Join us as we unpack the challenges and triumphs of hybrid work, informed by the latest Gallup research. Our exploration spans from the nitty-gritty of daily struggles like accessing resources and staying connected to culture, to broader organizational impacts on productivity and team cohesion. Prepare to walk away with actionable strategies for leaders to deftly navigate these waters, fostering both employee satisfaction and the health of their organizations.
Our certified 4Sight coaches are on deck, ready to guide leaders through the nuances of maintaining a vibrant culture amid the hybrid workplace. So, if you're ready to evolve your leadership playbook for the hybrid age, tune in and join the conversation that will change the way you view and manage your workforce.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Join us as we unpack the challenges and triumphs of hybrid work, informed by the latest Gallup research. Our exploration spans from the nitty-gritty of daily struggles like accessing resources and staying connected to culture, to broader organizational impacts on productivity and team cohesion. Prepare to walk away with actionable strategies for leaders to deftly navigate these waters, fostering both employee satisfaction and the health of their organizations.
Our certified 4Sight coaches are on deck, ready to guide leaders through the nuances of maintaining a vibrant culture amid the hybrid workplace. So, if you're ready to evolve your leadership playbook for the hybrid age, tune in and join the conversation that will change the way you view and manage your workforce.
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
The Art of Leadership Network. Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's keep learning on this leadership journey together.
Speaker 1:So, friends, today I want to talk about the biggest challenges of hybrid work. Are any of you feeling that pain? The biggest challenges of hybrid work. I'm actually going to kickstart our conversation from a graph that I pulled up from some research that Gallup recently did, and we'll link to that in the show notes so you can check it out. But Gallup, as always, does just wonderful research on organizational culture, employee engagement, etc. And they have some new research out on the biggest challenges of hybrid work, and so this graph shows five of the greatest challenges for employees in hybrid work and five of the greatest drawbacks for organizations related to hybrid work. So what I want to do is I'm going to read both of those lists the five of the greatest challenges for employees and the five drawbacks for organizations and there's some interesting observations that I'm going to make as I read through those, and then I'm going to talk about what do we do about it.
Speaker 1:What do we do? Because I think most of you are guessing that hybrid work is not going away. Some version of hybrid work, I suspect, is part of your norms as an organization. Now there are very few organizations that I know that are fully back in the office, outside of manufacturing or service-based businesses where you have to physically be there. But most of you that are working in organizations whether it be churches, nonprofits, businesses especially in environments that create thought leadership type of work, where it's more thinking-based kind of activity. We're all working remotely, or at least some hybrid of working remote and working some in person, and most of the organizations that I am talking to are struggling to figure this out. There are so many nuances and challenges and complexities. We're trying to appease employees by creating some flexibility, but we're seeing the drawbacks for us as organizational leaders. We're seeing in the headlines major companies that are vacillating between the extremes of making everybody come back in 100 percent, and then there's revolt on their hands and other organizations that are figuring out either hybrid or fully remote scenarios. But it is really shifted a lot in the last few years and it continues to. But what I know is that it's not really going away. What it requires from us as leaders is a willingness to really look at the information, look at data, like we're going to look at today, and be proactive about how we're going to engage hybrid work. Again, I don't believe it's going away. I think this is part of our reality as leaders. We have to acknowledge that and we have to be more intentional to say how does hybrid work best for us as an organization? Let's look at this data from Gallup.
Speaker 1:The first list is the top five greatest challenges for employees as related to hybrid work. The first one, the one that had the highest response, was that employees feel like they have less access to work resources and equipment. That just makes sense, right? Like less access to resources and equipment. They don't have accessibility to the same tools that they would have had if they were in the office. What that reminds me of is, if you remember from the culture hierarchy of needs, one of the tools that we use in the lead culture framework, we say that basic needs level of the hierarchy, the bottom level of the hierarchy, is just tools for the job. Employees need just functional tools to do their work.
Speaker 1:Employees are acknowledging this hybrid work thing means I don't have access sometimes to the resources or equipment that I need to do my work. They're reduced to basic needs. When our basic needs, we don't have the tools for the job. You know how it is if you're at home and your printer all of a sudden doesn't work or it's out of ink, like everything stops right, like you can't function. If you have an IT issue, your computer's acting up, you're at home or you're at the coffee shop, all of a sudden your work comes to a grinding halt. The same would be true, potentially, if you're in the office, but you have more access to resources to solve those problems.
