Young employees in office

How to be a high-performing leader in a hybrid workplace

Drone view of a city
EY UK

Multidisciplinary professional services organisation

11 minute read 01 Oct 2021
Related topics
Workforce

Leaders need to adapt their behaviours to excel in our new hybrid working world.

In brief

  • Our new normal has arrived: hybrid working is here to stay. To thrive, leaders must learn how to adapt and lead their hybrid teams in this new working world.
  • In a hybrid workplace, leaders need to act with equity, lead with empathy, revive informal social learning, build networks, and use hybrid communication.

With the return to the office imminent or for some already started, there are many questions on how businesses will operate moving forward and the challenges this will bring to leaders. The EY Work Reimagined survey, of over 16,000 employees, across 23 sectors and 13 countries paints a clear picture that the reimagined working world is a hybrid one. With 90% of employees wanting flexible working options and 54% considering leaving their current employment if they don’t retain flexible working options, the ability to lead in a hybrid workplace is crucial to survive and thrive beyond COVID-19.1

A study of 3,500 leaders and managers across the UK, found that almost three quarters believed that leadership was lacking throughout the pandemic.

ILM and City & Guilds Group Survey

The COVID-19 pandemic brought fast-paced change to the world of work. Overnight, many switched from being co-located in an office to either hybrid or fully remote.2 The pandemic also accelerated and amplified the need for longstanding leadership and management challenges to be tackled, such as digital transformation, managing remotely, leading through rapid change, fear and uncertainty. However, many leaders have struggled to keep up with challenges left in the wake of the pandemic. 

For example, a study of 3,500 leaders and managers across the UK, found that almost three quarters believed that leadership was lacking throughout the pandemic.3 Specific areas that leaders struggled with were empowering and motivating teams, problem-solving, empathy and emotional intelligence.3 Moreover, the World Economic Forum points to an urgent need for leadership upskilling in digital fluency and change management to remain competitive and agile in this new hybrid working context.4

How to effectively lead a hybrid team

The hybrid working world presents leaders with many challenges. It is time to shift from leading in crisis mode and assess what leadership tactics worked well throughout the pandemic. Doing so will enable leaders to develop a more accurate picture of how to effectively lead a hybrid team now and in the future. 

Findings from a manager skills survey of 1000 employees5 showed that to be successful and overcome the challenges that the new hybrid workplace presents, those in leadership roles must dial-up their soft skills to maximise their performance and that of their hybrid team. Specifically, the survey found that employees believed their line managers and organisation have struggled to provide adequate support during the pandemic suitable for a hybrid workplace.5

Following an extensive literature review, we explore five insights into hybrid leadership and provide practical tips on how leaders can: lead their hybrid team with empathy, compassion and care, act with flexible working in mind, revive informal and formal learning, hyperfocus on network building, and use hybrid communication to create a working world that enables people to succeed. 

1

Chapter 1

Lead hybrid teams with empathy, compassion and care

As we emerge from the pandemic, to effectively lead a hybrid team, leaders will need to actively support their employees’ well-being.

Before the pandemic, there was a paradigm shift towards a more humanistic model of leadership. This encouraged compassion and the need for increased concern towards the well-being of the individuals one leads.6 The pandemic has accelerated this focus on empathy and compassion as employee well-being has taken a significant hit since the onset of the pandemic. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has reported that well-being rates plummeted during the first lockdown and continued to do so with each subsequent lockdown.7

Furthermore, the pandemic significantly increased the risks that people were facing, shifting many suffering from acute stress to chronic stress. The pandemic brought on reduced access to mental health support, social isolation, and sustained fear and uncertainty, which only served to multiply well-being and mental health challenges. Additionally, the experience of chronic stress is the strongest predictive factor of employee burnout.

A survey of 2,000 employees found that
of employees want their managers to engage in an honest and personal conversation about their mental health.

The pandemic has caused clinical professionals to theorise over a new disorder, Post Pandemic Stress disorder (PPSD).8 Although currently not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health (a standardised and centralised diagnostic tool used by mental health professionals), PPSD like other stress-related disorders can result in people showing trauma reactions. This can happen in the months and years after being exposed to stressful or traumatic events caused by the pandemic.9 As we shift to a hybrid workplace, employee well-being can no longer be seen as an issue that is centralised to just HR. Leaders must play an active role in supporting their hybrid teams to ease into a post-pandemic world and push employee well-being to the top of the agenda. Thus, leading with empathy, compassion and genuine care for the well-being of hybrid team people is pivotal.

2

Chapter 2

Act with flexibility and equity in a hybrid workplace

Leaders will need to reduce biases and promote fairness for a balanced hybrid workplace dynamic.

