is not just a platform to speak publicly. Social media users want meaningful connection online, so you should focus on building engagement. Connecting with customers online also builds brand loyalty. Read users' comments and respond to some of these. Take the time to follow some of your customers on social media, read their posts, and react to their posts. This also demonstrates that you actually care about your customers and prospects because you read their posts and respond to them. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, often comments on other people's posts on LinkedIn. This strategy is clearly working for him, as he has accumulated more than 210,667 followers on LinkedIn, and even his employees respond well, as 90% of his employees approve of him, according to Glassdoor.

• Focus on company culture

  As one of the most influential CEOs on social media demonstrates, talking about company culture can significantly boost transparency and build trust in the brand. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn's long-term CEO who recently became LinkedIn executive chairman, often shares insights about his company culture on social media. In one recent LinkedIn post, Weiner shared a view from the LinkedIn office in San Francisco and accumulated thousands of likes and many comments. Weiner also understands the importance of engaging with his employees' posts on social media, because it demonstrates his enthusiasm for the company culture and its people. Remember that your leader's use of social media is like a window to your company culture so your leaders should spend a lot of time sharing what your company culture is like. This improves your employer branding and builds trust for your brand for prospective employees and customers.

• Be authentic

  Another key aspect of leveraging social media to build transparency is to be authentic, according to Jeff Weiner: ‘It comes down to authenticity; authentically communicate what you are most passionate about, what inspires you, and what you've learned or experienced that others can benefit from.’ He continued, ‘The more authentic you can be, the more effective you will be.’ As the leader of one of the most successful social media companies, Weiner understands what it takes to create a strong social media presence that has a big impact. The more you share on social media, the more the public will recognize your authentic voice and the more you will be able to connect with them. The more you practise sharing on social media, the more you will find your authentic voice, so you need to dedicate a set amount of time each day to social media. Start with what you are comfortable sharing and build on it; the more you share, the more natural it will become for you to share and be authentic and this will resonate with your community.

Encouraging your leaders to embrace social media can feel like a daunting task and can seem disconnected from achieving success. Many business leaders are not very active on social media and simply share content from their company's official social media pages. Some business leaders perceive social media as not business critical, and the majority of CEOs and C-suite executives have never been taught how to leverage social media platforms anyway. However, the world we live in has changed dramatically since the days many CEOs started their career, and in a hybrid work environment where online presence is more scrutinized than ever before, modern CEOs and business leaders can no longer afford to be invisible on social media. Customers, prospective customers, employees, prospective employees, and members of the public are looking for business leaders who share openly about their company culture, their vision, and who actively engage with their community online.

As Jeff Weiner famously said: ‘I've come to learn there is a virtuous cycle to transparency and a very vicious cycle of obfuscation.’ This could not be more true in a hybrid world where employees and customers spend more time on social media than ever before. Businesses whose leaders are embracing social media in an authentic way are winning trust and building extreme transparency faster and better than those whose leaders are invisible on social media.

Promote Open Communication

When Ray Dalio, chairman of the world's largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, whose net worth is about $20 billion, is asked about the reason for his success, his answer is: ‘radical transparency’. Dalio explains:

‘I want independent thinkers who are going to disagree. The most important things I want are meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And I believe that the way to get those is through radical truth and radical transparency. In order to be successful, we have to have independent thinkers – so independent that they'll bet against the consensus. You have to put your honest thoughts on the table. Then, the best ideas rise to the top.’

Ray Dalio's open communication philosophy has always been a key factor to his success and what led his company to become the largest hedge fund firm in the world. Dalio's open communication approach is highlighted on his company's website: ‘Bridgewater's competitive edge is our pioneering workplace culture that relies on truthful and transparent communication to ensure the best ideas win out.’ Dalio further explains his ‘principled approach’ on his company website: ‘With the goal of creating an idea meritocracy, Ray wrote a set of principles that became the framework for the firm's management philosophy. Chief among them is employing radical truth and radical transparency – encouraging open and honest dialogue and allowing the best thinking to prevail.’ Building radical transparency and open communication allows for honest discussions and a free flow of ideas which leads to the best outcome. Promoting open communication creates psychological safety where everyone feels safe to share their ideas without fear of being ridiculed. This allows for more creative thinking and innovation, which gives the organization a competitive advantage.

Open communication at work happens when every employee in an organization is empowered to share their ideas in a safe environment. Each employee is able to express their ideas to each other and to debate freely on any topic. It happens when information is shared between all employees in a transparent and consistent way. Team members are assertive and are encouraged to express their thoughts and feelings clearly in an open-minded environment.

