There's good news and bad news in the fight to return to the office post-pandemic. The good news is that leaders and staff have been forced to be more thoughtful in negotiating how to get work done most efficiently. The bad news is that the delicate compromises of hybrid office life still often don't work for everyone.
And nowhere is this more evident than when staff are dragged into offices and forced to take part in endless Zoom calls that they could have taken from home. The lack of foresight inherent in these strange arrangements has led to a constant stream of TikTok videos and the spawning of at least one vulgar acronym.
Before you take this as a sign to go back to working in the office five days a week, take a look at the statistics: Of 158 U.S. chief executives surveyed by The Conference Board, only six are prioritizing bringing employees back to the office full time, and most recognize they'll lose talent if they do.
Hybrid work is likely here to stay, so here's one small suggestion for a big improvement. why and how The meeting will be conducted.
As Harvard Business Review writes, if you want hybrid to work, you need to intentionally design in-office workdays as days employees won't want to miss. In short, “onsite is the new offsite.” Can you make the office just as engaging and enjoyable as when your team travels out of town for an offsite? “At the very least, it's important to be intentional about how you plan your company's in-office workday, not just to add incentive but to make your employee and company time valuable.”
Creating a good office experience is harder than it seems. With teams made up of Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, how do leaders keep everyone happy with the ever-increasing number of different communication tools they use every year? And do they proactively consider when, where and how they communicate and collaborate?
So before you schedule your next meeting, consider these four questions:
- it is have Occur?
Are your meetings the best way to advance progress for the benefit of all involved? When I was younger and less confident, I had strict 1:1 meetings with my team members. As I matured, my confidence in myself and my members' abilities grew and meetings became optional. Consider whether the meeting is there to ease anxiety or to actually move the team's goals forward. Ask yourself if this topic is better brought up in Slack or over email. - Who Do I have to attend?
J. Richard Hackman of Harvard University concluded that the optimal number of people for a meeting is four to six (up to 10 attendees), because miscommunication increases “exponentially” as the team size increases. Amazon's Jeff Bezos popularized this concept as the “two pizza rule,” which states that no meeting should be so big that two pizzas wouldn't be enough to satisfy everyone. Ask yourself if everyone who is asked to take time out of their day to attend the meeting truly understands this. Really Participants are necessary for success. The thing I hate most in meetings are the “peanut gallery” who don't offer any meaningful input and don't help drive results. Consider saving everyone the pain of a huge invite list. Without a large audience, those who do attend are more likely to speak up. - what What is the modality?
If you ask employees to come into the office, perhaps hold meetings in person and allow off-site employees to join via Zoom or phone. After battling commuter traffic, having to video conference from the desk next to other employees can feel a bit silly and wasteful.Ask yourself the tough questions: Can you meet in other ways? Can you make team check-ins asymmetrical by posting to a shared document? Is there a way to combine work updates with more personal/fun updates? Are you making the most of your time together, whether it's in front of a whiteboard, enjoying a meal or coffee together? Does every meeting need video? (Consider that for many people, video adds an extra “burden” on hair and makeup time.) Does it make sense to hold a conference call earlier so staff in other time zones can join in? Or would it make more sense to record the call and add a personal introduction for local staff to watch and enjoy the replay during work hours?
- Whose leader?
Without a clear structure and roles for decision-making, time is wasted. Create an agenda and share it with everyone in advance so no one comes to the meeting unprepared and unsure of their role. Have someone take notes and meet in a distraction-free environment. Designate someone to be responsible for following up on action items and hold participants accountable. Without a leader, a meeting will not be effective, no matter how rigorously you prepare in advance.
Hybrid work can be a wonderful gift that can boost both productivity and job satisfaction, but it can also feel like a burden. As WeWork alum Varesh Sita recently wrote on LinkedIn, we need to bring the excitement of offsite to onsite work in the office: “Now the focus needs to shift to careful onsite planning: bringing people into the office on a regular basis, building connections, enabling collaboration, making plans, building strategies, and ensuring clarity and alignment.”
Sita suggested that companies should hire in-house workstyle organizers, just as they had offsite organizers. Deep down, we all know that hybrid work isn't quite right, but good meeting planning can at least get you moving in the right direction. If your goal is to create an environment where your best people can thrive, use the office as a tool to achieve that outcome.
