Let’s be honest, most employee handbooks are ... uninspiring at best.

Everyone needs one, you’re supposed to read it on your first day, but after your eyes cross from flipping through a bunch of pages in a binder that all look the same, is it any wonder that people tend to forget about them until something goes wrong?

This is a huge missed opportunity.

Your employee handbook is a core element of onboarding, training, and even culture-building. But you wouldn’t know it by the boring, difficult-to-use format that so many companies still stick to. 

The truth is, when done right, your employee handbook not only ticks the box when it comes to making sure everyone’s been told the employment policies, it...

• Gives employees the information they need to do their jobs exceptionally well.
  In many workplaces, employees don’t know what their company’s goals or intentions are. This is a golden opportunity to literally spell it out.

• Makes the most important information about your company easily accessible.
  From culture and company values to how we do things to employment policies, this is your chance to cut through the confusion. In the employee handbook, I urge you to communicate with precision how to behave and perform in your workplace. All your effort will pay dividends, and you will thank yourself later, I promise!  

• It shows employees what’s important, rather than just telling them.
  This can be a double-edged sword if you don’t get it right. For instance, if you say your company culture is about having fun and working as a team, but your company handbook is a big pile of self-protective legalese, it can create cognitive dissonance –– or like the “real rules” only come out when something goes wrong.
  
  Similarly, if you expect high quality in everything you do, but your company handbook consists of quadruple-xeroxed, torn three-hole-punched paper, in an old binder, then that shows your employees that your rule about quality comes with at least one asterisk. 

Get your handbook right, and you can improve every single area of your employee experience. Developing or revamping your employee handbook forces you to consider all aspects of the employee experience, from recruiting, onboarding, training, development, performance management, benefits, paid time off, leave, and accommodations to how employees transition out of your organization. It’s a touchstone for the employee experience. A thoughtful revamp can lift your employee experience creating a considerable and aligned impact.

The cherry on top is the design.

Let’s assume you have the words; policies, culture, and values, in pristine order and approved by your employment attorney. Many organizations publish that long wordy document either on their intranet or in hard copy format (I know you!). But wait, this is where the handbook is about to transform. Put it through a design process to emulate your website, logo, and colors. Work with a designer to develop a template that invites readers in and keeps their attention from the table of contents to the very last page. 

If that sounds out of reach for a handbook, check out the handbook created by Dark Horse Comics.

I had the pleasure of supporting Dark Horse as they redeveloped their handbook, and I was exhilarated by their final product. I’m not even an employee of Dark Horse, and yet I still find myself wanting to read every page. It’s engaging, shares all the most important information in an easy-to-read format, and completely aligns with Dark Horse’s culture.

Granted, they’ve got an advantage with their in-house design team –– but what really makes this handbook great is the combination of the illustrations and thoughtful content. It’s the thought that went into it, the way it’s organized, designed, and the unwavering commitment to the company’s culture with every turn of the page. 

*The incredible design credit goes to Graphic Designer, Cindy Cacerez Sprague, at Dark Horse Comics for her work designing this internal document. Cindy excelled with how she made the Dark Horse employee handbook go from words on paper to this impressive form of communication.  

How to create an exceptional handbook

Ready to up your own handbook game? Here’s what I recommend:

1. Start by thinking about what’s most important. What do you need people to know? This includes, of course, all the legal stuff and employment policies, but think beyond that. What do your employees need to know to be great at their job? Leave, accommodation, reimbursements, equipment, etc. What about data, stories, company lingo, contact info, history? This is a great chance to pass on organizational knowledge and expectations.

2. Then determine the best organizational structure for your handbook. The way you present this information is just as important as what the information is. After all, if people can’t get to it easily, chances are they’re not going to read it. Look for ways to make this easier on people, using sections and subsections, grouping relevant information together, and thinking about ways people might use the book. For instance, if someone needs to raise something to HR, where might they look first in the book? Would they be able to find that information easily? Or if someone was just coming into the company and had no idea what it was all about, what would you need to tell them first?

