Inclusive management for hybrid teams

Ensuring an inclusive working environment is particularly important in the hybrid working model, where team members will be working from a wide diversity of environments, and will prefer different ways of working.

Consider these recommendations to support fairness and inclusion: 

• Be respectful of people's working patterns, and the adjustments that they will have to make to get used to any changes.
• Ensure that all members of the team get equal access to new projects, development opportunities, etc. 
• Be aware that time spent in the office is not an indicator of performance.  Colleagues who spend more time working on-site are not more productive or dedicated than those working remotely, or vice versa.
• Provide different ways of engaging in meetings: for example, allowing people to use both the Microsoft Teams chat or speech options.  This can be particularly useful for neurodivergent people. 
• If you’re organising social events for your team (e.g. team lunches), make sure that there is a good balance of virtual and in-person events and that they are planned well in advance.

Wellbeing in hybrid work

A Guide to Promoting Staff Wellbeing [PDF 777KB]

While Queen Mary has many resources to support colleagues’ wellbeing, you may want to consider these ideas around hybrid working:

• Encourage conversations within your team about their experience of hybrid working, and start open conversations about mental health. Experiences of hybrid working will vary between staff members; it’s important to check in.
• Have supportive conversations about flexible working to support staff with caring responsibilities, and promote wellbeing. This could be through senior role modelling across your area or department. 
• Support your team to disconnect from emails and online working outside of their working hours, to ensure they are considering work-life balance.  Managers should role-model this!
• Encourage your team to set boundaries – there is a need to help people to define what a working day is like when working remotely.
• Consider creating a ‘wellbeing team charter’ that may outline what is reasonable in terms of email traffic and other aspects of work which might help support your team’s wellbeing.
• Communicate the importance of taking regular self-care breaks to your team.