ACT Government public servants were some of the first to trial a hybrid work approach when Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory Andrew Barr announced in December last year that ACT public servants would not be returning to the office five days a week, nine to five. Instead, they would be investing time looking into more flexible strategies like new work hubs in town centres, cloud software etc. (Bushnell, 2021). 

Whatever balancing act/strategy the individual government agency decides to take, it’s imperative that it has been based on both qualitative and quantitative data; the feedback you get back from your employees through both surveys and general conversations as well as behavioural data that reveal how the physical office is being used. This data could be how many employees are swiping into the office and how frequently they are (every day, twice a week) or at what capacity an office’s meeting rooms are at – are they often full or remain empty for significant periods? For those in government agencies, it’s also worthwhile considering the activities that have to be carried out in a physical office or on-site (perhaps building inspections or cyber security tasks). Using this information will help the organisation determine what combination of practices (both remote and in-person) will work best for them.

How To Maintain Culture Within Hybrid Work Models

While there are some things that no one misses about working in an office (sitting in traffic on your commute to work would have to be top of the list) there have been many workers who have said remote work has meant a lack of spontaneous interaction and connection with colleagues, which they miss. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges – both when offices were working 100% remotely and now when employees work remotely at least one or two days a week – has been how organisations can maintain their workplace culture and cultivate a sense of belonging for their employees. Psychological research has consistently shown that when employees feel they belong to a team or organisation – in the sense that it aligns with their values and allows them to feel comfortable being themselves – they will not only perform better, but also experience higher levels of engagement and well-being (Berg & Chamorro – Premuzic, 2021). Consequently, it’s in a company’s best interest to cultivate and maintain a workplace culture where each employee feels valued and included, however this is much more of a challenge in an environment where organisations are relying on video calls and screen activities to stay connected with their remote colleagues.

Considering remote work is here to stay, many organisations are now exploring the strategies they can employ to overcome the issues around fostering and maintaining workplace culture within a hybrid work model. According to a recent article by Human Resources Director (HRD) there are five key pillars organisations should focus on to foster culture: Trust, Expectations, Accountability, Accessibility and Community. These same pillars can be applied to Local Councils and Government agencies.

Pillar 1: Trust

Trust – is a value very close to Public Sector People’s heart. According to Scott Stein, author of Leadership Hacks, it’s easy to trust a colleague when you can see them working right next to you in the office. However, when everyone is working remotely the trust between colleagues or within teams can start to break down. Trust is instrumental to productivity within a working environment, as without it, people stop working collaboratively and communication falters (White, 2022). Making ‘trust’ a priority within your organisation will enable staff to feel comfortable to speak openly and share honest feedback with each other – and when people are proactive at sharing information like this consistently, it builds trusting relationships. Indeed, in Public Sector People’s own workplace, our biggest priority is to build trust with our key stakeholders (our clients, our candidates and of course, our colleagues). We know that if we’ve fostered an environment where our colleagues trust each other and have trust in the company overall – to not only do the right thing by them but other PSP stakeholders – they’ll be more engaged at work.

How can you foster trust? For our organisation trust is built when we provide honest feedback and communication, show care to those around us and focus on the interests of our stakeholders. From a remote perspective, honest feedback and communication can still be cultivated through a number of online IM and video tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom. It might also be worthwhile to schedule regular check-ins, and if you’re in a senior role ensure these check-ins are maintained even if there aren’t too many things to update the team on. Having the routine in place-even if it’s just for five minutes – ensures people feel a connection to one another. Another suggestion to help foster trust within teams and ensure feedback is being regularly provided to all team members. It’s important not to assume that everyone in the team will know about an update or the great work an individual is doing purely because they are in the same team or the same office. Especially because people will be working remotely at different times, the key way colleagues can find out about what each other is doing is through virtual communication. This is especially important within a Local Council or Government agency as they will often collaborate with different departments on particular projects, so having that knowledge and free-flowing communication across the organisation enhances the progress on these projects. Shining a spotlight on particular achievements or milestones made, also means everybody can feel good about everybody else’s work, identify resources and support each other. Individual members of the team will have faith in the competence and hard work of their fellow team members, which fosters a trusting environment (Cooks-Campbell, 2022). 

Pillar 2: Expectations

Expectations also play a big factor in remote working. The challenge with expectations is that they can differ slightly depending on the individual, and determining what a team member’s expectations are, can be even more challenging when communication is done virtually. Unfortunately, teleconferencing doesn’t always pick up on the nuances of an individual.

Consequently, it becomes increasingly important for managers and those in leadership positions to clearly state and clarify expectations and targets, as otherwise, staff won’t know what is expected of them. To ensure that everyone knows what is expected– in regards to working hours, start times, attending meetings, when people are working from home and communicating/updating team members – managers and those in leadership positions will have to think carefully about how they can effectively communicate these expectations. Otherwise, these same managers can risk falling into the pattern of constantly asking people for updates and coming across as micromanaging. To avoid this, a common strategy is to have your team work together to create a working agreement – where everyone contributes to a list of expectations (for example team members will check in at 9:00 am daily, or all team members are required on-site for their monthly team building session) that is then written up and sent to everyone, so all team members clearly know where they stand, even when working remotely.

An emerging trend in hybrid work models and one that helps to manage expectations is asynchronous communication – where teams communicate with one another without the expectation of needing to respond immediately. Asynchronous communication negates the need to ‘always be on’ which can be a risk for those working at home. Rather, team members will be given all the information they need to complete a task by a certain deadline. Managers can encourage teams to send daily or weekly updates on these tasks, so everyone can be transparent in what they’re working on day-to-day, but ensure that the pressure is off for people to respond to or provide status updates 24/7 (Kim, 2022). Having asynchronous communication in place also demonstrates that managers are instilling trust in their team to get their work done when outside of the office.