3. If possible, use your table of contents to hyperlink to the correct page within your digital handbook.

4. Use this as an opportunity to culture-build.

Finally, remember that this is as much about showing people what your company is about as sharing information with them. Think about how you can use your employee handbook to demonstrate what’s truly important at your company, and set up common ground for what employees can expect in their relationship with their work, each other, and management.

Saying your business is like a family might feel warm and delightful to you but to your employees, it could bring up memories that are not so rosy.  Families are complicated. Workplaces should be much more straightforward, based on agreed-upon practices, and hopefully less emotionally intertwined.

The truth is, you don’t really want your business to be a family. Here’s why:

-- It leads to messy relationships and undefined responsibilities, and can be used to undermine equity and fairness.

In a family, people come together to support each other when they’re having a hard time, and issues of fairness don’t really come into it. But in the workplace, trying to overlay the family feeling onto every situation can lead to some very inequitable, unfair situations. If during meetings we talk over each other, like a family at a dinner table, then introverts or people who are more polite in those circumstances never get their voices heard. 

Policies and systems are put in place for a reason in the workplace, without them, things get very messy very fast. Of course, in a family, it doesn’t make sense to have that kind of structure, because the overall goals are different. But if you don’t have them in a business, people are going to get taken advantage of, overlooked, and possibly even hurt to the point of leaving.

-- It’s good to have psychological distance from work.

People need space from their work life, and assigning the role of “family” to your work life can blur boundaries and make it difficult to get the psychological distance you need. If your work and personal life are intertwined roles get blurry, am I your manager, workout partner, or drinking buddy?

-- The most professional version of you should show up at work.

Not every version of you needs to show up at work. In a family, all the yous are there: you when you were a child, when you were 13, when you were 18. At work, that’s where the adult you shows up with professionalism, patience, and a fully developed executive functioning pre-frontal cortex! . If 13 year old you is showing up at work, all self-absorbed, win at all costs, loud in meetings, and defaults to blaming others, we’re probably going to have a problem. 

-- It makes feedback and separation so much more complicated.

It’s hard enough to give constructive feedback or part ways with someone when they’re your close colleague, but if you consider yourselves to be family? That’s devastating. What’s more, having a commitment to the “we’re all a family” narrative can make it harder for people to speak out when they’re uncomfortable with something, because there’s a stronger incentive to belong.

-- We excuse poor behavior in a family.

Right or wrong, we excuse the poor behavior of our family members. “Oh, that’s just Chad,” we say. In the workplace we say things like, “you’ll get used to Chad, he’ll grow on you.’ Meanwhile, you’re uncomfortable with his close-talking, sexist, conversation-dominating behavior but can’t say anything because “that’s just Chad”. 

-- Finally, it leads to some weird contortions with roles.

In a family you are who you are, and you can’t change that. You’ll always be the older sister, or the aunt, or the younger brother, because that’s the role you were born into. In the workplace though, roles should change to meet the needs of the workplace. Good managers place the right people in the right roles, and help them develop into different roles. If you get locked into the idea of family though, it becomes easier and easier for people to get stuck.

I understand that most of the time when managers talk about how their department is a family, it’s well-intentioned. 

But what I’d invite you to think about instead is this:

What does that actually mean? And what values are you trying to express by saying that your workplace is like a family?

A lot of times people fall back on this saying as shorthand, when what they’re really trying to express is closeness, levity, and a sense of community –– all of which are fantastic. But not a family.

Want support in making your business an exceptional workplace (and absolutely not a family?) Let’s talk about how defining your values can help establish a healthy workplace culture. Find out how I can help here.

Something’s off. People aren’t talking. They’re working in silos. Engagement is falling fast, and miscommunications are on the rise. It’s one of the most challenging situations a manager can encounter: a bad team culture.

Here’s the bad news: it’s not going to fix itself. As the manager, you’re responsible for creating, managing, and recreating the team culture as needed.

