Introduction

When the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly forced organizations to embrace remote work for the first time, the majority of businesses were unprepared for such a sudden shift. For most, it was the first time that employees were no longer working from the office every day, and nothing had prepared them for it. The majority of organizations had no system in place to communicate efficiently to a team that was mostly remote. For legal firm Lenczer Slaght, the timing could not have been better: this is when they launched their brand-new company intranet. From day one, the firm's employees became dependent on the intranet for company updates, news, policies, guides, and more. Lindsey Bombardier, director of marketing and business development, recalls: ‘Our immediate adoption rate was close to 100%. I am not sure we would have seen that had we not transitioned to working from home.’¹ The law firm rapidly started using their new intranet as a way to communicate about everything, from Covid-19 resources to Twitter feeds to trusted news to a directory of practice resources helping lawyers, law students, and law clerks find toolkits. Bombardier praised the adoption of the intranet as a game-changer when the firm had to go fully remote on such short notice: ‘During the past year, when everything has turned virtual, it's been a saving grace for everyone at the firm.’

Regardless of the technology and approach that is used to communicate in remote or hybrid work, communicating well when teams are distributed geographically is essential to the success of the organization. When employees work in different locations, communication is more challenging. Unconscious bias is more likely to happen because of distance bias, which is the brain's tendency to think people that are physically closer to us are more important than those who are further away. Company culture is also difficult to maintain when employees spend less time together face-to-face. Silos are more likely to happen because of the distance between employees. Maintaining high levels of transparency can also become more difficult when most employees work from different locations.

Overcommunicating is the idea of intentionally repeating a message more than is generally considered necessary. It helps emphasize important messages and reinforces certain key ideas. Overcommunicating brings clarity and removes false assumptions. Since clarity is much needed in a hybrid work environment, overcommunicating simply helps convey key messages. During a time of uncertainty and rapid change, such as the one that most organizations experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, overcommunicating brings many benefits to the business. In particular, in a remote or hybrid work environment where employees are more separate from each other than in an office setting, the advantages of repeating messages more than usual are significant. Repeating key messages helps avoid confusion. It reduces false assumptions and misunderstandings and brings much needed clarity in the business. Considering that miscommunication or poor communication are often reported by employees as a major reason for not being able to deliver work on time, communication more than usual is especially important in a hybrid work environment. Communicating well in a hybrid work setting also brings purpose. When leaders talk about their company's mission, vision, and goals often, they motivate employees because they remind them of the bigger picture. They help employees see their purpose within the organization, which helps build feelings of belonging and increases employee engagement. Reminding employees about the key goals of the organization or about other important messages also helps build a positive company culture. When leaders are able to bring clarity to the workplace, employees feel more included in the organization, and they feel more comfortable because they can see clearly what matters in the organization. It means that employees are more able to contribute because they better understand what matters and they are more confident about the direction to take. Finally, clear communication creates more accountability. When leaders are able to explain and remind their teams about what is important in the organization, employees have clear direction, and they know what to focus on and to deliver. Clear communication fosters ownership because everyone clearly understands how their role will impact the bottom line.

When teams are distributed geographically and spend little time in an office together, the need for clear communication becomes more important than in a traditional office space setting.

In order to overcommunicate well in a distributed team, leaders and managers need to follow certain steps that can help create the desired cohesion and clarity: they need to assess their communication channels and ensure these are fit for hybrid work, schedule strategic regular meetings, cultivate empathy and appreciation in their communication, create a new communication framework, and communicate with equity and inclusion in mind. Overcommunicating in a hybrid work environment should become part of the leader's routine and should not be seen as a burden but rather as a way to bring the team together. Often, managers and team leaders are afraid to repeat themselves and to sound repetitive to their teams. In reality, people like to be reminded about what matters because they need to know the direction they are supposed to go; according to most surveys on employee communication, the challenge comes from a lack of communication and a lack of clarity, rather than from repetitive communication. Once company leaders and managers understand the importance of building clarity at work, they will no longer fear being perceived by their employees as too repetitive, and they will embrace their roles as chief reminder officers. Following the steps outlined in this chapter will help leaders and managers create clarity for their team in a hybrid work environment, and ultimately build successful hybrid teams who are crystal clear about their purpose, mission, and goals.

In a hybrid work setting, where some employees might work fully remotely, some might work partly remotely and some might work fully in the office, reviewing and assessing communication channels is a very important step to ensure that employees are satisfied with internal communication. Studies have shown that good internal communication improves coordination, boosts employee morale and productivity, and improves efficiency and employee retention. Here are some of the most effective ways that you can measure your communication channels in hybrid work to assess which ones to keep, which ones to lose, and which new channels you should consider adding:

• Survey employees on your communication channels

  Consider sending out anonymous pulse surveys to all your employees on a monthly basis, specifically asking them for feedback on internal communication channels. Make sure that you divide employee responses based on those who work full remote, those working partly remote, and those working in the office. Look for some patterns: you might notice that fully remote employees want more team meetings to remain connected, whilst hybrid workers want fewer meetings and more work using shared documents instead, and perhaps office workers want more in-person meetings to promote team building. Consider hosting some qualitative surveys to find out more about the reasons behind certain requests from employees. For instance, you might ask employees in a one-to-one meeting what their preferred communication channel is and what they like about it, and you might also ask them what other communication channel they would like to try that you have not considered before. The important thing is that you pay attention to your employees’ feedback on communication because this is your opportunity to significantly improve communication and adjust them to a hybrid work environment, in real time. Remember that your employees’ preferences will evolve over time, so it's important to regularly send out communication surveys and adjust accordingly.

• Assess internal communication engagement

  Another great way to measure employee engagement with internal communication is to simply track their engagement through analytics. Take time to monitor how your employees are engaging with your various communication channels, including your intranet, your instant messaging app, your internal newsletter, and any other communication channel you may use. Again, compare engagement rates between groups to observe patterns, because remote employees may use certain communication channels more than office workers, for instance. Analyse not only logins but also average time spent in each channel. Try to understand how much employees are really using each channel. Assess email open rates and intranet logins per department and per work group.

Assess Your Communication Channels

Like many other companies who went fully remote during the Covid-19 pandemic, Paddle, a UK-based software company, was forced to re-evaluate its communication channels to ensure it was supporting all employees. Paddle's Chief People Officer David Barker recalls making the decision to go hybrid after a year of remote work: ‘At the start of the year, we thought about recalling everyone to the office on a permanent basis. However, since March, we've been asking ourselves, “Why is it so important to have everyone in the office?”’² When Paddle surveyed its employees about what their preferred method of work was, it found that the majority of staff wanted flexibility. That's when Paddle realized that team members needed to have the right tools to collaborate well, whether in person, on video, or asynchronously. For Paddle, the transition to hybrid work meant investing in new tools built to support innovation. Bianca Dragan, Paddle's brand and event manager recalls, ‘We've used Miro, for example – a virtual whiteboard solution – to brainstorm ideas and capture thoughts and feedback.’ The company went even further to maintain playfulness: ‘To maintain our company culture, we've also had to become very creative over Slack – we've had Paddlers create custom music videos and we've paid to have Cameos [personalized videos made by celebrities] done for us to celebrate big milestones.’ Paddle also implemented meeting-free days as well as a policy in which 30-minute meetings must end at 25 minutes, to give employees a break between meetings. David Barker commented on the need to reassess communication in hybrid work: ‘Embracing the way of working we've all been forced into over the past 18 months has forced us to re-evaluate what it means to work. It's been a journey and mindset change, even with our leadership team, but hugely positive for our business. We've honed a great medium where we feel that we can support our people wherever they are, fit around their lives and still achieve our results.’

