Is your hybrid office fair and productive?

Have you given any thought to how fair your workplace is for people working in the office and others working remotely? Is everyone treated in an equitable way? How are decisions made? Who are they made by? Are those people able to avoid bias towards the remote workers and create the conditions for success?

With a little bit of thought and planning we can make the hybrid workplace a fair and productive place.

Some Challenges

Ensuring that everyone is able to join in with the meeting

• Each remote person is likely to be using a separate microphone and might have a headset making the audio clearer still, in an office people often use a single laptop and are not aware of the poor quality audio experienced by everyone else.
• As the people in the office are together this generally means they have a better experience and can contribute more to the conversation. If people joining the meeting remotely cannot see and hear as well as the people in the room they are being disadvantaged.
• People who are routinely excluded from taking part fully in meetings will either stop trying to take part fully and will not be as effective as they could be or they will become frustrated and look elsewhere for work where they are included.

Where to start

Can everyone hear and be heard?

• Invest in quality audio headsets for remote people and shared microphone and speakers in offices and test how they work.
• Ensure that people in the office speak into the microphone.

Can everyone see anything being shared?

• Instead of working on a whiteboard or paper in the room share things using software such as Miro, Mural etc
• Everyone should be using their own computer and one person should be sharing the screen.

Can everyone join in?

• Use the hands up feature on your video calling software to indicate you would like to speak
• Agree use of the chat feature
• Use polling software such as Mentimeter, Ahaslides or Slido to ask questions and gather information
• Use an agenda so that people understand the purpose of the meeting and know what to expect

I have had a lot of experience working in hybrid environments both before and during the pandemic and have experienced and helped resolve the challenges mentioned.

If you would like to have a conversation about how I might be able to help your team to make the most of the opportunities of hybrid working and avoid the pitfalls please contact me via email or directly book a call. I look forward to hearing from you.