The good news? There are so many simple, effective things you can do to get your team’s culture back on track. 

Here are my top 5 tips for building a strong team culture:

Call it out

This might be the last thing you want to do –– after all, having a less-than-great team culture doesn’t really create an atmosphere for sharing and trust. But I promise you that letting things fester is worse. Call a meeting and lay it all out on the table. Talk about how the team culture hasn’t been what anybody wants it to be. And then ask the team to brainstorm ideas about how to fix it. I’m always a fan of doing this together on flip charts if you possibly can, but doing it remotely via a doc works too.

Create consistency

Teams thrive when they know what to expect. Schedule in consistent activities for team culture-building, and make sure they always happen. Think: things like a weekly team meeting, quarterly happy hour, yearly off-site. It’s easy to let these things slide when you get busy, but don’t give into that temptation. These things are just as important as any of the other work you do, because they ensure that you can do that work well.

Give people space to form organic connections

Many people hate traditional icebreakers, so if you try to force your team through those week after week, you may end up doing more harm than good. Instead, use tried and true team builders, and be sure to create lots of space for forming organic connections too. Things like coffee tastings or bagel bars often work well for this. Anything you can do that puts people in a room with each other and gives them the opportunity to chat is a good thing!

You may also want to see how you can encourage mentor-mentee relationships among your team members. You can go for the traditional manager-team member set up, but I’d encourage you to think outside the box and let people form these relationships organically among themselves as well. You never know whose skill sets and needs are going to align!

Revamp your team meetings

Team meetings are usually the worst part of everybody’s week (managers included!), but they can be such a valuable opportunity for culture-building, if you know how to do them right. Instead of going with the traditional meeting structure, make meetings collaborative. Give everybody a job to do in the meeting, or a part of the meeting. You can even do a rotation, or a lottery for who gets what job each week to keep things interesting.

One really effective culture-builder for meetings is the weekly shout-out. It sounds cheesy, but if you end every meeting with a time where people can give shout-outs to their teammates, calling out good behavior and celebrating wins together, it goes such a long way in building culture. Plus it makes meetings way more enjoyable, since everybody leaves on a high note! (Want more training for running great meetings? Check this out.)

When in doubt, bring food.

Bagels, doughnuts, salad bar, coffee or tea flights, cocktails, whatever’s a fit for your team, bring it. Food always brings people together, and the act of eating with each other is an easy way to foster a sense of community. 

Creating a strong team culture is so important, and it really can start with something as simple as a box of bagels and lox. So make sure you’re taking the time to focus on this critical element for engagement and retention! And as always, if you’d like some support while you’re working on it, I’m here to help! Find out how I help managers build great team culture here.

Making generalizations about generations is always going to require painting with some broad brushstrokes –– but I have noticed some trends about managers lately that seem to be holding true across many of the businesses I work with. It’s been especially interesting to see how these trends are impacting (and in some cases forming!) the shifts in the world of work we’re experiencing now.

Here’s what I’m seeing:

Boomers

The good: Managers in this age cohort have a wealth of lived experience, and you just can’t get the same depth and breadth of know-how with any other cohort. They’ve been through multiple recessions, they’ve seen the ups and downs of business, and they can often see things others can’t because they’ve worked through similar situations before.

The bad: While this is certainly not universal, I’ve seen that a number of boomer managers have a hard time relating to their workforce. (This is certainly not a one-way street, I also see that younger cohorts have a hard time relating to their older managers as well.) They have a tendency to be so far up that they forget what it’s like to be down in the weeds, and they can neglect communicating with their workforce, since they forget that not everybody has the same lived experience they do, and may need things spelled out in different ways.

My tip for boomer managers: Lead with empathy. This is good advice for any manager, but I especially recommend it to my managers in this age cohort, because empathy unlocks the key to that relationship with your workforce. While you have lots of experience, the people you work with do too, even if it’s not as deep or broad as yours.