Speaker 1:The number one thing that employees are acknowledging the challenge they feel is less access to resources and equipment. Number two is that they feel less connected to their organization's culture. Of course you know this one got my attention. They feel less connected to the organization's culture, of course, because we're not in proximity, we're not with each other, we're not feeling that connection and camaraderie and the ethos of culture because we're not with one another. Number three is that they say decreased collaboration with my team. Again, we're not with each other, we're not in proximity, so collaboration is much more challenging. It's much more challenging to have to reach out to somebody to schedule a meeting, to schedule time to chit chat, whereas if you're in the office you just hop down the hall and pop into somebody's office and ask them the question or get their insight on something. It's much easier when we're in proximity to do those kind of micro moments of collaboration. We've lost that in hybrid work. Number four impaired working relationship with coworkers. So employees are saying and my relationships with my coworkers? They're not as good as they were before. Again, lack of proximity creates lack of relationship. Then, number five reduced cross-functional communication and collaboration. So it's picks up on the number three, but just expands upon that cross-functional nature of working across teams and departments to get work done. It just takes more work, doesn't it, when you again have to schedule a meeting or you have to send the email and wait for the response. You just can't get that quick collaboration, that cross-functional communication that is so valuable to help teams do work efficiently and effectively. So the five greatest challenges for employees related to hybrid work were one less access to work resources and equipment. Number two they feel less connected to their organization's culture. Number three decreased collaboration with their team. Number four impaired working relationship with coworkers. And number five reduced cross-functional communication and collaboration.
Speaker 1:Now let's look at the top five greatest drawbacks for organizations in relationship to hybrid work. The first one decreased workplace communication. It's same for employees, same for the organization. We just are not communicating as effectively anymore. Number two decreased collaboration. We heard that from the employees. It also is impacting the organization. Number three negative impact on workplace culture. So of course the organization is feeling that our culture is not as strong and healthy because we're not in proximity to one another. We've created complexity with hybrid work. We've got to acknowledge the reality of that. So the first three drawbacks for organizations had overlap with the challenges that employees feel. Those three were the same across both.
Speaker 1:Number four is lower productivity. So the employer is saying the organization is saying we're seeing a decrease in productivity. Now what's fascinating to me about this is that I am hearing so many leaders saying that their team are. They feel like their team are working less, and part of that might be they just don't have the visibility into what team members are doing when they're not in the office, but they feel like they're actually working less but are complaining of overwhelm more. Right like that. Team members are feeling more overwhelmed, you know, just not feeling like they can have capacity. And yet we're not seeing the same level of output. Now I have a suspicion that that is because of that.
Speaker 1:Decreased collaboration, the impaired relationships, the reduced cross functional communication, like all of the things that the employees are naming, I think, are also resulting in this lack of, or this lower productivity. But that lower productivity is a result of them not feeling connected, them not collaborating and the exhaustion that that creates. Right, it creates exhaustion when you're trying to get things done and you just can't move it forward, and I think that's where employees feel overwhelmed. It's not the amount of hours, it's the what it's taking to produce work. That used to just come a little more naturally when they were in proximity. And then the fifth one the fifth drawback for organizations is decreased creativity or innovation. And again, if we're not collaborating, if we're not communicating, if we're not in relationship, it is hard for us to be creative or innovative. And so those are the challenges that we're seeing, both employees and organizations. So the five drawbacks for organizations, just to repeat those were one decreased workplace communication. Number two, decreased collaboration. Number three, negative impact on workplace culture. Number four, lower productivity. And number five, decreased creativity or innovation.
Speaker 1:So again, the question what do we do about it? Right, like, what do we do to address this? So I want to give you a couple of thoughts here and, in summary, we have to fight for organizational clarity more than ever. And we have to fight for clarity throughout the organization because we have increased complexity by going hybrid, again, in the culture hierarchy of needs, that second stage of the hierarchy is organizational clarity, which includes clarity of mission, vision, org structure, roles and responsibilities, et cetera. So these things clarify how we work together as a team.
Speaker 1:So, when we lack good skills for working with others in hybrid work, if there's anything in the system that is unclear, right. So if we lack those skills for working with others in hybrid, if there's anything that's unclear, that confusion exasperates our ability to work well, right. If anything's unclear in roles or responsibilities or org structure, immediately it starts to break things down. If I'm unsure of who's responsible in a hybrid world, I don't have the option of walking down the hall to ask someone. Right? I have to send an email or a Slack message carrier pigeon, whatever it takes to get the information I need. So it takes extra work to get the information. It's slow and it's laborious. So what do we do when we meet that resistance? Right, we often just give up. If it takes extra effort to get an answer to the question, I just kind of give up or move on.
Speaker 1:When we hit obstacles like this, we don't feel like we have the agency in that situation and so we feel overwhelmed and defeated, like it's just so much work to get a simple answer or I don't actually know who I'm supposed to go to for what, and I can't just go pop into somebody's office and get the clarity I need. It's like it is an event to get on the phone with somebody or get on a Zoom call or send a message and hope for a response pretty quickly. So repeated days of this this kind of you know just feels like you're moving through quicksand create ongoing angst and confusion with your team and, again, that's why I think we're feeling this sense of overwhelm, even though we're seeing lower productivity. So, essentially, to address the challenges presented by hybrid work, we have to fight for clarity and we needed to find how we work together in this context. So, really quickly, I'm gonna give you five things. Five is the theme today.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna give you five things that I want you to think about in ways that you can help lead through working in a hybrid world. Number one I want you to assess your organizational clarity and address the gaps. There could be lots of them, because lots of things have shifted and there are probably lots of things that need clarity and they won't feel fuzzy to you, but they will feel fuzzy to your team. So you have to do the work on this In episode 219, I dig into that a bit more so that episode may be helpful for you. Number two I want you to define your work rhythm.
