Hybrid working — I’m ready for it are you?
When I heard I could try hybrid working again I was really excited. I had adhered to government guidelines of working entirely from home again whilst OMICRON levels were high and was starting to feel fed up with missing seeing my team in person. Having Covid over Christmas certainly didn’t help!
So far I have spent 2 days working in the office, what a difference the day of the week makes. Friday was quite busy and I had a few laughs with members of my team. I also experienced those water cooler moments talking to Kevin about the new room booking system.
From what I can gather Friday’s are popular due to it being bacon roll day and it being a slightly shorter day with normally less scheduled meetings. I started my weekend early meeting my team for a walk followed by dinner. I was buzzing.
After enjoying Friday I decided to go to the office again on Monday. Monday I was joined by one member of the team who only stayed a few hours. I did get a problem resolved by ICT face to face though and I did make the most of testing out the hybrid meeting room kit for an up coming session.
Monday I felt really self conscious when taking part in Teams calls with the lack of people around. Was I too loud, were those that were in listening?, should I say that? I checked into a room on my own a few times. I also felt more lonely than actually being at home in a vast office with so much space so I called a colleague for a quick work catch up and we joked about my new buddy (the cardboard cut out of digital norm you can see in the photo).
So should I try and encourage more colleagues to try hybrid working? mentally I think having a balance is really beneficial, but have we got stuck into new routines and ways of working? for me the travel and time needs to be worth it too.
I will be training up Workplace Digital Champions on how to run successful hybrid meetings, sharing my experiences of hybrid working and will be looking at new ways we can let others know our intentions of where we will be working. Currently some teams are arranging working in the office via chat, whats app, calendar entries and teams channels. However there is a new app which Stuart Ridout (Productivity Coach) talks about on his YouTube channel which looks very exciting.
Get this FREE TeamLink Hybrid Work app in Microsoft Teams — YouTube
I will give another update in a few weeks on whether I am able to test the new app and how having to work back in the office full time for a month pans out. The month back in the office is due to personal circumstances rather than choice. Choice would be hybrid working with perhaps Tuesday’s/Wednesday’s and Friday being the days of choice in the office with a walking meeting also thrown in 😊