Gen X-ers

The good: Gen X-ers are the sandwich generation, squeezed in between the two larger cohorts of the boomers and the millennials, which means that they have good insight into those around them. They tend to see the strengths and weaknesses of both cohorts, and are able to easily navigate whatever team they happen to be working with. 

The bad: Again, this is far from a universal, but some Gen-X-ers seem to have one foot out the door. We’re all aging, and it can be tempting to stop learning, or to try and ride out those last couple of years. This can also lead them to favor stability over change, which means that they can unintentionally hamper good ideas by naysaying them before really considering whether that’s in the best interests of the team.

My tip for Gen-X managers: Be present, and curious. My favorite quote from Ted Lasso (which actually originated with Walt Whitman) is “Stay curious, not judgmental.” Lean into that strength you have of fitting in with different age cohorts, and be willing to give new ideas a try, even if they seem like they might be impractical on first viewing.

Millennials

The good: Millennials have the widest-spread growth mindset of any of the cohorts I’ve seen. I’ve had many come through my Manager Training Series and they have this burning curiosity and desire to grow that aligns well with where they’re at in their career trajectory. They’ve got a lot of momentum, and they bring that to their workforces as well.

The bad: Yet again, this isn’t true of every millennial manager I see, but I do see that some of them can have a tendency to get into responsibility silos. As in “this and only this is my responsibility, and I will not engage with things beyond my direct responsibility.” While it’s great to know your boundaries, teams and workplaces aren’t perfectly clear-cut in terms of responsibilities, and sometimes you need someone to step up and take responsibility if it’s presented.

My tip for millennial managers: Watch out for a tendency to hyper-individuate. Absolutely respect yourself, and respect your boundaries, and also recognize that the nature of reality in which you are working is that you are part of a team. Marry that momentum you so naturally bring to things with the ability to lead and work as part of a team, and you’ll see so much change.

What does this mean for the world of work overall?

I think the main thing we can all take away from this is that the world of work is becoming more complex, and not just in the way that people talk about when they write about the VUCA world of work. 

We’re now working with an unprecedented mix of generations in the workplace (I didn’t even get to Gen Z, they’re just starting out in their manager journey!) and that means that the core things that always make for good management are more important than ever: curiosity. Good listening. Teamwork. Kindness. And empathy.

The more you’re able to lead with those things in your management, the smaller the generational divides become, and the more you’re able to pull on everybody’s strengths.

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Engagement and retention have been top concerns for companies over the past several years, and it looks like they’ll remain issues for some time to come. While some of the factors impacting the way people stay or go in their careers is out of your control, you actually have a lot more power in this area than you might think.

The truth is, your employees will almost always tell you what they need to stay engaged with their work –– or whether they’d honestly be better off somewhere else. You just have to ask the right way.

The #1 Key to Employee Engagement Almost No One Does: Stay Interviews

Get on the waitlist to receive the earliest notification when the on-demand training becomes available. Coming soon!

That’s where stay interviews come in.

You might have heard of these (or not, they’re shockingly underused), but it’s like an exit interview you do before someone actually decides to leave. In it, you set aside a couple of days or weeks to talk to each of your team members individually and ask them what keeps them at the company, what would make them decide to leave, what they’re missing from their work right now, and what they’re seeking for career growth and professional development.

Three benefits of conducting stay interviews:

-- You get the inside scoop on what’s going on with your team.

One of the hardest things about managing is having to make decisions without all the information. Doing stay interviews can open up a wealth of data that you might otherwise never have found out, letting you make well-informed decisions about how you run your team.

By learning exactly what your high performers want and need, you can give it to them or work with them to reach a compromise, which helps keep them engaged with the company. Similarly, you can find out what’s going on with your middle-of-the-road workers, and create a plan to better meet their needs and help them develop. And if you find that you have some lower-performing employees on your team, you can use these meetings to have a frank conversation with them and talk about what their needs are, whether you can meet them, or whether they’d be better off transitioning into another position or company.