Leading a hybrid team will bring many challenges and leaders need to ensure that their people, regardless of if they are co-located or working remotely, have the support and access to resources that will enable them to perform their best.12 Before the pandemic, there was a stigma around flexible and remote working. Many were concerned about the impact that visibility can have, with career opportunities being disproportionally given to those who were co-located with leaders and those in senior roles (proximity bias). Leading a hybrid team in today’s working world will mean having to dispel these fears and biases, and ensure that these processes are fair to all, irrespective of their location to ensure a balanced work dynamic.13,14

3

Chapter 3

Revive informal and social learning and upskilling in a hybrid workplace

Leaders will need to support their hybrid teams’ learning, and empower them to leverage their new skills.

How EY can help

With the loss of face-to-face contact, informal and social learning between colleagues has diminished. Studies have shown that despite this fall in informal and social learning, there is an appetite to learn and gain skills and knowledge essential for career development.15, 16 For example, a LinkedIn Learning report found that generation Z and millennials are dedicating 50% more time to learn independently and that the opportunity to be upskilled plays a key factor in turnover intentions, retaining talent pools and capturing fresh talent.17

As we continue to use hybrid work models, leaders must dedicate time to help their hybrid teams learn and grow, but also to empower them to leverage their new skill set.

4

Chapter 4

Hybrid workplaces require a hyperfocus on network building

Leaders will need rebuild old networks to make them fit for a hybrid workplace.

The pandemic thrust us into a survival mode, many found themselves working harder and longer days dedicated to delivering KPIs. This meant that anything which did not support the achievement of KPIs was quickly put on the back burner. Virtual social coffee calls quickly lost their novelty, resulting in many professional networks fading. The hybrid workplace presents challenges for new starters (who have joined during the pandemic) with less access to senior individuals within the business. They will need additional support to build connections across the business. As we shift to a hybrid work model, managers and leaders will have to ensure that networks are built with a hybrid model in mind so that teams or individuals aren’t siloed from the rest of the organisation.

5

Chapter 5

Use hybrid communication

Leaders will need to establish new communication norms for today’s hybrid workplace.

Effective communication is a challenge that remote working has only exacerbated.18 Almost half of the respondents to a manager skills survey5 believe communication is an essential skill for their line managers, especially as offices reopen. However, hybrid working carries the communication challenges of working remotely and face-to-face. Leaders must shift their communication strategies to embrace a hybrid workplace. Being a great hybrid communicator requires you to clearly and intentionally establish new norms for you and those you interact with.

An essential tool for communicating in a hybrid working world, requires the balance of synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication is the real-time communication method that was dominant pre-COVID-19. It is effective for dynamic interactions, active engagement, and fast-paced decision-making. However, the expectation of frequent synchronous communication can disrupt one’s deep work hours. An example of this is the mass virtual call fatigue phenomenon, which was felt throughout the first months of the pandemic.19

Using asynchronous communication, communicating not in real time but flexible to the availability of the receiver, is fundamental to phenomenal communication. It enables everyone to contribute, regardless of whether they are co-located or remote, and the opportunity for hybrid teams to collaborate without being constrained by someone's availability. In contrast asynchronous communication can delay decision-making. Therefore, to have world-class hybrid communication, leaders and managers must establish what needs to be done in real time (synchronously) such as decision-making, and what can be done more flexibly (asynchronously) such as projects that require individual outputs and thinking.

Another beneficial communication tool for a hybrid workplace is using bite-sized information. Effective communicators understand that reducing any information to its key messages is critical to performance and fast-paced delivery.20 In a hybrid workplace where teams are dispersed with less visibility and synchronous communication opportunities, it is essential people leave their interactions with all the information they need and clear actionable tasks. 

Communication should also be aligned to your employee value propositions. The sudden shift to working from home has the potential to make people feel detached from your culture and employer brand. As you shift to a more stable hybrid working model, leaders should use this as an opportunity to reignite employee experience. This can be achieved through reiterating your unique employee value proposition and how it benefits your people.


Summary

The pandemic has highlighted that to thrive now, and in the future, leaders must adapt to unprecedented changes in the modern working world. The hybrid workplace model means leaders can leave behind existing bad practices and herald new best practice hybrid habits. Leaders need to stop anticipating what the new normal is; we are here. It is time to utilise our learnings from the pandemic to navigate this new hybrid working world. Leaders should embrace leading a hybrid team, seek to empower and engage their employees and ensure that their organisation advances successfully into a post-pandemic world.

About this article

Drone view of a city
EY UK
Multidisciplinary professional services organisation
Related topics
Workforce

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