The world is being changed exponentially by digital technology.

The first ripples of change were felt in social spaces, but now the workplace is being altered by the advances in communication and data sharing that the digital age brings. Businesses and managers are having to adapt to remote and hybrid working styles that present a lot of challenges as well as opportunities.

Learning how to adapt to these new norms is going to be an important element of continuing success in the marketplace. Here is a quick guide to some of the challenges of remote and hybrid management and how to overcome them.

Learning To Adapt

The way we work is changing rapidly. More and more businesses are looking at hybrid structures and working from home as ways to increase productivity while reducing overheads. The advantages these can bring to a company are obvious, but the challenges they create often go overlooked. Managing remote teams can be difficult to do effectively, especially if you are used to running an in-house team.

Educating yourself on the changes, understanding the challenges, and learning about modern solutions to this modern problem are the keys to overcoming the changes that remote working and hybrid teams bring.

The business world is changing exponentially, and this Leadership online short course from the MIT Sloan School of Management can help you and your business navigate these situations.

This will help you lead teams in the digital age and adapt to the rapidly changing environment that the digital revolution is creating. Knowledge truly is power, and by empowering yourself with the information and tools you need to manage a remote or hybrid team you can overcome the challenges and boost the benefits of these new styles of working.

Virtual Teams, Real Trust

On any given business day, trust is key to the organizational effectiveness of your team. Trust is the foundation of any relationship, whether personal or professional. In a virtual working environment with a wholly remote team or a hybrid working structure, trust becomes even more vital. Your team needs to trust you and your abilities, and you need to trust their time management and productivity more than ever before.

Working from home means working in a more relaxed environment. This has obvious advantages to workers and their work/life balance, but it also leaves workers unmonitored. There is software available that can help managers to monitor workers and how they progress through their tasks, but these all have their limitations.

Trust between worker and manager is a vital tool in the remote workplace, and this trust goes both ways. Teams need to build a new level of trust between each other to ensure that targets are being met and that productivity is not negatively impacted by this change in working style.

The New Normal

Elements of the traditional in-house work environment will not transfer well to a remote or hybrid setup. You will have to work closely with your team members to create the new normal. Work with your team to establish new protocols, schedules, and methods for collaboration to ensure that the workflow is not disrupted by the change in the environment that comes with working from home.

There is no single policy or practice that will apply to every team regardless of the industry your business operates in or the makeup of your team. Together, you will have to create new systems and ways of communicating to discover the new normal and harness the power of remote and hybrid working styles without a negative effect on productivity or workflow. These new working practices and protocols should be as close as is practically possible to the in-house practices that your team used to follow. This makes the switch to remote or hybrid working easier to manage at every level of the hierarchy.

Staying Accessible

Digital technology has given us many new ways to communicate, but when teams make the switch to remote and hybrid working styles communication and accessibility can suffer. Remote working can make both workers and managers feel remote and detached from one another. When you implement these working styles you also need to implement new methods and lines of communication.

These new ways of communicating not only need to include avenues and opportunities for official meetings and communique but also ad-hoc and social conversation. Every workplace is a social environment after all, and it is difficult to build a team and rapport without social communication.

In the age of the digital era and remote working, what replaces ‘water cooler’ chat? You need to create chat rooms or groups for non-work conversations as well as new lines of communication for official and work-themed chats. Virtual morning coffee meetings and ‘ask me anything’ sessions can both be used to ensure your team has the opportunity to reach you and one another.

Feedback Loops

Managing remote and hybrid teams can make feedback difficult. This is not only feedback coming downstream from the higher management structure, but also upstream feedback from your workers on the quality of their workflow and their experiences working. This is not just about negative feedback either. Everyone deserves recognition and praise when they have earned it, and this can be an important element of workplace satisfaction.

Both positive and negative feedback can be public or private, whether in an in-house environment or among remote and hybrid workers. You must have arenas for both positive and negative feedback in place, and protocols ready for how to use them.

Workers need to know that they have an outlet for their concerns and an inlet for recognition. Never let opportunities for feedback get lost in the change over to remote or hybrid working styles, it is an important and valuable tool for the continuing success of your business and your team.

Set Goals With Your Team

Remote and hybrid working can be incredibly useful for setting and achieving goals as a team. Being able to communicate effectively and efficiently means that tasks can be outlined quickly and goals set through group discussion. This would be harder in a traditional work environment. Monitoring progress becomes easier with the right protocols in place, and achieving milestones as a team becomes easier to acknowledge.

Involve your team in setting goals and discuss with them how they can be achieved. Work with them to develop time frames and schedules that they can accommodate.

The changes that remote and hybrid working styles bring can be seen as negative throughout the workplace hierarchy, but the positives they bring far outweigh the challenges. By setting realistic goals and working with your team to consistently achieve them you are demonstrating that remote and hybrid working styles are an asset to your company and not a liability.

Remote and hybrid working can have a huge positive impact on any business, it all depends on how managers, workers, and the business itself adapts to these changes. By getting ahead of the problems, and working with your team to find solutions, any manager can not only overcome these challenges but also thrive in the new normal of remote working.

Use this guide to help you to navigate your own path through this exponentially changing work environment, and make remote and hybrid working an asset to you and your company.

Read Also:

• Benefits Of ERM: Streamlining Enterprise-Wide Risk Management!
• Nine Business Management Tips For Ambitious Entrepreneurs
• What Is Enterprise Spend Management?