Long story short? It’s a great way to retain the high performers, improve the middle performers, and move away from the low performers.

-- You can spot trends.

While you might talk about some of these things in passing in your weekly or monthly check-ins, the stay interview is specifically dedicated to this one topic, giving you and your staff time to really think this through. And since you do all your stay interviews in the same period of time, you can get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening with your team and spot trends. For instance, if everyone is saying they’re feeling constrained by a certain process, that’s an easy fix. Or if you find that multiple people are saying that one team member is holding them back, then you know you’ve got some coaching or even staffing changes to make. And along those lines...

-- You can make proactive staffing choices.

Sometimes someone’s going to leave, and that’s all there is to it. But unless someone’s a genuinely bad fit for your team, there’s almost always something you can do to encourage them to stay, if you catch them early enough in the disengagement process. Some managers are afraid to do stay interviews because the thought of finding out that your top performers are unhappy sounds terrifying, but believe me, it’s way worse to find out by them turning in their resignation. Doing regular stay interviews helps you keep your finger on the pulse of your team engagement, so you can be in a position to proactively intervene, or support people as they transition out.

It’s so simple, but such a powerful way to move the needle on engagement. So block out some time on your calendar for stay interviews –– we’re coming up on the end of year, which is a great time to do them.

And, if you’d like to learn how to do an effective stay interview, I’ve got a new on-demand training on just that. In it, I walk you through the step-by-step process I use to help my clients conduct stay interviews that get the information they need and help them retain top talent. Stay Interviews - How to engage and synergize your team (on-demand training).

To you, it was just a simple conversation about how to do things a little better. And yet somehow you’re now sitting in an office or on a Zoom call with a staff member who’s in the middle of a breakdown. They might be yelling, or crying, or telling you in great and emphatic detail why you’re wrong and exactly what you can do with your feedback. Either way, it’s not the situation you envisioned going into the meeting.

The only thing worse is when you give someone feedback and they sit there, smile and nod, and tell you they’ll be sure to keep it in mind ... only for you to find out weeks or months later they just ignored you and kept on doing things how they wanted to do them.

What’s happening with bad responses to feedback?

There are so many things that could be going on if somebody’s responding to feedback in a way you didn’t expect. People are still under higher stress levels in general, and many are adjusting to hybrid work environments that are layering even more complexity into their work. Most of the time, whatever their response is has very little to do with the content of the feedback, and much more to do with the other things going on in their life.

That’s why the first step is always to get curious.

When someone responds badly to feedback, ask them what’s going on. Be calm and non-judgmental, and genuinely curious. You might be surprised at what you hear! Even if they end up sharing information with you that has nothing to do with the feedback you’ve just given, that’s more information you can use in your management, so there’s really no way to lose here. And, best case scenario, they’ll be able to walk you through exactly what about your feedback was difficult for them, so you can fix it!

Consider what your relationship with that person is like.

Along those same lines, think about the kind of relationship you have with that person. You have to have a relationship with someone to successfully deliver feedback, otherwise it’s just information. If you find that people aren’t responding to your feedback (or are responding badly to it), it could be that you just don’t have that kind of relationship with them, and you need to work on growing a more positive and healthy relationship. 

Take a look at your feedback style.

We’re not often explicitly taught how to give feedback, but it’s such an important skill. If you’ve never considered your feedback style, or only gone with the kind of feedback style your managers used with you, take a moment to reflect and see if that’s really effective. If you’re not sure, or realizing you could use a brush-up on your feedback style, take a look at these best practices -- they’ll help you give the kind of feedback that people take on board and actually follow through on!

Three feedback best practices every manager should follow:

Best Practice 1: Paint what “done” looks like

In Dare to Leave, Brene Brown presents this concept of “painting done” –– in other words, creating a very clear, explicit picture of what a task looks like when completed, how it impacts other processes, how you expect it to be done, etc. It sounds so simple, but it can be really hard to do! While it’s obvious to you how something should be done, or what it’ll look like when the person you’re giving feedback to implements that feedback, chances are they’re not going to magically intuit what you’re thinking. Paint a super clear picture of what “done” looks like so you’ll both be on the same page, and they’ll have a clear goal to aim at.

