Making

the
How to create watercooler collaboration
moments between onsite and offsite employees.

I
n the blink of an eye, the COVID-19 pandemic changed
the way many Americans work. When the lockdowns
hit in March 2020, 31 percent of U.S. employees worked
from home some or all of the time. A month later, 70
percent of employees were working remotely, according
to Gallup surveys.
In between was a dizzying race to get systems in place
to allow people to work and communicate from anywhere.
Remarkably, many organizations survived the transition.
And, for the most part, fears of lost productivity result-
ing from a mostly remote workforce didn’t materialize. In
fact, 94 percent of employers responding to a 2020 Mercer
survey about flexible work said productivity stayed the
same or improved in the months following the lockdowns.
Now, as more employees return to physical workplaces,
companies and HR leaders are facing a new challenge: how
to manage a hybrid workforce.

By Kate Rockwood
Photo Illustrations by C.J. Burton

40 HR MAGAZINE WINTER 2021

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 SUMMER 2021 HR MAGAZINE 41

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 MAKING THE HYBRID CONNECTION
Data supports the belief that
hybrid work is the future: About 73
percent of employees want greater
f lexibility and 67 percent seek
in-person activity and collabora-
tion post-pandemic, according to
Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index.
In many ways, hybrid teams are
more challenging to manage than
all-remote or entirely in-person
42 HR MAGAZINE WINTER 2021
Winter 21 FEAT Hybrid Connection.indd 42
ones—which is why it will be es-
sential for companies to implement
effective hybrid work practices.
Many employers have cited lost
company culture and reduced col-
laboration as reasons for wanting
employees back in the office at least
part of the time. Slightly more than
70 percent of HR professionals said
they were more concerned about
employee collaboration this year
than they were before the pandemic
began, according to the results of
the Gartner 2021 Hybrid Work Em-
ployee Survey.
When employees are in the same
workspace, their interactions are
more spontaneous and they tend to
interact more with people outside
their own teams, says Sunkee Lee,
11/18/21 10:41 AM
 S H R M .O R G / H R M AG A Z I N E

an assistant professor of organi-

zational theory and strategy at the ‘If remote team members feel they’re
Tepper School of Business at Carn-
egie Mellon University. But simply not being included, they will tune out,
being in the same office isn’t enough
to achieve collaboration, Lee says. stop contributing
On the flip side, a hybrid workforce
doesn’t automatically doom collabo- ideas, and eventually
ration and team building.
“Now it’s about how we work, not individual and team
where we work,” says Tina Marie
Wohlfield, SHRM-SCP, founder employee engagement
and chief people strategist for HR
consulting and talent manage- will suffer.’
ment company TIMAWO in Fraser,
Mich. “The biggest mistake is the DARREN MENABNEY
mindset that collaboration can
only happen when everyone is in
the same environment—either all
virtual or all in person.”
Companies will need to keep
an open mind and rethink what Make Meetings More Equitable
types of work require collaboration Running a meeting is a lot easier when almost all of the participants are
and which ones don’t, says Darren working either remotely or in person. It becomes trickier when the meet-
Menabney, global employee en-
ing is hybrid and requires interaction or collaboration, says Tina Marie
gagement lead at Ricoh Co. Ltd. in
Wohlfield, SHRM-SCP, founder and chief people strategist for HR consult-
Tokyo. It’s key to fending off two
ing and talent management company TIMAWO.
potential pitfalls of having a hybrid
By default, in-person attendees draw more focus and remote partici-
workforce: in-office employees who
pants might be treated as a distraction or an inconvenience because of the
feel resentful of or impatient toward
extra work it takes to include them in the experience, she says.
remote workers, and remote or hy-
“As a result, virtual attendees might not have the opportunity to be active
brid employees who feel alienated
from decision-making. Menabney participants in the conversation,” she explains, “and when they aren’t, we
is confident, though, that hybrid lose valuable perspectives and collaborative opportunities.”
teams and team building are com- That’s why Wohlfield recommends that companies assign a virtual mod-
patible concepts. erator to every virtual or blended-format meeting. That doesn’t have to be a
formal, fancy job title; it can simply be handled by one of the team members
Do a Soft Relaunch on a permanent or rotating basis. The virtual moderator basically acts as a
When offices closed in March 2020, second meeting facilitator for the people attending virtually. The role is one
there was barely time to make sure part tech support and one part engagement ringleader. Duties include:
people had the equipment they ā Welcoming the meeting participants.

needed to work at home, much less ā Handling any tech snafus, such as video or audio issues.
to come up with best practices for ā Posting polls, additional documents and questions.
remote work. ā Sharing participant questions with the meeting facilitator.

