COVID-19 has changed the way we work.

Even before the pandemic, the U.S. workforce increasingly relied on remote collaboration technologies like videoconferencing and Slack. The global crisis accelerated the adoption of these work tools and practices in an unprecedented way. By April 2020, about half of companies reported that more than 80% of their employees worked from home because of COVID-19.

That shift was made possible by decades of research into, and then development of, technologies that support remote work, but not everyone uses these technologies with the same ease. As early as 1987, groundbreaking research identified some of the challenges facing women working from home using technology. That included the difficulties of child care, work-home separation and employee growth opportunities.

Since that time, we have learned much more about virtual collaboration. As an associate professor of information systems , I’m interested in what we can expect as we eagerly anticipate a post-pandemic future. One thing stands out: Hybrid work arrangements – that is, employees who do some tasks in the office and others virtually – is clearly going to be a big part of the picture.

One survey from April 2021 shows 99% of human resources leaders expect employees to work in some kind of hybrid arrangement moving forward. Many have already begun. As just one example, Dropbox, the file hosting service , made a permanent shift during the pandemic, allowing employees to work from home and hold team meetings in the office.

The definition of “hybrid” varies in other organizations . Some workers might be in the office a couple days a week or every other day. Other businesses may require only occasional face-to-face time, perhaps meeting in a centralized location once each quarter.

Either way, research does show many companies fail in their implementation of a virtual workforce.

Remote work versus in the office

In-office work promotes structure and transparency, which may increase trust between management and workers. Developing an organizational culture happens naturally. Casual office conversations – a worker walking down the hall for a quick and unscheduled chat with a colleague, for instance – can lead to knowledge-sharing and collaborative problem-solving. That’s difficult to replicate in a virtual environment, which often relies on advance scheduling for online meetings – although that’s still feasible with enough planning and communication.

But if you look at different metrics, in-office work loses out to working from home. My recent research discovered remote workers report more productivity and enjoy working from home because of the flexibility, the ability to wear casual clothes, and the shortened or nonexistent commute time. Remote work also saves money. There is a significant cost savings for office space, one of the largest budget line items for organizations .

Hybrid arrangements attempt to combine the best of both worlds.

It’s not perfect

It’s true that hybrid work faces many of the same obstacles of face-to-face work. Poor planning and communication, ineffective or unnecessary meetings and confusion about task responsibilities happen remotely as well as in-person.

Perhaps the largest issue when working at home: technology and security concerns . Home networks, an easier target for cyberthreats, are typically more vulnerable than office networks. Remote workers are also more likely to share computers with someone else outside of their organization. Hybrid organizations must invest upfront to work through these complicated and often expensive issues.

With hybrid work, managers cannot see the work taking place. That means they must measure employee performance based on outcomes with clear performance metrics rather than the traditional focus on employee behavior.

Another potential pitfall: Fault lines can develop within hybrid teams – that is, misunderstandings or miscommunication between those in the office and those at home. These two groups may start to divide, potentially leading to tension and conflicts between them – an us-versus-them scenario.

Establishing a hybrid environment

Numerous recommendations exist on the best way to develop a hybrid model . Here are a few of the best ideas.

Meeting too often or with little purpose – that is, meeting for the sake of meeting – leads to fatigue and burnout . Not everyone needs to be at every meeting, yet finesse from management is required to make sure no one feels left out. And meeting-free days can help with productivity and allow employees a block of uninterrupted time to focus on complex projects.

Listening to employees is critical to making sure the hybrid environment is working. Continually seeking feedback , through one-on-one conversations, focus groups or human resources surveys, is important too. So is recognizing and rewarding employees with in-person or virtual kudos for their achievements. Performance incentives , such as financial rewards or tokens of appreciation including food delivery, help develop a supportive culture that increases employee commitment.

Finally: Both managers and employees must be transparent in their communication and understanding of hybrid plans. Policies must be in place to define what tasks happen in the office and remotely. Access to reliable communications is essential, particularly for remote work. All employees must receive the same information at the same time, and in a timely manner. After all, whether in the office or online, workers don’t want to feel they’re the last to know.

Written by Alanah Mitchell , Associate Professor and Chair of Information Management and Business Analytics, Drake University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

How Snapchat, Dropbox, and HubSpot helped employees adjust to COVID-19

Did you know we’re hosting a discussion on productivity, culture, and talent at TNW2020 this year? Check out our session on ‘Redefining the way we work’ here .

When COVID-19 first hit, futurist Peter Schwartz warned businesses would soon embark on a grand experiment unlike any before: “We’re going to learn the hard way, rather quickly and by necessity, everything that can be done remotely. We’re not going back to zero afterward.”

For many of us, the reality of that shift is a lot more lo-fi than anticipated. Sure, mastering Microsoft Teams presented a temporary challenge, but maintaining professionalism whilst handling the banalities of day-to-day life in between Zoom calls has proven more difficult.

For people managers, ensuring employees find proper balance in their lives is essential to our ‘new normal’. After all, switching off is especially harder without our daily commute , and the result is we often carry work stress even after we’ve signed off on Slack.

“The pandemic is obviously taking a toll on everyone: we need to consider mental health, wellbeing, work/life balance, and even added pressure for parents and caregivers to juggle home-schooling alongside their regular work,” says Melanie Collins, Global Head of People at Dropbox. “We worry about burnout.”

To help, Collins explains that Dropbox offers employees and their dependents free counselling sessions, and the company routinely shuts down so that workers can reset and recharge without feeling guilty for doing so.

For real change at work, tie empathy goals to executive compensation

HubSpot’s Katie Burke, agrees with Collins’ prioritization. Burke says HubSpot’s core value is empathy, and the company was able to reinforce morale by showing unadulterated understanding this year.