Best Practice 2: Work alongside them

This can be one of the most powerful ways of getting feedback to stick, especially if you’ve given someone feedback a couple of times and they’re still not getting it. It could be that they just need you to sit down and do it with them a couple of times so they can work through it step by step with your guidance. By doing it with them side by side, you can model your expectations as well as the way the project needs to be done, so they know exactly what they should be doing. And, if the problem persists, you can then move it into a performance review knowing that you’ve worked with them and that there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to do this process correctly.

Best Practice 3: Give feedback to everybody all the time, not just in response to problems ...

It’s easy to fall into the habit of only giving feedback when something goes wrong, but this is both demoralizing and ineffective. Give feedback to everyone on the team regularly, so it becomes a normal, no-stress part of your work life. That way people don’t feel like they’re being nagged, or singled out when they do something wrong, and you have a structure in place that holds space for negative feedback as it comes along.

... and this includes you.

Most managers focus on giving feedback, but it’s absolutely crucial that you regularly receive it, too –– and I’m not just talking about from your higher-ups! As you’re setting up your regular feedback practice, make sure that you include a way for your team to give you feedback too. Encourage them to be honest, and make it clear that they’re not going to face any repercussions for negative or constructive feedback. It can be hard on your ego if you’re not used to it, but it’s so useful, and it creates a much better relationship with your team.

Feedback is one of the hardest things to do well, so if you’re struggling, you’re not alone! I’m here to help with The Feedback Workshop (September 12th) and my highly sought-after Manager Training Series (begins October 10th). Find out more about how I can help you hone your skills as a manager right here.

We all know how important it is to work from a set of shared values –– it’s one of the most powerful predictive factors for employee engagement and high performance, plus, it encourages a sense of camaraderie and makes being at work much more enjoyable. People all align around the same sense of purpose, and organizational decisions get much easier, since you have a clear sense of what you’re aiming for.

Of course, we also all know how easy it is to create a “Shared Values” document, stick it up on the wall, and then only remember that it exists when you’re doing a deep clean before Christmas and find that it’s fallen behind your filing cabinet.

The good news is, it’s absolutely possible to create a solid sense of shared values that actually impact the way your organization runs day-to-day. And, even better, organizations that do this hard work have an incredible degree of alignment around their values that can have massive, lasting impact on the organization as a whole. 

Here’s how to create a sense of shared values: 

Quick side note before we dive into the process: you can certainly do this on your own, but if you get stuck anywhere in the process, I highly recommend outsourcing it and working with someone who can come in and help guide you and your company through it. Sometimes just having that pair of outside eyes can make everything so much easier. Message me for resources.

• Start by hosting a brainstorming session for getting shared values on the table.

• Whatever your starting point is, the next step is to bring your staff together and have a brainstorming session where everybody contributes their thoughts about what your org’s shared values are.

• At this point, anything goes, so encourage people to bring whatever thoughts they have. Write them all on a whiteboard or a big sticky note on the wall, and once you hit that point where everybody’s contributed, or you start seeing repeat values, start seeing if any of your values might fold together into one.

• Once you’ve got your list narrowed down, have people vote on which values are most representative of the company. One easy way to do this is with dot stickers –– everybody gets a the same number of stickie dots, and they put their dots next to the values they’re voting for. I call this stickie dot voting. It may surprise you with how quickly this synthsizes your ideas.

• Then wordsmith it.

• Now that you’ve gotten the puzzle pieces on the table, so to speak, take it away and do some wordsmithing. See what you can do to really get to the heart of what these values are about, and phrase them in a simple way, using everyday language. Think about how people actually talk in your organization, and describe the values in those terms. That will be so much more useful and feel more “real” to your people than any kind of fancy, over-the-top language.