Now is a perfect time for compa- ā Setting up or running breakout rooms.

nies to put thought into how they This is also a good chance to recognize that virtual collaboration, wheth-
want hybrid teams to operate. er in meetings or not, can be a more inclusive experience than in-person
“Consider a soft relaunch or a kick- collaboration, says Darren Menabney, global employee engagement lead
off event for your teams,” Menabney at Ricoh Co. Ltd.
says. “Even though your team is not
“Employees who are quiet, who would describe themselves as introverts,
new, their context now is.”
or those for whom English is not their first language, feel more enabled and
Employees can discuss what a
included when collaborating remotely,” Menabney says. —K.R.
hybrid work environment looks like
at their company and what role they

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 MAKING THE HYBRID CONNECTION
will play in it. Menabney recom- ā Expectations about response
mends that each team or department times and which communication
devise its own team communications tools team members should use.
charter. This document can include: ā A basic schedule that allows for
ā An agreement that describes how flexibility but also includes core
team members will individually hours for collaboration. Software
and collectively approach the hy- company Atlassian found that
brid experience. its team members needed about
ā Solutions that address team mem- four hours of overlap in a day for
bers’ individual circumstances, collaboration.
such as family commitments, com- Whenever Menabney launches a
mutes or other personal situations, new global project team, he distrib-
along with their preferred work utes a questionnaire asking employ-
styles. Those who work on hybrid ees to rank certain work prefer-
teams are more willing than onsite ences on a scale of 1 to 10. Topics
employees to accommodate their can include preferences for working
teammates’ work preferences (69 independently versus collectively
percent versus 54 percent), Gart- or thinking quickly versus needing
ner’s research found. time to process. He then shares the
ā Guidelines that ensure remote results with the team members to
workers are able to contribute to help them get to know one another
decisions and provide feedback better. (“You’d be surprised how
to the same extent onsite employ- many HR people describe them-
ees are. For example, if time is selves as introverts!” he says.)
set aside for collaboration, make “You can use that knowledge to
sure all team members are on structure the team, work and sched-
their laptops so that everyone is ule appropriately,” he explains.
collaborating in the same way. “If
remote team members feel they’re Schedule Interactions
not being included, they will tune Working in the same office provides
out, stop contributing ideas, and plenty of opportunities for chance
eventually individual and team and planned interactions. People
employee engagement will suffer,” chat while riding the elevator or
Menabney says. waiting for a meeting to start. They
‘The biggest mistake
is the mindset that
collaboration can
only happen when
everyone is in the
same environment—
either all virtual or
all in person.’
TINA MARIE WOHLFIELD, SHRM-SCP
44 HR MAGAZINE WINTER 2021
Winter 21 FEAT Hybrid Connection.indd 44
eat lunch together or go for drinks
after work. These encounters, which
sometimes reach across departments,
often spark great ideas.
In a hybrid workforce, those in-
teractions can still happen, but they
must be more intentional.
“You need to build in time to have
watercooler talk,” says Amanda
Kassler, SHRM-SCP, owner of Inno-
vative HR Solutions in San Antonio.
Kassler stresses the need to en-
courage connectivity and fun at
work. As an example, she cites an
activity she came up with to cele-
brate her team’s on-time completion
of a project despite several setbacks.
She created a “mega dessert” made
up of all her team members’ favorite
confections and shipped each per-
son a piece. The team members then
dug into their treats while on a video
call together.
“They all still talk about it,” she
says. “Now some of them do recipe
exchanges with the really weird and
unusual things they’ve made.”
Other ideas for helping a hybrid
workforce collaborate and interact
include the following:
Hold non-meeting meetings.
Kassler is a fan of non-meeting
meetings. These are scheduled times
during which a manager and an em-
ployee—or even two colleagues—can
chat. These meetings might last any-
where from five minutes to 30 min-
utes and should not have an agenda.
Expand connections. Collabo-
ration is about more than workers
on the same team or at similar job
levels working well together. It also
means having high-level managers
actively engage employees in the
decision-making process, says Steve
Smith, vice president for human
resources and culture at OpenWorks,
a commercial cleaning company in
Phoenix. Identify cultural ambassa-
dors and form “Kaizen” teams made
up of employees from various levels
of the organization who are focused
on improving business practices, he
suggests. (The Kaizen concept was
11/18/21 10:42 AM
 S H R M .O R G / H R M AG A Z I N E

71%
of HR professionals said they
were more concerned about
employee collaboration
this year than they were
before the pandemic.
Source: Gartner 2021 Hybrid Work Employee Survey.

