Despite many of the tools that became commonplace during the pandemic existing to facilitate remote work long before Covid thrust it forward as the modus operandi for workplaces around the world, remote work had struggled to gain acceptance at any kind of scale. This makes it clear that it wasn’t the tools per se that were the problem, but rather the ways of working and managing that struggled to reconcile an on-premise workforce and a virtual workforce.
Indeed, the most popular article of the year to date at MIT Sloan’s Management Review is on the new ways of leading in this hybrid work environment.
“Effective leadership in this new hybrid world requires different skills that go beyond traditional team leadership,” the authors explain.
Forming bonds
As James Citrin and Darleen Derosa explain in Leading at a Distance, one of the main challenges experienced during the rush to virtual working has been successfully onboarding new hires. While procedural aspects of onboarding have been relatively straightforward to transfer over to virtual working, the cultural and relational aspects have been much harder.
“In our Virtual Experience survey, employee onboarding was cited as the single factor most negatively impacted by virtual work,” they write.
Research from Harvard Business School offers us hope that bonds can indeed be forged virtually if managers go about things in the right way. The study was conducted at a large North American company and showed that regular Zoom calls with managers can prove effective in developing the kind of connections that are so important for any new hire.
Virtual watercooler
The researchers suggest that such “virtual watercooler” sessions can be effective in helping new hires bond with managers and other staff, which in turn helps to ensure that performances are high and job satisfaction maintained.
“Our results are encouraging, as they suggest that opportunities for brief informal and synchronous interactions with senior members can enhance a new employee’s socialization to the organization and improve their productivity in a short amount of time,” the researchers write.
Traditionally, the onboarding process for new hires at the firm would involve them sitting next to more experienced employees and simply absorbing what they needed to know by osmosis. This lassez-faire approach largely worked as 75% of the interns would accept offers to join the firm.
Indeed, the Zoom time with managers resulted in a 7.3% boost in the likelihood of the individual being offered a job compared to peers who were not given such time with their managers. Their job performance also increased by around 10% as a result, suggesting clear benefits from the approach.
“The survey measures suggest that the virtual watercoolers may have facilitated information and advice sharing, which possibly enabled the interns to improve their job performance and career outcomes,” the researchers explain.
Connecting virtually
Of course, as Harvard career adviser Gorick Ng in his latest book The Unspoken Rules, our managers are not the only people we need to meet at work, so it’s important that our hybrid workplaces also provide us with ample opportunities to socialize widely to help create deep and lasting bonds.
“It’s hugely important that we work on the social glue that binds teams together and helps them work effectively together,” Gillian Karran-Cumberlege, co-founder of headhunting firm Fidelio Partners told me. “This has certainly been the case for new joiners as it’s much more challenging to know what it is you’re joining when it’s purely remote.”
Research from Boston College suggests that the key to relationship building in a virtual environment is “cadence”. This revolves around our ability to understand not only who our colleague is but we can also reasonably predict how interactions with them will go. These are things that are much easier to establish face-to-face than virtually. The authors argue that it can be established virtually if people are able to first establish work-related cadence before then moving on to friendship-related cadence.
So, if we lay the foundations for work-related cadence ourselves by being a reliable work partner and responding to external requests promptly, this helps to lay the foundation for deeper relationships. We can then prompt these by being proactive in our attempts to reach out to coworkers with small steps like sharing a funny story or some personal news.
For managers, video calls can perhaps begin with a period in which team members can learn something about each other. Something as simple as a 10 minute “open mic” at the beginning and end of each call to allow for more impromptu conversations can be effective.
“At board level, a good chair will ensure that there is time to talk about the personal elements that help any team to work well together,” Karran-Cumberlege continues. “The adoption of digital tech has also given us a glimpse into people’s homes, so children could interject themselves into the call, which completely changes the nature of the meeting, and these interactions could give us a deeper insight into each other’s lives.”
Onboard coaching
To help with virtual onboarding, Citrin and Derosa recommend using an onboarding coach to act as the liaison for all onboarding activities and the go-to person for any help or advice needed. This individual will help to set up the various one-to-one meetings that can help the new recruit to establish the relationships they need to thrive.
Alongside these, they can also help to organize group discussions so that the new recruit can understand some of the team dynamics at work in the organization. These can also help to forge the friendships that are so important in the workplace.
“As our technology use has skyrocketed, loneliness has simultaneously risen,” says Deloitte’s Jen Fisher and Ahn Phillips in their recent book Work Better Together. “In fact, rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.”
This has significant implications in our virtual workplace, as it’s widely recognized that if we have friends at work we’re more likely to feel engaged, productive, and loyal to our employer. It’s a point reinforced by Gallup’s Jim Clifton and Jim Harter in Wellbeing at Work.
They argue that while attempts to develop stronger bonds between employees can often feel forced, and therefore backfire, they are nonetheless probably worth continuing with to help create stronger ties between employees, and therefore between them and the organization more broadly. In a hybrid workplace, this applies more than ever.
As we juggle the frequently changing environment that typifies our Covid world, creating a workplace that is supportive and humane has never been more important. It’s a period that has seen intense experimentation as organizations have strived to adapt. If hybrid working does become the new norm, then creating human bonds is likely to be a crucial part of a manager’s work.
