Welcome, everybody, to How to Effectively Supervise a Hybrid Work Team. This is the first topic in the 2023 Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate Webinar Series. We've been providing this series now for several years, and we have I think somewhere around 2000 people, give or take, over the years that have attended the series and received their leadership certificate. And we're offering, again, a leadership certificate for successful completion of the series this year in 2023.

And the instructions as you're probably aware Is there's four quarterly topics. So today's topic is number one, and then we'll come back in May and we'll be offering how to become a more effective manager, in August, we'll offer the third topic, how to give difficult feedback to your employees, and then we'll complete the series with the fourth topic in November, which is entitled managing the stress of time and competing priorities.

And so again, four topics. You will get credit for attending these topics, whether you attend the live webinar like the one we're doing today, or whether you review the recordings, because we're recording each of these sessions. If you want to register for the additional sessions this year and you don't have the registration link for the three additional sessions coming up in May, August, and November, all you have to do is hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today.

That goes directly into the email inbox of our team. And just say, I would love to have the registration links for the remaining webinars coming up here in the 2023 Leadership Certificate Program, and we will be more than happy to send you the registration links for those three webinars. All right, folks.

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But at the end of the formal part of the presentation today and for the other three sessions, we'll have a question and answer session. At that point in time, please feel free to type any questions you have into the question box. You'll find the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right hand corner of your screen.

And for each of the four sessions, including today, we'll get to as many questions as time allows. All right, folks, let's go ahead and get started. All right. In the way of background, we're talking about managing a hybrid work team. The number of hybrid or remote workers-- and as most of us probably recognize, a hybrid work team really is defined by people that work in multiple locations as part of their schedule.

Probably most commonly since the beginning of the pandemic, hybrid work teams have been made up of individuals that at times work remotely or teleworking from home or work remotely in some way, shape, or form, and then other times, they are at another location. Either on on-site at the physical workplace, or at another location.

And so that's what we're talking about today, is how do we do a great job of leading teams that we don't see every day? We may see them sometimes on-site, and sometimes they're working remotely or, again, in another location. Now, sometimes, this can be complicated by the fact that the supervisor may be working a remote schedule or a hybrid schedule where they're site part of the time, and part of the time working from home. And so that's been increasingly common also since the beginning of the pandemic.

But as most of you know, before the pandemic, only 11% of workers in the United States were working full time from home. Now, that number would be a lot higher if we looked at full time and part time and hybrid workers like we're talking about today. At least it would be significantly higher than that.

But since the pandemic and so many organizations, for safety sake, sent workers home on a part time or full time basis to practice social distancing and stay safe during COVID, it became much more widely accepted that when people work from home or when they're not physically in the physical workplace or at the home location, that people can still be pretty productive.

And so since the-- as the pandemic has continued, more and more organizations-- as workers transition to coming back on site, many still continue to work, either a remote schedule they work either full time remotely, or they started to work, what we're talking about today, a hybrid schedule where part of the time they're working remotely and part of the time they were back on site, back at the physical workplace.

And this is, again, becoming increasingly a trend in our world, and it's probably going to be here to stay. If you read what forecasts are for the future of Workforce Management, the hybrid work schedules seem to be very-- they're embraced by both employees and by organizations. Because again, you can get the best of both worlds.

You can give people the flexibility and autonomy to work from home at least part of the time, but also have them in the office at the physical workplace to do team building, to do bonding, to do the things that have to be done from the physical workplace standpoint. Now, there's been some great studies that reinforce.

There was Hays study in 2021 that said that only 7%, and this was smack in the middle of the pandemic, that only seven only approximately 7% of employees wanted to return to the office full time after COVID. And again, so many-- there was half or more of the American workforce had transitioned to working from home, at least on a part time basis, during COVID.

And so as there was transitions back to the physical workplace for a large part of that workforce, as we started to-- as people got vaccinated and we started to be able to manage COVID better as a society, and I know it's still an issue that we're dealing with, but it was interesting-- people spoke. Employees in masks were saying, I really love the-- especially those that hadn't had that opportunity before to work from home. I personally have been working remotely since 2009 and I love it.

But a lot of people during COVID started working from home for the first time, and a lot of organizations were allowing people to work from home during COVID for the first time out of necessity to keep people safe and to practice social distancing. But then again, as people started transitioning back to the workforce or, excuse me, back to the physical workplace, more and more organizations and individual employees were like, hey, wait a minute, I like working remotely and I'm pretty productive working remotely.

