It’s time to grow your hybrid culture

Hybrid work offers unique opportunities to rethink how we collaborate and organise ourselves. Even so, survey after survey shows that wellbeing and attachment to the workplace are falling. Has the hybrid model failed? No, but it’s time to put extra focus on building a strong culture in the hybrid era.

It went really well at the start of the lockdown. Several surveys, international and Danish, pointed to high productivity and great satisfaction with the new, flexible way of working. For many leaders and companies it was an eye-opener to a new reality, where they had to admit that employees showed more responsibility than expected and could actually manage their time from home. Over time, we began to see signs of organisational corrosion. It was hard to bring new people properly on board, we missed our social relationships, and several people struggled with their physical and mental wellbeing. Now we’re back in a workplace with more flexibility, but where employees complain that office time is hardly worth the commute. The office day disappears into virtual meetings, and many still choose to work from home. And when we work from home, we’re good at getting absorbed in our own specific tasks, but rarely focused on collaboration and building relationships.

Has the hybrid model failed?

It’s tempting to wish we could go back to the past, when everything was fine and we were simply together at the office. But was it really such bliss back then? Were meetings really super-efficient, with no problems with engagement or a sense of community?

The truth is probably that hybrid work acts as an organisational magnifying glass, highlighting the things that were already limping along. Unprepared, unstructured meetings without an agenda fail badly in a virtual or hybrid setup, but they failed before too. Colleagues who didn’t invest in the community before may simply find it easier to hide at home. And leaders who lack empathy and tend to micromanage have an even harder time in a hybrid way of working.

It’s time to grow the hybrid culture and renegotiate the team contract

Culture is something we create together, and it has to be grown and looked after. In many places it may once have arisen more or less by chance, through the relationships between people at work, but now it takes a more targeted effort that lays the foundation for a strong professional community, both at the office and at a distance.

It isn’t a job you can hand to the communications department. A strong culture and community have to be grown and built very close to the employees, at team level. We need to rebuild a strong community and a strong culture, in a hybrid version.

How do you work with culture?

In his book The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle argues for three qualities that support a strong culture in leading companies around the world. These companies have built a sense of safety in the organisation, removed the fear of sharing vulnerability and worked hard to build a strong, clear purpose. Employees dare to share mistakes, disagreements or frustrations. Leaders dare to show their own vulnerability, which makes it easier for employees to dare to share too. And everyone can rally around a clear identity and a shared set of values. But in practice, how do you define the hybrid culture at team level?

In our work equipping leaders for hybrid work, we’ve often used a framework built on the themes below:

Purpose and values. We need to have, or come back to, the conversation about why we’re actually here, who we’re here for, and which values define us as a team. When we don’t see each other at the office as often, it becomes even more essential that this is clear to everyone and is revisited regularly at team meetings.

The team contract. We need to decide which tasks are fine to handle from home, and which we give extra focus to when we’re together at the office. And then we need to agree, and commit, on how we meet, communicate and collaborate in a hybrid setting.

Team goals and a team contract. We need to agree on the behaviour we expect from each other, and on how we build strong social ties, both at a distance and together. We need to work with self-management and build a shared understanding of how the demands on each person are changing. And finally, we need to set clear team goals that help shift the focus from the individual alone to the team as a whole, in a hybrid setting.

Culture has to be created close to the team

It’s time to act and create the hybrid culture. But it’s a job that has to be handled at department level. What works can differ a lot depending on professional groups and job functions, and of course on the leaders’ own abilities. But with a bit of goodwill, a clear framework, effective facilitation and an open mind, you can get a long way, and create the shared hybrid contract that lays the foundation for an even stronger hybrid workplace.

Want to talk about your culture?

Culture isn’t built with a poster in the canteen. It’s built in the team, one conversation at a time. In our workshops, teams and leadership groups have the conversation about purpose, the collaboration contract and how they treat each other in a hybrid setting, and go home with concrete agreements in hand.

If you’re thinking about strengthening your culture, get in touch here. Then we’ll have a no-obligation conversation about what a workshop could look like for you.