First, you need to understand and recognize the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication refers to people exchanging information and messages in real and is typical in an office environment. It can be much harder to achieve synchronous communication in a hybrid team because people work in different locations and might not be able to respond immediately to messages. Synchronous communication includes face-to-face conversations and meetings, phone calls, video calls, and instant messages. Although synchronous communication is not always easy to achieve with a hybrid team, there might be situations that require this type of communication, such as:

• When discussing a sensitive topic or sharing feedback.
• When dealing with a sensitive issue that requires immediate attention.
• In emergencies.
• To kick-start a new group project.
• For team-building activities.

On the other hand, asynchronous communication refers to communication that doesn’t happen in real time. In this type of communication, there is a lag between the time the message is sent and the time it is received; in remote teams, asynchronous communication is much more prevalent than synchronous communication. Asynchronous communication includes working on a shared document, sending and receiving emails, and using team chat apps.

Regardless of what type of communication you use, it is important that you assess the effectiveness of your communication channels in a hybrid work environment. Good internal communication offers many benefits to the organization including boosting employee morale, engagement and productivity, better operational efficiency, higher employee satisfaction and retention, and better decision-making. Below are a few ways you can assess the effectiveness of your communication channels in a distributed environment:

• Survey employee engagement

  One of the most effective ways to assess your internal communication channels is to simply send a monthly pulse survey focusing on communication. Best practice is to make this survey anonymous so that employees feel safe to voice their concerns and ideas in a secure environment. It is also a good idea to analyse results based on the employee working style: the responses from your fully remote employees might differ from those of your fully office-based employees, which might also differ from your hybrid employees’ replies. You may notice that fully remote employees prefer one specific communication channel to another, and that your office workers prefer another communication channel. In addition to sending out qualitative surveys, which can be broken down per respondent's type and department, you should also consider hosting focus groups for collecting responses in a one-to-one setting. Taking the time to collect qualitative feedback will help you understand the real challenges and opportunities related to communication in hybrid work. For instance, you might discover that remote workers feel less seen and heard in your monthly all-hands because the attention tends to be on the in-office workers, so you might consider looking for ways to make your remote workers feel more involved in these conversations.

• Study performance data

  Most communication tools and technologies offer dashboards that show data related to engagement. Whether this relates to your monthly internal newsletter, your intranet, your instant messaging app, your monthly all-hands Zoom call, or any other internal communication channel, you should be able to export usage data and analyse the results per team. For instance, you can track internal newsletter open rate, click-through rates, and intranet logins. Many companies use an intranet to share company information. You might start by looking at the percentage of employees using the intranet, frequency of intranet usage, peak times around intranet usage, groups and demographics using the intranet more than others, and preferred way to log in (mobile or desktop). If your intranet usage is low, you should consider hosting a dedicated company-wide meeting and ask your employees how they wish to receive and share company information. Using a top-down approach that leaves no room for discussion will stop you from achieving great engagement rates with your communication channels, which will lead to poor internal communication.

• Pay attention to employee turnover

  Employee turnover rate may seem irrelevant to internal communication; however, when your organization has outstanding internal communication, employees are more likely to be very engaged and motivated at work and less likely to leave your organization. Pay attention to how many employees are leaving your organization, hold exit interviews, and spend time with the leavers to understand their reasons for departing. According to Trade Press Services, effective internal communications motivate 85% of employees to become more engaged in the workplace.³ Track your employee turnover rate, in particular based on their working group, as you might notice that fully remote employees are more likely to leave than in-office employees, for example.

If you are looking for some inspiration to create effective internal communication in a hybrid work environment, you might want to emulate some of the most innovative companies that implemented outstanding internal communication strategies. One of these companies is TED, the world-famous non-profit organization spreading ideas via short talks. TED releases talks that have a duration of 10 to 18 minutes maximum. Many studies have shown that the average adult attention span is approximately 15 to 20 minutes, highlighting the need for shorter meetings. Although TED's model is to share interesting ideas in a format that keeps our attention, it is worth considering keeping most of your internal meetings to a 20-minute duration, in order to maintain your employees’ full attention. Another company that is well known for its excellent communication is rethinking the traditional approach to internal communication. Virgin and its founder Richard Branson embrace meetings that are held in different spaces. Branson prefers having his meetings in a park or in a cafe, because he believes that new environments help generate new ideas and new perspectives. In a hybrid work environment, you might consider inviting your meeting participants to go for a walk around their local neighbourhood whilst logging in via videoconferencing. This simple technique could spark more creative discussions and lead to more innovative discussions in your weekly team meetings. Netflix is another interesting example of a company that innovated with their internal communication. At Netflix, communication from management ‘comes in the form of short, online memos where questions are answered, essentially making it a living document’.⁴ This form of very concise and interactive communication from management makes it more engaging for all employees, whether they are mainly remote workers, office workers, or both.

There are many benefits of assessing your internal communication channels in a hybrid work environment, in particular if hybrid work is new or relatively new to your team. Organizations often skip that step and do not take the time to conduct a communication audit. In reality, running a communication audit is the first step to building the foundation of a successful hybrid organization. First, conducting an internal communication audit provides an opportunity to reflect on what tends to work and what doesn’t in terms of sharing information with a distributed team. The audit is a time to reflect and think about what format and channels work better in a hybrid environment. Assessing your internal communication channels will also allow you to set new communication goals for the upcoming year. You might even consider making communication goals part of the business strategy, considering the importance of good communication to run a successful business. Discussing with your leadership team how to incorporate communication goals into their annual targets will help reinforce the focus on effective communication, which is more important than ever before in a hybrid work setting. Assessing your internal communications will help you understand what your employees really think about your organization's communication channels. For instance, if your remote employees make up the largest part of your workforce and they rarely use your intranet and prefer using your Slack channel to receive key company information, you might consider adjusting the way you communicate important company updates moving forward. As mentioned previously, try to understand if certain groups of employees prefer certain communication channels based on their working environment, dividing your employee feedback into remote workers, in-office workers, and hybrid workers, because you might uncover patterns that are specific to each group.

Conducting a communication audit is especially important in a hybrid work setting because it will help you allocate your budget accordingly. By analysing which channels your employees are using, you will be able to notice which communication channels are not being used and you might be able to save on your budget by stopping spending on channels that are not being used. At the same time, you will be able to allocate some of the budget on new communication channels that are more relevant to a hybrid workplace. Remember that the investment you make in new communication channels will fuel the collaboration of your teams and boost your team productivity, so do not worry about spending too much of your budget on internal communication because your distributed teams need to be able to communicate well to work well together. Finally, conducting an audit of your communication channels in a hybrid work environment will help you optimize your existing communication tools. Many organizations that I have worked with had so many different communication tools and apps that most of them were not being fully utilized. Conducting a communication audit will allow you to understand which communication apps are being underutilized due to a lack of awareness. This is a great time to launch your new communication programme to your employees, announcing some exciting changes and sharing how you have used employees’ feedback to propose a new communication strategy. You might be able to re-launch some existing communication apps that were not being promoted before and you might run some workshops and lunch-and-learn sessions to showcase these communications tools to ensure that every employee is aware of them and understands how to use them.

