It's time to cultivate the hybrid culture

Written by Jesper Ridel, Director, LEAPFORWARD

Hybrid work offers unique opportunities to rethink how we collaborate and organize ourselves. Yet study after study shows that well-being and attachment to the workplace are declining. Has the hybrid model failed? No, but it's time to put extra focus on building a strong culture in the hybrid era.

The start of the lockdown went very well. Numerous international and national surveys pointed to high productivity figures and high satisfaction with the new flexible way of working. For many managers and companies, it was a wake-up call to a new reality, realizing that employees were showing more responsibility than anticipated and could actually manage time from home. Over time, we started to see signs of organizational corrosion. It was hard to get new people on board, we missed the social relationships and several people struggled with physical and mental well-being. Now we are back in a workplace with greater flexibility, but where employees complain that office hours are hardly worth the commute. It's all about virtual meetings, and many people still choose to work from home. And when we work from home, we are good at immersing ourselves in our own specific tasks, but rarely focus on collaboration and relationship building.

Has the hybrid model failed?

It's easy to wish for the past, when everything was good and we were just together in the office. But was it all just bliss back then? Were meetings just super efficient, with no problems of engagement or sense of community?

The truth is that the hybrid way of working acts as an organizational magnifying glass, highlighting the things that also failed before. The unprepared, unstructured meetings with no agenda fail miserably in a virtual or hybrid setup, but they also failed before. Colleagues who didn't invest in the community before may just find it easier to hide away from home. And managers who lack empathy and are prone to micromanagement will have an even harder time with hybrid working.

Time to cultivate the hybrid culture and renegotiate the team contract

Culture is something we create together, it needs to be cultivated and nurtured. In many places, it may have previously arisen somewhat randomly through relationships between people in the workplace, but now there is a need for a more targeted effort to create the foundations for a strong professional community - both in the office and at a distance.

This is not a task that can be done by the communication department. The strong culture and community must be cultivated and built very close to the employees, at team level. It's time to act and recreate a strong community and culture - in a hybrid version.

How to work with culture?

In Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code, he argues for three characteristics that underpin a strong culture in leading companies internationally. These companies have built organizational safety, removed the fear of sharing vulnerability, and have put extra focus on building a strong and clear purpose. Employees dare to share mistakes, disagreements or frustrations. Managers dare to show their own vulnerability, making it easier for employees to dare to share. And everyone can unite around a clear identity and a common set of values. But how do you practically go about defining the hybrid culture at team level?

In my work with preparing managers for the hybrid everyday life, we have often worked with a framework based on the themes below:

Purpose and values. We need to talk or revisit why we are here, who we are here for, and what values define us as a team. When we don't see each other so often in the office, it becomes even more essential that it is clear to everyone and regularly revisited at team meetings.

The cooperation contract. We need to define which tasks can be handled from home and which we will focus on when we are together in the office. And then we need to agree on how we meet, communicate and collaborate in the hybrid.

Team goals and social contract. We must create common ground on the behavior we expect from each other and how we create strong social ties both at a distance and together. We need to work with self-management and create a common understanding of how the demands on the individual change. And finally, define clear team goals that help shift the focus from individual to community in the hybrid.

Culture must be created in the community

It is time to act and create the hybrid culture. But this is a task that needs to be tackled at departmental level. There can be major nuances depending on professional groups and work functions, and of course also in relation to the managers' own abilities. But with a little good will, a clear framework, effective facilitation and an open mindset, you can go a long way and create the joint hybrid contract that creates the basis for an even stronger hybrid workplace.

Jesper Riedel, Director, LEAPFORWARD
Jesper has 10 years of international management experience, including 7 years of practical experience as a hybrid leader in Microsoft. Today he is a lecturer and advisor within hybrid leadership through hybridledelse .dk