5 Productivity tips that will boost hybrid workers’ efficiency

November 9th, 2021
5 Productivity tips that will boost hybrid workers’ efficiency

Being given the flexibility to work both in the office and remotely comes with benefits, primarily having greater control over how you spend your workdays. This is called hybrid working, in which you split time between in-office and remote work. But doing hybrid work also has its downsides: it’s easy to lose your momentum, get distracted, and become disorganized.

If your organization is embracing hybrid work for the long term, it’s important to know how to keep your productivity at an optimum level. Here are some tips to help you achieve that.

1. Ensure your work desks are comfortable

If you are more comfortable working at your office desk because it is set up in a way that’s more conducive for working long hours, try to replicate the setup at home. This could entail nothing more than having everything you need at your home workspace: your laptop/PC, extra monitor, mouse, phone, and other office essentials.

If you work at home more often than in the office, it pays to know what your ideal work desk and height should be. This way, you can maintain proper posture, preventing you from slouching that could result in neck and shoulder pain and other body aches. Poor posture while working isn’t just bad for your back, it can also reduce your productivity.

On the other hand, if you occasionally work at a co-working space or cafe and notice that you’re not as productive when working in such places due to discomfort or distractions, consider other places to work.

Related reading: Boost productivity by organizing your home or office workspace

2. Leverage collaboration and communication tools

With people in your team working from different locations on any given day, seamless communication and collaboration is a must. Communicating via email only is not the most optimal way to talk to your colleagues. For one, it can result in delays from waiting for replies, and it tends to be highly impersonal. You also tend to miss social cues which are important in promoting effective communication and developing good relationships with your coworkers.

So if you belong to a hybrid team, online collaboration tools and features are your friends. If your team uses Google Workspace, you can use its Meet Video and voice conferencing tools to host meetings. With Workspace, setting up meetings can be made even more efficient with Google Calendar, and you can record meetings and save them to your Google Drive account. Similarly, users can take advantage of Microsoft 365 collaboration functions mainly via Microsoft Teams, a collaboration platform that comes with video conferencing, chat, file storage capabilities, and more.

3. Determine optimum locations and work hours

There are tasks that you can do better or faster when you’re doing them in certain locations. For example, high-impact tasks that require you to go into “deep work”, such as finishing a sales report or writing a 3,000-word article, will likely be better accomplished when done at home where you can exercise better control over distractions. As for days when you must attend meetings and/or perform tasks that require face-to-face interactions, you’d be better off spending them at the office.

It’s also necessary to consider the times and/or days when you are most productive. An online survey commissioned by Moneypenny (an answering services firm) revealed that Americans are most productive on Monday mornings. Regardless of when you are most productive, it pays to do your most critical work on days and in locations where you can be at your most efficient.

4. Know the business’s expectations

If you’re working from home part-time, you may occasionally feel like you’re missing out on critical information regarding matters like a project’s progress, meetings, or company events. This is why managers in charge of hybrid teams must set clear expectations for employees. Everyone must understand what’s expected of them, particularly regarding when staff should be available (whether in-person or online), which days they should be reporting to the office, and the like.

5. Shift focus on output quality rather than attendance

It doesn’t take much effort to let your team know that you’re available online on Teams or Slack, or that you diligently show up at the office. Ultimately, in any team, everyone is expected to contribute to organizational goals, whether that means finishing tasks on time, meeting deadlines, or keeping clients satisfied. Being a valuable team member requires you to deliver quality work, which you can do by determining which hours of the day you’re most productive, making smart use of every available technology, and collaborating with your colleagues efficiently.

To maximize your team’s strengths in a hybrid work arrangement, you need technology that can help everyone be productive no matter where and how they choose to work. Learn how you can leverage technology to keep your hybrid team productive – schedule a FREE IT consultation with our experts today!


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