When Bosh launched its new employee-focused TED Talk-style format called ‘The Spark’ in 2017, little did they know that it would become a massive internal communication success. The German multinational engineering and technology company wanted to boost internal communication by offering employees a platform to share their ideas in a new format inspired by the famous TED talks. Employees would share a presentation on a topic of their choice. As a result, each video had an average of 25 000 views internally.⁵

You don't need to launch your own TED Talk–style event or to limit all your meetings to 18 minutes following the TED Talk approach; however, you need to take the time to evaluate your internal communication channels to ensure that they are working effectively for your hybrid team. In a highly distributed team, employees are more disconnected from each other and are less in-the-know of the latest project developments and company updates. It is absolutely essential to review, audit, and measure your communication channels, to ask for employee feedback and to test new ways to communicate internally in order to build the foundations for a successful team. Remember to involve your employees in your decision-making process, especially your fully remote employees, as well as those working partly remotely, so that you get the full picture of what is working for them and what is not. Ultimately, your business will only be successful in hybrid work if every employee feels equally part of the team and part of the conversation, regardless of whether they are fully remote workers, partly remote workers, or office-working employees.

Schedule Strategic Regular Meetings

When Harvard Business School studied the impact of working from home on employees’ work habits during the Covid-19 pandemic, the results revealed some significant changes in how meetings were being used.⁶ Harvard Business School studied emails and meetings of more than 3 million employees in 16 cities to research the impact of remote working on employees’ email and meeting habits. The research team studied team members at 21500 companies in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. When the research looked at meeting invitations, it found that employees in remote work attend 13% more meetings, and the number of people invited to each meeting rose by two, or 14%. The research also revealed that employees sent 5.2% more emails a day and that emails had 2.9% more recipients. The fact that employees are spending more time in meetings when they are no longer sharing an office is not surprising, considering that it is more challenging to keep up with the frequent changes when located in different geographies.

However, keeping up with the latest news and changes is not the only reason why team leaders would pay attention to scheduling key meetings. Recent surveys about the workplace have revealed that the majority of remote employees feel more excluded and isolated from the group than their office colleagues. Harvard Business Review surveyed 1153 employees, of which 52% worked from their home office at least some of the time.⁷ Those remote employees reported not being treated equally when working from home. Remote workers also reported feeling that their peers mistreated them and left them out, worried that colleagues said bad things behind their backs or made changes to projects without telling them, lobbied against them, or didn’t fight for their priorities. When the survey asked remote employees to describe specific skills that great managers had, the responses from over 800 participants included:

• Checking in frequently and consistently
• Using face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact
• Demonstrating exemplary communication skills
• Making expectations explicit
• Being available
• Demonstrating familiarity and comfort with technology
• Prioritizing relationships

Most importantly, nearly half of the remote employees surveyed (46%) said that the most successful managers checked in frequently and regularly with them. Remote workers said that although the frequency of these check-ins varied, they were always consistent and scheduled in their calendar.

What both surveys demonstrate is the importance of scheduling strategic regular meetings with employees in a hybrid work environment. Employees who work in a distributed environment need more frequent check-ins to remain in the know of the latest changes and also to feel included and part of the team. In particular, employees who work fully remotely should have frequent cadence meetings scheduled by their managers to feel like they are part of the group.

Choosing the Right Meeting Cadence

Let's be frank: many employees struggle with the number of meetings in their calendar and sometimes wish they had fewer meetings to attend so that they could focus on getting on with their work. And who can blame employees for feeling this way? Meetings do require some preparation, they take time to attend, they often require some follow-up actions, and not all meetings are productive! So before jumping in and sending out too many meeting invites to your hybrid team, take the time to think about what the right meeting cadence is for you and your team. This will help keep your hybrid team connected without annoying them with unnecessary catch-ups.

A meeting cadence simply means how often you and your team members decide to have recurring meetings. It can be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Typically, there are four common types of meeting cadence that each serves a different purpose:

• Quarterly meetings

  Quarterly meetings work well for sharing status updates and progress in regard to strategic business goals. They are very relevant for quarterly business reviews that are cross-functional, strategic planning meetings, cross-department all-hands meetings, and performance reviews.

• Monthly meetings

  Monthly meetings are great for more meaningful check-ins on strategic topics, allowing employees to share more granular updates on their strategic initiatives. Monthly meetings can be great for skip-level management meetings, which are employees’ meetings with their manager's manager, as well as for cross-department management meetings, and department meetings such as ‘department monthly all-hands’.

• Weekly meetings

  Weekly meetings are a great cadence for deep updates on projects and initiatives within the same team; they are highly recommended for team meetings, including vertical team meetings (regional department) and horizontal team meetings (heads of departments in the same region). Of course, weekly meetings are the best cadence for employees’ one-to-one meetings with their managers, as well as peer meetings for employees from the same department.

• Daily meetings

  The most frequent type of meeting, the daily meeting, serves as a daily check-in for high-importance projects or special circumstances projects. As they can be disruptive, they are best used for special occasions. Some teams use daily meetings as part of their agile methodology framework and start each day with a ‘daily stand-up’. They are best kept short, focused, and used as a quick check-in channel rather than a problem-solving channel.

Remember that you can always change the frequency of your meetings, so even if you don't get it right the first time, you can always revisit the cadence at a later stage. In a hybrid work environment, more frequent meetings are better than less frequent meetings in order to maintain good communication and alignment, as well as inclusion and belonging. A good practice is to ask for feedback often about your meeting cadence; as your team evolves with new people joining and some people leaving, your team's preference might change over time, which is why it is particularly important to collect frequent feedback from your team.

Setting up Cadence Meetings With Direct Reports

Direct reports need special attention in a hybrid work environment. Check-ins with their managers is often their only opportunity to actually get some feedback on how they are doing, understand whether they are going in the right direction, and to check if they are not missing out on something important. Setting up weekly one-to-one meetings with direct reports is really important in order to provide an opportunity for every employee to connect with their direct line manager. Some managers tend to cancel cadence meetings with their direct reports with the excuse that ‘something else’ came up, and they don't reschedule them.

For many employees, their one-to-one meeting with their manager is their only chance to get some real-time feedback on their work; the best managers, as mentioned earlier in the survey by Harvard Business Review, are those who regularly check in with their employees. Reclaimai surveyed anonymized aggregated data comparing workweeks between February 2020 and October 2021 across over 15 000 professionals. They found some shocking statistics about the impact of scheduling and rescheduling one-on-one meetings in their ‘Reclaimai 2021 Productivity Trends Report’.⁸ Their report revealed that more than 40% of one-on-one meetings are rescheduled weekly, taking on average over 10 minutes each to coordinate new meeting times. Interestingly, the report found that on average, 42.4% of one-on-one meetings are rescheduled every week, 118.7 one-on-one meetings are rescheduled per person each year. More interestingly, the research found that on average, 29.6% of one-on-one meetings are cancelled, and professionals with 15 or more meetings every week cancel meetings over 50% more often than the average person, at 127.3 cancelled meetings a year, or 2.5 cancellations a week. With so many one-to-one meetings that are cancelled or rescheduled, it is no wonder that the average remote employee feels more excluded from the group and isolated from the action. Whilst it is important to schedule one-to-one meetings with direct reports in hybrid work, it is even more important to actually attend those meetings.

