The Leader’s Role in Fairness and Inclusion for the Hybrid Workforce

Organizations are experimenting with more ways than ever for people to work together. As organizations continue to adopt hybrid working models and new ways of working, they’re finding that a critical piece to this puzzle is answering this question: how do we create an accessible, inclusive environment for our entire workforce, whether remote or in person?

Why inclusion and fairness at work matter

The indirect impacts of COVID-19 have surfaced continual complexities. Supply chains are having more hiccups; mental health needs in the workplace are at an all-time high; and employees are taking a serious look at whether they should change jobs. There are a number of cascading concerns that leaders need to navigate. Many people relocated to geographies outside the ones they were hired into (for safety needs, managing costs, or personal preference). Re-negotiating a new norm is not as simple as a policy change; employees want to hear what the organization’s outlook is for the future of talent.

A powerful definition of workplace fairness comes from this article in Fast Company by Sarah Grimstead: “Workplace fairness is about providing a level playing field for all. It is fostering an inclusive environment in which leaders value remote and in-person workers alike, providing individuals with similar tools to do their job and allowing all employees to thrive.”

To create a level playing field for all, we can’t put those who work remotely at the margins of our organization when it comes to power, status, and visibility for growth and promotion. It will take nuanced interpretations of company policies and beyond, plus good judgement, to make things fair, equal, and inclusive for all employees.

Surfacing privilege

Moving to the hybrid environment has caused joy for some employees who are sick of either being lonely or not having dedicated workspace. Yet, others might be in a panic or navigating additional stressors to secure childcare, commute safely, and not expose immunocompromised family members at home to disease.

During my time at TiER1, we designed a simple exercise to help teams have open conversations about relative advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the hybrid environment. Through this exercise, you can surface learning for a team or a leader as they realize that benefits and risks are not spread equally.

The exercise is simple; review each point of the exercise and note whether the statement is true for you. If you conduct this exercise as a group, ask every person to raise their hand if the statement is true for them. You might even make a shareable “game board” in PowerPoint so that everyone can move a token with their name forward one step for every true statement, similar to the Privilege Walk Exercise widely used to encourage conversations about privilege. I especially encourage leaders to use this exercise for reflection.

Remember: While some of these dimensions of advantage might be true for some of your people, there might be just as many people you lead for which these statements are not true. If that is the case, a hybrid environment may add extra decisions, complexity, and stress disproportionately to your workforce, further contributing to burnout.

Making the workplace work for all

Improving inclusion and accessibility is a collective effort and many of us feel urgency to get it right, now. Employees are turning to leaders for answers on what changes can be made to make the workplace more fair. Leaders are being put under the microscope as a result, and in some cases employees are coming down hard on their leadership if the “right” answers, proposals, or processes aren’t initiated. This process takes time and a lot of human judgment. There are no rules.

I offer this as an invitation to connect with everyone’s humanity and use elevated awareness and dialogue as the skill to emphasize rather than architecting broad mandates and policies. This is not to say that leaders do not have power and authority to initiate some of the most meaningful changes. It is to say that, in my experiences working with client teams, starting with a conversation rooted in curiosity is usually the most human place to begin these types of cultural interventions.

EQUIPMENT

Issues such as equal access to bandwidth, tech support, and personal technology equipment were “solved” in a mad dash when we all left our offices (monitors in tow). Those “solutions” need to be reevaluated with a lens on equity.

The unified standard for personal employee equipment is:

• Laptop with camera
• Headsets (to support work-from-anywhere and private conversation when in office)
• Extra monitor
• Access to internal servers
• Some amount of reimbursement to support a range of needs (e.g., reliable internet speeds, purchase of ergonomic chairs/desks, and support on mobile phone bills)

If your organization is not creating the equal footing from which your employees can work from, you may be creating an artificial ceiling to which they can be their best selves for the work and those you serve. Reimbursement is particularly important, as every employee situation is different; it’s critical to design an element of choice into how employees meet their needs.

WORK HOURS

Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index Report found that in the all-remote environment, meetings, chat messages, and email volume have all consistently grown. Everything is urgent and employees cannot find time to get work done.