Speaker 1:If you expect your team in the office certain days or certain hours, you need to be really clear about this. If it's fuzzy in your organization because you're just trying to be kind and accommodating, we're so guilty of this, you guys. We are trying to just work nice with everybody and be accommodating to the hybrid requests, but what we do is we create all of these special arrangements with different team members and it just creates a ton of confusion and it's really doing the opposite of what you hope for. You're trying to be accommodating and supportive to your staff, but it actually just makes everything confusing. Some team members abuse the freedom and then others are so uncertain of whether they are meeting expectations of when they should be in the office that they burn time and energy worrying about where they need to be and when Some of your more anxious or people pleasing team members are so worried about not being there enough or not being there at the right time that they're gonna over fixate on that and it actually just burns unnecessary energy and everyone is frustrated because they don't know when to expect to see other team members. So it's like I don't know who's gonna be in the office when I hear that all the time from teams. So it is time to define your work rhythm and, especially if you have some level of hybrid work or some flexibility in your work schedule, you need to be really clear about that. When do you expect people to be there.
Speaker 1:Number three remember that flexible work days are not days off. So what I've seen happen is that I've worked with a few teams recently who are cramming all of their meetings into their office days, and it's overwhelming and they're not getting the best energy from their team, nor is anybody enjoying it, because they're just so hurried that they're not actually connecting, which is really the point of the days that we are in the office together. We need to focus on that collaboration, the relationships, the communication, and so what I'm seeing happen is we're trying to cram everything into those days that we're working or that we're in the office together, because we've somehow assumed that we can't put meetings on the other days. And so it is completely appropriate to schedule meetings on flexible work days or non-office work days. Right, they're still working, and so don't get into that sense that you have to put everything only on the days people are in the office. It is, I mean, maximize it. You want the right people at the table and that creativity and collaboration, but there are other meetings that could probably work virtually that should go on those other days. So just consider that in your planning.
Speaker 1:Number four increase your culture of accountability. Greater flexibility requires greater accountability and, again, we're often pretty bad about this. So you've got to determine your mechanisms for check-ins and updates and then commit to those as a team. What tools do you need for visibility into what one another is doing? I'm not talking about being aggressively like checking in on people or you know pejorative and how you're holding people accountable. I'm just saying we need good. Back to our communication thing. We need good communication about who's doing what when and you know, and making sure that the right information is getting surfaced so we know what we're each doing. So you might have to improve some of your systems, some of your different tools that you use for managing projects or communicating status updates. You've got to really look into that and get really clear about how you're holding one another accountable for the work you've committed to.
Speaker 1:And then, number five, remember that we're all here in service of the mission, right? We're all here because we are here to do good work for a good purpose. So keep the mission white hot, find ways to cast vision and keep your team connected to the mission, and this probably means that you, as the leader, might need to adjust how you connect and how you communicate. So you've probably still relied on old mechanisms for vision casting, which historically might have meant, you know, just chit-chats in the hall and talking about a story that you just heard, or a customer that was really happy, or you know something that happened on Sunday morning for those of you in church ministry and you get to talk about that in the halls and just in the banter that happens in the office every day. Well, you've lost some of those places for just that ordinary chit-chat that is inspiring, where we hear the stories and we're reminded of the purpose of our work. So, as a leader, you've got to find those channels. What are those channels that help you keep the vision in front of everybody? Because the vision has to guide us. The vision, the mission have to guide the work that we're doing.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, I hope that was helpful for you today. Five greatest challenges for employees, five greatest drawbacks for organizations related to hybrid work. And then I tried to give you five things we can do to address those challenges we're feeling. If you find it helpful, share it with a friend, share it with your team, talk about it, unpack it and discuss how do we do hybrid work well. And then, if we can be helpful to you.
Speaker 1:The 4Sight coaches are certified in our Lead Culture Framework. This is what we do and this is what we love. This is how we love serving leaders. So if we can help you evaluate or assess your culture, we would love to help. Just send us a DM on social media at Get4Sight, on all the social media channels, or even just email me at Jenni@g et4sight. com that's J-E-N-N-I @ G-E-T, the number four S-I-G-H-T. com, and we will get you connected to a coach for a free 30 minute call. Help you look at what's going on in your culture and what's the best next steps for you to keep leading towards that healthy culture you aspire to. So, friends, I hope this episode today got you thinking about how do you maintain a healthy culture in a hybrid world. So keep leading well and we will talk to you next time.