Get Your Hybrid Strategy Working Again

Is your hybrid working strategy limping along? Has anything really changed since Covid restrictions first began to ease? Is it time to start doing things better?

To find out what best practice looks like right now, our Editor, Megan Jones, spoke to Adam Boelke, Bryce Ackerman, Jamie Storer, and Kim Ellis (and also put the spotlight on Superdry) on how to whip your hybrid working strategy into shape.

10 Ways to Get Your Hybrid Strategy Working

Here are 10 ways to optimize your hybrid working strategy:

1. Upgrade Your Agents’ Home Office Set-Up!

Your agents’ home workspace can make or break your hybrid working strategy – especially if lots of your agents are working from their dining room table (or even on their laptop in bed, as still sometimes happens!).

During Covid, this may have been a quick fix, but longer term, it’s going to affect their mental health, their response time, their wellbeing, and even lead to bad backs and arthritis. It needs to be addressed!

Not sure where your agents are sitting? Do a quick audit to find out!

“If you want to refresh your hybrid working strategy, ask your agents “Where are you working? What’s your desk set-up? Send me photos!”

This will help you see who needs an upgrade, so you can provide funds for a new desk or chair as necessary.

Contact centres with hybrid strategies are typically saving a lot on office costs, so there should be wiggle room in the budget to send out a laptop, maybe another monitor and headset, and still be cost effective.

This could be as simple as issuing IKEA vouchers so agents can choose what they need and order it direct to their home – with a caveat of paying back if they leave in the first year of using it.” – Kim Ellis, Chief Learning Architect at Go Ginger Learning Solutions

Be proactive in your approach too! You may even have a scheme in place in the small print somewhere, but your agents may feel uncomfortable asking for new equipment when they’ve made do with the dining room table for so long.

This needs to be a department-wide exercise to double-check everyone has got what they need to thrive.

2. Consider Using Tracking Software to Do a Spot Check on Agent Productivity

If there’s a lack of trust and productivity issues in your contact centre, and the viability of your hybrid working strategy is being called into question, it can be a useful exercise to deploy tracking software to do a spot check on agent productivity.

Jamie Storer, Sr Manager, Workforce Optimization at Columbia Sportswear Company — Jamie Storer

“If there’s any doubt that your agents aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing, you could try deploying desktop analytics that would measure any type of keystroke, mouse click, or movement to find out exactly how they are spending their time.

It’s important to be transparent about it, though, and let everyone know they are being tracked.

Of course, this does open a can of worms, and you will unfortunately catch people wasting time or watching Netflix when they aren’t supposed to be. But if it’s used for just a short period of time as an audit and the worst offenders are flagged to HR, it can be an all-round positive exercise that helps to set high expectations of what working from home means in your organization and help to prove that your hybrid strategy is viable in the long term.” – Jamie Storer, Sr Manager, Workforce Optimization at Columbia Sportswear Company

3. Always Do Your Performance Reviews in Person

Just because you’re in the habit of doing online meetings doesn’t mean it’s the right format for all meetings – especially 1:1s and annual performance reviews.

“Always do your 1:1s in person, as doing them virtually can lead to awkward silences and less open conversations. When you have video calls every day, it’s about leaders investing time in a face-to-face conversation and making their team feel valued.” – Bryce Ackerman, Workforce Management Internal Consultant at Roche

If you are looking for some helpful phrases to use when appraising an employee’s performance and encouraging them to improve, read our article: 25 Performance Review Phrases for Customer Service

4. Make Sure Your Wellbeing Initiatives Are Available to Everyone, From Anywhere

Wellbeing initiatives are on the rise in the contact centre – as shown in Call Centre Helper’s latest What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now report – but when did you last stop to check that everyone can benefit from them, no matter where they are?

For example, are your Mental Health First Aiders available for video calls or just face to face? Are yoga sessions scheduled for every Friday, when there’s some people only scheduled to come into the office every Tuesday?

It’s about double-checking that hybrid workers have equal access to the wellbeing initiatives in place.

For one-off events, this could even be as simple as communicating in advance that “we’ve got a surprise wellbeing treat in the office next Wednesday, so please come in if you’d like to get involved” – so people don’t feel like they’ve missed out.

5. Stop Doing Video Calls With Your Colleagues in the Office

You really need to break the habit of joining a video call when you’re in the same building.

Bryce Ackerman, Workforce Management Internal Consultant at Roche — Bryce Ackerman

“Oftentimes with hybrid working, when we go into the office, we’ll sit at our desks and join a video call to accommodate those few who are dialling in remotely – instead of the people on site going into a meeting room together.

