Effective communication from managers is the linchpin for success in remote and hybrid work environments. Regular and transparent communication fosters a sense of connection, ensuring that remote and hybrid employees remain informed about organizational goals, expectations, and updates. Managers play a pivotal role in providing necessary guidance, addressing concerns promptly, and promoting a collaborative culture, which is crucial for maintaining team cohesion in dispersed settings. By actively engaging with remote and hybrid teams, managers not only nurture a positive work environment but also contribute to the overall success and wellbeing of their employees in evolving work structures.

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Action Items to Improve Communication

  1. Communication Norms: Set up time with your employees to align on your communication norms and cadence.
  2. Make Work Visible: To avoid confusion when collaborating with employees and colleagues, decide on shared team norms for communicating one another’s availability.
  3. Tips & Tools in a Hybrid World Create a google chat, zoom team chat, or slack group.
  4. Create deliberate feedback loops: Ask for feedback and schedule retrospectives in advance of any project deadlines. This week, ask at least one person for feedback on your communication style.

 

 

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Create Communication Norms

Determine with your employees and colleagues the best ways to stay in touch. What communication ‘channel’ should be used for which situations? Review the resources below to help you think about what team norms already exist and how they could be improved or made clear, for new employees and the existing team. 

Does the team prefer real-time chat or asynchronous email? What is the expected reply/ turn-around time for email? How about Slack? Google Chat? Zoom phone v. zoom meeting? Which chat channels are used for what information? What are the unspoken rules for @all emails?

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Make Work Visible

Decide on a system with your team to give one another status updates. For example: create a shared visual dashboard, send brief status updates over email, chat, or Slack, or begin each week with a standup where you share what you will get done this week and what you did last week. 

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  • SmartSheet
  • Google Sheets

  • Docusign - is the global standard for digital transaction management: electronic signing made simple. It solves paper problems by replacing manual, paper-based methods with DocuSign and other integrated systems.

  • Campus VPN - A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. A VPN is an alternative to a truly private network, in which someone completely owns the infrastructure (i.e., wires) between locations and no one else can use it.  

  • Trello organize, sort, plan, and collaborate. Use it as a project management hub for a team of thousands, or on your own to boost personal productivity. Managers and team members can see the multiple steps of any project, and quickly assess tasks completed, work to be done, and see what’s been assigned to whom.

  • Jira helps plan and organize tasks, align work to goals, track work, real-time data. 

  • Monday for Project management, requests & approvals, custom workflows

  • Miro - bringing together workshop slides, real-time data visualizations, action items, diagrams, visual project management, collected on a single board.

Changing your work location in google calendar: From google calendar, click "settings" then setup working location. Can customize by day or all at once.

Google Calendar Suggestions for Remote & Hybrid Work

*Suggestion: Choose one item from this list to do now.

  • Post your regular work hours and location in Google Calendar. Edit your google calendar settings to note whether you're on campus, working from home or hybrid. You can also note flex schedule hours! 

  • Change your "default meeting" time to "speedy meeting" in Google Calendar settings to shorten hour long meetings to 50 minutes, or 25 minutes instead of 30. 10-minute breaks between meetings allow the brain to “reset,” reducing a cumulative buildup of stress across meetings. Taking time out between zoom calls prevents stress from building up.

  • Set "focus time" on your calendar to indicate those times when you are working on specific projects or need time to catch up. 

  • Block your time in Google Calendar when you have days off or appointments. Adjust the visibility settings for any day-long Google Calendar items to “Public” so people can see when you’re out of the office.

 

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Virtual Communication Tools

Communication Platforms

  • When in-person meetings are not an option, use Zoom or Google Connect Video Conferencing if you need to deliver a difficult message, have formal discussions regarding progress on projects, or discuss development needs. Video conferences are highly recommended to hold team meetings and individual 1:1 weekly check-ins. Seeing and hearing your team will aid you in monitoring team and individual morale.

  • Zoom phone - Call someone directly when you have sensitive or urgent issues to discuss, or any situation where tone is key to ensure clarity. If video conferencing isn't an option, it's also better to call to convey real-time information, do some brainstorming or decision-making, and have formal discussions regarding progress or projects.

  • Connect (Google) Chat Instant Messaging and  Slack Consider creating a Slack "water cooler" channel or team texts for your team to have a space for more relaxed, personal connection.

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  • Shoreline to share and join events with the broader campus community. 

 

Scheduling Tools

To avoid the unnecessary back and forth of scheduling one:one or group meetings, try one of the following scheduling tools: 

When2meet, Doodle, Sharing Google Calendars & Creating appointment slots

 

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During Meetings

"CAMERAS ON" when possible: 

  • Nothing creates clarity and bonding faster than seeing each other face-to-face. It adds a layer of meaning that mirrors meeting in-person all together.