Promoting an open communication approach has many benefits to the business and is an essential part of building extreme transparency at work.

Each employee is more connected to the company's values and vision. Promoting open communication at work also fosters employee engagement. When the CEO and business leaders ask for the opinion of different people, they send the message that they care about what their employees think. No opinion is more important than another, and no role should weigh more than another. This makes employees feel valued, heard and respected, and it creates a stronger sense of belonging. Fostering open communication at work also boosts company performance because the goal is no longer to be right but to find the best decision for the business. It removes any politics or confidential projects and creates a culture of winning together as one team. Open communication also fosters innovation because everyone shares their ideas and creative thinking, instead of just a few employees. Every employee, every team, and every department is more likely to innovate often because all ideas are equally weighed, and the best ideas win instead of just the ideas of the most senior employees. An open communication approach also improves employee retention because employees feel respected and heard when they are asked to share their ideas often.

Culture Amp analysed data from over 150 companies and over 60 000 employees to study what drives employee engagement in their New Tech Benchmark survey.¹⁶ The survey revealed that out of the top ten factors driving employee engagement, three are related to good communication:

• Employees feel happy with their current role relative to what was described to them.
• Leaders have communicated a vision that motivates employees.
• Employees experience open and honest two-way communication.

Likewise, the factors that dictate whether employees are disengaged at work all relate to communication, according to the same Culture Amp survey. The following factors are the ones driving the most employee engagement or disengagement:

• Effectively directing resources towards company goals.
• Leaders who inspire confidence.
• Leaders that demonstrate people are important to the company's success.
• Leaders that communicate a motivating vision.

In her book Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean, Kim Scott introduced the idea of being radically candid or transparent in our communication at work in order to be successful. She writes: ‘When bosses are too invested in everyone getting along, they also fail to encourage the people on their team to criticize one another for fear of sowing discord. They create the kind of work environment where being “nice” is prioritized at the expense of critiquing and therefore improving actual performance.’ Scott also said, ‘Jobs articulated this approach more gently in an interview with Terry Gross: “At Apple we hire people to tell us what to do, not the other way around.”’

Although the concept of being open and transparent and communicating freely might seem scary for some leaders, the benefits truly outweigh the risks. Communicating freely without fear of criticism builds a positive work environment where people feel safe and valued; in contrast, restricting communication to a few people in the organization and only sharing limited information creates an environment with no trust and a lack of motivation for employees who want to share their ideas and feel valued.

As Ray Dalio recalls, his radical transparency approach to communication was not always well understood by his early team members. Dalio recalls that in 1993, three of his closest collaborators told him that he was being ‘too honest’. They sent him a note reading: ‘Ray sometimes says or does things to employees which makes them feel incompetent, unnecessary, humiliated, overwhelmed, belittled, pressed, or otherwise bad. If he doesn't manage people well, growth will be stunted and we will all be affected.’ Dalio recalls that the feedback stayed with him ever since. So he decided to meet individually with his team to come to a mutual agreement about how they should communicate. He wanted to create a culture where everyone could have ‘thoughtful disagreements’ and discuss their ideas without creating problems. That event led him to create his now well-known ‘principles’ to create a radical transparent culture. Ray Dalio himself is an example of transparency, especially when he publicly shared an email that one of his employees sent him, which read as follows:

‘Ray – you deserve a “D–” for your performance today in the meeting… you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have and been that disorganized. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare and maybe even I should come up and start talking to you to get you warmed up or something, but we can't let this happen again. If you in any way think my view is wrong, please ask the others or we can talk about it.’ Instead of being offended, Dalio took that email as an example of how employees should speak to each other. As Dalio himself said, ‘In order to be successful, we have to have independent thinkers – so independent that they'll bet against the consensus. And to do that, you have to put your honest thoughts on the table.’ Then, the best ideas rise to the top.

Promoting a culture of open communication takes time, effort, and a strategy. In a hybrid work environment, where most employees are never in the same location as their co-workers, building an open communication culture becomes more important than ever before to ensure that everyone is working collaboratively. Remote workers in particular need to be in the know and also to be able to voice their opinions just as much, if not more than, in-office workers. Here is how to promote an open communication culture in hybrid work:

