Building the Future of Work Now: Key tips to enhance people coordination in your hybrid workplace

The modern workplace is rapidly evolving. Corporations are no longer tied down to office spaces; employees can work with greater flexibility and autonomy than ever before. Hybrid workplaces have established themselves as the new norm, blending remote and in-person work environments. This hybrid work arrangement allows employees to enhance their work-life integration and contributes to an inclusive work environment, where those who may otherwise face barriers to traditional in-person work can participate.

Despite the many benefits of the hybrid workplace, it is important to recognize the shortcomings in terms of hybrid workplace communication and collaboration. With employees working in different locations or different time zones too, there is potential for delays in decision-making, miscommunication, and cohesion within the workplace. Organizations need to make conscious efforts to address these challenges.

In this blog, we will share eight practical tips to enhance the coordination of employees in your hybrid workplace. From using technology to keep individuals connected to creating pathways for open communication, these strategies will enable you to bridge the gaps in hybrid work arrangements and create a productive work environment for your team.

The Importance of Coordination in the Hybrid Workplace Model

Coordination is integral to all multiplayer environments. In the hybrid office model, however, where teams are often geographically dispersed and working across different work settings, coordination takes on greater importance.

Effective coordination ensures that remote and in-person employees are able to align their efforts, share information, and collaborate. Coordination in the hybrid workplace contributes to overall team performance and organization. When teams are well-coordinated, they can leverage the diverse skills of all employees, in-person or remote. This contributes to an integrated team with enhanced problem-solving, creativity, and productivity. Furthermore, coordination works to mitigate the challenges of communication and information sharing that arise in a hybrid workplace – coordination forms a shared sense of purpose and accountability.

How to Enhance Coordination in the Hybrid Workplace Model

There are multiple steps organizations, big and small, can take to push their teams in the right direction when it comes to coordination efforts. We have created a list of eight strategies to enhance coordination in the hybrid workplace. By implementing these measures, organizations can foster an integrated team mindset with enhanced problem-solving, creativity, and productivity.

• Establish Clear Communication Channels

When working hybrid, employees cannot just walk over to their colleagues desk or step into their manager’s office for support. Thus, utilizing hybrid workplace communicators such as Jumpree or Trello, a project management tool will allow employees to stay constantly connected.

• Set Regular Check-ins and Team Meetings

By organizing a weekly timeline that consists of regularly scheduled check-ins and team meetings, you can ensure all employees stay connected. Individuals working together may find themselves in different timezones thus, on different schedules. Having consistent meetings allows employees to stay in the loop on their colleagues’ work and coordinate their own efforts in response.

• Foster a Culture of Trust and Inclusion

Without a physical office, it can be a challenge to form a company culture, as has been done traditionally. Despite this, it is important to ensure all employees are connected and feel valued and included. This will result in open dialogue and collaboration between diverse perspectives. This can be achieved by maintaining transparent communications at work or finding a workplace check-in spot near team members, or hosting quarterly field visits with the team to learn and share something new.

• Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

When roles and responsibilities are clearly established, expectations are transparent and employees can take the necessary steps to complete their role. When every employee is successfully completing their tasks, they can collaborate and support their colleagues, even when they’re separated by space and time.

• Leverage Technology

There are countless collaboration tools, platforms, and softwares to support efforts in your hybrid workplace. SmartenSpaces offers tools to support your hybrid workplace arrangements such as desk management booking recommendations and smart meeting room booking to support the hybrid workplace. Additionally, with the Hybrid Scheduler, you can efficiently create and manage a hybrid work schedule for your team.

Also read: Ways to create workplace solutions that work for you and your employees

• Encourage Knowledge Sharing

Promote the sharing of expertise, best practices, and lessons learned among team members to enhance collective learning efforts and collaboration. For example, flexible seating allows employees to move around and come together when needed to collaborate on tasks and projects. Through the Smarten Spaces desk booking app. Employees can reserve their workspace by scanning a QR code or simply logging into their profile. This allow teams to meet and collaborate  as they can readily book space at the office.

• Implement Virtual Team-Building Activities

Virtual activities utilize one of the benefits of remote work: the ability to connect and collaborate on a global scale. By organizing virtual team-building activities and events, you can bring together your employees. In these events, employees can discuss the struggles they face in hybrid working and establish ways they feel the dynamic can be improved.

• Provide easy access to a variety of meeting spaces

Findings indicate that employees are mostly coming into the office for meeting spaces. Whether it be for a huddle, formal meeting, customer interaction, and team discussion rooms, using programs such as Jumpree for Teams allows you to provide employees with the resources they need. Additionally, by releasing rooms that are booked but not used, you are able to ensure availability for all employees and reduce space waste.

Conclusion

By emphasizing coordination as a core priority in the hybrid work model, the solutions we have provided above will work to enable communication, information sharing and collaboration. These solutions will work against barriers of time and space created by the modern workplace and allow for improved task coordination, reduced duplication of efforts and enhance decision-making processes. Additionally, coordination-focused hybrid workplace solutions contribute to a greater sense of unity and shared purpose within teams. Together, these efforts allow for higher levels of productivity, achieving success with innovation.

Continue reading: The Balancing Act: How to Maintain Work-Life Balance and Drive Productivity with the Hybrid Workplace