Hybrid work etiquette: what you can do to make your as well as your team's work experience the best in a hybrid work setup.

Neptune Ubicom Pvt. Ltd. launched its Future of Work policy recently. This policy outlines what working at NUPL will look like in the future. We have launched a hybrid, remote heavy, and rotational model for the future. Our aim is to facilitate team interactions and cross-team collaborations from the office while ensuring that the comfort of working remotely remains an option for our employees.

For NUPL, hybrid means having the opportunity to work from the office as well as remote work in a week. Remote heavy means getting an opportunity to do remote work more than office to ensure everyone has a good work-personal life balance. Rotational will imply that in a week, each product team has an overlapping day with another product team to maximise cross-team collaboration.?

We are keen to ensure that we are enabling a smooth transition by taking things slow. After 3.5 years of remote work, we are giving our team time to get into this new work mode.?

We recognise that this is going to be a new way of work and to make it a success, in addition to giving our team time to transition smoothly into it, we wish to establish etiquette to have a successful hybrid way of work. These etiquettes will ensure teams and team members can collaborate and work together as successfully as they would have done if everyone was in the office together.?

Here are some points that one must keep in mind to ensure their own and their team's convenience and comfort:?

1. Schedule transparency: your team must know about your availability, whether you work from home or the office. This leads to better-planned meetings, personal calls, etc.
2. Proper Slack updates on all channels about availability and work timings help maintain clarity within the team about each member's availability. This means updating Slack on where you are at all times: at lunch, on a tea break, in a meeting, focused on work, etc. This applies to everyone, whether you are working from the office or your home.
3. Create time to interact with team members outside of work meetings to foster communication and team development.
4. Look the part: working from home is not a free pass to look shabby during meetings & work hours.
5. Working from home must not affect productivity. It becomes especially cumbersome if the team works in collaboration, requiring all members to hand over jobs for effective work in the team.
6. Be ready to understand everyone's unique situation and learn to be flexible.
7. Even when at home, you are a NUPL cultural ambassador and must act in a manner that becomes it. You must keep the cultural values of NUPL intact when you work from home as you would if you were working from the office.
8. During meetings, introduce yourselves and the team to understand who works from where. This makes communications simpler, clearer and easier to manage, whether you attend them from home or join in from the conference room in the office.
9. Ensure that microphones in a meeting room are set so that those joining in remotely can hear everyone in the conference room.
10. Use the mute button wisely so that your teammates aren't disturbed by the noises in your home if your WFH setup is not entirely noise and disturbance-free.
11. Refrain from multitasking; it is distracting for your team. Fidgeting or interacting with people outside the meeting at your home can be distracting and cause the meeting to be put on pause to get your attention back. This wastes everyone's time and energy.?
12. The same body language rules apply in a hybrid work setup as the office, so be mindful of how to speak and your non-verbal communication language as much as you would be of your verbal one.?

These simple steps showcase mindfulness as well as sensitivity. Ensuring you are aware and actively take steps to keep these etiquettes will lead to effective collaboration in a hybrid work model.?

Thanks for reading, and do come back for more.?