• Host open meetings

  Hosting meetings where some participants are in the office and some are joining remotely can present some challenges when it comes to open communication. Remote participants may struggle to join in the conversation and to get in the debate. Office participants may forget about remote participants and get carried away without offering remote participants a chance to join in the discussion. To avoid leaving any participant out when hosting hybrid meetings, you might implement a few simple rules and reinforce the rules during all your meetings. Implement a round-robin rule where each participant takes turns to speak. One of the most efficient ways to ensure this happens is to appoint a dedicated meeting host. Your meeting host is responsible for ensuring that each participant gets equal speaking time. Your meeting host should also be on the lookout for group dynamics such as any off-topic question asked only to test the presenter, or any passive-aggressive comment. They should set the tone for your meetings and redirect discussions to the main topics and ensure everyone gets a chance to contribute equally to the discussion. Another powerful way to host open meetings that foster open communication in hybrid work is to avoid the use of chats during meetings. Chats during meetings can be very distracting and take the attention away from the presenter. Meeting participants should be encouraged to speak up if they have any question or feedback during the meeting, so that everyone can hear them and focus on what is being said rather than being distracted by the chat conversation.

• Prioritize networking

  The number of employees who have never met their colleagues face-to-face has drastically increased since Covid. A large number of employees who started a new job since the start of the Covid pandemic have never met their co-workers in person. Remote work and hybrid work make it harder for employees to get to know each other, to build rapport and trust and to create an environment where open communication is the norm. This is why it is so important to focus on networking and team building as often as possible. Networking can be as simple as starting any meeting with some icebreaker questions for the participants. Icebreaker questions in meetings can range from an update on the weekend, to hobbies, to holiday plans, etc.

Wherever possible, try to schedule some networking and team-building time face-to-face, as this is the most powerful way to build rapport. If face-to-face team building is not possible, hosting virtual networking meetings are a fun way to build rapport, trust, and an open communication culture in your team.

• Frequent check-ins and open-door policy

  Managers who frequently check in with their people are the ones who really set the tone for an open communication culture. Ensure that you regularly check in with as many co-workers as possible by setting up regular cadence meetings with them. Managers who prioritize contacting the people in their teams and departments often are the ones who truly build an open communication culture. Team leaders who create an open-door policy build an open communication culture as well as transparency in their teams, and they encourage free-flowing communication. Sending a simple email to your team to say that you are available between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. for catch-ups will encourage people to call you and discuss any topic they want to. Another way to encourage an open-door culture is to invite people to add colleagues during meetings when needed. You can send an email to say that if your colleagues are having a meeting and they realize they need another colleague's input, they should get into the habit of calling that colleague in the moment. This is what an open-door policy looks like in a virtual world: simply getting into the habit of dialling in a colleague when in the middle of a meeting. These simple actions send the message that your team is always open to discussion, no matter where the people are based or what people's job titles are. And if the managers themselves adopt these habits, usually the team embraces the culture even faster.

Promoting open communication in your organization might seem uncomfortable at first, especially if you have never operated this way before. You might feel outside of your comfort zone initially and wonder if you might run into any challenges related to sharing confidential information, trust issues, or creating unwanted conflict. However, this fear of running into challenges is really an illusion because withdrawing information is exactly what creates trust issues and unresolved conflicts, especially when people feel left out and excluded from conversations, which is what leads to resentment and bad feelings.

If you operate in a virtual or hybrid work environment, your team will become more confident and collaborative when they feel like the culture is focused on open communication. As Ray Dalio wrote in his best-selling book Principles: Life and Work, ‘The most meaningful relationships are achieved when you and others can speak openly to each other about everything that's important, learn together, and understand the need to hold each other accountable to be as excellent as you can be.’

Create a Flatter Organization

When Billy Seeney, design lead at Squarespace, was asked what makes his team structure effective, his answer was the flat structure:

‘We've changed our structure a fair amount over the years as we've grown – we're always looking for the most effective organization. Our mostly flat structure allows each of us to work on the things we're passionate about, which gives the team room to shift around as different needs surface. We recently evened out the number of direct reports that each manager has, which helped a lot in putting together an efficient team. In a great creative culture, people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms.’

His colleague Danni Fisher, product designer at Squarespace, added,

‘This year, we introduced a product design weekly sync led by our Director of Product Design. The meeting is loosely formatted and gives an opportunity for each designer to share his or her work and thoughts on the creative process. We aren't timeboxed and it doesn't matter what work is presented – the most important aspect is that each team member has the opportunity to share something. Collectively, we offer critiques and ideas to help teammates think through a particular problem they may be stuck on. The transparency that comes with sharing our work and thought process is key.’

When asked about the culture at Squarespace, Billy adds:

‘Our leadership team plays a major role in establishing the company culture by way of hiring decisions, communication styles, and opportunities given to employees. Our CEO sits right next to us, in the same kind of chair, at the same custom concrete desk, with the same computer equipment everyone else has. This sends a profound message to the company about equality of ideas, and the fact that he's not tucked away in a glass office somewhere in a suit speaks volumes to the entire organization.’

