Best Ways to Manage Training in a Hybrid Work Culture

As offices are reopening post-pandemic, companies ask employees to spend at least a few days a week in their former workplaces. Managing employee training in this hybrid environment will be a big challenge. A new working model with physical and virtual environments needs new best practices in employee development.

If the hybrid model is here to stay, the training adopted needs to match it. Regardless of their workplace, creating a consistent, high-quality training experience for all employees is essential. Today’s hybrid teams have a variety of working modes – people who work full-time, people who attend for a few days a week, and people who work remotely.

Coordinating these activities and building effective teams with people with myriad experiences is the main challenge for managers. This blog will talk about ways to update your training strategy and successfully manage training in a hybrid work culture.

Some of the topics covered are listed as such:

• What is a Hybrid Work Environment?
• Challenges of Managing a Hybrid Work Culture
• Steps to Successfully Managing Training in a Hybrid Work Culture

Gyrus LMS is a highly intelligent and interactive training catalyst that can adapt itself to the hybrid training environment. Our LMS enables trainees to be trained and assigned assessments while incorporating ways to include offline feedback.

Let your employees conquer the hybrid work environment, with Gyrus. Request a free demo now

What is a Hybrid Work Environment?

A hybrid workplace is a combination of in-office and remote work to meet the new working model norm that has proven to boost revenue and productivity. A hybrid workplace is a step towards tailoring jobs to meet specific employee needs and abilities.

Although the rules for the number of reporting days for employees vary from company to company, several top organizations are adopting the hybrid work model.

Challenges of managing a hybrid work culture

A hybrid workforce requires special training and treatment as solid teams may be split into physical and remote arrangements. Therefore, it might be challenging to provide meaningful and consistent training to both groups. The training challenges in a hybrid work culture are:

• Employees need equal access to relevant, meaningful training that can benefit them irrespective of their geographical location.
• New tools and technology such as messaging apps, LMS platforms, email, and task management software help make remote working possible. But employees need to upskill themselves to make the best use of these tools.
• In a hybrid work environment, there is a change in core competencies. Manual jobs are getting automated, and employees need to be armed with both communication and technical skills moving forward.
• A hybrid work environment means a flexible workplace as an added benefit to the employees. To support the hybrid workplace, you must have a flexible company culture and a training program to follow that.

5 Steps to Successfully Managing Hybrid Work Training

1. Understand your training needs:

Companies must perform a skill gap analysis to review their present and future training needs. Understand that skills are needed for the industry and find out what skills your employees need to learn to excel in their jobs. Based on the employee’s feedback, you can decide what content you will offer and how you will deliver it. After assessing the training needs, plan your training to fit those needs and revisit the process regularly.

2. Focus more on communication skills.

Since remote working is not the best platform for teamwork, soft skills like communication, collaboration, and time management must be focused upon to overcome obstacles. Since distant teams do not have daily interactions, such as in-office employees, there is less motivation for impromptu collaboration and problem-solving. As a result, people may settle into their work bubble and fail to reach out.

3. Update leadership training:

Leading hybrid teams requires a unique approach. Team managers must be trained with the skills they need to reach out to their subordinates and motivate them to move forward. In a traditional work environment, managers physically monitor employee progress and check in on them frequently. There is no such guidance or feedback in a remote setup, and this problem can be remedied by including the required skills training for leaders going forward.

4. Re-think Blended Training:

Blended training techniques in a hybrid work culture can include collaborative workshops, online sessions, brainstorming, discussions, and other exercises. These communication methods can encourage employees to learn, obtain feedback from each other, and promote learning and retention. They also encourage teamwork and enhance collaboration.

5. Mold the training program to fit the new workflow:

While live online training will work well for distributed teams, this must not be the only way to train remote employees. When employees are spread across many locations and working hours, the workflow is bound to differ. Your training program must be adapted to suit the new working pace and hours.

The working landscape is continuously evolving to meet the ever-changing circumstances. This means upskilling and reskilling must be a part of your training program strategy. Partner with a global learning management system platform such as Gyrus. Gyrus offers a unified learning experience, real-time data visualization, scalable training methods, flexible learning formats, and hours of training.

Automate and help your employees thrive in a hybrid workplace with Gyrus. Book a free trial now

FAQs

Ways to easily transition to a hybrid work environment:

To help employees transition into a hybrid work environment, one should introduce them to the following objectives:

• Share the clear goals that the team is pursuing.
• Share your understanding of individual roles.
• A shared understanding of available resources
• Share a list of norms that ensure that the group collaborates effectively with digital tools, as well as enables the group to remain connected personally and professionally.

How can one be as inclusive as possible in hybrid work designs?

Leaders have to build creative ways to motivate onsite-essential employees to work remotely. Some tips that can help everyone transition are:

• work rotation to reduce the number of people who are working on-site continuously.
• Providing learning days that can be used for either online or offsite in-person classes, as well as other skill-building workshops. This is a powerful way to ensure everyone has time for self-development.

Ways to measure the performance of remote or hybrid employees:

Managers can measure employees’ performance based on outcomes, group work, and individual development. Some steps that can help are:

• Note whether people are delivering expected goals.
• Ensure the team is operating as one unit as this builds a successful hybrid team.
• Support individual growth as a function of being on the team.