And employers were also saying, but we do need people on site sometimes. We need to provide face to face customer service in some organizations, we need to have people in the office collaborating on projects, we need to do team building, we need to see each other sometimes.

And so it's become more commonly popular to do these hybrid schedules where people-- we're the best of both worlds again where people at times and individual employees at times have the autonomy and flexibility to work from home at least part of the week, and then the other part of the week, they come into the office and work on site.

And so again-- and again, you read a lot of the research about the evolution of Workforce Management, you're going to see a lot of people predict that the hybrid model and remote work is going to be here to stay. At least there's a lot of researchers that are believing that. Now, there's research that shows that not only can people be pretty productive working from home-- there was a Stanford Research study, I don't have it listed on the slide, that really talked about when people are working from home, once they set up their home office, as long as they've got a comfortable place to work, they've got enough privacy and they've got a good workspace.

And once they get in a rhythm of working remotely, they can be as much as 20% more productive because there's less interruptions, they don't have a commute to contend with, it's a more relaxed environment. And then there was a Austin College study I want to cite here that talked about-- people can achieve greater work life balance and personal well-being when they're working at home at least part of the time.

There's lower stress. Again, you don't have a commute to deal with, which causes a lot of workers that are coming into the physical workplace a lot of stress. And so I just want to remind us folks that as the world continues to evolve, I think it's a really great thing as employer groups are-- I mean, they're really trying to find, they're paying a lot of attention to employee well-being.

And not only keeping people safe during the pandemic that we're still dealing with, but trying to optimize that. Trying to find out what's the right environment to help people be as healthy and productive as possible? And we're finding that there's a lot of potential for these remote or hybrid working models. And so that's why I want to talk about with you today because there are some challenges of managing a hybrid or a remote work team.

Those of you that have done this in the past-- I've been doing it for a long time now. I've personally been working from home, as I mentioned, since 2009. I'm a supervisor at Deer Oaks and I've been managing my team-- my remote work team now for-- actually, my hybrid/remote work team. I've had hybrid scheduled workers over the last seven years, eight years, and I've also had people 100% remote. So I've been managing both.

And there's some challenges. It's not quite the same as being in the same physical office together, having eyes on each other, seeing each other day to day, being able to connect and communicate directly, bond together. For supervisors, having eyeballs on employees to make sure that they're staying busy and maintaining productivity. And so let's talk about some of the challenges.

One of the challenges is trying to maintain consistent communication with everybody. It's hard when you've got different employees that have different schedules. And it's hard to share information consistently across a team of people that may be in different locations where let's say you've got a team of five people and two of them are in the office two days a week, and another two of them are working from home every day, and then you've got yet another one that has a different hybrid schedule.

And so it becomes a little bit more challenging to stay on the same page with everybody. Because, of course, when people are working from different locations and different schedules and we don't have the benefit of seeing each other face to face every day, it does put a premium on communication, and we have to be more intentional about making sure that we're communicating effectively and everyone's getting the information and the support they need.

Those of you that have managed remote or hybrid workers in the past probably that it becomes a little bit more challenging to do team building, to keep the team bonded together if they don't see each other very often. It can be a challenge. We've gotten very creative within Deer Oaks because so many of us now are working remotely to be able to create a work family environment where--

And there was a lot of research that says when a team feels bonded, when they care about each other, when they feel connected to their colleagues, it really becomes not just your coworkers, but the environment becomes this is my work family, this is my home away from home. When that happens, there's lots of research that says that those teams are incredibly more productive, maybe even 70% more productive, and the workplace culture provides more of a sense of belonging, and people look forward to going to work.

They're less likely to leave those environments and try to find a job somewhere else because they really bond with their team. So it becomes more of a challenge to build that when people don't see each other every day. I think most of us would recognize that. It's also, of course-- and this is one of the bigger challenges for trying to supervise a hybrid or a remote team, is it's more difficult to monitor people's day to day productivity.

That was the biggest challenge for me when I started supervising a hybrid and then a completely remote team. It was hard for harder for me to try to feel comfortable that people were being as productive as they needed to be. That they were working long enough, that they were keeping up with their work, and they were maintaining full productivity.