Pillar 3: Accountability

This pillar is fairly straightforward – ensuring everyone within a team has a designated role and that every task has been allocated and accounted for. It is when there is a crossover with responsibilities or a brief is unclear that confusion occurs and overall productivity is halted. A hybrid and remote workplace can make accountability more challenging as it can become difficult to see who is completing which tasks and who to go to for specific tasks.

Accountability becomes important for overall workplace culture as when people are held accountable they deliver results because they don’t want to let others in their team down. They also hold others responsible for their actions in a supportive way and often work together to develop solutions for problems, regardless of their title or position (White, 2022). Creating accountability can be as easy as having regular catch-up sessions with the team regarding particular projects and even regular performance catch-ups with individual employees so they are clear on their responsibilities, KPIs and how these relate to the wider team and company.

Pillar 4: Accessibility

How much access employees have to other employees – especially when working remotely – becomes a balancing act. Working remotely takes away the ability to have casual conversations with individuals on an ad hoc basis like you would if your colleagues were in the same physical office as you.

On the flip side, some employers might think that they have greater access to their employees when working remotely and will start calling/emailing you at any time of the day or night. This isn’t an ideal scenario either.

The advantage when working in an office is that you can easily see when a colleague is accessible or not – if they’re not at their desk or you see them having lunch or in a meeting room you know they’re not available and ultimately will wait for a better time to ask them something. This is of course harder to determine when working within a hybrid work model and trying to contact a colleague who is working remotely. Consequently, accessibility needs to be clarified. Many teams have guidelines in place about contact hours – some email signatures even have their contact hours included – which say something like “although I am sending this email outside of office hours I do not expect a response outside of the hours 9:00 am to 5:00 pm”. These guidelines can differ from team to team, as long as everyone agrees on them and clearly understands them.

In regards to accessibility, it’s also imperative that those in leadership roles lead by example – that they try and make a habit of sending emails or asking for things inside of work hours and make a big show of ‘logging off’ on time. This ensures team members don’t feel pressured to stay online 24/7 or get back to requests straight away no matter what and promotes a culture that values wellbeing and balance.

Pillar 5: Community

The final pillar for fostering a positive workplace culture within hybrid working models (and potentially the most important) is creating a community. When you take out the daily interactions employees have with each other over five days a week in the office, you basically have strangers interacting.

To make sure that colleagues still feel connected with one another and part of a ‘team’ even when working remotely, a company needs to work hard to schedule regular interactions between their employees no matter if these interactions are physical or virtual. This can be achieved in a number of ways – over the last two years, many organisations have started to schedule virtual social events as well as in-person events (online trivia or virtual workshops which include break-out rooms where colleagues get the chance to chat with each other). Many organisations have also created employee resource groups – spaces for employees from underrepresented backgrounds to connect with one another. Encouraging these spaces give employees a place to talk and share their experiences openly. They also reinforce a company’s commitment to diversity and are invaluable in creating a culture of belonging (Cooks-Campbell, 2022).

Ultimately, these pillars can be built into the culture of any organisation, by increasing employees’ awareness of each pillar and ensuring that the organisation’s leaders are communicating and clarifying how important they are overall. Sometimes focusing on these individual pillars rather than workplace culture overall, can make improving workplace culture more achievable, especially for organisations embarking on a hybrid work model.

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[1] Siebert, B. (2020). Coronavirus Has Forced Australians To Work From Home, But What Are The Impacts On CBDs? ABC News. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-18/coronavirus-working-from-home-impact-on-australian-cities/12435248

 [2] Australian Public Service Commission. (2020). State Of The Service Report 2019-20: Learning Through Change. Australian Public Service Commission. Retrieved from: https://www.apsc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-02/aps_state_of_the_service_report_2019-20_0.pdf 

 [3] Goldstone & Narayanan. (2021). Rewriting The Future Of Work With Hybrid Workplaces. PwC Australia. Retrieved from: https://www.pwc.com.au/digitalpulse/report-future-of-work-hybrid-working.html

 [4] Graham, Jackson. (2021). Hybrid Work Here To Stay In APS But Will Office Access Determine Opportunity? The Mandarin. Retrieved from: https://www.themandarin.com.au/171523-hybrid-work-here-to-stay-in-aps-but-will-office-access-determine-opportunity/ 

 [5] Bushnell, I. (2021). The World Has Changed: Barr Sets Hybrid Work Course For ACT Public Servants. Riotact. Retrieved from: https://the-riotact.com/the-world-has-changed-barr-sets-hybrid-work-course-for-act-public-servants/517960 

 [6] Berg & Chamorro-Premuzic. (2021). Fostering A Culture Of Belonging In The Hybrid Workplace. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2021/08/fostering-a-culture-of-belonging-in-the-hybrid-workplace

 [7] White, L. (2022). How To Build Cultural Pillars For A Successful Hybrid Workforce. Human Resources Director (HRD). Retrieved from: https://www.hcamag.com/au/specialisation/employment-law/how-to-build-cultural-pillars-for-a-successful-hybrid-workforce/411581

 [8] Cooks-Campbell, A. (2022). The New Hybrid Culture You Need And How To Build It. BetterUp. Retrieved from: https://www.betterup.com/blog/hybrid-culture

 [9] Kim, P. (2022). Why Great Culture Is Essential For A Hybrid Workplace. Wrike. Retrieved from: https://www.wrike.com/blog/great-culture-essential-for-hybrid-workplace/