Eye-to-eye camera angle: 

  • Research shows that trust is made up of two key components: warmth and competence. Eye contact can increase both. When meeting with others in a remote environment, be careful not to position your camera so that you are looking down at the viewer (high power), up at the viewer (low power), or not at the viewer at all (low warmth). The best angle for warmth and power is straight on with eyes at camera level. 

Round-Robin: 

  • The simplest way to get yourself and others engaged is to participate early on. One easy way to do this is to add a ‘round-robin.’ This can be a 30-second introduction, update, quick win, or just greeting. Why? If you speak up early on, you’ll be more likely to participate later. 

  • To Chat or not to Chat: 

  • One of the big benefits of remote and hybrid meetings is the chat function. You can use chat as a quick poll or pulse check. It can also be a terrific tool to involve internal thinker's vs external thinkers/processors. Chat as a backchannel communication tool can be fun but distracting. Create a ‘chat free’ norm for your meetings when deep attention is needed.

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Use tech to collaborate and keep curiosity alive! 

  • Share your screen and take notes in a Google doc or share a link to the document so everyone can collaborate at once! Google Drive: Google Drive Essential Training (1h 10m)

  • Zoom is constantly adding new tools. Try out one or two in your next meeting: annotate, poll and whiteboard functions just to name a few!

Other Virtual/Hybrid Meeting Tools:

  • Mentimeter: Turn presentations into conversations with interactive polls that engage meetings and classrooms.
  • Canva: Collaborate on designs, brands, whiteboards, presentations and more. 
  • Mural: Free virtual Whiteboard. Create mind maps, brainstorm sessions, Kanban boards, collaborative notes, team standups, retrospectives, and workflows.

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Create Deliberate Feedback Loops

Successful leaders schedule regular meetings to stay connected. During these meetings, supervisors and employees will discuss work items to assess progress. By meeting on a regular basis, employees can plan tasks accordingly and supervisors will stay informed. Productivity increases because regular check-ins come with built-in rewards and consequences for failure to execute on expectations.

But how?

The common hierarchy of best practice for providing feedback is; in-person, video conference, phone conversation, e-mail, and lastly text.

  1. Provide feedback from a coaching perspective: 

People want to succeed. Tap into that basic human motivation and empower an employee to do their best work. Transparent feedback from those with more experience or wisdom on a certain topic is how people grow and succeed. Employees appreciate transparency and access to your thoughts. They will feel closer to you and not so isolated from you and the company. If you come at it from a place of coaching, you will appreciate and respect one another even more, and your employees will be more likely to ask for help and stay on course for better performance.

  1. Spend more time clarifying goals and priorities: 

In one-on-one calls, ask team members what they’re focusing on, review their understanding of their goals, and help them work through possible conflicting priorities. Make it clear when goals have changed, and share any new information about what is important right now. Find out what is creating delays or problems, and have an open-minded conversation about how to proceed. If their work is impacting other team members, help them plan how they will communicate more quickly with their colleagues, or offer to facilitate a meeting.

  1. Track what people are doing: 

Explore with each team member how they are handling their assignments, and offer feedback on the approaches they describe. Provide both positive and improvement feedback on the examples they give you and how they are performing in general. Use the tracking as a way to provide appreciation and feedback in the same conversation.

  1. Ask for and relay stories: 

Ask your employees to tell stories about a particular situation: What did they do, step by step? In the case of remote employees, use these descriptive stories as observations of their behavior. Sharing how you managed a similar situation builds trust and provides options for improvement.

  1. Offer feedback that is important but not too difficult to implement: 

When you start the feedback process, be authentic about what would help the two of you work toward shared goals, and explain how your employee’s current approach has impacted those goals. Then, make a positive suggestion for what the employee can do to implement the change, making sure to ask for their ideas too.

  1. Create and nurture trust, gratitude, and concern for well-being: 

Since you may not see your team members in person as often and may not have close working conditions, eye contact, or informal conversations, it can be helpful to increase other types of communication with them, in order to build and maintain personal rapport. Ask how they are doing in general. Listen, keep it authentic and share a bit about your own life. This approach helps to make up for a lack of face-to-face communication when it comes time to give feedback. Make sure that you don’t only call or meet with your team members to deliver challenging news or negative feedback. Aim to produce a smile (or at least not a frown) when your name pops up on their screen… A gratitude, or even advice call every so often can change the dynamic with relatively little effort. Consider a "walk-n-chat" to catch up more informally so you are not tied to a computer and get some fresh air and exercise. This signals that the well-being of your staff is important to you and makes it easier for staff to recognize it as a priority for their own productivity.

  1. Ask for feedback: 

Allocate time to solicit your employees’ feedback, and let them know that you value their suggestions. When you receive their feedback, sit on your hands if you feel one ounce of defensiveness. Start by thanking them for the feedback, and acknowledge that it’s an important point. If you can’t think of how or why to implement their feedback, tell them you want to think about it, and come up with some ideas on how to implement it before your next meeting. Keep your ego in check and realize you only grow when you learn...and give yourself a break...no one is perfect...we must be open to advice in order to succeed.

 

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