How to make Hybrid Working Team Agreements

Working from home has many benefits, but sometimes it can get a little tiring.

That’s why a lot of people can’t wait to return to the office again.
But at the same time, they don’t want to go back to the office five days a week again.

That’s where hybrid working comes into play.

In this week’s workshop, you will learn how you can create hybrid working agreements.

This way every individual can have their freedom and flexibility, but you also:

• keep being productive,
• collaborate with each other, and
• hold each other accountable to agreements you made together.

Hybrid working is where you don't work at an office five days a week.

There are a lot of benefits for both employees and employers, but also there are a lot of challenges in how to actually work hybrid.

Of course, it gives employees more flexibility and freedom but there's much more to it for the employer as well because the improved quality of life for the employee, will automatically mean that there's more loyalty.

For an employer, a remote workforce also means a larger talent pool.

Having a flexible work environment means lower employee turnover.

And if people are able to move back to their hometown instead of living close to their office.

This is can also lead to a lot of environmental positive benefits.

And it's clear that I am on this remote bandwagon or this hybrid bandwagon.

That's because this way of working has become natural for me.

I started building websites when I was 15.

I've played online games a lot, and I've also worked with a lot of people all over the world.

Remote work can be a possible solution to a lot of the bigger problems that we are facing today.

That's why I've spent a lot of time in building a training program called Future Proof.

A five-week training program that helps you and your team to work hybrid.

And like I said last week, I created a quiz where you can quiz yourself.

What level of remote you are.

And based on your level, you also get personal recommendations on steps you could take to improve.

But if we have a look at the program itself the Future Proof program is a five week program.

It helps you to get to a remote first and partially asynchronous way of working.

And this is really helpful if you want to work part-time at the office or part-time at home.

It's a five-week program.

So you can see over here.

Week one until five.

And it will help you to collaborate and communicate with your team while working hybrid.

Which seems to be the most popular option for a lot of people right now.

Most people describe hybrid work as a couple of days at the office and a couple of days at home.

But there are many other forms to work hybrid as well.

But hybrid work brings a number of challenges.

And the biggest challenge most companies are facing today is what does hybrid work actually mean for us?

And of course that's completely normal because it's going to be a new situation all over again.

Therefore, it is key to understand hybrid, to be able to understand a more flexible future of work.

Hybrid can be many possible systems but it generally grants employees more autonomy to fit work around the rest of their lives instead of the other way round.

Ideally it's the best of both worlds.

Structure and sociability on one end and independence and flexibility on the other.

Let's have a quick look at how companies are trying to solve this.

Kissflow launched a remote plus hybrid work model last year.

It's important to note that Kissflow is a company that enables you to work remote and I don't have any affiliation with them.

What they did, they shared some of their key highlights of their remote plus model, A Way To Work Hybrid.

Which is a really interesting list of 12 points.

And the first one is that the organization has given the freedom or teams to choose between hybrid work or in office.

And that every team is expected to work in office or one week in a month.

And this way it becomes easier for people who are not from the city and they even encouraged to move back to their home towns and to reduce expenses, strengthen family and social bonds and to contribute to the local community.

And they enable that for example, with providing accommodation for those who travel and also to host monthly meetups for socializing and to build a strengthened cross-team relationships.

And they expect this will give them a lot of benefits.

An increase in productivity, meetings will be well-structured,
workplace responsibility will shift through the individual, and the time to commute will largely be reduced.

And in their way of working they try to echo a couple of challenges as well, missing out on a cashflow face-to-face conversation is a big problem.

And that's what they're trying to solve.

For example, with a quarterly conference that they will be hosting.

And in their way of working, they also echoed challenges like the difficulties with white-boarding or brainstorming and building upon each other's ideas.

And also onboarding new employees.

Let's have a quick look at another article from We Work Remotely.

They talk about how to make hybrid work, work.

And in this article, you can see a list of advantages and also the downsides of a hybrid working from home model.

Businesses can take advantage of these perks.

So employees work to their strengths and raise productivity.

They better accommodate team members with disabilities and there is lower overhead.

But also here there's a list of downsides.

Isolation or feeling left out and disconnected from the in-house team.

That can be a real big problem.

And communication requires extra effort.

It's a new skill that people have to develop which is more challenging in the beginning.

But luckily, as they say here as well, there are fewer downsides to becoming a hybrid company than upsides.

And you can fix them with the right planning and preparation.

So if you need any help with that, then let me know.

The Future Proof program is designed to overcome these kinds of challenges.

If you have a specific question, then let me know in the comments below, and I'm more than happy to help.

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