The Employer Engagement Guide: 5 Ways to Maintain Balance Across Blended Teams

Welcome to Part 11 of the Employer Engagement Guide. Is a blended workforce new territory for you? Are you facing challenges in terms of bringing on-site and remote employees together as a successful workforce? Read on for our top tips!

In today’s world, connectivity and technology are advancing at lightning speed, meaning an increasing number of workers move to part-time or full-time teleworking.

Providing blended working (the chance to work from home or the office) is a brilliant perk to entice and sustain top talent in a competitive market.

That said, managing both in-house and at-home employees is no walk in the park, from time management to project tracking to efficiently engaging staff in your company culture.

Happily, there’s a whole host of applications and guidance for managers and employees to streamline blended working in the workplace.

What’s the meaning of blended working?

Blended working is when employees combine working remotely with working on-site so it’s suitable for staff and employers.

Since the pandemic, this hybrid work from home and office-based schedule is popular among employers and employees for many reasons.

For example, the benefits of hybrid remote working include more flexibility around childcare commitments. Covid-19 has shown many parents the perks of this flexibility to their work-life balance.

A recent study revealed that only 13% of employed parents wish to return to the old normal. Here’s how to bring on-site and remote employees together as a successful workforce.

1. Ask all workers to join meetings via their webcams

To guarantee an effortless blended working experience, have all your staff – remote and office-based – take part in meetings via their webcams, even if they’re in the same room. In this way, no one feels left out by not physically being in the office.

What’s more, this also ensures the office-based workers’ opinions don’t override those of the home-based workers’. On-site workers tend to collaborate with other on-site workers and overlook or don’t listen to the individual on the call.

2. Personalise the at-home experience

Hybrid working can be tough, particularly if you have a site-based team located conveniently to where you’re based. The remote-working employees can’t physically take part in the meetings. Neither do they have an opportunity to pass by a colleague’s desk to say hi. And even Slack doesn’t measure up to the power of in-person meetings.

We advise arranging a weekly video call with all your staff members – or even just one-to-ones will do. You could introduce photo days where teleworking employees upload pictures of their home office and vice versa.

The aim is to do all you can to engage the home-based team with your firm, values, and culture. To make them feel acknowledged, familiarise yourself with their local holidays – it’ll make all the difference. 

3. Talk every day via multiple channels

Make sure you know what each member of your team is up to, so be sure to take a look at the shared calendar. For instance, on a Monday, you could do a stand-up so each worker talks about any obstructions they need help with. Then, on a Friday, you could have a Zoom session to reflect on the past week.

Consider opening a Zoom line for workers that want to arrange a casual catch-up to brainstorm ideas. Alternatively, use Slack – you can use it to organise different rooms for every client and team member for a sophisticated conversation. Set your staff up with email addresses so that everyone knows what’s what.

Think about using the likes of Monday.com or Asana for managing projects and delegating team responsibilities. Using applications like these mean there are manifold ways for your team to collaborate. Your team communicates on their terms via their favourite channel at least once a day. So, your workers come together, whether they’re in the office or not.

A few other top tech tools we recommend are:

• Google Apps/G Suite (desks/spreadsheet tasks/documents.
• Freshdesk (customer service)
• Trello (business roadmaps)
• Jira (tech)

However, the best application of them all is real-life face time, not the app. After all, nothing else compares to the interaction and mind share of an office floor packed with driven, enthusiastic, hardworking individuals.

4. Concentrate on the results part versus the perceived effort part

In a hybrid working or blended working situation, it’s easy to focus on the amount of effort a worker puts into a particular project. One of the best ways to help your employees is to concentrate on the results an individual brings in, not the perceived effort.

If you put all your energy into concentrating on a worker’s effort, you may feel frustrated about their work. Before taking a candidate on, tell them what you want to accomplish and see if they understand and acknowledge your vision. After this, observe if they add value to your vision. If they fail to because they have so many other customers to deal with, they may not be the best ‘culture add’ to your firm.

5. Ensure everybody knows the score

To ensure every in-house or remote team member stays in the loop, hold weekly recorded meetings. Often, the teleworking team is neglected in terms of understanding what’s going on and when.

With employees based worldwide, it’s tricky to find a suitable time to meet. However, when you record meetings, your whole team can stay in the know and give feedback and make suggestions on any topics discussed.