Future of Work & Leadership - Costello

Challenges of leading a hybrid workforce

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 14:00:58 +0000

Challenges of leading a hybrid workforce Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:00

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Brett Josephson, associate dean for executive development at Mason, shares his insight on the challenges of leading a hybrid workforce.

It’s 9 am. Do you know where your team members are?

Before Covid, the answer was simple: They were – or were expected to be – in the office. The pandemic erased that certainty and accelerated the pace toward work-place flexibility. As we move forward in our post-covid work environment, employees are strongly indicating their preference for flexibility and self-determination regarding their working environment. A portion of the workforce will desire to stay at home with high flexibility, whereas others will return to the office by choice.

In my role as Associate Dean of Executive Development at 91��, I’m constantly talking to business leaders about their leadership and workforce struggles, concerns, as well as wins. Since Covid, a central theme of those discussions has been the complexity of managing hybrid teams. Fortunately, as we’ve all grown accustomed to the new normal, more and more managers are discovering that hybridity offers at least as many opportunities as challenges.

In my interactions with managers, I’ve seen that successful adaptation to the new normal requires managers to be intentional, purposeful, and transparent in their actions. Here are two areas managers need to consider as they continue to lead a hybrid workforce.

How to effectively monitor outcomes rather than activity. With hybrid, it is easy for managers to feel cut off from the day-to-day activities of their teams. Back when everyone was in the office, they could easily see what employees were working on. But the activity of remote workers is beyond such moment-to-moment oversight.

To recapture a sense of control, some companies have resorted to surveillance tools that use webcams, keystroke trackers, etc. to closely monitor employee activity. Like any other kind of micromanagement, though, these technologies send a discouraging signal to employees that their organization does not trust them. In some individual cases, that mistrust may be justified, but it shouldn’t be assumed for all employees.

Instead, managers need to experiment with a range of techniques to ensure not only that productivity remains high, but also that employees have the support they need to work effectively. The ideal solution will vary from team to team but could involve a mixture of interactive online tools (e.g., Slack, Teams, Google Docs), regular Zoom check-ins and one-on-one virtual meetings, even some in-person engagements and activities. It may take some time to get the recipe right – but once you do, the result will likely be maximised transparency and trust. A win-win for managers and employees alike.

Addressing power and politics. “Presentism” – the idea that leadership potential can be measured by the length of time one spends in the office – is still alive and well. Before the pandemic, employees who worked late also were more likely to receive personal attention from higher-ups who kept similar work habits, further increasing their opportunities for advancement. By the same token, it could be that employees who return to the office will enjoy an automatic political advantage over their remote-working colleagues.

The above-mentioned monitoring solutions would partly address this problem as well. Managers need a reliable way of measuring performance that doesn’t depend upon physical proximity. Beyond that, organizations should devise and implement proactive strategies for virtual mentoring, so that high potentials do not feel they have to choose between their career prospects and the flexibility of hybrid working. To be sure, any form of mentoring is time-consuming. But so is a preoccupation with office politics – a pre-pandemic obligation that could be lessened by virtual career development.

The politics of hybrid working can go in a different direction when all hands are urged to return to the office. Those with enough power may pull rank and refuse, creating an obvious hierarchical split– frontline staff commuting like it’s 2019, and higher-ups stubbornly staying at home. The perceived double standard could end up being a serious drain on morale. Yet another reason to embrace the new normal, rather than trying to force employees back to the office.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Business Voice.

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Resolving the Great Resignation – One Employee at a Time

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 12:31:24 +0000

Resolving the Great Resignation – One Employee at a Time Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 09/08/2022 - 08:31

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Victoria Grady

We’ve all become familiar with the pandemic-related reasons behind the upheaval in the labor market, as well as the standard-issue solutions like trying to infuse work with purpose or offering employees remote working. While these are practical suggestions, they have not restored stability to the workforce. It is our contention that any broad-brush advice for retaining employees in the current environment will be insufficient. Whether managers like it or not, employees will demand sensitivity and adjustment to their psychological needs as individuals.

In retrospect, Covid-19 was the first major disruption to professional lifestyles since the women’s movement in the 1960s. Just as “women’s lib” triggered backlash from male leaders, the shocks wrought by Covid similarly caused ripple effects – for employees of all genders, races, and walks of life. But – and this is essential – every employee experienced the disruption differently.

The operative concept here is “psychological contract,” or the intangible compensations we derive from employment. If you have worked somewhere for any length of time, chances are you have an unwritten contract with your employer. But no two people’s contracts will look the same.

For example, remote working limited the spontaneous social encounters and standing lunch dates that fulfilled extroverted employees’ psychological needs in the “before times.” Employees who placed great stock in the prestige of their employer would have felt the loss of in-person networking events that gave them the opportunity to impress others by simply handing over a business card. When these intangible satisfactions suddenly disappeared, working life became less appealing. We see this as a main driving factor of the Great Resignation that remains largely unaddressed.

Theoretically, pre-Covid psychological contracts could be restored by pretending the pandemic never happened and requiring full-time presence at the office. However, ignoring the potential convenience and flexibility of hybrid working would place companies at a disadvantage in the war for talent. Employees do not want to choose between practicality and their own psychological needs – they want both, in harmonious balance. It falls to organizations to rewrite psychological contracts for this new era.

Since no two employees will have the same contract, revisions need to happen on an individual level between employees and managers. While this sounds like a daunting task, if you are armed with some information about psychology, it is not at all impossible.

An area of developmental psychology known as attachment theory points to the fungibility of emotionally anchoring bonds. The basic nature of our attachments, as well as our ways of maintaining them, are rooted in childhood experience and thus die hard. But the specific objects of our attachments can be switched. Victoria’s recent book Stuck: How to Win at Business by Understanding Loss explains how leaders and managers can use attachment theory to help team members weather the storm of change. Applying this logic can help repair the psychological contract.

To fill the social void at lunchtime, for example, organizations could offer an opt-in service enabling hybrid employees to arrange lunches or coffees with colleagues living in their area. The “me-time” of the commute could be restored by allowing employees to block off an hour every day for thinking and reflection. Status-oriented employees deprived of self-promotion opportunities could be given the chance to share their accomplishments internally, through corporate social networks or blog posts. These examples illustrate the general purpose, which is to find adequate analogues for pre-pandemic psychological routines and attachments.

Understanding not only what losses employees are mourning but also why opens the door to exploration. You could ask, “Assuming we can’t have an in-person all-hander this year, what else could we do that would generate excitement?” Developing an answer may take time, but starting the process of rewriting the psychological contract is meaningful. It signals sensitivity and a commitment to employees’ mental health.

Together, the information shared during psychological contract-based conversations can also help organizations work out which pre-Covid rituals should be brought back. If employees are nostalgic for in-person team meetings, it may be worth trying to resurrect them. Employees’ psychological contracts will also help you determine which in-person events justify additional expenses.

All-in-all, astute managers should sustain the conversation about psychological contracts into the “new-normal” and beyond. Regular evaluations could include check-ins to make sure needs are still being met and plan necessary adjustments. That way, employees and organizations can build mutually supportive ties capable of withstanding the next inevitable surprise.

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