Burke adds this includes keeping business matters transparent, especially as the pandemic continues to affect more companies, and by extension, more people.

“In times of uncertainty, people are looking for as much information and clarity as possible. We share all the information that we can, including financial considerations and board decks,” says Burke.

Establishing empathy as a core value of a business sounds nice, but it seems appropriate to hold business managers accountable for achieving that goal. That’s why Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., tied executive compensation to values-based goals of being kind, smart, and creative.

“We did this to show how important it is to live those values, to not only thrive at our company, but to really serve our community,” says Lara Sweet, Snap’s Chief People Officer.

[ READ: It’s 2020, your team’s mental health and morale should be a priority by now ]

“As people leaders, we must think about what is important to our teams, and make sure we’re providing that, whether it’s training, benefits programs, or inclusive leave practices,” adds Sweet. “It’s really important, while we’re all at home, that we’re thinking about what might have served before — how do we reinvent that?”

There’s no doubt 2020 presents a difficult challenge for companies. You can learn exactly how tech’s biggest investors reacted to this year at our ‘ Redefining the way we work ’ session at TNW2020 , where Collins, Burke, and Sweet will relay exactly how they’re enacting lasting change that has real impact for their employees.

Hosted by Landit founder Lisa Skeete Tatum, the panel will also share strategies for promoting inclusiveness, and their experiences with increasing workplace diversity for the betterment of their employees, clients, and customers.

My team had a ‘no meeting week’ to ease Zoom fatigue — here’s how it went

After one year of working from home, I knew my team needed a change.

Judging by conversations I had with colleagues, family, and friends, it was becoming very clear that the new-to-remote workforce was on the fast track to hitting a collective wall.

Generally, we try to keep our ears close to the ground when it comes to listening to employee feedback at Storyblocks so we can spot any mounting issues and nip them in the bud quickly. In the early days of the pandemic, this meant figuring out creative ways to maintain our company culture while working remotely.

So we went all-in and enrolled in virtual cooking classes, collaborated to crack the code in a virtual escape room, and gathered employees based on shared interests outside of work with interest-based clubs like podcasts and book clubs.

We also launched some of our newest business resource groups (BRGs) in an effort to unite employees within our workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences as our team continues to grow and evolve.

But while these initiatives helped foster an increased sense of connection and belonging among employees, they did not address the percolating problem that many companies are up against now – employee burnout.

Enter: No Meeting Week

After surveying Storyblocks employees and doing some digging to find the spark that lit the match of employee burnout, we found that Zoom fatigue was a recurring theme driving burnout.

When we looked at how much time Storyblocks employees were spending in meetings across all of our departments, we found that it ranged from around 40 to upwards of 80% of their workday, with certain teams that meet as a core function of their productivity (i product and marketing teams) over-indexing on time in meetings in comparison to time in “deep work” phases. And while this percentage of meetings may have been similar to pre-pandemic, there was one main difference – meetings were now on video.

Zoom fatigue has become a common culprit of employee burnout throughout the pandemic. According to the Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale , created by Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, there are five different types of fatigue associated with video calls:

general (overall tiredness)

social (wanting to be alone)

emotional (being overwhelmed and “used up”)

visual (symptoms of stress on one’s eyes)

and finally, motivational (lacking the drive to start new activities).

Additionally, video calls contribute to the “always on” mentality that has resulted from working from home during the pandemic, which has made it difficult for many people to discern where work ends and home life/personal time begins.

When doing research on employee burnout, we quickly found that this problem was something many companies are also up against. For example, to persuade people to take time off, Google has started offering a bonus vacation day for those who book time off. PwC has also started offering their US-based employees $250 for every full week of vacation booked, up to $1,000 a year.

But while these programs are substantial and tackle the problem of employees not taking their PTO, we wanted to make sure whatever initiatives we put into place hit at the real root of our employees’ burnout.

That’s why we decided to initiate a ‘No Meeting Week’ to enable heads down, uninterrupted work time that would help our employees recharge and catch up on larger projects.

What we found

Following No Meeting Week, we conducted an internal survey to get a sense of whether or not the initiative was successful at easing employee burnout, and I’m happy to say the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

In fact, nearly three-quarters of employees who participated in the survey said they had more time for their personal life throughout the week and nearly 90% of employees said they were more productive compared to a normal week.

They also said they appreciated the added flexibility of not being tied to a strict meeting schedule, and felt like everyone they spoke with were in a noticeably better mood throughout the week.

Other positive outcomes included: added flexibility, more consistent sleep patterns, slack traffic decreased, and more time for reflection and ad-hoc discussions.

Interestingly, while it technically was No Meeting Week, many employees found that they collaborated much more in an organic fashion than they normally do throughout the week, and ad-hoc meetings felt more purposeful and organic.

Last, but definitely not least, our employees across the board reported having a more positive attitude toward the work they were doing. That’s a big win in my book.

Keeping up the momentum

In order to keep up the positive momentum from No Meeting Week, we will be testing out a summer break in July, where all employees will be taking the same week off.

I’m hoping this will enable employees to really disconnect and focus on personal time by reducing back-and-forth emails throughout the week.

Additionally, we have reinforced the idea that going “camera-on” for meetings is optional, and we’ve encouraged all employees to “audit” their meetings to ensure that they are productive and actionable for all attendees.

While we are all still new to remote work, the solutions we’re uncovering to combat the issues that come with it are building the framework for a more positive work culture than we’ve seen in years past.

Over the past year, our experience learning how to tackle these new workplace challenges will be an important skill for us as we move toward ironing out what the best hybrid model will look like for current employees and future generations.