A flat organizational structure like the Squarespace culture is increasingly becoming relevant in a hybrid work environment. This is because flat structures promote a degree of trust and openness that are especially important in a remote work or hybrid work environment. Trust has never been more important to the success of teams in a virtual work environment and having a flat structure promotes trust. The structure of an organization helps employees understand how they are connected to one another, so having a flat structure sends the message that every employee is as important as anyone else and is as connected to the CEO as any other employee, promoting openness, trust, and collaboration. Virtual and hybrid teams are more successful in a flatter organization for many reasons. When teams are decentralized and physically separated, work is better done in a decentralized structure. As McKinsey explains, ‘When the workforce is hybrid virtual, leaders need to rely less on hierarchical and more on inspirational forms of leadership. The dispersed employees working remotely require new leadership behaviors to compensate for the reduced socioemotional cues characteristic of digital channels.’¹⁷

So what exactly is a flat organizational structure? A flat structure refers to an organization with very few levels of management between leadership and employees. The flat organization emphasizes each employee's accountability and their involvement in decision-making. Some flat organizations have no middle managers, and decisions can be made by self-organizing teams or by rotating managers. Some flat organizations have only a few managers who are responsible for larger teams. All flat organizations have significantly less management layers than traditional hierarchical structures. Flat organizations present many benefits to teams, especially in a hybrid work environment where every employee is more isolated and needs to be able to make their own decisions quickly.

First and foremost, communication improves significantly in a flatter organization. Information can flow freely between all the different employees and departments, silos are removed. Employees are empowered to go and look for the information they need directly from the source without having to wait for authorization or fear of bypassing a manager. There is less room for miscommunication, as everyone gets access to the information they need directly from the sources. Information is also much more immediate and there is less delay caused by unnecessary waiting times.

Second, employees feel more empowered and engaged through the increased autonomy and trust they gain from a flatter structure. Employees no longer feel that they are being micromanaged and told what to do and how to do their job. Employees feel they are being treated as adults and empowered to do their work to the best of their ability. The entire energy of the organization is more positive and creative, as employees no longer feel stopped in their tracks by unnecessary processes. Employee engagement and motivation rises with a flatter structure.

Third, innovation happens faster and more often in a flatter organization. Innovation comes from experimentation and when every employee is free to do what they think is right, more employees experiment with new ways of working, which in turn, leads to more innovation at every level of the organization. Innovation is no longer the remit of the Research and Development department or the Engineering team but becomes everyone's remit.

Finally, flatter structures are much more cost-effective than traditional hierarchical structures. Middle managers are usually expensive, and when they are no longer needed, the organization can enjoy significant cost savings that they would otherwise not be able to enjoy.

So what steps can you take to revisit your company structure and create a flatter organization?

• Remove unnecessary middle management layers

  Make an audit of your middle management layer and remove as many middle managers as possible from your organization chart. You might repurpose their role to individual contributor roles whenever relevant. These intermediate managers and team leaders effectively remove initiative, empowerment, and autonomy from the individual contributors they manage, whether this is intentional or not. The simple fact of having many layers of middle managers sends the message that individual contributors are not fully empowered to make decisions. This also means that the flow of information between individual contributors and the leadership team is not free, and it blocks the communication internally. McKinsey pointed out that in truly agile organizations, we often see only three layers of management.¹⁸ The more direct communication is, the more transparency exists.

  In a hybrid work environment, where most communication takes place online, employees who feel empowered to make their own decisions and to speak directly with the leadership team are more likely to feel trusted than if they have to constantly go through their direct managers to get approvals.

• Empower front-line employees to get involved with the leadership team

  Employees who are individual contributors a often are those who actually deal with the customers, prospects, vendors, and members of the public on a daily basis. These front-line workers often have much more qualitative information, knowledge, and understanding about the customers and the ecosystem than executive teams. In any case, these employees who are on the ground hold a lot of extremely valuable information. Creating opportunities for front-line employees to speak directly with the leadership team is a key factor to creating a flatter organization that fosters extreme transparency. In a hybrid work environment, hosting regular all-hands meetings that are hosted by individual contributors can be a powerful way to achieve extreme transparency and to let information flow from employees who are ‘on the ground’. Creating communication channels where every individual contributor is encouraged to participate is another powerful way to create that direct line of communication between individual contributors and leadership teams.