Setting up Cadence Meetings for Your Team

Teams really come together when they meet. When they are not meeting, teams are actually just a collection of individual contributors working on their individual projects, separated from each other. So setting up a good cadence meeting with your team is very important for the success of your team. Start by paying attention to your current team meeting cadence. Ask yourself if it is serving you and your team as well as it should. As your team evolves and grows in size and complexity, it is possible that the meeting cadence set up some time ago no longer reflects what your team really needs at this time. As always, get direct feedback from your team and ask them how often they want to meet. Consider paying attention to the following factors:

• Time allocated versus time spent in team meeting

  The time actually spent in your team meeting might differ from the time allocated to your team meeting. If your regular team meeting often overruns, it is a sign that your team needs more time together. Maybe they need more frequent or longer team meetings. However, if your regular team meeting often ends ahead of time, you should consider shortening the time or even making it less frequent. Discuss the meeting duration with your team members and adjust it accordingly.

• Team morale

  Your team's morale and engagement at work is a great indicator of the effectiveness of your team meetings. If most of your team members feel demotivated and disengaged at work, it is a sure sign that your team meetings are not working really well. Your people should feel energized in your meetings and should be enthusiastic and contribute with high energy levels. If that is not the case, you should revisit your team meeting cadence, your meeting format, and agenda. Ask yourself if the people in the meeting are the right meeting participants and if some of them should be in other, separate meetings. Do an audit of your meeting agenda. Ask questions about your team meeting format, cadence, and attendance during one-to-one meetings with your team members to uncover what might be missing.

• Choosing the right team meeting cadence

  In a hybrid work environment where meetings are more frequent than in a traditional office setting, it is best to keep meetings as short as possible and to keep them on track. With Zoom fatigue likely to kick-in more in a distributed work environment, keeping your team meetings minimal will help keep your team members engaged and avoid absenteeism and no-shows. As a rule of thumb, it is best to start with less frequent, shorter team meetings and increase the frequency and duration if necessary, rather than having too many meetings that are too long, because this will lead to employee disengagement altogether. It will also help to set clear expectations and a clear agenda with your team. Add the meeting agenda to your meeting invite for everyone to see. Add a shared document to your team meeting invite where attendees can add questions and notes before the meeting to save time for discussion during the meeting. Finally, always get your team's feedback on your team meeting cadence and always be ready to adjust it accordingly.

As hybrid work is becoming the new way of working for most organizations across the globe, leaders must learn how to communicate well with teams that are more dispersed than ever before. For many leaders, this is a new paradigm and they have never been trained on how to lead and communicate well in a hybrid work environment. Employees who work fully remotely or who work remotely some of the time are reportedly more distracted and more lonely than employees who work full-time from a traditional office. Remote employees and those working remotely some of the time also find it difficult to stay in touch with their colleagues, to be in-the-know and to collaborate well as they struggle to see the bigger picture. Scheduling strategic regular meetings with your teams and attending without cancelling or rescheduling is the best way to communicate well with your hybrid team. From daily stand-ups to weekly team meetings, and from monthly syncs to quarterly business reviews, regular team meetings help teams bond, connect, build trust, communicate on important issues, brainstorm ideas, and share feedback. The secret is to attend these cadence meetings religiously and treat them with the respect they deserve, because as the statistics show, a majority of one-to-one meetings get cancelled and rescheduled. Schedule strategic meetings with your team and attend them, whilst asking for frequent feedback to improve them, and you will be on the right track to building a successful hybrid team.

Cultivate Empathy and Appreciation in Communication

When Covid-19 hit in March 2020, forcing many businesses to close their doors overnight, the hotel industry was hit particularly hard, and hotels were forced to completely change how they operated as businesses. Ewelina Kubaska, HR specialist at Hilton Garden Inn Krakow Airport Hotel, remembers: ‘For us, the year 2020 will always remain the symbol of the pandemic and the time of unprecedented changes that we had to adapt to.’ Ewelina recalls that like many other hotels, Hilton Garden Inn Krakow Airport had to ask some employees to work remotely for the first time, especially those whose physical presence was not critical. Ewelina shares that her organization changed the working hours and responsibilities of their employees to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic. As an organization that transitioned to becoming a hybrid team overnight, the Hilton Garden Inn Krakow Airport Hotel quickly realized they had to change the way they communicate with their employees in order to maintain not only communication, but also trust, engagement and team spirit during a challenging time. Ewelina recalls: ‘Our board supported us as best they could. We were all regularly informed about the current situation, further plans, and possible scenarios. Our leaders understood that we all needed more empathy and mindfulness, and more attention paid to our feelings and emotions.’ As Ewelina shares, ‘The leadership style changed – it was now based on communication and compassion. We all listened to each other and motivated each other every day.’⁹

Another company that had to rapidly pivot from office work to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic is RingCentral.¹⁰ The American cloud-based communications company had to radically change its approach to employee communication in this new fully remote work environment. One of RingCentral's employees explains:

‘One of the things we found was that as our employees were working remotely, they were working very, very hard. Our productivity went through the roof! But the potential for burnout was real, so we put a number of things in place to both say “thanks” and to protect our people from working all the time. Some examples are a once-a-quarter day off for all employees; weekly virtual activities, from game hour to happy hour – ways for employees to hang out; and more frequent communications from executives to make sure everyone knows where the company is headed.’

RingCentral recognizes that communicating with appreciation in mind can be more challenging in a remote or hybrid environment, so they use video conferencing to connect with all employees to allow some important face time.

Boston-based staffing and recruiting firm Hollister is another business that understood the need to communicate with appreciation in a newly remote work environment.¹¹ Since March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the staffing company transitioned from office work to remote work. The company is doing a lot to communicate appreciation to all the employees in a remote work environment:

‘We have a company-wide meeting every Monday morning where our vice president reads acknowledgements that colleagues submitted about each other. We also read two testimonials received from engagement surveys each week to acknowledge our team live. Every employee gets a ‘First Cup's on Us’ Starbucks gift card and a GrubHub gift card to order coffee and lunch for us on their first day. Every employee also receives an Amazon gift card for both their birthday and their anniversary, along with a personalized anniversary note from leadership and their manager. Further, we host a quarterly company-wide meeting to acknowledge and reward employees across the board, from top sales performers to Unsung Hero, where leadership comments on what contributed to each individual's success and offers a financial reward.’

In 2016, Harvard Business Review published the results of a survey on empathy in business which revealed some astonishing findings.¹² The Empath Index is an index that seeks to discover what companies are creating empathetic cultures. The premise is that empathetic workplaces are better at retaining people, attracting and retaining diverse talent, and perform better. The research, run by consulting firm The Empathy Business, breaks down empathy into five categories: ethics, leadership, company culture, brand perception, and public messaging through social media. The survey researched CEO approval ratings from employees, percentage of women on the board, number of accounting and infraction scandals, and employee information from Glassdoor, amongst other metrics. The study focuses on global companies with an emphasis on UK and US companies. The Empathy Index revealed that the top 10 companies in the Global Empathy Index increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10 and generated 50% more earnings.

