In Hybrid Work, Managers Keep Teams Connected

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In Hybrid Work, Managers Keep Teams Connected

Summary

Dawn Klinghoffer -- who is Microsoft's head of people analytics, and her team have been analyzing daily surveys throughout the past year from more than 150,000 employees who use Microsoft. The article looks at these observations and gives some avenues for managers to improve connections with their hybrid team.

Key Points

• When managers were more intentional in improving team connection through avenues such as team priority, a sense of production, and work-life balance for employers, employers felt more connected to one another.
  - "When managers proactively provide support, team members feel closer to one another and their work"
• One of the trends that the daily pulse survey's found was that shifting to remote work slowly eroded team connection (these findings were also shown in the same study of The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work -- Are We Ready? (2021) #62)
  - About two months in lockdown (April 2020): 91% of employees reported feeling connected to their team"
  - September 2020: 80% of employees reported feeling connected to their team.
  - During the holiday (November 2020): 75% of employees reported feeling connected to their team

Some possible factors that impacted employees sense of connection:

1. Receiving privatization support for managers
2. Feeling productive
3. Maintaining work-life balance
4. Managers ability to create a supportive environment where people love the work and have a good sense of work-life balance. Additionally findings suggests that bonding activities such as virtual happy hours can play a role in team connections. So managers ability to create awareness on these factors are helping to form a positive work climate.

Virtual Onboarding:

• New employees had nearly a 20% increase on the reliance of managers for onboarding support. However, reliance of peers for onboarding support decreased by 15% (in comparison to pre-covid).
• New employees who had managers who played an active role with them were 3.5 times more likely to say they were satisfied with their onboarding experience and 1.2 times more likely to feel they were contributing to their team's.
• Summary of onboarding experience: "Managers hold the dial that brings everything into focus, especially in a time of hybrid work. In short, managers matter more than ever"

Suggestions from findings:

• There are some difficulties in virtual work and team connection, work-life balance, and feelings of engagement. Companies should consider these factors to strengthen the bonds among team members.