• Bring it back to everyone for a final check-in.

• Gather everybody together again and present your wordsmithed draft to them, and invite them to give you any final feedback before you all espouse those values. Once everybody feels like they’re on board with the document, discuss how you’ll actually see those values play out in your day-to-day work. For instance, if humor is a shared value, then how are you going to incorporate humor in your weekly meetings? Talk about how these things show up tactically, and what processes you can put in place to ensure they stay top of mind.

• Finally, make sure you set aside time every six months or so to review your statement and see whether it needs any updating. Are there any values you haven’t really seen at work in the past six months? Do you need to add any new values? Has anything else changed that might mean the document is now out of date? Having regular check-ins ensures that you keep your values current, and you don’t end up with the poster-behind-the-filing-cabinet situation.

And of course, if you’d like more guidance and support with this kind of work, I’m always here for you. Click here to find out more about how I support managers just like you do more great work.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: the hybrid work environment is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. 

That’s got a lot of managers facing challenges they never expected. Many people don’t want to come back into the workplace. People need different accommodations post-pandemic, whether for their health or simply because they’ve gotten used to picking their kid up at the bus stop every day. And the mix of logistical, mental, and emotional juggling required can make even the most seasoned manager want to throw up their hands and lock their office door.

But a hybrid environment really can work –– in fact, with some flexibility, it can benefit you, your staff, and the organization. 

Here’s how you can support a hybrid work environment as a manager:

Listen, listen, listen.

This is the first and most important thing: if you do nothing else, just listen. People have a whole lot of thoughts about coming back to the workplace in any capacity, and a lot of them are scared, anxious, angry, eager ... anything you can imagine in the line of strong emotions. As a manager, your job is to listen to them and really understand where they’re coming from. And that’s it, to start! You don’t have to decide what to do in that moment, just listen. Really ask your people how they feel about hybrid work and why. This will help them understand that you care about what they’re feeling, and it’ll help you both find solutions for a pattern of hybrid work that serves you and your organization.

Offer as many accommodations as you reasonably can, and have a well-defined accommodations process.

One key feature of hybrid work (and post-pandemic work in general) is accommodations. While it’s likely you’ve always offered some accommodations for health conditions, you’re going to have to increase those to include wellness and personal accommodations.

Lots of people need different types of accommodations than you might have previously considered: many companies need to offer mental health accommodations because of trauma from the pandemic or simply have to be more flexible because people have gotten used to different timings in their lives. If somebody has gone to therapy every week from 2 - 3 in the afternoon, they’re not going to want to change that and be back in the office. Similarly, people have gotten used to being with their families in different ways. They like being able to drop the kids off at school, or pick them up from the bus stop, or even run their errands in the middle of the day. Do what you can to work with people, and create a well-defined accommodations process so you can quickly get people the help they need.

Along these lines, remember that you may need to change things up for the “new normal”. You may have team members who can no longer safely come in because they have compromised immune systems, or you may have people who have physically relocated. Ensure that you still have ways to include them by making your conference rooms AV-accessible, so people can work both in-person and at a distance as needed.

Look for core office hours

The old schedule of everyone coming in from 8 - 5 is almost certainly never coming back. So don’t try to force it. Instead, think about how you can offer flexibility while still getting people together for the things they really need to be on-site for. 

For instance, you could agree that every day from 10 - 3 is “at work” time, or core office hours, where people agree to be in the office. If someone wants to come in earlier or make that the start of their day and stay later, that’s all well and good! But at least now you know when you can schedule meetings, and people can know when they can definitely expect their colleagues to be available. If daily hours aren’t a fit for your organization yet, then start with days of the week instead. For instance, Thursdays could be meeting days, and any work that needs to be done in-person gets done then. It takes a little planning, but it actually saves a lot of time and frustration when it comes to time-blocking work and scheduling the things that really matter.