Here are some examples of practices that you could align on in your organization:

• The typical workday at our organization is from 9am-5pm Eastern time (ET).
• However, we have colleagues working across many time zones, so our expectation is that all employees are available 11am-3pm ET for meetings to encourage collaboration regardless of work location.
• Working on weekends is the exception, not the rule. If you’re doing weekend work, one rule of thumb is “no new threads.” Anything from the week prior can be wrapped up, but new things being spun up should wait until Monday.
• We bias for in-person meetings on a specific day of the week, which makes it easier for those who choose to come into the office to get the benefits of seeing one another and having informal chances to connect.
• When a coworker has their status set as “Do Not Disturb,” we honor that. Having private, uninterrupted spaces in what can feel like an “always-on” environment is something we support to encourage everyone’s individual well-being.

NEW HIRES & NEW TEAMS

Teams or team members who first joined your organization and came together during the pandemic have had a tough go at feeling like they are a part of something. With the number of meetings on calendars seeming to only increase, finding time to network and connect with other coworkers is hard, especially with already packed workloads.

Furthermore, navigating those questions that felt silly or stupid before are really hard to ask when apart. In the past, we used to be able to pop our head out and ask quickly; now it’s a “thing” and I have to rely on chat to ask, not knowing what kind of moment that person is in on the other side of that chat stream. Leisa Grothaus, who joined TiER1 Performance in March 2020, offered some of the challenges that are shared by many who are new to organizations:

• “Have I made an impression that was as good as if we had been in person?” New hires want to make a good impression; being seen from only the neck up for months makes it difficult to gauge where you stand and whether your “best foot forward” really landed the way you wanted it to when you were stuck sitting behind a screen.
• “Am I doing the right amount of work to get the job done?” Without having others to calibrate against, it’s really hard to know what templates, tools, or work has already been done to help speed up delivery. Working in isolation, it’s hard to know if your work pace is aligned with others considered successful in your role. Add on top of that trying to find time to continue to learn about the organization and network, and it makes it even more difficult to gauge.
• “Did that question sound dumb, or like I was complaining?” With asynchronous modes of communication like email, chat, and text, it’s difficult to sense whether your questions are being received as intended. Newer hires are using way more of their brain space to make sure they are coming across “just right” as they try to build a brand and reputation for themselves. Inevitably that makes their onboarding and time to performance last longer (add on the additional pressures of representing a minority identity and this pressure increases several times over).
• “If I do come in to work with the team, how do I know others will be there?” When it comes to the inevitable negotiation as we move into the hybrid environment of “who will be in person,” it may feel selfish or self-serving for new hires to ask a team to come together. Not wanting to inconvenience anyone, they are in a spot of possibly depriving themselves of the ability to have those social connections that help a team member feel they belong.

These are just a few highlights of the ways newer team members may need extra attention from leaders to feel included as you shift into the hybrid environment. Setting norms like consistent days or certain special meetings where you can expect to see more people in the office (safely) will provide much-needed alleviation from decision fatigue for new hires.

HYBRID MEETINGS

A “hybrid environment” does not necessarily mean every meeting needs to be hybrid. As leaders plan key moments in the months ahead, it’s critical to be choiceful about what meetings should stay all remote, which should be hybrid, and which should be all in person.

If your workplace is endorsing a message that implies the hybrid or remote environment is here to stay, leaders will have to work extra hard to make sure they are “walking the talk” over the next months. New behaviors observable by all will be key in signaling the importance of inclusion when building teams. (For example, deliberately making space for virtual employees to engage in informal interactions.) If an organization communicates “remote and in-person employees will both be able to get ahead equally here,” yet leaders are showing up to all meetings in person, then this will signal that those who are working from home are not “doing what it takes” to be a leader in this organization. Working from home (or a non-office location) a couple days a week can make a big difference.

For the hybrid meeting itself, I highly recommend adopting a “learning posture” over a “knowing posture.” It was awkward at first to adjust to an all-remote rhythm; the hybrid rhythm too will require us to embrace the awkwardness for a period. The leaders who have the commitment and resilience to stick through the learning of it will be the ones who emerge on the other side as more adaptive and dynamic than their change-resistant counterparts who tried to quickly either “go back” to the way things were or to suggest “we already know how to do this”. Neither of which will resonate with employees experiencing the very real differences of the switch to hybrid.