Other research carried out by the leading American analytics and advisory firm Gallup demonstrated that having compassion improves remote worker's performance.¹³ In 2018, Gallup released an article sharing the findings of its latest research on the qualities of leaders who inspire performance. The analytics firm surveyed 10 000 people and found that the four qualities best describing leaders who inspire performance are trust, compassion, stability, and hope. In their remote employee engagement survey, Gallup found that employees who agree with the statement, ‘My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person,’ are more likely to:

• Experiment with new ideas.
• Be advocates for their employer.
• Support co-workers personally and professionally.
• Feel equipped to strike a balance between their work and personal lives.

Gallup's research found that leaders who want to show they care about their remote workers should do the following:

• Give recognition and praise often

  According to Gallup, employees want to do a good job, and they want their manager to notice their good work. Remote employees are not physically present to receive thank yous, so words of appreciation, texts, and emails are great ways to prove that you notice and appreciate their work.

• Ask for their opinions

  Gallup also found that a great way for managers to show their compassion to remote workers is to ask them for their opinion. The consulting firm recommends that managers ask their remote employees what they think or what they would recommend given a particular situation.

Although it seems like common sense to communicate with particular empathy and compassion in a remote or hybrid work environment, my observations from having worked with dozens of organizations is that this is simply not the reality in many organizations. First, the vast majority of team leaders and managers have never been trained or educated on how to attract and retain talent in a hybrid work environment. This lack of education and awareness translates into a total absence of empathy and compassion for their hybrid and remote employees. Second, most team leaders are so busy focusing on their day-to-day work, fighting fires, and responding to business emergencies that they forget to check in with their people, let alone taking the time to ask their remote and hybrid employees how they are doing. Finally, some managers simply believe it is not their job to care for their people or to build trust, as they view it as something that has nothing to do with the business. For all of these reasons and probably more, the majority of team leaders and managers do not proactively communicate with empathy and compassion, and this is especially damaging in a hybrid work environment where most employees feel more disconnected and isolated than in-office workers. Communicating with empathy and compassion builds psychological safety, which is when employees are able to show up, speak up, and contribute without any fear of negative consequences, mockery, or criticism. Being particularly empathetic and compassionate builds trust and rapport, which sets the foundation for a productive, enjoyable, and even fun work environment. Empathy is really the secret ingredient to building a successful team, particularly in a distributed team, where each employee might have very different challenges, needs, access to information and knowledge, and even different cultural backgrounds if teams are geographically distributed across different countries, continents, and time zones.

In order to cultivate empathy and appreciation in communication, hybrid work managers can follow a few strategies that will significantly boost their team morale and productivity. Even though some team leaders and managers may never have led with empathy and appreciation before, they can learn and practise empathetic communication by following a few simple techniques and becoming role models for their hybrid teams:

• Acknowledging and complimenting employees’ work

  Remote workers and even hybrid workers can often feel that their hard work is not being recognized as much as their office-based counterparts. For those working most of the time ‘out of sight’ at home, it is easy to feel forgotten and left out from the office ‘high fives’ and spontaneous cheers.

Complimenting and praising contributions makes people feel good about their efforts, encouraging them to work better and setting the tone for the type of communication that is expected and valued: empathy and appreciation-based communication. People working in such an environment where praising is common practice are more likely to praise their co-workers' work, which in turn, creates a virtuous cycle of praise, appreciation, and empathy. Managers can also show their appreciation of their hybrid team by offering rewards. These rewards can be financial such as additional payment at the end of the month, or they can be non-financial such as extra days of annual leave. The important thing is that managers demonstrate they care about their hybrid workforce by giving them a reward or praise, because all employees will feel they are being recognized, valued, and appreciated by their manager, whether they are ‘out-of-sight’ remote workers, or partly ‘out-of-sight’ hybrid employees.

• Asking for feedback

  A study of 1100 employees, published by Harvard Business Review, found that remote workers feel more left out.¹⁴ According to that study, nearly half of the respondents said that most successful managers checked in frequently and regularly with remote employees. Respondents also reported that the most successful managers are good listeners and inquire about workload and progress. The research demonstrates the importance of asking for feedback when managing a remote team or even a hybrid team. Asking for feedback should not be limited to just work, workload, and progress, it should also be about work–life balance, any need or help, or anything else that the employee feels is important. In addition, great managers take time to build trust and rapport with each of their employees before asking for feedback.

Asking for feedback and building trust takes some extra time, but the rewards are infinite because it will boost employee morale and engagement, productivity and retention, and collaboration and communication. In addition, managers can leverage technology to collect feedback by sending monthly employee pulse surveys to gather quantitative feedback. However, in order to get the full picture of what their hybrid employees really need, team leaders should ask for feedback during their one-to-one meetings with their direct reports.

• Supporting flexible work

  Even though hybrid teams most likely are allowed to work in a flexible environment, managers of hybrid teams should pay attention to how they support flexible work for their employees. During my many years of consulting companies and even working with companies who support flexible work, I have observed that the company policy about flexible work is not always translated into practice by all managers. An article published by The Atlantic titled ‘What Bosses Really Think of Remote Workers’ revealed that people who work from home get fewer raises and promotions.¹⁵ The reality is that many employees fear that embracing hybrid and remote work will hurt their careers and they fear repercussions on their promotions, pay rises, and opportunities for growth due to hidden bias towards office workers. Managers who truly want to build a successful hybrid team by communication with empathy should become vocal advocates of flexible work. Be sure to talk about your support for flexible work during your team meetings, your one-to-one check-ins, and any company all-hands meetings. Remember to ask your team members how they feel about their current working environment and listen to their requests. Find out if any of your team members are going through a challenging time who might need special working arrangements.

  Team leaders who actively promote a flexible work environment with their team members show they care about their people and actively support their remote and hybrid employees so that everyone can work from their preferred location and can juggle any other commitments. Such managers demonstrate empathy and nurture a culture of camaraderie and support, which is fundamental in a hybrid workplace.

  The transition from traditional office work to hybrid work has changed communication forever. In particular, when many employees had to become remote workers overnight during the Covid-19 pandemic, their needs and expectations related to communication shifted as they expected more empathy and more appreciation. A SWNS research study of 2000 Americans, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Motivosity, found that remote workers are not feeling the love from managers, with half of employed respondents working from home saying they have not felt much gratitude from their job since they stopped commuting.¹⁶ Cultivating empathy and appreciation in communication is an important strategy to build, nurture, and retain teams in a hybrid work environment. Managers who practice empathy and appreciation with their hybrid employees build the foundation for a successful hybrid team by setting the tone and becoming role models.

