Author: Sean Malady

When the pandemic first hit, companies had to scramble to find a work-from-home solution within 24 hours. It’s been a few years since that hectic time, and while during the early days, we prayed for everything to “return to normal,” we have accepted that having a work-from-home business model is the new normal.

But not all companies can go completely remote; some can only make a couple of days a week work.

The magic is finding the sweet spot for your company and the perfect management style to keep things running smoothly, no matter the environment.

As long as you look at the three most important things as you make this transition, you are bound to be a success. You can’t make a significant business change like this without considering the company’s goals, the managers, and the other employees. All of these things will be affected by any decision, which will, in turn, determine your business’s continued success.

So, how do you manage your whole business from the office and home? The answer is simple: having a plan before transitions start happening.

Management

An essential part of creating a thriving hybrid business environment is ensuring your management works in both the office and remotely. Your company can test this over some time before enacting a company-wide hybrid policy.

That is one of the benefits of going hybrid now versus a few years ago. You can take the time to establish what works best for your company structure and who struggles the most from remote work. Not everyone will take to work from home as easily as it is to breathe. If we learned one thing from early 2020, some people are fantastic managers, teachers, and leaders when their audience/team is right in front of them. However, put a computer screen between them, and they struggle to establish a rapport and authority because they can’t visualize what they need to do.

Taking time to establish a remote option in your workplace slowly allows you to sort out which team leads might need extra support when transitioning to a new way of managing. Giving your employees time to get used to the change in structure will ensure you become a successful remote company when you need to be.

Taking time also allows you to work out any technical issues when setting up home offices. This is a crucial part of management because it’s part of each role working at 100% every day of the week – no matter the situation. Having rules and guidelines in place for when a connection issue occurs will help your company save on downtime.

We will get into this a bit more in a minute, but another crucial part of management is meetings, scheduling, and employee support. All of these must be established before making your remote workplace option available companywide.

As a business owner, you dictate how much your manager needs to be in contact with their team throughout the day. By establishing this scheduled structure from the start, you are giving your managers the tools for success even before they have the opportunity to feel overwhelmed. 

These meetings and check-ins can be altered based on workload and capabilities, but they still need to happen at a specific frequency – daily, once a week, every other week, or once a month; you need to make it company policy that they occur. This way, your employees aren’t just out there doing whatever they want without making themselves available for the responsibilities of their position.

Scheduling

Most importantly, you must determine how your hybrid schedule will be set up—having a plan will make it easier to manage your employees’ expectations. Employees are less likely to abuse the system if they know how many and which days they are allowed outside of the office. 

When planning the schedule, you need to decide your company’s needs, each role’s needs, and how often you can afford your employees to be out of the office. No two companies will have the same hybrid plan because each situation is unique. The most important thing to remember is to find what works best for you.

It would be best if you also considered allowing your employees some schedule flexibility. Whether you decide they can have access to this flexibility from the start or it is a perk for them once they’ve established that they can handle working from either environment. You have to assess what works best for your company overall and the various roles within the company. 

Don’t let scheduling bog you down. When you first start, decide on a schedule and stick to it. Choosing to have a whatever-goes attitude from the start can create tricky problems with staffing that you don’t need. If you realize after a few months of hybrid that your company can afford more at-home days or need less, you can adjust to fit the needs. 

Maintaining Culture

One of the first things to suffer when deciding to go hybrid is the overall business model, which includes your culture. More often than not, when your company was created, it was with the mindset that everyone would be in the office every day and interacting with one another face to face quite regularly. Naturally, when you take your business hybrid, there are going to be some adjustments needed.

Company culture can seem effortless to establish when your workforce is in-person. When you adjust your practices, that culture could take a significant hit if you aren’t careful. While the culture may remain as it has always been for your seasoned employees, whenever you bring on new hires after this change, you need to have a plan to convey that culture to them despite not being in person.

It’s easy for new hires not to understand the values, beliefs, and vibe of the company they work for when their interactions with coworkers and managers are limited. Knowing this will help you set up a successful transition and path forward. 

You don’t need to change your culture’s basic structure; you need to adjust it to fit a more tech-centric environment. If you used to have monthly team-building exercises, you should continue that trend but find new ways for them to be exciting and fun even if members join in virtually. 

Make sure these team-strengthening activities, which are a big part of your culture, remain well-attended and have feedback from everyone involved. This way, your teams still feel like teams despite not meeting in person.

Part of adjusting your company and your culture is changing your communication style. With not as much face time, some employees may need increased communication throughout their days to feel less on an island. Ensure your company policies and best practices include a structure for this change.

Communication ensures everyone is a success no matter where they work. It enhances your culture and provides employees with the support they need to be their best.

Hiring Practices

Ensuring your culture withstands the move to remote work is extremely important when considering your hiring practices. During the hiring process, you will need to account for a remote employee’s inability to know the office’s culture from experience. This means you must adjust your culture so that new hires understand the company from day one, even if they never step foot in the office or meet their coworkers.

You can make some significant changes to your hiring process because of remote work. One of the major ones is you can adjust compensation to reflect the changes made to your company structure. Depending on how remote you can feasibly make your company, you may be able to extend your pool of candidates from your area to include the whole United States.

In a hybrid world, it might be beneficial for your onboarding process to include time spent in the office. This can ensure your new hires are going to be good fits for the remote aspect of your company. It also gives you a chance to introduce new employees to the executives of the company as well as their direct managers. Making this meet and greet part of their orientation is crucial if you have to do a virtual onboarding. 

You want to ensure your practices help the 90% of employees who will thrive in whatever environment your company gives them and the 10% who may need extra help for whatever reason.

How We Can Help

J & J Staffing has been on a hybrid business model since the start of the pandemic. Our company continues to thrive and adjust to each new challenge. As the area’s premier staffing resource, we know how companies have worked around this new normal. If you need help hiring any new employees for hybrid or just some more tips on what best practices you can use, give us a call.