So I had to figure out some ways to manage performance, and I'll share some of those thoughts here in a little bit. But again, I think most of you would recognize, if you've managed a hybrid or remote worker in the past, it's more of a challenge when you don't have eyes on people every day to keep track of what people are doing and to feel comfortable that-- to be able to manage performance in a way that people are doing what they need to do and the work getting done and the results are coming in.

Another thought I wanted to share is that when you're hiring people that are going to be hybrid or remote workers, I think we also need to be considerate of the kind of individual that will fit that model well. And what I find is that people that I feel most comfortable supervising-- I've got one particular remote worker right now.

She's 100% remote, she's amazing. She's a self-starter, she's very motivated, she's very responsive. I feel 100% comfortable that she is fully productive, takes initiative, and she provides great results. I mean, having someone like that is the idea. You want to have individuals that you really believe and trust they're going to not take advantage of working from home, but that they're going to stay fully productive and they're going to bring results. They're going to be-- they're going to be engaged in giving 100%.

And that can start with hiring people. So you might hire-- you might give a little bit of thought to when I'm hiring someone that's going to be working a hybrid schedule where they're going to be on site part of the time and working remotely part of the time or working 100% remote, just making sure that not only does that person have the background and experience that you need and the technical skills, but that they're the kind of person that you can really trust to be fully productive with a minimum of supervision. We're not going to have someone putting eyes on them every day.

All right. So I'm going to talk about four different areas here. I'll give you a quick overview. Four different areas of supervising hybrid or remote workers. The first one is the importance of being inclusive and responsive to staff members that are either working on a hybrid schedule or a remote schedule, and then we're going to come back and talk about the importance of really over communicating and putting an intentional focus on relationship development. Again it's harder to do when you don't see people every day.

The third part of what we'll talk about today is the how to communicate? I find that the more effective we are in the interactions we do have with people that are hybrid-- that work a hybrid schedule or a remote schedule, the more bonded they are to the organization and to you as their supervisor and the more likely they are to stay motivated do their best work and stay with your organization.

And the last but not least we're going to talk about, proactive performance management. Obviously, again, there's an extra challenge of holding people accountable and feeling comfortable that everyone who's working on a hybrid or remote schedule is maintaining full productivity.

All right. Let me start with being inclusive and responsive to hybrid and remote staff. And this is obviously a growing trend. So there's new research coming out all the time about best practices here in managing teams like this. But some of the stuff that's coming out early on, and I've experienced a lot of this myself personally since '09 when I transitioned, is we need to make sure that we're creating as inclusive an environment as possible.

And there's a lot of conversations in the world today rightfully so about the importance of inclusivity. Making sure that our workplace environments are as inclusive and welcoming to everybody as possible. And when you've got people that are working different schedules where you might have some that are working remote 100%, you might have some that are working hybrid schedules depending on what their job responsibilities are, you want to make sure number one, you're going out of your way to make anyone that's not in the office full time--

Now, you want to make everybody feel welcome, of course. But you want to make-- and you want to make everybody on your team feel valued and important. But I feel like it's even-- just out of experience, it's even more important that we go out of our way to make hybrid and remote workers feel valued and important. It's easy, and I know this, again, from the 14 years I worked from home.

You can start to feel real isolated, and you can really feel like out of sight, out of mind, and you can feel left out when you're not in the physical workplace. And I felt some of that. When I first joined Deer Oaks, I've been remote the whole time I've been with Deer Oaks. I've been with Deer Oaks now going on 12 years.

When I first joined Deer Oaks, I was one of the few remote workers at the time. Our team has since largely transitioned, our administrative team has largely transitioned to working remotely. But early on, 11, 12 years ago, I would feel left out sometimes. I would see emails going around and conversations that were happening and issues that were being discussed, and I'd feel a little bit out of the loop.

Where if you were in the physical office, oftentimes when someone sees you, they'll ask your opinion, they'll call you in on a meeting, they'll discuss things with you. And when you're not there in the physical workplace every day, you can feel like you're not-- you're out of sight, out of mind. And that can be disconcerting. That can make people feel uncomfortable. So I just want to-- and that can happen when people feel insecure, or they're feeling disconnected, or isolated, it can really have an impact on our motivation and productivity.

