4 Best Practices for Building a Successful Hybrid Work Culture

One thing has become abundantly clear during the massive work-from-home experiment triggered by the pandemic: a complete return to the old way of working is highly unlikely. While a small number of companies have announced that all employees will be required to return to the office, the majority are now moving toward a hybrid work environment, with 66% of global business decision makers considering how to redesign physical workspaces to enable this.

Having the right tools and infrastructure in place is important, but deeper cultural changes are needed for a hybrid workforce model to be sustainable. One in three leaders (30%) say the challenge they’re most concerned about when it comes to managing a hybrid workforce is maintaining their corporate culture. 

But the culture you once had, even with the adjustments you made to support remote teams during the pandemic, may not be well suited to a hybrid work environment. So, seeking to maintain the status quo instead of rebuilding could hold you back.

As you plan for what the future of work will look like at your company, here are four best practices to consider for fostering a hybrid culture that helps employees thrive — no matter where they are.

1. Take a remote-first approach by creating a single source of truth

When companies talk about allowing their people to continue working remotely after the pandemic, they often discuss what will be done to accommodate employees who make this choice. But a truly hybrid culture is not one that treats onsite work as the default mode that needs to be retrofitted for remote work to be possible. Instead, it must center on a purpose-built digital space where all employees collaborate and come together, regardless of where they’re physically located.

Moveworks CEO Bhavin Shah dubs this space the “digital HQ.” The digital HQ, he says, is more than just a collection of tools — it’s a one-stop shop for everything an employee might need, whether that’s tech support, internal documents, or the minutes from a meeting that happened last week. Without this shared space, remote workers may be uncertain where to look for materials and support, while their in-office colleagues may be privy to information that they don’t have access to.

For the digital HQ to be effective, leaders, managers, and employees need to treat it like a single source of truth — minimizing work and discussion that happen outside of it. This doesn’t mean that onsite employees can’t have a casual chat in the hallway or that a manager can’t text an employee in an emergency, but any work-related insights or decisions that come out of these conversations need to be recorded in the digital HQ to provide visibility. 

To help employees adapt to this way of working, encourage them to think of your culture as remote-first. If an action could leave a remote team member in the dark, it’s probably not the right action to take. This mindset shift will require patience and reinforcement, but the end result will be a more connected — and less chaotic — hybrid work culture. 

2. Treat remote and in-person work as equal and valid

Another benefit of emphasizing a remote-first culture at your hybrid company is that it positions remote work as something you encourage, not just something you allow. 

This is an important distinction, because remote workers sometimes face an uphill struggle to be taken seriously. Historically, managers have rated in-office employees as higher performers, despite little evidence of better results. They’ve awarded them bigger raises and more frequent promotions. If this happens when you shift to a hybrid model, remote employees may feel pressured to come into the office more often — or grow disheartened and leave. 

Training managers to focus on outcomes rather than individual actions can help you minimize remote bias and create a more equitable hybrid workforce. But to ingrain remote working as a core element of your hybrid culture, you also need to ensure that in-person work isn’t championed in more subtle, unintentional ways. 

If every senior leader always works onsite, for example, employees may get the sense that management considers this the best way to work. Having a senior leader regularly call into an all-hands meeting from their home office or kitchen, on the other hand, shows the team that remote and flexible work is not only normal but something that even the most senior people embrace.

3. Ensure digital team-building efforts don’t feel half-baked

For employees already working remotely when the pandemic hit, seeing their entire team start working from home had a positive impact on their sense of belonging. In a May 2020 survey of remote workers across six countries, Microsoft found that 52% felt more valued or included as a remote contributor in meetings because everyone was now in the same virtual room. As one respondent put it, “Remote participants used to be invisible, but not anymore!” 

As some employees return to the office, companies risk falling back into old habits and leaving remote workers on the fringes if they don’t carry over some lessons learned during the pandemic. The digital HQ will help keep employees connected, but intentional efforts are required to make this space inclusive and lively. 

Having a watercooler channel in your digital HQ, for instance, is only effective if both remote and onsite workers engage in it, so you may need to nudge staff to use it until it becomes second nature. GitLab, a company that started out hybrid before shifting to a fully remote model, also recommends continuing traditions like virtual coffee chats that you may have started during the pandemic. However, it cautions against always pairing remote workers with onsite ones, as this may inadvertently reinforce the idea of distinct work environments, as opposed to a unified remote-first culture. 

Managers must also resist the urge to frame in-person team-building events as the superior option. While you can bring all employees together from time to time for offsites (which may, delightfully, now be onsites) and parties, remote workers should never feel pressured to come into the office more often if they want to take part in day-to-day activities. By putting as much thought and effort into planning online activities as you would in-person ones, you can encourage all employees to participate, regardless of where they prefer to work. 

4. Find ways to re-emphasize your core values in your new digital space

In previous years, some experts defined the challenge companies faced in creating a winning culture as ensuring that their core values were felt in the halls, not just written on the walls. In a hybrid work environment, this challenge may be redefined as taking your values beyond the halls and the walls — ensuring they are woven into the fabric of your shared digital space.

Leaders and managers will need to find new ways of communicating these values consistently, especially to people who started remote and so lack the context that their more tenured peers may benefit from. This could include giving examples of online behavior that demonstrates each value, so employees have a clear understanding of what the goalposts look like. 

At the same time, managers must learn how to spot, acknowledge, and reinforce value-driven behavior in digital settings. Having group channels where managers and even employees can publicly recognize when a team member is exemplifying core values is one way to do this, ensuring that great work never goes unnoticed.

Create a hybrid culture that’s built to last

Now that countless employees have had a taste of remote work, many will not want to go back to the office full time. Building a hybrid workforce can help you retain these people — but only if you proactively adjust your culture. 

It will feel like an adjustment at first, but stick with it. The end result will be a culture that’s more resilient to future disruptions — and more inclusive of different employee needs and working styles.

*Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

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