Workplace productivity is in peril! People want to work more than ever because AI is putting jobs at work culture and workplace ethos. Putting it simply, workplace productivity is spurred by job risk. But doing meaningful work is becoming harder. This is especially true for the hybrid workplace. Since people no longer share the same space to work, connecting and collaborating have taken on new dimensions. Creating a hybrid work model that drives success is the need of the hour!
If you are familiar with the talk around workplace productivity, you may already know of virtual coffee chat apps. And while they are great, they are only a launchpad for what needs to be your organizational satisfaction, growth options, and a sense of belongingness. Using virtual coffee chat apps like LEAD helps businesses promote organic bonding and collaboration – something much needed when not interacting in real space.
Smart team management combines 1-on-1ns, watercoolers, and new hire onboarding + timed check-ins to make employees cultivate a sense of equity in the company. This is not a hack! IT is the essence of building a strong team and it does increase your overall productivity output.
Now, let’s look at some other productivity hacks you can take up to optimize your hybrid team’s output:
5 Hybrid Team Hacks You Should Get in 2024
Scheduled Touch-base Meetings
One of the biggest losses from the pandemic is the regular scheduling of meetings. These fixtures are used to help managers and team leaders align goals and processes with their teams. Now, getting things together and working smoothly requires more than just setting a timer. It demands that everyone’s work process and schedules need to come together. For fast-moving team processes like Agile, getting things together can be even more challenging. However, once the initial alignment normalizes, your team should be able to come together at regular intervals.
Many companies prefer a one or twice-a-week mode for team meetings interspersed with one-on-ones and virtual coffee chats. Others have a more widely spread schedule and prefer to shuffle things around. The best way to find out what works for your team is to start with team meetings and fill in the rest of the week’s or month’s plans as the need arises. The ideal fixture spread enables you to keep goals on track while giving enough space to your members to get their tasks done. The most common variation is 2 to 3 days between each meeting with 2 meetings per week. If you have a larger team or long-running projects then you may need more days but once a week is recommended.
Impromptu Group Chat Sessions
Group chat sessions are events created to bring the team together for an informal chat. Unlike the team meeting, this is mostly a text-based interaction session on some common topic of relevance. It doesn’t need to be something work-related. It could be something that the whole team can comment on or discuss. For example, if you have a common sport, then upcoming matches are a great thing to talk about. If you have common interests like confetti art and origami or something else that pairs together, then that is worth discussing too. The idea is to help team members network and socialize through a common topic.
Watercooler sessions are also a great way to bring new topics to a team and foreshadow an upcoming event. For example, if you have a team meeting on Monday, you can put up a topic on Thursday and float it to your team before you bring it to them formally. Doing this is useful but managers must be careful not to add pressure to it since that can have the opposite effect.
Meme-based Showdowns
Memes are now a thing on MS Teams. Team users and their – well, teams, can now bring some levity to the workflow and social network with memes. That’s a really innovative way to increase workflow and productivity. Considering that memes are something everyone can connect with, using them to create a cultural dialog is a very engaging experience. In fact, most employee engagement programs fail because they are too formal and try to mediate communication. Instead, using something like memes helps break the ice, bring creative ideas together, and develop rapport. Arguably, the only thing more personal and relatable than memes are virtual coffee chats.
In some cases, using memes also leads to innovative branding and marketing ideas. Some companies even use memes are a means of generating market interest in their brand experience from both employee and client perspectives. Creating employee engagement that translates directly into customer outreach and personalization is a very smart tactic and well worth exploring.
Tired of Reading? Watch this video for fast info and a vibey beat! 🙂
Informal One-on-Ones
Informal one-on-ones are a lot like virtual coffee chat but with a team leader or a supervisor. This does not need to be done more than once every fortnight but is usually a great idea since it helps dynamize hierarchical synergy. The process of correlating with one’s supervisors is usually a strong motivating factor for employees to put out their best work. Oftentimes, group chats or team meetings are not suited for voicing opinions, and one-on-ones are important to fill in this personal gap. Also, one-on-ones are crucial for creating a personal rapport with team pairs. Most teams pair individuals under the buddy system and one-on-ones can help team leaders check up on team pairs.
Event Celebrations
Quarterly recognition events are an important way to identify and celebrate top performers. They are also useful for creating competitive momentum. Much like water cooler sessions, they are a touchpoint that everyone can look forward to. In addition, celebration events like work anniversaries especially for new hires are crucial for developing their productivity and helping them orient to the company. The most common terms are 30, 60, and 90 day check-ins. Creating this kind of scheduling is a very important feature of effective hybrid team management. Regular reminders of work process outcomes help remote and hybrid workers stay motivated. Plus, non-formal interactions enable the development of personalized work relations.
Are You Ready to Boost Your Hybrid Team’s Productivity?
Hybrid teams are the popular choice when it comes to business teams across the world. However, it is more about getting it right than getting into hybrid work setups. Organizing your business calendar with the kinds of remote meetings we mentioned above, particularly watercooler sessions and virtual coffee chats is a do facto imperative for team leaders.
LEAD.bot is a team engagement platform available on Slack and Teams. It is an all-in-one team development software with features like virtual coffee chats, buddy programs, birthday celebrations & work anniversary celebrations, new hire onboarding programs, and Pulse Surveys.
LEAD.bot also offers cutting-edge Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) for big enterprises and institutions. Executive to mid-level managers use ONA to gain highly actionable insights and build strong workplace connections. Using this app enables developing innovative employee engagement ideas to connect employees and foster better organizational health, employee retention, and overall performance with this simple app!
LEAD.bot is a product of LEAD.app and we also LEAD.bot’s sister app Sunrize which showcases workplace attendance by graphs right on Slack! Book a demo now!