Co-create a New Communication Framework

When Amy Edmonson, professor of leadership at Harvard Business School and specialist in organizational behaviour was asked what the future of work will hold, especially regarding remote and hybrid models, her answer was: ‘The most successful teams will write the playbook together.’ Edmonson recommends evolving workplace communication by breaking old habits and developing a new method of workplace communication. She describes this as a ‘linguistic system of science, that co-opts our communicative habits with parts of the scientific method, creating a culture that says: here is what I see, here's some hypotheses and experiments that we could try. Let's remain open to the data we receive and others’ ideas’.¹⁷

One company that has embraced the co-creation of a new communication framework in hybrid work is Ernst & Young. EY has created a Design Council to navigate the shift to hybrid work and ensure that all employees are being represented. EY put together a team of employees from different functions, regions, and levels of seniority, selected on their ability to act as change champions at all levels of the organization. Together, the team is using their diverse perspectives to create EY's ‘Way of Working’ guidance. IBM also adopted a similar approach when it hosted a ‘Think Forward Jam’: the company hosted a two-day virtual event for more than 34 000 employees to co-create guidance, foster accountability, and share best practices and recommendations regarding how to work together in a hybrid work environment.¹⁸

Co-creating a communication framework is creating a basic structure of communication by working with all employees. It is a two-way, open dialogue between the organization's leaders and its employees, where all parties engage in a discussion to jointly define a solution of communication that works for everyone. The benefits of co-creating a communication framework with employees are significant and justify this approach. First, leaders who co-create the communication framework with their employees gain access to more creative thinking and expertize. Individual contributors in your team bring a wealth of perspectives to the discussion that you would not get from consulting with only your leadership team. Your employees are also experts in their own fields, and they understand better than anyone else what communication works for them and their team members. They also are directly impacted by the communication channels and therefore their contribution to the communication framework will directly improve communication. Second, co-creating a communication framework with employees taps into a community that is extremely willing to help. Think about co-creation like a more democratic way to create new policies. Co-creating improves collaboration and gives a voice to all individual contributors, fostering unity and open discussions. Finally, co-creating a communication framework improves employee experience. It says to your employees that you care about what they want, and it makes your team feel valued, heard, and seen. It allows organizations to transform their employees into fans and advocates. Regardless of what drives your organization to co-create a communication framework with your employees, the simple process of opening the discussion to all employees will open access to greater creativity and expertize, give you access to an engaging community willing to help, and transform your employees into advocates.

• Identify and articulate new engagement rules

  One of the first steps of co-creating a new communication strategy for your hybrid work team is to identify and articulate new engagement rules. In a hybrid work setting, communication is more asynchronous than in an office setting, employee distractions from work are more frequent (family members, kids, pets, deliveries, etc.), and it is more challenging to achieve a sense of familiarity between employees organically. Rules of engagement regarding communication and collaboration must be discussed and adjusted according to the new paradigm and based on your team's preferences. For example, your team might decide to host either meetings that are fully in-person or fully virtual, excluding meetings where some participants are in the office and some are joining virtually, if they feel it offers a more equal opportunity to speak to all participants. Your team might also decide to record and share all video conferences and share notes from each meeting for every employee to see, making information more accessible to everyone inside the organization. Some companies have also decided to make all employees' emails accessible to all employees inside the organization, to increase transparency and knowledge sharing. Team leaders and managers should ask their own teams how they want to engage with each other, what channels they prefer to use for each project and how they want to share information in a way that is productive and mindful of everyone's work preferences. Some teams might prefer to use instant collaboration tools for project collaboration such as Slack, whilst others might prefer to share using shared documents on Google drives, and other teams might prefer to communicate over emails.

Once you have identified how your team likes to collaborate, make sure that you write down these rules of engagement, share them with the wider organization, and make them accessible to everyone. You should also revisit these rules regularly as new members join your team and as new needs and trends arise, to refresh them and keep them current.

• Document processes and technology

  Documenting processes and technology is often skipped over and regarded as tedious by many leaders. Most of the teams I have worked with didn’t have documented processes and technology related to communication. However, writing down processes can significantly improve collaboration, especially for new starters who are not familiar with the systems and the people. A 2007 study from the Wynhurst Group found that newly hired employees are 58% more likely to still be at the company three years later if they had completed a structured onboarding process.¹⁹

  Discuss with your team members what they would like to document in relation to communication guidelines. Write a handbook for your team on how to communicate in a hybrid work setting and share this handbook with your new starters and the wider organization.

• Organize office working days

  Although the trend for remote work and hybrid work is growing globally, the need for face-to-face meetings remains strong to build camaraderie, rapport, trust, and belonging. According to a Hubspot study, 95% of people agree that better business relationships are built through face-to-face meetings.²⁰ According to a Forbes study, 84% of executives say they prefer in-person meetings for their ability to build stronger and more meaningful business relationships.²¹ Many other studies report that face-to-face meetings allow teams to build more meaningful business relationships, facilitate communication, allow people to bond, and improve team building. In a hybrid team, managers should discuss with their team members the importance of organizing face-to-face meetings regularly to build rapport and improve communication. Allow your employees to decide how often they want to meet in person, where they want to meet in person and what format they prefer for a face-to-face gathering. Ask your team members what works for them and how you can facilitate in-person meetings. Invite all your employees to contribute to the discussion and listen to what is being said. Once you have heard from all your employees, write down the takeaway and book some dates in everyone's calendars for in-person meetings. By involving your people in organizing those in-person office working days, you build a more participative approach to communication in your team.

• Schedule time for frequent improvements

  One of the key success factors for your communication framework is its adoption by your team members. If your employees do not follow the communication guidelines, it is a signal that your guidelines need adjusting. In a survey by Really Simple System on CRM adoption, which surveyed 500 users of CRM software in the United Kingdom, it was revealed that 83% of senior executives said getting the staff to use the software was their biggest challenge.²² And it is not just technology adoption that can be a challenge: if employees do not adopt the communication channels recommended in the communication guidelines, the entire communication will suffer, and the team will not be able to collaborate efficiently. Discuss with your team members how often you should revisit your communication framework. Ask your employees when they would like to refresh the team's communication guidelines and tools to adjust to their changing needs. Remember to frequently check in with your employees on the communication guidelines and find out if anything needs to be changed.

The process of co-creating a communication framework can be achieved through design thinking. This methodology is a powerful way to co-create a solution with your employees. Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that takes into account the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Design thinking means working together to look for opportunities and focus on problem solving. It always starts with people and needs, and it involves understanding and listening, establishing a culture of trust and openness. The design thinking process is structured around five key steps:

• Empathize

  The first step in design thinking is to empathize and discover. Listen to your employees and ask them to share what a good communication framework would look like in a hybrid work environment. Find out about your team's challenges related to communicating in a distributed environment. Try and listen with an open mind, and be open to all the challenges you might hear about.

• Define

  This step is about stating your employees needs and challenges. Define the key issues and challenges that your employees shared with you during the first stage of empathizing. Identify pain points and patterns that need to be solved.

• Ideate

  This step of the design thinking process is where you involve all your employees in the idea creation process. At this point, you are challenging assumptions and creating new ways of thinking. Encourage your employees to be creative and think of new ways to communicate well in a hybrid work environment. Invite your employees to present their ideas to the team and to share new ways they think communication should be approached in a distributed work environment.

• Prototype

  At this stage of the design thinking process, you and your employees start creating solutions together. You and your employees will develop several communication frameworks for your hybrid team based on the ideas from the previous stage. Make sure that you create more than one communication handbook so that you keep your options open.

• Test

  Try your new communication guidelines with your team. As you experiment and test your new communication framework with your hybrid team, you might revise and adjust it based on your team's feedback. Keep testing and experimenting with your new communication framework until your team is happy with it and adopts it fully.