I'm pretty much a people person, and so it was harder for me, I think, than some to adjust to working remotely. And there was a time when I was working on a hybrid schedule where part of the time I was in the office, and part of the time I was working from home. But I know that my boss has done an incredible job over the years of making me feel more connected, making me feel valued, which has really helped me overcome that feeling of isolation and being left out.

But doing that work myself makes me very aware that I want to be-- I want to make sure that everyone on my team feels comfortable, they feel connected to me. So I try to be as accessible and responsive as possible. I don't want people to wonder if they're significant if they don't hear from me for a while because we don't see each other every day.

One of the things I was-- one of the examples that I became aware of a while back is that when a work team is working together in a physical office and they see each other every day, people say, good morning. They pass each other in the hallway. In the morning, they say good morning to each other. So you might have a supervisor and employee pass each other in the hallway and say, good morning. How is your weekend? How's your family?

And then so now that supervisor gets busy, that employee goes to their desk and they get busy. Now, they send their supervisor an email at 9:00 AM and they don't hear back to the end of the day. They probably don't give that a second thought because they've seen the supervisor that morning, the supervisor was friendly to them. They know the supervisor is pretty busy. They've noticed that that person has been behind closed doors all day and they can tell that they've been real busy. So maybe they don't feel very insecure about that because they recognize the boss is busy.

But if you're a remote worker or a hybrid worker working from home that day or that period of time, and you send an email to your boss who you haven't actually seen in a while, but you send an email to them at 9 o'clock in the morning and here you are, end of the day, you still haven't heard back, you could start-- because you don't if the boss is busy or not. You can't see that person.

And so you can start to feel a little disconnected or start to maybe wonder if you're as important as you'd like to be or as significant as you'd like to be, and it can create, again, some insecurity. And it can make people feel isolated and uncomfortable and left out. And so as supervisors, let's be sensitive to that.

And when you've got a remote worker or a hybrid worker who's working remotely for a period of time-- and more and more organizations have gone to those hybrid schedules where people are in the office a couple of days a week and they're home a few days a week working remotely, just be sensitive on days that people are working remotely to be as responsive and accessible as possible so that people don't feel insecure. So they don't feel left out or isolated or disconnected.

And then functionally, let's make sure that we don't leave hybrid or remote staff out of important conversations and decisions. It's interesting, the research nowadays about managing remote or hybrid workers talks a lot about proximity bias, which is a term that I've just recently become aware of, but it's interesting.

Proximity bias would be where a supervisor is not-- and of course, this kind of stuff typically is never intentional. It's just a functional thing that someone would get into doing, is there's a tendency for some supervisors that are working in an office to have more conversations with the people they can see that are right there in the physical workspace with them, and not be as thoughtful to include those that are working remotely during that period of time.

And so they're not intentionally leaving those people out that are working remotely or working on a hybrid schedule, but it's human nature if you see someone to share something. Hey, I got this situation going on. What are your ideas about this? Rather than just taking the time to reach out to someone who's working remotely.

And we've got to be aware of that. We've got to be aware of not being even unconsciously biased to paying more attention or including the people that you can see in the physical workplace if you're also in the physical workplace as a leader and neglecting or not including-- and again, most of that's not intentional. It just becomes something where it's easier to-- hey, I see Bill down the hall or I see Anne sitting in her office.

Easy to get up and go over and talk to Anne when you see them there, or get up and go over and talk to Bill than to try to reach out to someone that's working remotely during that period of time. So let's just be aware of that so we can intentionally treat all staff equally, which means you want to make sure you're trying to communicate with everyone.

I've talked about that as a challenge earlier. When people are at different locations and different schedules, but we're trying to stay in touch with everybody on a regular basis and communicate with everyone regularly. We'll talk about some tips about how to do that here in a moment. Make sure we're giving opportunities to everyone equally.

Again, not just-- because again, it might be easier to giving an opportunity to someone right down the hall that you can see. You know they're in the office that day and it's easy to walk right down the hall and say, hey, would you like to take on this opportunity? When it might take a little bit of time to track down the person that's not in the office that day.

And so let's make sure, again, we're being intentionally inclusive and treating everyone equally. Same thing with time with us. Again, you could end up hanging out with people that you see again, because you see people. I became very aware of this. I facilitate a lot of training like this for Deer Oaks. And sometimes, we use this platform GoToWebinar and sometimes we use Zoom.