• Delegate decision-making to everyone

  One of the key elements of a successful flat organization is delegating decision-making to every individual contributor. A successful flat organization has clearly defined roles and responsibilities, a mission, a vision, clear values, and has delegated responsibility to every employee. Each employee feels trusted to make the best decision for the organization, without any need to request approvals. When decision-making is delegated, the entire organization becomes more agile, and the team becomes more motivated because everyone knows they are trusted to make the right decisions. There is no more micromanagement, and everyone trusts their co-workers to make the right decisions for the organization.

  In 2019, the CEO of digital marketing agency Jellyfish took a big step when he decided to remove senior managers and heads of departments from his organization structure. Rob Pierre, who had been the co-founder and CEO of Jellyfish since 2005, came to the realization that the traditional hierarchical organization chart encouraged the wrong type of behaviour. Pierre admits that the heavy management layers were blocking productivity, so he replaced senior managers and heads of departments with steering groups of employees where responsibilities were shared. One of the many interesting changes that happened when Jellyfish became a flatter organization is that the promotions were handled differently. Every employee had a chance to present a business case for their promotion, which were anonymized and judged by a panel of employees. Since that system was implemented, more than 800 employees have been promoted and 57% of these are women. Pierre believes that this anonymization of the promotion process helped reduce unconscious bias and promote more gender equality. Pierre also believes that his company's flat organization model can be used successfully by any organization and his advice is to ‘focus on your desired outcomes, get everyone in leadership to become an advocate – and address any reservations immediately’.

  In order to make a flatter organization work in a remote work model or hybrid work environment, leaders will need to shift their approach to leadership. Leaders who might have been outstanding leaders in a face-to-face office environment may have to adapt and evolve to a remote-first environment in order to be successful. Here are a few leadership skills that should be embraced in order to build a successful flat organization in a hybrid work environment:

• Role modelling more than before

  Now that you operate in a hybrid work environment as a leader, your interactions with your co-workers, which are rarer than before, become scrutinized even more than they were previously in an office environment. This is because your people have fewer opportunities to see you and interact with you, and when they do, they will pay even more attention to how you show up. In a flatter organization, leaders continue to be in a position of authority and influence; therefore, their approach will be mirrored by their people. For example, if you work in a hybrid work environment but you are in the office five days a week, you are sending the message that people should be in the office. Instead, you should work as many days remotely as you do in the office, sending the message that you support a hybrid work environment.

• Become an inspirational leader

  In a flat organization, there are fewer middle managers and heads of departments, but the leadership team remains present as the guide on how to operate. So in order to build a flat organization that will succeed, the senior leadership team should work on becoming an inspiring leadership team that lifts people up and celebrates employee empowerment. For example, leaders should embrace opportunities to mentor some employees to show their support and availability. Leaders might also consider embracing their authentic voice to show that the company celebrates every employee's individuality.

• Leading through consensus

  Many senior leaders have worked for decades using the traditional command and control method, where they make the decisions and expect the team to follow blindly. However, this approach will no longer work in a flatter organization, and everyone needs to make the mental shift from a traditional top-down leadership approach to a modern bottom-up and consensus-led approach. For instance, leaders should often ask open questions in team meetings and listen and take notes. They might start using surveys more often to get more quantitative feedback from their people. The key is to invite everyone's voices in a flatter organization and to make group decisions.

  Creating a flatter organization in a hybrid work environment will truly build an additional layer of transparency and trust that will lead to better performance. When middle management layers are removed and replaced by steering groups, everyone feels more heard and valued, especially in a distributed team where many people work remotely. This approach to work fosters more collaboration, more trust, and ultimately more transparency. Empowering front-line employees to get involved with the leadership team, including remote workers, and delegating decision-making to everyone truly builds more trust and transparency in the organization, which leads to better collaboration and performance. As Bill Gates himself said, ‘The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.’¹⁹

Create Employee–to–Leadership Communication Channels

In 2020, leading British multinational retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) had recently launched a programme to get employees to share their ideas via email with their CEO Steve Rowe. However, some M&S employees were not using emails regularly, and using emails to manage ideas was proving very challenging and tedious. The company needed a way to better engage more employees in the conversation with their CEO. This is when the company adopted a new way to create a communication channel between all employees and the CEO: in 2021, M&S launched an app called ‘Suggest to Steve’ that allowed employees to share their ideas directly with their CEO, from their mobile phone or from their desktops. Employees could also like and comment on other employees' ideas, which increased communication and transparency. Moving from traditional emails to an app increased the volume of ideas by 70% year-on-year, and employee engagement is reported to be higher than ever with over 3000 ideas, likes, and comments being shared every single month.²⁰ When Covid-19 hit, Michaela, an M&S employee, used the app to share her idea with her CEO: she suggested that the company raise money to support the National Health Service (NHS). Michaela's idea was heard by her CEO Steve, who decided to embrace it. They raised over £150 000! Opening a dedicated communication channel for employees to speak directly with their CEO built a more transparent environment and gave employees a voice that they previously didn't have.

