Hybrid teams, a combination of local and remote working members, are increasingly common in today's working world. While this structure offers flexibility and diversity, it also presents unique challenges, particularly when it comes to conflict. In this article, we'll explore the most common conflicts in hybrid teams and present effective strategies for resolving them.
Key facts
- In a hybrid set-up, a large part of communication takes place in virtual space. This can lead to increased conflicts within the team.
- Unclear responsibilities, lack of transparency & reduced presence in the office often lead to tensions.
- Clear communication guidelines, more feedback & strategic meetings on site help to overcome these conflicts.
Typical conflicts in a hybrid team
Hybrid work can cause a feeling of “loss of control” in your companies. This is not the typical control over employees and their areas of responsibility, but rather the feeling of not knowing what the rest of the team is doing right now.
This uncertainty is increasingly motivating managers in particular to Office quotas to reduce the potential for conflict within the team and to complete tasks via short official channels.
However, if the hybrid work model is well established culturally, you can avoid some conflicts within your team. The biggest sources of conflict in the hybrid set-up include:
- Communication issues: In hybrid working life, your employees primarily work in virtual teams. This means that the majority of communication takes place in the digital space. Here it is much more difficult to read the facial expressions and gestures of the other person, to understand and correctly interpret what is written. Classic conflicts in teams are thus based on communication problems.
- Lack of transparency: Who is working on which projects? For virtual teams It is sometimes difficult to find out who is responsible for which area. Conflicts within the team can arise due to a lack of transparency, especially in interdepartmental exchange.
- Work anywhere and anytime: Many employees are still used to the traditional working model. Less office presence and increased digital communication can quickly lead to less exchange within the team, which can increase the potential for conflict. Especially when accessibility is provided by mobile working is limited in different time zones, there are often misunderstandings or false expectations.
- Lack of organizational structures: In hybrid teams, it is important that all files and information are bundled in one place. An effective and intuitive project management tool is essential for the flow of information & work processes to work.
- Sense of inequality: Sense of disadvantage among employees who spend more time working from home compared to those present on site. The Proximity bias summarizes this feeling and can lead to conflicts within the team in the form of a sense of injustice.
- Collaboration issues: Difficulties with coordination and collaboration due to different work environments.
Resolve conflicts within a team
In order to solve these problems of the hybrid working model, you as a company must counteract. Otherwise, there may be numerous conflicts within your team, which in the long term corporate culture may damage.
To prevent this from happening, you must recognize the signs of conflicts in the hybrid team and resolve them:
Improve communication
Communication is one of the most important points within the change model. If information is not passed on correctly or only partially, this not only hinders work processes, but also interpersonal relationships.
Therefore, try to establish uniform communication guidelines. These can include, for example, the following points:
- Core communication times: For example, your core communication hours are between 10:00 and 17:00, on weekdays. Within these times, you usually expect a quick response or you agree that messages will be answered by this time. Don't expect any answers outside of these hours.
- Set status: Always try to display availability by the respective status in your chat program such as Microsoft Teams or Slack. In this way, you can communicate possible absences or focus times to the outside world. The same applies to vacation periods. An absence note provides clarity in the event of a sick leave or vacation.
- Open communication: If you have the feeling that communication is not working well or that there is a conflict within the team, talk to each other. If necessary, try to find a mediator and resolve the conflict.
Bring more employees to the office
Even though the hybrid model provides a lot of flexibility, it makes sense to have your employees regularly back to office to bring - without coercion, of course. This is because a completely different form of communication and collaboration can be carried out locally than when everyday work takes place completely online.
In order to better identify conflicts in the team, resolve them or reduce the pitfalls of digital communication, try to get your employees into the office on certain days. So promotes the Work in the office.
Regular Meetings In a team or individual discussions help to capture the mood of each individual and in the entire team and to identify potential conflicts. For managers, in particular, the Management at a distance become a challenge. This also includes the potential for conflict. So meet regularly and try out team events or Team building to strengthen your momentum.
Build a culture of trust & combat proximity bias
Even though it is good for team collaboration and conflict resolution to meet in the office, mandatory office attendance is counterproductive. Trust your employees and don't make their performance dependent on the number of office days.
Managers must understand this change in culture and not prefer employees who spend more time in the office. Instead, employees should be trusted more and given responsibility — regardless of where they work. Because this also helps to avoid conflicts within the team.
Strengthen your team with Seatti
In order to be able to better organize the transition model between home office and office and to strengthen team cohesion, our workplace engagement software offers you the opportunity to bring your team closer together than ever before.
With features like our Meetup dashboard With just a few clicks, you can see who is in the office at what time and what your team is currently working on. So you can arrange to spend days together at the office in just a few moments. Team bookings It also allows you to invite your entire team to the office — whether it's for a meeting, an event, or simply to spend the day together.