In March 2021, Citigroup announced its move to a hybrid working environment. Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, shared that the decision to embrace hybrid work was due to the many benefits that employees received from the flexibility of working from home. However, Fraser also explained that ‘the likelihood of employees adopting a hybrid work model depends on how well they can collaborate with co-workers and management from their home office’.²³ Fraser also announced a ban on video meetings on Fridays, introducing ‘Zoom-free Fridays’, and announced that a percentage of Citigroup employees would continue to work fully remotely. In Citigroup's case, it is clear that a new communication framework needs to be created in order to enable the best possible collaboration between employees and management. The CEO herself pointed out that only employees and teams who are capable of collaborating well in hybrid work will be able to continue to work in a hybrid setting. The importance of co-creating a new communication framework cannot be underestimated in that context.

Hybrid work is a new reality for most managers, teams, and organizations globally. The vast majority of employees, team leaders, and managers have never been trained on how to communicate in a distributed work environment.

Ultimately, the success of your hybrid team will depend on how well your distributed team is able to collaborate in a distributed environment, so take the time to co-create a new communication framework that your employees will embrace and adopt.

Communicate With Equity and Inclusion in Mind

Hybrid work offers many benefits to employees because of the flexibility it provides and the choice people have when it comes to where they work. For many employees, having the option to work remotely at least some of the time is about the ability to work at all. Making office work mandatory simply excludes many qualified people from jobs they are capable of and willing to perform. Employees with family care responsibilities rely on remote work and hybrid work. The majority of carers for young families are women. Women, many of whom are mothers, have expressed a stronger desire to continue working remotely than men.²⁴ Employees with physical disabilities also rely on remote and hybrid work: commuting creates a significant obstacle to many disabled people and working from the office can be a major roadblock for individuals with mobility limitations. Employees living in remote locations due to lower income, far from city centres where most offices are located, need remote and hybrid work options because many struggle to commute to office locations. Employees with lower income simply cannot afford to live near office locations, which often excludes them from job opportunities. Remote and hybrid work gives people with lower income access to work, which they would not be able to do otherwise. However, as inclusive as hybrid work is compared to the traditional office work setting, it can also cause some inequalities and exclusion for the remote and hybrid workforce.

Although often unintentional, like most biases, it is very real. A research study of more than 1000 employees in the UK by Censuswide revealed that a third of workers believe that being in the office is ultimately better for career progression, and 39% are convinced that working from home may hurt their career.²⁵ Proximity bias is our tendency to prefer those who are closer to us in space and time. Yet for UK-based occupational psychologist Ali Shalfrooshan, ‘prioritization of safety doesn't always lead to accurate judgements’. Shalfrooshan explains: ‘We all can reflect on occasions where the people we sit near are the people we know the best and feel the most kinship to.’²⁶ Research from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that between 2013 and 2020, people who worked from home were on average 38% less likely to have received a bonus compared to those who never worked from home. Similarly, the analysis showed that, between 2012 and 2017, people who mainly worked from home were less than half as likely to be promoted than other workers and were less likely to receive training.²⁷ The problem caused by hybrid work is that it could create an unintentional two-tier workforce: one workforce made up of in-office employees who get the credit, promotions, trainings, career advancement opportunities, glamour work, and mentoring, and another workforce made up of remote and hybrid workers who get forgotten, excluded from career advancement opportunities, who are not getting rewarded and promoted for their work, and who get denied mentoring and glamour work. Although this two-tier workforce might not be the result of intentional exclusion or discrimination towards remote or hybrid workers, it is as damaging as intentional discrimination for those hard-working, high-performing hybrid and remote employees. Organizations must learn how to communicate with equity and inclusion in mind in order to create a fair and equitable hybrid workplace where all employees are developed and retained.

In September 2021, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that ISS Facility Services Inc., a facility management firm, unlawfully discriminated against an employee who asked to continue working remotely due to health conditions and fired her for it. Ronisha Moncrief, a health and safety manager for ISS Facility Services, requested accommodation to work from home two days a week as an accommodation for her chronic obstructive lung disease and hypertension. Shortly after her request, ISS placed its staff on modified work schedules where employees worked from home four days per week due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in June 2020, ISS required all staff to return to in-person work at its facility five days per week. When the facility reopened, Moncrief requested accommodation to work remotely two days per week due to her pulmonary condition that caused her to have difficulty breathing and placed her at a greater risk of contracting Covid-19. The company denied Moncrief's request and, shortly thereafter, fired her.²⁸ This case illustrates the risks of creating an inequitable work environment for remote and hybrid workers, who are more at risk of being penalized in their career because of their choice of working fully or partly remotely. Not all remote and hybrid employees risk being fired for doing so, but they most likely risk missing out on promotions, career advancement opportunities, rewards and recognition, mentoring opportunities, pay rises, and more. What's more, the inequalities in the workplace persist and have even been accentuated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report pointed out:

‘On one hand, the proportion of women among skilled professionals continues to increase, as does progress towards wage equality, albeit at a slower pace. On the other hand, overall income disparities are still only part-way towards being bridged and there is a persistent lack of women in leadership positions, with women representing just 27% of all manager positions.’

The World Economic Forum's 2021 Gender Gap Report also revealed that there has been a decline of women's hiring into leadership roles, creating a reversal of 1 to 2 years of progress across multiple industries. Other studies, such as McKinsey's ‘Women in the Workplace’ report, have also reported that men are promoted at a 30% higher rate than women. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, men have earned more than women since 1979, the first year with available data. And according to the US Census Bureau ‘2019 American Community Survey’, Black and Hispanic women face the biggest pay gap when comparing earnings to non-Hispanic white men.

With all the pre-existing inequalities in the workplace between men and women, white employees and non-white employees, and all other inequalities, the hybrid workplace needs to foster an inclusive and equitable workplace for all its employees. In a post-Covid workplace, where workplace inequalities are more top of mind than ever before, employers must implement strategies to communicate with equity and inclusion in mind to attract, nurture, and retain diverse talent in a hybrid environment. Here are four strategies that you can use to communicate with equity and inclusion in a hybrid work environment:

• Overcommunicate

  In a hybrid work environment, full-time remote employees and employees who work remotely part-time can feel more excluded than their office peers. Managers must make an intentional effort to overcommunicate with all employees in order to make everyone feel included and part of the team. Replicating office informal interactions is a great way to overcommunicate with everyone. Remote workers tend to work with less supervision, so managers may be less aware of their workload or accomplishments.

Communicating more frequently also helps create more inclusion. Sending weekly emails to your team, hosting informal chats with remote employees, encouraging pre- and post-meeting socializing, holding company-wide meetings to sync up and highlight your team's success internally help to improve feelings of inclusion amongst your hybrid team. Refreshing your internal communication channels also helps create more inclusion and equity between remote employees and office employees. Describe explicitly which channels should be used for various types of communications (email, chat apps, meetings, etc.), encourage more inclusive practices such as choosing to use group email threads where project discussions are visible to everyone rather than one-to-one emails, ensure that your one-to-one meetings structure allows sufficient time for feedback from each employee about their work setting, and document conversations via digital channels rather than in person.

• Ensure equitable practices

  In a highly distributed team, there is a higher risk of favouritism towards employees that are office-based versus remote employees. Distance bias and proximity bias are at play, and they tend to make team leaders unconsciously prefer office workers who are closer to them over remote workers who are further away. Start by reviewing your workplace practices. Traditional policies no longer work in a hybrid setting. Standard performance reviews and evaluations might hold hidden bias towards in-person workers, giving them an unfair advantage.