M&S is not the only company who has mastered exceptional employee-to-leadership communication. Google is well known for its transparency when it comes to sharing information internally with all employees. In contrast to M&S, Google doesn't use an app; they use a weekly all-hands meeting to allow any employee to speak directly with the co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Every employee at Google is invited to join that meeting, which can happen either in person or in a video format, and anyone can ask a question during the dedicated Q&A session, which is by far the most important part of that meeting. Another way that Google fosters full transparency is by giving newly hired software engineers access to almost all of their code on their first day.²¹

Leadership communication refers to the messages that are shared internally by the leadership team of an organization. These messages have a significant impact for the employees because they set the tone for the company culture and values of the organization. Good leadership communication with employees directly impacts the success of the organization. Creating direct employee-to-leadership communication channels is critical to building extreme transparency in the organization. Employee-to-leadership communication channels are the means by which workers can directly communicate with their leader, in a two-way communication approach. The communication channels used have a direct impact on employees' feelings of belonging and inclusion in the organization. Effective employee-to-leadership communication channels should be more informal to encourage everyone to participate. They should allow employees to participate in a relaxed environment without fear of being judged or criticized. Ideally, these channels should enable conversations in a friendly environment.

In a hybrid work environment, these communication channels can take different forms. Face-to-face communication is still important to bring the human element to it and is also great for team building. However, this is not always possible in a hybrid work environment; instead, organizations can host hybrid communication channels where the CEO can be in the office with some office workers in a conference room and some employees can join remotely. In that scenario, it is important to pay extra attention to remote workers and make sure they are actively being invited and included in the conversation; this can be done in different ways including using a very large screen showing their faces to in-office attendees, having a meeting moderator who invites remote workers to ask questions, using a group chat before and during the meeting to allow remote workers to ask questions there, etc. In a hybrid work environment, employee-to-leadership communication channels can also take a digital form. Internal communication platforms such as Zoom meetings, or employee collaboration tools such as Slack channels, can also be used to facilitate conversations between the leadership team and employees. Some organizations might prefer to use fully digital communication channels instead of hybrid channels in order to make every employee feel equally heard and comfortable to participate in the discussion. The format of the employee-to-leadership communication channels might evolve over time as the organization evolves, and it is good practice to get feedback from employees about their preferred communication channel. There is a wide variety of communication channels that organizations can choose from, depending on the company culture and the employees’ preferred choice of communication. These include the intranet, emails, project management tools, newsletters, messaging software, video conferencing software such as Zoom, internal podcasts, company blogs, employee feedback softwares, internal social media channels, and employee survey solutions. Regardless of which communication channel is used, it is important that it allows two-way communication between the leadership team and employees.

When authors Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind conducted research on effective leadership, they found that there are four main elements of effective leadership in an organization, in particular when it comes to leadership communication: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. The authors found that intimacy helps move from a traditional top-down approach to a more engaging bottom-up exchange.²² This can be achieved by using a less corporate and more casual tone. Interactivity is achieved through dialogue and giving way to a two-way exchange. Inclusion refers to empowering all employees to have a voice on company channels including on social media. Intentionality enables leaders to share key messages by explaining them rather than just enforcing them. By using these four key elements of leadership communication with employees, leaders can create a truly transparent work environment.

In a hybrid work environment, it can be particularly challenging to achieve effective employee-to-leadership communication because there are fewer opportunities to engage face-to-face with the CEO and the leadership team when not in the office. However, there are ways to achieve powerful employee-to-leadership communication even in a distributed work environment:

• Supporting two-way communication

  In a hybrid work environment, creating and sustaining two-way communication between the leadership team and employees is fundamental. The goal is to achieve an open dialogue between employees and the CEO. Listening is key, so make sure that you listen to your employees and act on the feedback you receive; this shows that you pay attention and that you truly care. This can be achieved by hosting a longer Q&A session in your weekly town hall meeting. This can also be achieved by hosting a special Q&A session based on the feedback you received in the previous town hall, as this shows that you listened and that you care, and you want to continue the discussion.