Ease back in

Finally, realize that this is going to be a process. People have strong feelings about coming back to work, and we’re all still dealing with the aftereffects of the societal and work shifts of the past few years. So start slow and very gradually work up to your full hybrid work schedule. Even just having team lunches together for a couple of weeks before your official “start date” can be a great way to start. 

The benefits of having people back in the workplace are so many, and I really do think things will get easier after we go through this period of readjustment. So take your time, lead with empathy, and know that things are just going to be a little bumpy as we transition back into on-site work –– but we’ll get there!

As always, if you like what you read here and want more support in developing as a manager, check out the next Manager Training Series! You can sign up for a free preview here.

Your turn

How is your workplace supporting a hybrid work environment? What tools or tactics are working well for your team? Share in the comments below or on our social feeds on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Think back on when you hired your HR leader.

They really impressed you during the interview. They were enthusiastic, creative, and motivated. All sorts of ideas were flying around the room. They talked about all things they could do to increase employee engagement and decrease turnover. The new compensation plan they’d like to implement. The performance management plan they thought could improve performance throughout the organization.

It all sounded so exciting, making the hire was a no-brainer.

But here’s the thing:

Many organizations have interviewed — and subsequently hired — good HR leaders. But not every organization ends up with a new compensation plan, decreased turnover, or improved performance.

The problem is, many HR leaders work reactively.

This doesn’t mean that they’re sitting around just waiting for the next issue to raise its hand. 

On the contrary, even the best organizations have so many challenges to tackle, day-to-day, the average HR leader is completely swamped. They’re putting out so many fires they often are working overtime to stay caught up

And this is why those exciting plans they talked about during the interview haven’t yet come to fruition.

Because many HR professionals haven’t yet realized the one thing they need to move from being good to great:

A solid HR strategy.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; if your HR leader is already overworked, how will tasking them with creating an HR strategy help?

Because it’s the lack of strategy that actually causes the problem in the first place.

Yes, creating an HR strategy at the beginning of the year (but really, is also a great time to work on a new strategy) will take some time, effort, and planning. But if you get it right, having it in place will actually mitigate or prevent many of the current fires your HR team has to deal with.

Here’s why:

When you have a solid HR strategy, you don’t spend the entire year reinventing the wheel.

You’re actively working towards reducing issues like staff motivation and turnover, which means you have fewer problems to solve on a day-to-day basis. Equally, when problems do arise, you’ve already planned for how to tackle them.

When you have a solid HR strategy, your employees feel more taken care of.

The best HR strategies are created in consultation with your employees. When HR actively takes the time to listen to workers, learn about their challenges, and then make a conscious effort to form a strategy that addresses those challenges, your employees feel valued, more connected to the organization, and more engaged in their work. That alone significantly reduces stress on the HR department and is a great way to strengthen your overall approach to workforce communications. 

(It also makes your organization a more pleasant place to work for everyone, which is an underrated bonus!)

When you have a solid HR strategy, you know everyone is working in alignment.

As well as soliciting feedback from employees, it’s important to involve leadership in any HR strategy decision-making. The plan itself needs to work in conjunction with the needs of the workforce and the wider goals, budgets, and priorities of the organization as a whole. Developing a strategy that takes all of those things into account ensures that everyone, across the organization, is working in alignment.

If you need a final convincer, try this: your HR strategy doesn’t have to be a huge initiative. And it certainly doesn’t have to be something that will give an already overworked HR team sleepless nights!

At its heart, it’s really just about exploring and assessing your organization’s strengths and weaknesses (many of which will already be clear to you), thinking about the organization’s key objectives over the next 12 months and what you need to prioritize, and then deciding how all of that will play together in a way that works for people at every level of the organization.

And encouraging your HR team to embrace this annual strategy creation is the best way to help them unleash their creativity, improve their own working conditions, and finally shine in their role.

If you found this helpful, you’ll love my Manager Training Series where I teach leaders like you how to develop a strong foundation of leadership skills. Click here for the details.