I've noticed on Zoom calls that I have a tendency to interact, during webinars, more with people whose cameras are-- whose cameras are on. It's like you can make eye contact with those people. It's easy to call on them. And those that don't have their cameras on, again, it's almost like out of sight and out of mind and you don't know if they're multitasking or you don't want to put them on the spot or you're not sure that they're engaged.

And so I've had to try to be careful to not-- again, not interact in a not equal way with participants, just the ones that I can see with their cameras on versus the ones that I can't. So I can easily recognize the tendency for us to gravitate towards those that are right there in the same location issue. You can make eye contact with.

And so we've got to be careful not to give them more opportunities, not to include them in more conversations and decisions, and leave those that aren't physically in the workspace that day or in the physical workspace that day out of those conversations or out of those opportunities.

The other thing is to remind the whole team. Folks, it's real easy again for people that are on site to overlook or forget to include people that are working a hybrid schedule or a remote schedule. So let's remember to copy everybody on email. Let's make sure we're not neglecting copying people, not just the people we see. And if we're in the physical workplace, we're having an on site meeting, let's not forget to invite those to the conference in or to join via Zoom or Teams or whatever virtual platform you use.

So again, to keep people as included as possible. Just becomes a little bit more of a challenge. We just have to stay a little bit more mindful of that. And of course, as a leader, you want to make sure that everyone, regardless of whether they're in the physical workplace or not, has access to all the right software, all the right communications tools, access to the right IT support.

I've had a few people working remotely that just couldn't log on to a call. They just didn't have the right software, the right access. And so I've started to make it more of a point to just make sure that everyone can have access to whatever mode of communication we're using so that everyone has equal access, again, and can be included.

All right. Next, let's talk about focusing on relationship development and communication. This is a really important follow on to that. So relationships between supervisors and employees are crucial, as are relationships between team teammates, and we'll talk more about that here in a moment.

But Gallup, the polling company that does all kinds of employee engagement research, they are conclusive, folks, that the number one reason why an employee stays with an organization and gets engaged and stays productive and stays for the long term is because they've got a really good relationship with their direct supervisor.

And so I've come to see that the relationship we have as supervisors, with our employees, it's the game changer. It's the most important part of staff supervision. We really got to have strong relationships. So really take the time to get to people, find out what's important to them, what they value. And establish a dependable communications rhythm with everyone, especially with hybrid and remote workers.

Now, this is important with everybody, but I do believe we have to strive to overcommunicate with people that are hybrid or that are working hybrid or remote schedules. Because again, when they're out of the office, they're going to have a tendency to feel more disconnected and more isolated and maybe even left out. So make sure you've got regular way to check in.

I do one-on-one meetings with every one of my direct reports on a weekly basis. Now, I've got a smaller team. If you have a larger team, you may not be able to do it every week. I do it every week. Part of it is because we work remotely, and we don't see each other. Nowadays, we're 100% remote so we only see each other face to face every once in a great while.

So I just make it a point to making sure that I can have that dedicated time. Now, we communicate a lot more than just the one weekly one-on-one meeting. But I want to make sure I have that structured one-on-one meeting so that everyone knows they have a dedicated time with me and I have a dedicated time with them.

And so not too much time goes by where we don't connect. I don't want people to feel isolated. I want them to I care about them as people. And so during those check ins, I don't just focus on business. I take the time to ask people how their family is doing, just like when you get to people. You get to know your employees. What's important to them? What they're interested in? How many kids they have? What their favorite football team is? Speaking of the Super Bowl yesterday.

But I use those times to check in with people. I'll never forget early in the pandemic, one of my direct reports has a child in private school. And when the private school sent the kids home for the pandemic to do distance learning like, so many school districts did around the country, they had the parents-- they mandated that the parents do some home-school teaching.

And my colleague was really stressed about that. I mean, she's a busy person and didn't sign up to be a home school teacher. And I would have felt the exact same way if I was in her shoes. And so I would ask her-- during our weekly one-on-one meetings or check ins, I'd ask her how that was going. How's it going with your daughter? How's that working for you?

And I was offering extra support to say, if you need to have flexibility with your schedule, just let me. So she's a great employee and I trust her, and so I really did think it made a difference in our relationship. I think it helped to strengthen our relationship back during those days. That she knew that I cared about her and her family. That I didn't just care about the work that she did, but I also cared about her as a person.