• Asking for feedback and acting upon it

  One powerful way to create extreme transparency in your organization through employee-to-leadership communication is getting leaders to proactively ask for feedback and act upon it. This can be achieved by creating a session in the weekly town hall meeting dedicated to ‘giving CEO feedback’. The CEO could explain that they value employee feedback on the CEO's performance and invite employees to share such feedback. This is a great example of leadership communication focusing on employee feedback. If the setting is too intimidating and employees shy away from sharing feedback in front of everyone, this can be done via a poll or survey, where employees answer a live poll online by using a tool such as Slido.com. Employees will still get a chance to share feedback about their CEO via the survey tool and they won't have to speak in front of everyone. The CEO could then discuss what they see from the survey; the point here is that the CEO is asking for employee feedback and is open to listening and discussing the feedback in front of everyone, demonstrating that they are open to a transparent dialogue.

• Making information accessible

  Even if your organization has an employee-to-leadership communication channel in place, it doesn't necessarily mean that the conversation will happen if important information is not shared with employees outside of the channel. If employees don't know where the organization is headed, what the latest decisions are, and when important events are happening, there won't be much discussion happening at all. It is important that the leadership team shares important company information often with all employees, in a way that makes it easy for employees to find where the information is. Ideally, the content should be shared in a single place for ease of use by all employees. This accessible information about the company will allow employees to feel involved and to prepare their questions for the leadership team ahead of time. This is particularly relevant in a hybrid work environment where employees are geographically dispersed and need easy access to important information about the company.

• Be authentic

  Leaders will have to embrace becoming even more authentic in order to build that important layer of trust in a hybrid work environment. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been craving connection and rapport, including in the workplace. Some leaders have successfully managed to be more authentic and personal during this crisis, and they have opened up doors to more meaningful discussions and rapport in a remote or hybrid work environment. Authentic leaders who communicate often to all employees build more trust and transparency in the organization and set the tone for what type of relationships they want to see in their organizations.

• Measure employee engagement

  Whatever channel of communication you decide to use for a direct employee-to-leadership discussion, you should constantly measure employee engagement in order to adjust your communication channel. For instance, you might start with a weekly town hall meeting with a 15-minute Q&A for all employees to ask direct questions to the CEO, and you might notice in your surveys that many employees feel intimidated by the size of the group and therefore do not engage. You might then offer a virtual chat to allow the more introverted employees to ask questions online, and you might see better engagement and involvement from these employees. Or you might start by inviting employees to share their suggestions with the CEO via emails and through an employee survey. You might notice that some employees do not participate because the email might seem too complicated; you might then decide to build an app for sharing ideas with the CEO, and you might see an increased participation rate from employees using this method. Remember to always measure employee engagement regarding your communication channel with leadership in order to constantly adjust and improve your communication channel accordingly.

When the Covid-19 pandemic forced companies to quickly change gear and adopt new ways of working, Deirdre Garvey, CEO of The Wheel, had to shift to remote working quickly, like many other organizations at the time. Garvey is now implementing a hybrid work model and shares that creating a ‘single source of truth intranet’ was one of the key initiatives they launched in order to build a successful hybrid team. Garvey explains, ‘We now have a communication charter, a single source of truth intranet, we understand the importance of meta skills like empathy, creativity, self-awareness, flexibility, and cross skills.’ Garvey also talks about the importance of communication between the leadership team and employees, as she says: ‘Pay more attention to communication than you ever thought was reasonable’, and ‘Invest in training, treat your staff well, and listen’. She also adds: ‘It will help you to be a better listener’.

Many organizations have not revisited their communication channels since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and are stuck in an old way of communicating, which is based on the ‘command and control’ approach. These companies are still operating using a top-down approach and are failing to adapt to the new way of working. Employees are hungrier than ever before for authentic communication and they want to have a voice in how the organization operates. Simply put, employees who feel connected to their co-workers and organizations report being more productive. Connection and a sense of belonging in hybrid work can only be achieved through good communication between employees and the leadership team. In order to build outstanding employee-to-leadership communication channels in hybrid work, organizations should support two-way communication where leaders listen as much as their employees; leaders should also ask for feedback and act upon it. Leaders should make important company information accessible, thrive to be authentic, and measure employee engagement. This can be achieved on social media channels as previously mentioned, but also in weekly company town hall meetings or through dedicated apps. Regardless of which communication channel is used, leaders should pay attention to what their employees are saying and should build dedicated communication channels that invite each and every employee to talk to them directly.

