A WFH veteran shares how HR can navigate hybrid headaches

Well before the pandemic catalyzed a new era of remote work, Jennifer Watson was working from home. Since 2013, the HR pro, who is presently VP of HR at workforce management SaaS-provider Lasso, has worked remotely. Harnessing hindsight, Watson understands why so many organizations have faced a multitude of roadblocks while implementing remote and hybrid arrangements. The corporate sector is navigating a gray area, she explained to HR Brew, in which “everybody’s trying to figure it out.”

Watson shared insights on how to handle some of the intangible challenges associated with hybrid work, including engaging workers, keeping an open mind, and assessing biases.

Working in an office ≠ productive. “Just because people are in your presence, [it] does not mean they’re doing their job and does not mean they’re productive…If you are measuring people truly on their productivity, they can do that at home.”

Trust is essential for remote/hybrid. “You have to trust your employees. If someone is not doing their job, you're going to know pretty quickly…When you trust your employee, it allows you to give them grace. There’s always going to be stuff that comes up with people’s lives, with kids, they’re sick, something happens with the house. When you give someone that grace and that understanding when working from home…that’s going to go really far for their mental health and for their productivity.”

Relationships are key to remote HR. “It takes a lot of building relationships. Because nobody wants to call HR. Traditional HR has always said no. Traditional HR is a barrier. So, it’s really creating a brand for yourself to say, ‘Listen, just because I’m calling you, [it] isn’t a bad thing’...Because there’s not a hallway conversation. There’s no ‘Hey, I see this picture of your kid on your phone, how old are they?’...There’s just not the small talk that happens [in an office]. Small talk isn’t everything, but at least that is some form of relationship. And so you have to facilitate that.”

Check yourself. “[Conduct] a self assessment to see what bias you have about working remotely, because if you’re going to facilitate an honest conversation, you have to understand which way you lean. If you lean more toward ‘I like working in an office,’ then all of your views and conversations are going to be skewed that way. If you lean more towards ‘I love hybrid,’ ‘I love working from home,’ then you’re going to shift people that way. And that’s not our job. Our job as HR is to facilitate conversation, collect feedback, and come to a common understanding.”

The future? It’s hybrid. “Employees have the ability to make more demands than they ever have before. People like working from home because it plays well into your life, you can throw in a load of laundry, you can cook a meal, you can sign off for a couple hours and sign back on. It just allows freedom and because people have had a taste of that, I don’t know that we’ll ever go back to the traditional way of working.”—SB

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