And so just remember, folks, that our relationship with each employee, according to Gallup, is the most important part of our supervisory responsibilities. So make sure you're staying as connected to people as possible. There's also research about employee engagement. And I think we all want engaged employees, people come to work and give 100%. That knowing that my boss cares about me as a person, not just as an employee is a driver to engagement.

Now, also, let's not forget about strengthening team relationships. Again, as I mentioned earlier, having a well bonded team where people get to each other and care about each other is another key to having high levels of productivity. But again, it's more difficult to bond a team together when they're not in the same physical workplace every day. If you've got a bunch of people working a hybrid schedule where they're site part of the time and working from home part of the time or some others that are working remotely all of the time, it's harder to stay connected to everybody.

So make sure that you as a supervisor holding regular team meetings and pulling people together to discuss projects, and make sure that everyone has meeting access, make sure everyone has the ability to fully participate, whether they're in the physical workplace or not, make sure everyone has the right software, and make sure you're engaging everyone.

I was remembering some hybrid meetings I facilitated several years ago, and it was interesting where I had some people in the physical office and I was in the physical office at that point, some people that were not. Some people that were working from home, and I just was very intentional about calling on everybody, not just the people that I could see in the physical office with me in that meeting room physically, but also the half a dozen or eight people that were calling in from outside, I was calling on them as well.

I was soliciting their input as well, trying to keep them engaged. So I wanted to make sure that whether you were in the office or whether you were attending via Zoom or Teams, that you felt like you were a part of everything. And you have to be intentional about that. Again, it's real easy to focus more, if you're in the physical workplace, on the people can see and forget to engage and solicit input from those that are offsite. So make sure we're paying attention to that.

And I also use part of every team meeting for relationship development. During the pandemic, our small team did a really great job of getting to each other better for our weekly team meetings. But first of all, I went from biweekly meetings to weekly meetings. That was one thing I did to bring us more close, to bond us more closely together and help us get to each other more and feel more connected because we were all at that point working remotely, and it was COVID.

So we were doing a 5 to 10 minute icebreaker at the beginning of every weekly team meeting, and everyone had a chance to pick the icebreaker topic. Like one time, we did an icebreaker topic on let's go around the virtual room and everyone talk about the best concert they've ever attended and why. We got to each other's musical preferences. And that was fun, and we had a lot of laughs.

Someone another time did something about, now that you're a little bit older and you have more experience, if you were giving advice to your 18-year-old self just starting out, what advice would you give to the younger you? That was an interesting conversation we got to each other, what was important to each other.

And so icebreakers can be-- even if you're virtual or you've got a hybrid team, that can really make people let that help people let their hair down and get to each other better as people. If the times bring the team together, and especially if not-- if people are in different geographic locations, working a hybrid or a remote schedule. If you're only getting down to business, you'll miss the opportunity for bonding.

It's harder to bond people that are not in the same physical space. When people are in the same physical space, they do small talk when they're walking into the meeting room. They're walking down the hall afterwards, they do small talk. So there's natural bonding opportunities that you have when people are in the same physical space that you don't have when people are working a hybrid or remote schedule. So you've got to be more intentional about it.

That's why I was using those icebreakers to just get people more intentionally connecting together. And our executive director-- and I do a lot of that. We've gotten real creative in getting people together virtually, just to make sure that everyone feels connected and knows that we care about them and they get to care about each other and feel they have more of a sense of team even if they're not actually in the physical workplace or not in the physical workplace very often.

And then it's also important-- I got some great advice from a colleague recently to schedule any important meetings or conversations when everyone is in the office or everyone can be on a Zoom or teams call together. And so again, a lot of times, if you've got part of the team in the physical office and the other part of the team working remotely or a hybrid schedule, again, some people can be inadvertently left out of important conversations.

And so if you want to keep people involved, make sure that you're being thoughtful about how you schedule those conversations. So let's say you and two people in the office are talking about something important, and you've got three people that aren't there right now because it's their day to work remotely, they're working a hybrid schedule.

Is to say, well, let's hold off having this conversation. And say, let's schedule this-- let's put this on the agenda for and when we're having our general team meeting when everyone will be in the office because I want everyone to have a chance to weigh in on this. I think we could really benefit from having everyone give a chance to give input.

So it was interesting I heard one supervisor had-- and it was interesting. She was working a hybrid schedule. She was in the office on Mondays and Thursdays, and she was working from home on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. And she had her team were all working hybrid schedules, and everyone's schedule was a little different.