Be intentionally transparent. A big part of people's perception of fairness comes from transparency. Be open about the principles you are using to determine who gets promoted, who gets recognition, who gets new projects, who gets new assignments, etc. Share the experiments you are considering for new work methodologies with everyone in your team. Communicate about business necessities and the ways you will need people to make unique contributions toward a shared purpose. Hold people accountable. When you take action to address bad or unfair behaviour or a lack of results, you contribute to a more equitable culture. This is especially true in hybrid work where remote and hybrid employees pay extra attention to their manager's behaviour and use it as a basis for what is acceptable and what is not. When people feel others are doing their jobs, delivering results, receiving appropriate recognition, and being held accountable, it goes a long way toward creating a culture where a sense of fairness is pervasive.

• Monitor feedback closely

  Rethinking your approach with a strategy of fairness and equality in mind is key to communicating with inclusion and equity. Take concrete steps to ensure equal treatment of remote workers. Recognizing the needs of remote workers can be a challenge, so managers should monitor qualitative feedback of remote workers closely. By talking openly with your team, acknowledging the issues that hybrid work can bring, and hosting team meetings to discuss hybrid work, you can create a hybrid workplace that is fair and equitable for all employees. Companies without obvious metrics for measuring feedback on employee inclusion may need to create new assessment methods; consider sending employee engagement surveys with a focus on hybrid work. These employee inclusion assessments address many forms of bias including preferential treatment on the basis of presenteeism, race, gender, and sexual orientation, among others.

• Organize team-building activities

  When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, almost 26% of workers had a different employer that same year, meaning that some employees have never interacted with their new teammates in person before. Organize a group walk ‘n’ talk. If your team is tired of staring at a screen, then head outside! For those in the office, get together and go for a walk while you hold a meeting. For those working remotely, encourage them to call in and take a stroll during the discussion. Have those working remotely share where they're walking and what they're seeing. Or make it a competition by having your team track their steps and see who can get the most steps! Start a unique conversation. Making small talk via videoconference has its limitations. Build a numbered list of unique questions, have each team member choose a number, and ask them the corresponding question. You can choose from work-oriented questions like: What's a department you'd love to learn more about, and why? Or take a more personal route and ask questions like: What was your favourite holiday destination, and would you revisit that location?

Communicating with inclusion in a hybrid work environment means that every employee feels heard, valued and seen, and is able to take part in the same activities and enjoy the same experiences, regardless of their work setting. It means that all employees are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute equally to their team's success. It means that different perspectives are always heard and valued and that all employees contribute equally to projects. In order to create a truly inclusive and equitable workplace in a hybrid team, managers and team leaders must be intentional in their communication. Overcommunicating, replicating office informal interactions, ensuring equitable practices, monitoring feedback closely and organizing team-building activities will help create a more inclusive team and ensure that remote and hybrid employees are truly included and feel like they belong to the team as much as in-office employees.

Conclusion

In a hybrid work environment, the ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ adage can unfortunately become true. As many remote employees have reported in various surveys, working remotely, even part-time, can make people feel excluded, isolated, less aware of the latest developments, and even miss out on career advancement opportunities. The most successful hybrid teams are those that are able to overcommunicate through all channels to make every employee part of the conversation, regardless of whether they work from the office five days a week or whether they never work in the office. A lot of companies used the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to completely revisit their internal communication; from adopting new communication technologies and tools, to changing the way they interact with employees. From adopting a new intranet technology like legal firm Lenczer Slaght, to re-evaluating communication channels like UK-based software company Paddle, to embracing a new leadership style based on communication and compassion like Hilton-many companies have pivoted and changed the way they communicate with their employees during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the common theme amongst all these companies is that they all started communicating more, and more often, when they transitioned to a hybrid work environment. Whether it was by adopting a new communication technology like legal firm Lenczer Slaght, to facilitate better internal communication, or whether it was by embracing a new communication style based on better communication and compassion like Hilton, most organizations that transitioned to hybrid work embraced communicating more and better.

A new work environment requires new communication channels. First, you need to understand and recognize the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication refers to people exchanging information and messages in real time. Asynchronous communication refers to communication that doesn’t happen in real time. Assess the effectiveness of both types of communication with your hybrid team and identify which works best for each scenario. Survey employee engagement and analyse results based on employee working style: the responses from remote employees may differ from those of office-based employees. You may notice that fully remote employees prefer one specific communication channel to another, and that your office workers also prefer another communication channel. Study performance data to find out what tools are actually being used and what tools are not being adopted by your hybrid team. Monitor the performance of your monthly internal newsletter, intranet, instant messaging app, monthly all-hands Zoom call, or any other internal communication channel. Pay close attention to your employee turnover; when your organization has outstanding internal communication, your employees are more likely to be very engaged and motivated at work and less likely to leave your organization. Monitor how many employees are leaving your organization, hold exit interviews, and spend time with your employees leaving to understand their reasons for departing. Track your employee turnover rate, particularly based on their working group, as you might notice that fully remote employees are more likely to leave than in-office employees, for example.

Scheduling strategic regular meetings is also key to communicating well in a hybrid work setting. Harvard Business Review found that remote employees think great managers arrange frequent and consistent check-ins, and they reported that this is the top skill of a great manager, together with using face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact, demonstrating exemplary communication skills, making expectations explicit, and being available. Choosing the right meeting cadence will help achieve a balanced communication flow. Whether it's a quarterly meeting, a monthly meeting, a weekly meeting, or even a daily stand-up, you must implement a meeting cadence and ask your team what works best for them. Setting up cadence meetings with direct reports and team members is also fundamental, especially in a remote work environment, because direct reports need special attention in a remote work environment. Setting up weekly one-to-one meetings with direct reports is really important in order to provide an opportunity for every employee to connect with their direct line manager. Some managers tend to cancel cadence meetings with their direct reports with the excuse that ‘something else’ came up; however, cancelling one-to-one meetings without rescheduling is a sure way to fail at building trust. Research found that more than 40% of one-on-one meetings are rescheduled weekly, taking on average over 10 minutes each to coordinate new meeting times. Don't become a statistic attend all your cadence meetings.

Cultivating empathy and appreciation in communication is a key element of creating a successful hybrid team. Research found that companies with empathetic leadership generate more value and produce 50% more earnings than those with no empathetic leadership. Another research by Gallup found that compassion at work improves remote workers’ performance. Ensure that you intentionally communicate with empathy by acknowledging and complimenting employees' work, asking for feedback and truly supporting flexible work.

Co-creating a new communication framework with your team will also help build the foundation for a successful hybrid team. Identify and articulate new engagement rules with your team members, document processes and technology, organize office working days, and schedule time for frequent improvements. Involving everyone in the decision-making process and asking every team member to share how they prefer to communicate will help you create the right communication framework for your hybrid team.

Communicate with equity and inclusion in mind. Communicating with a focus on inclusion in a hybrid work environment means that every employee feels heard and valued. In order to create an inclusive hybrid workplace, managers must be intentional in their communication. Overcommunicating, replicating informal office interactions, ensuring equitable practices, monitoring feedback closely, and organizing team-building activities will help create a more inclusive team and ensure that remote employees are truly included and feel like they belong to the team as much as in-office employees. Communicating more frequently, through the right channels, with the right meeting cadence, in an inclusive and collaborative way, will set up the foundation for a successful hybrid team. As Henry Ford famously said: ‘If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.’