Managing Remote & Hybrid Teams

July 25, 2024

When COVID-19 enraptured the world, remote work became a hot topic for most organizations in a way that it never had before. Organizations were required to rethink how they managed their teams. Even now, with some time behind us, organizations continue to evolve to find the right balance between onsite, hybrid, and remote work. According to a 2023 Survey of Business Uncertainty, in 5 years, fully remote and hybrid work will account for 27.5% (Harvard Business Review, August 2023).

Here are my top practical suggestions for leading a successful remote or hybrid team that supports communication, creates accountability, and encourages individual and team engagement.

ONE-ON-ONE meetings should be weekly if they are not already. This may be a significant time investment for managers of larger teams, but one that will pay off with productivity and job satisfaction. When conflicts arise, be sure to reschedule or have a quick reach out. Keep notes of the conversations so that you can refer to them later.
DOUBLE DOWN ON THE USE OF KPIs to aid in accountability and performance from the individual to the department. They should be reviewed appropriately in most individual, team, and department meetings. Make the KPIs available for all team members to review.
SET EXPECTATIONS for working times as appropriate for each team member or team. Some teams or individuals may be more flexible, while others may need to be very strict.
STRATEGIC PROJECTS should have reoccurring meetings of their own. Keep them to 15 to 30 minutes and run them by the project manager, including project stakeholders. Hold a recurring project update meeting for the remaining projects.
DEPARTMENT, TEAM, AND ONE-ON-ONE MEETINGS should be organized in a hierarchical and recurring methodology to ensure communication with all team members, managers, and leaders. Fun and culture-building meetings should also follow a similar structure.
AD-HOC meetings should be frequent to replace the “walk-by” and ad-hoc meetings that would have occurred in an office.
LEADERS should schedule one-on-one meetings with individual contributors who report to managers down the organizational structure. Schedule check-ins or be sure to do them ad hoc and recurring. Adjust the frequency based on the team size. In an office, it is easy to stop by and have a chat; when remote, it is easy to go weeks or months without directly speaking to individual contributors.
TRAVELING to customers and offices should serve double duty to meet with team members for work and social purposes. Including members from other teams will encourage broader team respect and communication.
ENCOURAGE TEAM MEMBERS who are reasonably close to each other to meet for a working day and/or social time and provide the budget to do so.
WAR ROOMS to work on issues, plan, or train can be done on a video meeting platform. Encourage everyone to use video and participate.
MESSAGING PLATFORMS should not be overly relied on as the primary method of communication, especially in channels with several to many members. A quick call can take a few minutes, whereas a message can take many minutes or more to work through a conversation.
ALL MEETING ATTENDEEs, even if there is one remote attendee, should connect to the online meeting room unless the video conference room is very good. If all attendees are in the online meeting, there is more equality in the connection between all.