Conclusion

Distributed teams who spend less time face-to-face in an office tend to be less in the know of what is happening in the organization. This is because opportunities for spontaneous communication and information sharing are less frequent in a hybrid work environment. As a result, employees and teams who work in a distributed environment are more likely to keep certain information to themselves, even unintentionally, creating some unwanted and unintended secrecy and silos between people and departments. Silos, secrecy, and ambiguity at work decrease motivation, lower employee morale and satisfaction, and hinder collaboration and productivity. This is why building extreme transparency in a hybrid work environment is absolutely essential to develop a successful organization. Building transparency consists of earning people's trust and communicating in an open way. A transparent workplace boosts employee engagement and morale, builds trust between employees, and fosters collaboration. In a hybrid work environment, transparency is achieved through intentional communication and constant feedback, careful listening, and constant adjustment of the communication channels to achieve maximum trust. A shift from the traditional command and control way of doing business to the new bottom-up approach must also take place simultaneously in order to achieve transparency in the organization. Employees no longer want to work for organizations where their voice is not being heard. According to a new survey by ExpenseOnDemand, 64% of millennials believe complete transparency is the most desirable trait of employers.²³

Luckily, there are different ways for an organization to build transparency in a hybrid work environment, to create the right conditions for a successful team. It all starts with attracting and retaining the right people: transparent people. The people are what makes the culture of an organization, so if the goal is to create a transparent culture, then the focus should be on attracting and retaining transparent people. This can be achieved by paying attention to the hiring process. Candidates should be carefully researched and assessed, and managers should pay more attention to the transparency of the candidate than to their achievements and curriculum. Leaders should also communicate the importance of hiring and retaining transparent employees because they will reinforce the message by doing so. Building a transparent employer brand goes hand in hand with hiring and retaining transparent employees, because a strong, authentic employer brand will act as a magnet for authentic and transparent employees. Organizations should pay particular attention to developing a brand that is transparent and that inspires trust.

Another powerful way for employers to build extreme transparency in a hybrid work setting is to encourage leaders to embrace social media. Many CEOs, including Richard Branson, attribute the success of their organizations to the transparency they built by embracing social media platforms. When CEOs, co-founders and C-suite executives really use social media platforms every day to communicate, they set the tone for transparency and trust, they open a channel for direct dialogue with employees, customers, and members of the public, and they are able to collect unfiltered feedback in real time. This behaviour quickly gets noticed by all employees and customers and becomes proof that the organization truly cares about building trust and transparency with its ecosystem. In a world where face time is becoming less prominent, companies whose leaders communicate frequently and openly on social media rise above their competitors who don't by creating an open dialogue with everyone. Promoting open communication, even outside of social media, is another efficient way to build transparency in a distributed work environment. Ray Dalio and his ‘radical transparency’ approach to work is a powerful demonstration of how an open communication environment can truly propel an organization to becoming the leader in its category. The chairman and founder of the world's largest hedge fund (Bridgewater Associates) attributes his success to its open communication where everyone, including a new intern, can share their idea openly and change the course of the organization if their idea is regarded as the best one by the rest of the group. The importance of hosting open meetings, prioritizing networking and frequently checking in, as well as creating an open-door policy can truly promote open and honest communication in a distributed work environment.

Promoting open communication is a great way to foster transparency at work and it can be combined with building a flatter organization to achieve even more transparency. While some leaders fear that a flatter organization might be difficult to implement, it is now becoming more important to remove middle management layers in a hybrid work environment in order to build more transparency and to build a more empowering way to work. Organizations like Squarespace are embracing flatter organizations to encourage more collaboration, creativity, and innovation. More importantly, it sends the message that every employee is important, regardless of their job title or status as a remote worker, and it helps all employees feel more connected to one another in a distributed work environment. Building a flatter organization can be achieved by removing unnecessary middle management layers, by empowering front-line employees to get involved with the leadership team, and by delegating decision-making to everyone. Leaders in flatter organizations need to role model more than before to demonstrate how every employee is encouraged to participate in decision-making; leaders should also strive to become more inspirational leaders and lead by consensus in order to build a flatter organization that fosters transparency.

Finally, organizations striving to build extreme transparency in hybrid work should create dedicated employee-to-leadership communication channels. Leading retailers such as Marks & Spencer have embraced this type of employee-to-leadership communication during the Covid-19 pandemic and have created an app where every employee can share their idea directly with their CEO. In a hybrid work environment where teams are more geographically distributed, it can be particularly challenging to create effective employee-to-leadership communication channels; however, there are ways to achieve this, including supporting two-way communication, asking for feedback often and acting upon it, making important company information accessible, encouraging leaders to be authentic, and measuring employee engagement. Regardless of which method you choose to use to build transparency in your organization, it is essential that you consider ways to build trust and transparency in a hybrid work environment because distributed teams require additional support to feel connected and to communicate well. Although you might not be able to implement all of the methods mentioned above, if you start implementing some of them and you become more intentional in regard to building transparency in your organization, you will undoubtedly build the right foundation for a successful team in a hybrid work environment.