How 4and20Million are helping teams to navigate the hybrid working conundrum.
Where would you like to spend the next working week? Back in the office? At home? In a coffee shop? All of the above? As the possibilities have opened up again, so have the questions, LinkedIn polls and tricky decisions. Is three days in the office about right? Should we be pushing nervous colleagues to return to the office? Can we let people decide for themselves, or is some structure required?
These are difficult questions with unclear answers, particularly when many of our colleagues will have very different opinions and personal circumstances. In an effort to meet everyone’s needs, there’s a risk of jumping to a middle-of-the-road compromise. If you find yourself defaulting to a three-days-in-the-office-a-week structure because it’s a halfway house between two extremes, you may be guilty of this compromised approach.
Before settling on a definitive working structure, it’s important to first step back and consider the work to be done, and the best environments for it to happen. There are some tasks that are well suited to remote work (typically tasks that require focused thinking, solo endeavour and clear headspace to think). Other tasks really need a collective environment for best performance (training and learning, collaborative thinking, idea generation). We also have differing needs for personal connection. The natural overheard conversation and modelling of behaviour of the office will be more beneficial for some to observe regularly than others.
There’s much more to consider here than just ‘how many days in the office feel right?’. These questions about the type of thinking needed and team requirements might lead to different ideal solutions for different teams. For example, perhaps your finance team needs less time together in the office than your marketing team? At this point - with the myriad questions and different permutations - you might feel in danger of falling into a rabbit hole of nuance and complexity.
This is where 4and20Million come in. We provide a facilitated session that clarifies the role of both remote and office working for your business and helps your senior team to create the right structure to support your people and meet the needs of the business. This includes considerations like appropriate communication channels, setting expectations, providing clarity and evolving as you go.
We also support individuals and teams with shorter 45-minute sessions on the skills of hybrid work, building resilience and managing remote teams.
Balancing hybrid working is both the greatest opportunity and biggest threat to our productivity, collaboration and work culture. Getting it right is the most immediate challenge facing businesses as we move away from restrictions and create a new set of working habits.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your team strike the right balance, we’d love to hear from you.
4and20Million
Get in touch here:
dan@4and20million
07790 550 870
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