It’s been more than a year since the majority of office workers went remote. People have scrambled to adjust and keep both their work and home lives afloat. Sorry, you’re on mute! Hold on a minute, my camera’s not working. Never mind that, my kindergartner is invading the room. Can you see my screen?
Companies are already starting to discuss a post-pandemic future in which remote work is much more prevalent. But the reality will likely be hybrid, with some employees working mostly remotely, some working largely from the office, and some doing both. This creates a number of challenges but also the opportunity to redefine work. Companies should leverage rituals to prepare themselves for this hybrid future.
Ann Swidler’s seminal work, Culture in Action, states that people use culture as a tool kit in unsettling times, which COVID-19 certainly is. Being intentional about creating cultural practices like habits, routines, rituals, and stories can help redefine work as we move into a new normal.
How can we be more intentional about these culture practices? At Stanford d.school, we’ve been using a human-centered design approach to creating rituals. We began with personal rituals, then shifted to work. Initially, these were designed for in-person work, but as COVID-19 forced people out of the office, we adapted them for remote work. These seven components are critical to creating an effective hybrid work environment.
Infuse equalizers into your meetings
Do you remember a time when you were the only one connecting to a meeting virtually? Having such a limited remote presence created an unfair advantage for the majority of people who were in the same physical space. This asymmetric participation will be exacerbated in the upcoming hybrid era. To create more equitable participation and distribution of power, you need equalizer meeting practices.
Add care practices to your weekly team life
The pandemic showed us the hard way that well-being matters more than anything else. When we’re back in office, companies should instill practices that nurture a caring environment. This is as critical as the work that needs to be done. Such a mental shift isn’t easy, and companies will need to acknowledge that more “work” hours must be spent doing nontraditional activities.
Space is another strategy, and wellness rooms can be designed with more intentionality. For instance, we designed a wellness room in our workspace that has a forest ambience with a wall-to-wall forest mural, a diffuser, and comfortable seating for people to rejuvenate. Rather than seeing these activities as time away from the bottom line, companies need to understand how they play into employees’ overall mental health and productivity.
Strengthen human connection with special-interest gatherings
Human connection is the bedrock of collaboration and getting things done. Jane Dutton coined the phrase “high-quality connection” to articulate why personal connections matter and how they can pave a way for high-performing teams. Research also shows that people’s efficiency increases when they know each other personally and have relationships that go beyond the workplace. This will become more challenging in a hybrid work environment, so it’s even more important for team leads to initiate gatherings that give employees the opportunity to connect.
Dial emotions up and down to manage energy
People have limited energy that shifts throughout the day and during the week. Hybrid work will make it harder to recognize the signs of wear and tear on a team or if someone is feeling burnout. Team leads need to be proactive in providing energizer activities.
Create mental spaces for collaboration
When people work together, they need to develop a common understanding so that there’s clarity on the work direction and tasks. Whiteboarding is a common practice to establish such a baseline during in-person meetings. In hybrid work, this will be a challenge. Team leads can use visual thinking practices and tools to facilitate effective collaboration.
There are a number of virtual tools that lend themselves to this; once the tool is set up, team members can work on tasks together. Team hosts can warm people up to this way of working by encouraging them to include personal touches like adding a photo to the tool and telling the story behind it. Companies who are less visually oriented can leverage online office tools that allow real-time collaboration (such as Google Slides or Microsoft Office). We also see some companies like SYPartners launching SimCity-type virtual offices where people can create rooms and virtual whiteboards for their colleagues to visit and collaborate asynchronously.
Recognize people’s loss and grief
Microsoft’s most recent report mentions that one in six employees has cried with a colleague during the pandemic. People’s losses are on a spectrum, from being isolated from friends and family to losing loved ones. Recognizing the loss helps people acknowledge their emotions and assures them that it’s okay to grieve.
Team leads can support this by organizing something like a wake party, where people share stories of their loss and acknowledge each other. They could also create a mini garden in the office and let people pick a plant and commemorate their loss.
Send cues for belonging
Daniel Coyle talks about the importance of belonging cues in creating a healthy culture, which makes people feel psychologically safe. When a significant percentage of employees are remote, there are very few things to help them feel that sense of belonging in the company they work for. When a new employee joins remotely, the need for cues is exacerbated, as people lack the in-person cues of the office environment. Team leads and executives need to get creative in finding and expressing belonging cues to their remote workers with the company’s communications, practices, and policies.
Hybrid work will be a significant change for many people. Creating healthy, positive, productive environments when employees are scattered across the globe will be a challenge and will require strategic thinking and creative solutions. Focusing on equity, well-being, human connection, energy, and collaboration will be critical in order for companies to build intentional culture practices and adapt to this new normal.
Kursat Ozenc is a lecturer at Stanford d.school and a design director at SAP Labs; some of these rituals were adapted from his books, Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships and Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture That Can Adapt to Change.