The New Challenges Of The Hybrid Office
New challenges require new skills and approaches
Traditional workplace communication skills include writing, speaking, listening, questioning, and explaining things, among others. They are often an integral part of performance management processes and assessments. Good communication is fundamental to high performance in the workplace and the foundation of other skills such as influence, leadership, working well with others, and even emotional intelligence. These are all characteristics of future managers or so-called employees with high potential.
Schools do not prepare students for the interpersonal workplace. While some programs require some knowledge of these skills, this learning is noticeably lacking in other curricula, including highly specialized disciplines in science, technology, engineering, and math. Most career advocates will improve their skills in the workplace.
Employers also rarely hire people for their communication skills. Instead, these skills manifest as differences between qualified candidates. One of the things that hiring managers try to do is to find the best and brightest applicants who will best fit their teams.
Interpersonal skills training
Developing interpersonal skills and improving organizational performance are often carried out by human resource professionals. Ideally, they evaluate the needs in the context of the work and then create solutions to address them. Training solutions are often a trade-off between urgency, priority, budget, and scope.
The need for training in interpersonal skills has been predictable for decades. Companies routinely hire new employees. After a few years in the job, some employees find that they need help. More likely, managers recommend improving employees’ skills as they coach and evaluate performance. Occasionally, executives find a widespread lack of communication skills and request training.
As a result, many training organizations have some sort of pipeline in place, with some employees requiring interpersonal skills training at all times. Predictability is so well established in large organizations that they offer courses on a schedule. Many of them work with providers who specialize in teaching these basic skills in the workplace.
The new challenges of the hybrid workplace
When employees work alongside managers and others in offices, interpersonal qualities dominate the workplaces. Employees meet and interact to build relationships in the context of work. They deliver presentations, convince and argue naturally, with technology playing a subordinate or supporting role. Meetings around a table are the order of the day, even when speakerphones and screen sharing technologies support other people from different locations.
The hybrid workplace is just different. It effectively connects people who work together in offices with people who work remotely, often from home. An employee can work in the same location every day or switch between different locations. Some team members are in the office on a specific day and some are not. They all meet electronically in the digital workplace using technology, from email and phone to instant messaging, audio or video conferencing, and collaboration technologies.
The new challenge that employees have to face in the hybrid workplace is complex. To stand out or even be successful, they must continue to excel in all traditional encounters with executives, customers, employees and subordinates. They also need to be effective in virtual interactions that rely on technology. In addition, they must now be able to do both at the same time, regardless of whether they are physically in a room with others or alone at their computer. Increasingly, decision makers, influential leaders, and other key parties in a meeting can be in different locations.
The problem with existing solutions
On the one hand, the hybrid situation seems to be a natural part of workplace development. Teleworking grew by 159% between 2005 and 2017, making jobs increasingly hybrid. Left alone, of course, people would adapt to new technologies without any significant stress. Those with highly developed interpersonal skills would continue to use their talents while working in the developing workplace.
On the flip side, only about 3.6% of employees in the U.S. worked from home halfway or longer in 2018. When a hybrid workplace emerged, it was very slow to do so. Few training organizations focused on developing interpersonal skills for the hybrid workplace simply because it hadn’t been a problem.
I call 2020 the year of teleworking because the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many employers to do so. When planning future operations, some employers expect office work and teleworking to be directly linked. Others will simply be hybrid because more people are working from home every day than before the pandemic. Some experts suggest that the number of employees teleworking at half-time or more can exceed 25%.
Only in the shadow of the pandemic does a hybrid workplace require the attention of learning and development professionals. Existing solutions are insufficient. Few, if any, meet the demands of today’s complex work environment.
The challenge for jobs and training
We know there is a skills gap. We see it every time someone disturbs a meeting with a technical faux pas or when people talk about each other and then wait in silence for the others to speak. Further evidence emerges when people forget to unmute before speaking or accidentally intervene because they didn’t mute. The last minute sound check in the middle of an ongoing meeting tops my list of poor online meeting skills.
Even highly qualified communicators become speechless and lose focus when dealing with technical problems. They forget their role as leaders, influencers or persuasers and become problem solvers. Emotional intelligence and the logic required to troubleshoot problems are independent skills. Multitasking between the two while trying to access online interfaces is not something anyone can take for granted. As a result, moderators often face communication barriers that create unprofessionalism and stand in the way of success. The examples are endless and only reflect part of the problem.
Training appears to be an adequate solution to the challenges of the hybrid environment. Do we need an engraved invitation to start planning the inevitable intervention in the workplace? If budgets and other priorities prevent further development, we can at least begin to assess needs and effective ways to address them.
Learning and development organizations combat the perception of being a client. We see this situation develop and it is an opportunity to come forward and lead.
