Hybrid management: a new approach to team management

Telecommuting and hybrid working methods have shaken up corporate organizational patterns. They have brought with them the need to conform to new customs and question old practices. Hybrid management is part of the answer to guaranteeing quality of life at work and keeping teams engaged and productive, with greater benevolence, autonomy and empowerment. Find out more about the challenges of hybrid management, and the tools managers can use to align and unite employees around common objectives.

The move towards a hybrid working environment with the development of telecommuting

The "command and control" model usually refers to a vertical system, where management is entrusted to a leader who makes decisions for his employees, and confines them to subordinate tasks with limited scope for initiative. But mentalities are changing, and the health crisis has precipitated the adoption of telecommuting by a growing number of companies and employees.

A new organizational mode is emerging: hybrid working, with employees alternating between face-to-face and remote work, or with teams made up of both on-site and telecommuting employees. Telecommuting is becoming the new normal, between days spent in the office and others spent at home. It raises a number of issues and requires us to rethink our approach to work, for which an innovative team management model is gradually being put in place: hybrid management. Hybrid management involves managing employees both face-to-face and remotely, from their place of residence, in coworking spaces or on the move. Telecommuting, which has sometimes arrived suddenly as a result of the health crisis, must be seen in the light of the opportunities it offers companies, particularly in terms of reinventing practices, transforming the company more rapidly and creating more agile teams thanks to hybrid management.

Talents who aspire to teleworking

Telecommuting has become a way of life. Beyond the sometimes idealized image of these "digital nomads" working from a paradisiacal destination, telecommuting has become a reality for a majority of French people: according to the 2022 barometer published by JLL on employees' work preferences, 55% of the French working population has already resorted to telecommuting.

Also according to the JLL barometer, two-thirds of office workers consider that hybrid working will become a fundamental criterion for retaining talent in the years to come.

Young talent is particularly sensitive to these new organizational approaches. Nearly three quarters of Generation Z are hybrid workers.

Telecommuting or hybrid working can also become a lever for corporate social and environmental responsibility. Two-thirds of caregivers use hybrid working arrangements. This mode of working is essential if they are to carry out their professional duties while caring for a young child or a disabled person.

Managers who have massively adopted telecommuting

Hybrid management also takes into account another parameter: the massive adoption of telecommuting by managers themselves! 

According to the JLL 2022 barometer, three quarters of managers already practice hybrid working themselves.

Management tools need to integrate this specificity, and enable remote support of teams by managers working from home or a coworking space.

To meet a major organizational challenge, the hybrid approach calls into question the steering of managers, who must more than ever commit to the autonomy and empowerment of their teams. They must succeed in making a model based on trust coexist with a more traditional one based on control and delegation, with an equitable, inclusive and engaging approach aimed at activating collective intelligence.

Hybrid management: the challenges of new team management

Hybrid management radically alters the procedures and tools of traditional forms of management. Its implementation requires a phase of testing and adaptation, to provide a working environment conducive to employee fulfillment and productivity.

Respect for the right to disconnect

The hybridization of work has encouraged the development of practices that compromise employees' relationship with digital technology. Hybrid management requires a strict framework for use outside work, with the right to disconnect, but also during working hours. A balance needs to be struck to ensure that all the technological tools that facilitate exchanges and collaboration do not tend to become intrusive. Untimely videoconferences or e-mails transformed into a place for real-time exchanges, like instant messaging, are practices to be avoided if we are not to fuel the hypersollicitation of cognitive load with the digitization of interactions.

A blurred demarcation between living and working spaces

While some people have their own office at home, others need access to a coworking space to work in an environment conducive to concentration. In the former case, employees may find it difficult to separate their private and professional lives. In the latter case, in addition to the cost of accessing these spaces, there is above all a loss of confidentiality. 

At the heart of the company, the last decade has seen a gradual move away from individual offices to open spaces or shared areas, to facilitate communication and reduce floor space for financial reasons. Today, many employees complain about the impact of repeated interruptions due to movement or noise in these collective spaces. Since the hybridization of work is based on the sharing of time between different locations over the course of a week, the open space is now proving to be inadequate and obsolete for the challenges of hybrid management.

A flexible but organized framework

While job applicants aspire to greater freedom, flexibility and adaptability, and hybrid working practices tend in this direction, there is no question of abandoning all forms of management or retaining the old automatisms of abusive control. In the past, the tangible, physical managerial framework was provided by the workplace; today, it is the manager alone who embodies it. To this end, hybrid management forces managers to become ubiquitous, constantly juggling face-to-face and remote management. Their role is to maintain strong team cohesion in a model that is by nature unequal, favoring asymmetrical relations between employees. 

To be successful, hybrid management must promote the emergence of a virtuous and egalitarian managerial framework, which regulates the organization of work and empowers each employee. Managers must be relieved of this time-consuming and energy-intensive logistics, in favor of pure team management to gain in fluidity and efficiency. Managers intervene to support their colleagues, to provide solutions or to give impetus to the desired dynamic.

A new approach to performance assessment

Teleworking has undermined the culture of presenteeism, which values an employee's work through the prism of his or her time in the office. Hybrid management brings new ways of assessing an employee's performance and contribution, with more operational management based on close, concrete objectives. Obviously, it is no longer possible to continue to assess employees' work in terms of the time they spend in the office when they are working remotely. 

Delimiting the scope of action to achieve an objective is a technique more suited to hybrid working, where the manager delegates more and lets go. Hybrid management is based on a results-oriented culture, but this does not mean placing unattainable objectives on the shoulders of every employee without an excessive workload.

Hybrid working requires a more empowering management style, where managers and employees define their objectives in a climate of total trust, and where transparency is key to preventing difficulties.

The use of digital tools in hybrid management

Forced to adapt in a hurry, companies have not had time to put in place the processes needed to move from face-to-face to remote exchanges. Rapidly, all company profiles, regardless of their profession, age or level of comfort with digital solutions, had to get to grips with different videoconferencing tools, collaborative platforms and shared document spaces. Genuine facilitators for some and real nuisances for others, these new digital workplace tools have required teams to demonstrate great agility and adaptability.

The challenge for managers in these hybrid working environments is to ensure that new practices and rituals are adopted, in order to maintain a hierarchical link and cohesion between team members. This context calls for the use of communication tools that are adapted and, above all, accepted by all, in order to facilitate collaboration and ensure the success of remote projects.

The Cenareo solution integrates multi-channel internal communication software, a high-performance collaboration tool that is deployed in the company's digital workplace. This solution generates employee engagement by transforming any screen - smartphones, tablets, PCs and digital signage screens - into powerful and attractive broadcasting media. Thanks to its integration with collaborative tools, the Cenareo solution boosts the performance of your internal communication campaigns to meet the challenges of hybrid management. By broadcasting unified, impactful and relevant messages to everyone, managers can connect their on-site, telecommuting and field teams at the click of a button. It becomes a true centralized reference point, guaranteeing the digital inclusivity of employees.

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To stay connected in a context of hybridized work modes, managers need to offer a unified employee experience to foster team unity and cohesion. Cenareo's digital signage solution boosts team engagement, productivity and efficiency. It helps to develop a spirit of collaboration, by maximizing the reach of messages to achieve ever greater performance and inclusiveness.

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