Through lots of practicing and refining hybrid meetings, here are some insights and lessons learned that may help you navigate:

Before the meeting

• Basic meeting hygiene practices still apply: Send an agenda in advance. Make sure everyone invited needs to be there. Ask what collaboration can be done synchronously vs asynchronously.
• Test all technology (including camera/video, Wi-Fi, and screen sharing) before the meeting.
• Open the bridge to the meeting early (or as soon as possible) so remote participants can test their technology and participate in informal conversations (Cannot emphasize enough how important this informal chatter time is for feeling like you belong in a hybrid setting).
• Find a way to help team members coordinate who will be in person and who will be remote so those who want to be together can be.

In the meeting (norms for all)

• Don’t work on other tasks (e.g., checking email during the meeting).
• If appropriate for your organization, bias toward ALL video on, including those in the room (though in-room participants should join with audio and speakers turned off to avoid echoes).
• However, if your organization has high levels of burnout, little awareness about self-care, and little-to-no culture around taking breaks and creating buffer time in-between meetings I would think twice about mandating an always-on-video culture. We know from experience that this form of “always on” expectation can wreck our bodies, posture, eyes, and leave us with tension headaches at the end of the day. 2021 research at Microsoft says breaks as little as 5-10 minutes can make a huge difference.
• Everyone joins on their own laptop regardless of location.
• When you “go around the room” to seek perspective or to do things like introductions, find a way to level the playing field. Either remote participants always share first, or you ensure you alternate with in-person and remote attendees. This prevents any remote team members from always going last and feeling less important or valued.

In the meeting (if you’re remote)

• Imagine you ARE in the room.
• Minimize distractions (e.g., turn off all notifications, make sure your cell phone is on silent, and try to find a quiet space).
• Think about what you need to do in order to chime in and join the flow of conversation. When in person, it is much easier for the ping-pong effect to happen, and then you find yourself not wanting to interrupt. Norms like everyone raises their hand to speak creates shared expectations on how to make sure everyone is able to contribute.

In the meeting (if you’re in person)

• Think about what camera you are facing and default your body position to the camera that shows the room over individuals. We found remote participants wanted more to look at the room camera over individual ones (though both helped) to provide more context on body language.
• Use one mic that can pick up everyone’s voice. Make sure everyone else can be included in the discussion regardless of their location by minimizing side conversations and cross-talk. This is particularly hard for remote participants to interpret.
• Be mindful of typing, shuffling, and crinkling. These sounds are heard very easily on a remote connection but are harder to detect if you are in person (especially if you’re having food during your time together).
• When you’re stepping out of the room, share in the meeting chat why. Just like in all remote settings, if we need to step away for a quick break or because there’s someone at the door, we would send a chat saying “be right back” or something to that effect. If someone is presenting remotely and folks in the room step out, it’s hard to know why if you aren’t physically there.
• If a remote participant speaks up, everyone in person should be silent, because your voice is carried “from on high.”

MASKS & MEETING NORMS

I was in a hybrid meeting with 11 attendees (7 in person, 4 joining remotely). Someone in the room asked, “Are we all comfortable with taking our masks down?” (For context, it was about 85 degrees, and we were all sweating.) Here are a few things we learned from the conversation that proceeded:

• If your organization is going to rely on mutual consent for teams to make this choice on a day-to-day basis, it HAS to be OK for someone to say no, AND for no one to make that person feel excluded. When one individual does not feel comfortable, it immediately pushes them to the margins of the groups while having their boundaries potentially violated.
• If you do have masks down in the room, but the rule is to still wear them in the office, it is VERY easy to forget to put your mask back on if you leave the room to go to the restroom.
• As a leader of teams, if you are remote, and the rule is to have masks on, it becomes incredibly difficult to support the rule when you are not wearing a mask because you are not there in the room.

Conclusion

These insights from the field reflect current ways of working, which will continue to evolve as our ability to design and redesign those ways of working are put to the test. I hope these insights help you and your team navigate and build together a hybrid workforce that is as fair and inclusive as possible.

About the Author

Nick Pineda is Head of Growth at Wayfinding, where he is dedicated to creating the conditions necessary for growth—for leaders, for their teams, for their organizations, and for their patients, customers, and communities. Nick’s mission is to re-imagine what growth could look like. In his role, Nick helps restore relationships with ourselves, each other, and nature, so that all can be in greater service to power that serves the whole. When not engaged in transformational growth, Nick is regularly planning the next adventure with his wife, Kristin, and family.