Leading startups and entrepreneurial ventures require leaders able to manage unique challenges and embrace opportunities that shape the venture for success. - BY Dave DeSouza

A February 2023 WFH U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) found that in the prior week of the survey, 19.97% of people aged 20-64 and earning more than $10,000 worked entirely remotely, and 27.7% worked hybrid schedules. The hybrid workforce has become the norm. When the pandemic started, business leaders had to rapidly adapt to employees working from home and had little time to think about important challenges like preserving the organizational culture, maintaining employee engagement, and meeting employee needs. The focus was on utilizing technology to maintain employee productivity and retain customers. Now, it is clear that the hybrid workforce is a permanent work model, and managers must become more intentional in learning new leadership skills for empowering and engaging employees, so the organization continues to succeed.

Can Managers Meet Five Challenges Presented by the Hybrid Workforce?

Now that the pandemic has ended, organizational leaders realize they must adapt their leadership styles and skills to meet the needs of employees and achieve organizational goals. Martine Haas, Lauder Chair Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of the Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, says managers struggling to lead a hybrid team or remote workforce should assess where they stand in relation to the 5Cs or challenges.

The first C is communication. Do remote workers have effective communication tools, and do their managers recognize there are communication barriers to overcome, such as employees uncomfortable with speaking up during virtual meetings, and language differences that add complexity to communication? The second C refers to coordination between onsite workers and remote workers. Do managers know how to maintain coordination among all team members?

The third C is connections, which include social connections, such as professional networks and mentoring relationships that are so critical for minorities and women, and personal connections that are important to the psychological well-being of all employees. Do managers know how to lead teams in a way that develops and preserves relationships? The fourth C is collective creativity, which refers to the ideas and innovations that flow from people interacting spontaneously. Can leaders find ways to keep teams collaborating and generating new ideas? The fifth C refers to culture. An organization’s positive culture influences collaboration, innovation, inclusion and belonging, the ability to be viewed as an employer of choice, productivity, and employee-management relationships. How can managers maintain the organization’s culture when employees are not in the same location, and they are experiencing different challenges and stresses?

Leaders Able to Bridge Employee Expectations and Organizational Priorities

The hybrid workforce model has many positive impacts. For example, it has led to employers offering employees flexible work arrangements that allow them to meet personal needs. It has supported increased access to more diverse job candidates and improved “the work experience for employees of color, enhancing retention and bolstering the leadership pipeline.” Though the positives are welcomed, employees in the hybrid workforce also need leaders with the right skills to lead virtual teams in an inclusive way, maintain trust in leadership, drive accountability, maintain team collaboration, and support the organization’s culture. Team members working onsite and remotely must feel connected, even though remote workers cannot experience events such as having informal interactions with peers or stopping in at the manager’s office to ask questions.

Developing the right leadership skills matters more than ever in the hybrid workforce, because employees today have different expectations about work-life balance, work schedule flexibility, health and wellness, meaningful work, participation in decision-making, and more. As Microsoft found in its analysis of the changes in employee expectations as the hybrid workforce became a fixture, managers are the “critical bridge between evolving employee expectations and leaders’ priorities. If empowered, they hold the key to unlocking the potential of hybrid work. Equip them with the resources and training they need to manage the transition. While the policies are set at the top, leaders need to decentralize decision-making, and empower managers to make changes on behalf of their employees’ individual needs.”

Guarding Against Biases and Preserving Equity

Leaders must develop strong communication skills and learn to intentionally address the employee needs of both remote workers and onsite workers who need help connecting with remote team members. They can ask team members what is working, when they need to work together, what tools are ideal, and how they believe they can best support the organizational culture. Also, developing strong leadership listening skills is crucial. It is also important for leaders to guard against favoring team members who are onsite (proximity bias), maintain collaboration equity so that all team members are seen and heard, frequently communicate with all employees, and ensure all team members get access to the same information and vital information. Maximizing performance and productivity by distributing work that best fits the work location is also important. For example, some work is best done in a location without distraction, while higher performance is achieved in other work when people can collaborate in person.

Some things must be adapted to the hybrid workforce model. For example, Deloitte points out that the “practices and norms that drove productivity in the physical workplace do not necessarily work well in the hybrid one.” Their study found that half of the workforce does not feel that employee development programs translate to remote or hybrid work. There is also recognition that the “how, where, and when” of work must evolve, with the hybrid model becoming a bridge between business productivity and employee preferences. Managers must redefine work success as based on outcomes, rather than workloads and defined work schedules where activities are observable. This drives a change in how performance is measured. Leaders become coaches rather than productivity assessors. Each organization should evaluate organizational policies and make sure they fit the hybrid workforce.

It is wise to bring remote and onsite employees together periodically when possible. This is one reason some companies have a day or two each week when all employees work together onsite. However, this may not be possible when remote workers are globally spread out. In that situation, make use of technology to hold virtual meetings in which all employees can express concerns, share ideas, and connect. Managers must lead with authenticity, honesty, transparency, empathy, and flexibility.

Checking In With Employees

One thing that remains the same is engaging all employees by checking in with them regularly and encouraging feedback. Giving employees a voice is one of the most critical ways organizational leaders can stay in tune with employee needs. Plenty of advice is available on ways to empower employees in a hybrid workforce, but keeping a focus on employee needs can guide the empowerment of the workforce. The constant change in the business environment and employee expectations is challenging but manageable, when leaders have the right skills.