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 MAKING THE HYBRID CONNECTION
developed in the 1980s by a Japanese
organizational management consul-
tant and refers to progressive and
continuous improvement.)
Rethink the purpose of the of-
fice. Pre-pandemic, the office was
a place where both collaborative
work and solo work happened. With
a hybrid workforce, the office may
need to tilt more toward being a
place to collaborate. For example,
companies might ask employees
to come in for quarterly all-staff
46 HR MAGAZINE WINTER 2021
Winter 21 FEAT Hybrid Connection.indd 46
meetings and training sessions,
Kassler says, but not require them
to simply occupy a chair five days
a week to do work they could easily
do at home.
Bring the fun. Trina DeWitt,
director of human resources for the
Institute for Supply Management
in Tempe, Ariz., says maintaining
social connections among employ-
ees has been critical for the hybrid
workplace. One of the company’s key
strategies for 2021 was keeping its
LEARN MORE ABOUT DEVELOPING
HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS AT
SHRM.ORG/TEAMWORK
employees engaged. That meant or-
ganizing activities such as bingo or
Pictionary that could be done with
both in-person and remote partici-
pants using platforms that allowed
people to share screens and talk.
Find common ground. Early in
the lockdowns, some employees at
Avangrid Inc. connected virtually to
sew masks for health care work-
ers. Many members of the group
at the Orange, Conn.-based energy
services company didn’t know one
another beforehand. Instead, they
connected over a desire to help and
a bit of sewing savvy.
Additionally, Avangrid’s business
resource groups have become espe-
cially important during the pan-
demic to connect and support the
company’s roughly 7,000 employees
across 24 states. The groups are typi-
cally made up of employees who have
a shared interest or background.
Following George Floyd’s murder
in late spring 2020, for example,
the company’s African-American
business resource group worked
closely with Avangrid’s benefits
team to share information on stress
and mental health resources with
its members, says Peter Church,
Avangrid’s chief human resource
officer. These groups, which can
have elements of both virtual and
in-person interaction, are a good
way to “have teams operate not as
a hierarchy but as a pod,” Church
says. “Having a virtual component
allows people to collaborate more
readily without the boundaries of
an office.”
Allow for Vulnerability
The pandemic blurred the line
between work and home. It shined
a light into the personal corners
of co-workers’ worlds as they went
11/18/21 10:43 AM

about the messy business of working
while juggling barking dogs, patchy
child care, a public health crisis and
tight living quarters.
“We saw each other’s puppies
and the lunches we created. We
celebrated getting loads of laun-
dry done in between meetings and
wore funny hats to surprise some-
one on their birthday—all through
our laptops,” says Marley Hucka-
bee, former HR manager, North
America, at IBA Proton Therapy in
Herndon, Va.
Before the pandemic, Huckabee
worked in the office full time. But
she believes that her team going re-
mote, and then hybrid, strengthened
the bonds between its members.
“It forced me to check in more
with my employees, and our team
meetings were more robust because
we valued the precious time together
to collaborate,” she says. “Having
each other’s backs became so im-
portant to us during the difficult
and challenging times.”
Professionalism is important in
the workplace, as is a healthy sepa-
ration between work and home life,
but Huckabee believes one positive
outcome of the pandemic was that it
broke down barriers between team
members and between employees
and managers.
“As leaders, we have to adapt to
and allow for people to bring their
whole selves to work,” she says.
Giving employees space to improve
their work/life balance is crucial to
collaboration, she adds.
For some employees, work/life
balance improved when they moved
to remote work: In an October 2020
Pew Research Center survey, 38
percent of new U.S. teleworkers said
it’s easier now to balance work with
family responsibilities.
Evaluate Progress
Measuring profitability in a busi-
ness is fairly straightforward. But
what about the squishier concept of
collaboration? Are there signs and
Winter 21 FEAT Hybrid Connection.indd 47
‘Having a virtual
component allows
people to collaborate
more readily without
the boundaries of
an office.’
PETER CHURCH
metrics you can use to gauge how
well your hybrid team is functioning?
The answer is yes, and, in many re-
spects, it comes down to honesty and
communication.
Simple surveys can be a useful
way to take the temperature of how
well collaboration is going. Don’t
save your questions for an annual
survey, Church says; instead, ask
about collaboration or teamwork
through weekly or monthly pulse
surveys.
Since the start of the pandemic,
Avangrid has focused on making
its employee outreach more timely
and more targeted through pulse
surveys and small employee focus
groups.
“Now we have multiple forums to
collect employees’ comments, and
these comments create more dia-
logue,” Church says.
It’s also important to be open to
different definitions of successful
collaboration. Lee points to the
processes his MBA students use
to complete a final project for his
strategy class. Some sit down, divide
up all the tasks and only meet again
toward the end of the project to put
the work together. Other groups
discuss every detail together across
multiple meetings.
“At the end of the day, if both
groups complete an excellent final
S H R M .O R G / H R M AG A Z I N E
project, which collaboration is bet-
ter? Both are good types of collabo-
ration because the groups met their
end goal and they were satisfied
with the form of collaboration they
engaged in,” he says.
But Lee also suggests that HR
leaders can and should create small
milestones for teams and check to
make sure those goals are being
met. Then schedule chats with in-
dividual employees to see if they’re
satisfied with their team members
and the way the work is being done,
he says.
“If issues crop up in this process,
it’s highly likely that there are prob-
lems with collaboration,” he says.
Understandably, there will be
bumps along the road in a situa-
tion that’s new for many compa-
nies. It’s important to acknowledge
that you don’t have all the answers.
Being honest and authentic in your
communications will go a long way
toward garnering employee buy-in
when you need to make changes
down the road.
“When people are involved in the
ideation and problem-solving pro-
cess,” Smith says, “they feel heard
[and] involved and have a sense of
ownership in the solutions.”
Kate Rockwood is a freelance writer
based in Chicago.
WINTER 2021 HR MAGAZINE 47
11/18/21 10:44 AM
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