To overcome this, I think everyone should make it mandatory to be in a meeting room with each other – if you have made the effort to travel to the office – to see each other in person, share ideas, and feel more connected.” – Bryce Ackerman

It comes down to making the commute feel worthwhile and not just a tick-box exercise!

Adam Boelke

“As leaders, you’ve got to make good use of the opportunity that your team are there in person and create meaningful experiences to connect and share ideas.

For example, brainstorming sessions or roundtable discussions. It’s about making a conscious effort to make sure that they’re not just being dragged into the office to do what they could be doing at home.” – Adam Boelke, Managing Partner at The Alignment Advantage Group

6. Re-establish a Strict Communication Schedule to Keep in Touch With Your Team

Internal communication can really suffer when call volumes are high and everyone is busy, but it really shouldn’t be seen as a “nice to have”.

When 1:1s, team huddles, coaching, and training sessions are regularly bumped because everyone is “too busy”, it can have a detrimental impact on team morale and knowledge – even more so in a hybrid working set-up.

If this sounds familiar, revisit your communication schedule, put regular touchpoints firmly in the diary, and only move them in truly exceptional circumstances.

To find out what the 7 Cs of effective communication are and how best to apply them in your contact centre, read our article: The 7 Cs of Effective Communication

7. Stop Scheduling Back-to-Back Activities With No Breathing Space

In an office environment, even back-to-back training sessions or team huddles are typically buffered with a quick tea break or at the very least a walk to the next meeting room.

Yet when agents are working in a hybrid working environment, their schedule can quickly spiral out of control at home – jumping from taking calls, to an online group training session, back to calls, then into a team huddle – without a natural breather between activities.

The best way to counter this is to simply be aware of it, so you can make sensible adjustments to their working day. For example, finish a training session or team huddle 5 minutes before agents are scheduled to start taking their next calls to allow for a bit of a breather.

“It’s about being conscious that there just isn’t the same breathing space as there perhaps would be if you were all meeting face to face and gradually taking your seats in the meeting or training space, so make sure to build it in!” – Adam Boelke

8. Mix Social and Serious Conversation Online (Just as You Would Face to Face)

When your people aren’t together in the office every day, you have to go the extra mile to keep them connected, as Alan Mullen, Customer Service Manager, explained in our Call Centre Helper site visit to Superdry:

“The Superdry Customer Service Team are always talking. For example, using internal live messaging, the team start the day with a “good morning” and discuss their various activities from the weekend or the previous evening.

As well as using humour and GIFs, the internal chat is a mix of social and serious chat, much the same as you would find in any physical contact centre.”

This can be boosted with a strict “cameras on” policy for all video calls, so everyone feels more present and connected.

“Cameras need to be on in order to have good engagement, otherwise you end up just listening to someone on speakerphone and it gets very awkward.” – Jamie Storer

Note, in a hybrid contact centre, it’s extra important to be vigilant for signs of people going quiet (for example, if they haven’t turned their camera on or engaged in a group chat for a while) and make a conscious effort to check in and make sure they are ok.

9. Introduce an Online Recognition Programme That Can Be Accessed From Anywhere

Don’t reply purely on the moments when everyone is in the office together to celebrate individual performance. Instead, put an online recognition programme in place – so everyone can be recognized in the moment, no matter where they are working that day.

“When you have a public, online recognition programme, it’s a great morale booster! I love seeing all the comments that are coming in. It’s also really helpful when it comes to those performance review conversations too.” – Jamie Storer

It’s important to recognize the hard work your agents put in, and for ideas on how to show them that they are appreciated, read our article: Top 10 Ways to Show Agents They’re Appreciated

10. Make Sure Everyone Communicates via the Same Platform – No Matter Where They Are Working From

When you have a mix of office- and home-based agents working at any one time, knowledge, updates, and even fun snippets of information (such as someone’s upcoming wedding) can be missed if communication channels aren’t properly established.

One way to counter this to make sure everyone is using the same channels to share news and updates – no matter where they are working from.

Also, encourage anyone who shares exciting personal news in the office to remember to post it onto Teams or Slack to share with their homeworking colleagues that day too.

“Whether they’re in the office or working from home, agents should be encouraged to use a primary communication vehicle such as Teams or Slack to maintain a strong sense of a shared working environment.” – Adam Boelke

★★★★★

A Well-Executed Hybrid Strategy Empowers Your Agents

A well-executed hybrid strategy can empower teams, boost morale, and drive long-term success across the contact centre.

By focusing on improving agents’ working environments, investing in equal access to wellbeing initiatives, fostering open communication, and more, leaders can overcome the challenges of hybrid set-ups.