Well, she actually did her-- she tried to do her administrative work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when she was working from home. And she tried to-- when she was in the physical office on Mondays and Thursdays, she tried to do her face to face meetings with people and team meetings during those days when she was in the office.

So she just intentionally made sure since she wasn't in the office every day and didn't see some of the people face to face very often during the week on her team, she has made it a point to, when she was in the physical office those two days, to spend as much one on one time or group meeting time with the rest of the team as possible. Just wanting to maximize the opportunity to bond and stay connected together.

So let's make sure, folks, that we're thoughtful about those kinds of things. And it does become a little bit more complicated when you're working with a hybrid team or you're managing a hybrid team. All right. A couple more things and we'll come to a conclusion here and open it up for questions. This is how to of making sure that your interactions with people are as comfortable as possible.

Again, if you're not in the physical workplace, a lot of times-- with people together very often, a lot of times, your remote interactions may be more utilizing one way communication, like an email, maybe you don't have the opportunity to really collaborate with people and really interact in a really respectful and caring way.

And so I think it's really important to be as collaborative as you can be when you're-- I mean, obviously, collaborative communication-- whether you're face to face with someone in the physical workplace or whether you're interacting with someone who's working remotely or on a hybrid schedule, collaboration is going to make people feel more respected than talking at them, than being directive.

Being directive is-- and we all because we've worked for people that are of bossy, always telling people what to do, always giving their suggestions, always calling the shots, directing everything. That can make people feel-- on your team, it can make your employees feel like you don't necessarily respect them or you're not necessarily interested in their input. That you just-- you feel like you're just calling the shots and it's about what you want.

And that can be uncomfortable for people. It can even make people feel like they're being bossed around or micromanage when a supervisor uses that style too often. What I found is that the more collaborative I am, especially with people who are not in the office, it makes them feel better about our relationship. Makes them feel more respected, more valued.

And remember, it's important to go above and beyond to help people who are working remotely or working a hybrid schedule to feel valued, to feel connected. So when I am interacting with people that are not-- like in the picture here where you see the lady who's the supervisor talking to one of her employees here via Zoom call or a team's call, is to make sure during those interactions, you're being as friendly and respectful and collaborative as possible so that person feels bonded to you they feel cared about by you as a person. They feel connected to you.

And when they feel-- when they feel bonded-- and obviously, the best way to do that is when you're interacting with someone about an issue or about a project or something, ask a lot of questions. Invite people's input. Ask what they think. Ask if they have any examples of working on this kind of a problem in the past. What did you do the last time? Maybe we can learn from that.

And so it's really-- and I think we all know. When you work for someone who's really collaborative, that just brings you into everything-- when they're assigning a task, they're interested in your ideas about how you're going to get the work done. To give you a chance to build the workplan or develop the workplan. If there's a problem, they're regularly asking for your opinion about how can we best solve this problem?

And again, whether you're face to face with people or working with a remote or hybrid worker, obviously, people want to be respected. And when we use a collaborative communication approach, people are going to feel more respected. Again, it's even more important-- in my mind, it's even more important to go out of your way to be really respectful as you communicate with people that are working remotely or working a hybrid schedule so they feel more connected and more cared about. I think it's important.

And I've got a little three step-- it's not a script at all, but it's a little three step process that I follow to try to stay on track and make my conversations with people, either face to face or virtually, as collaborative as possible. Where I'll introduce-- I'll let the person know, here's what I want to talk to you about. Here's the problem that I'm dealing with, and I really need your input.

And then I ask the employee for their input. What do you think we could do here? Have you ever experienced this kind of problem before? What ideas do you have? What do you think I should do? Can you give me some advice? I love that. My boss is incredible about that. Our Executive Director at Deer Oaks, she's incredible. She always makes us feel valued. She always asks us for input.

Like she'll send me an email and say something like this. Hey, Greg, I got this situation going on. What are your thoughts? I love that. I mean, even taking the time in an email to solicit my input, it makes me feel respected, makes me feel like I'm important to her, she values my ideas, and it's really motivating for me and I think it's motivating for all of us when our leader when our supervisor shows an interest in our input, ask for our advice, is willing to listen to our ideas about how things should be done.

So let's make sure that we're not just talking at people and dictating solutions and making suggestions and sharing our ideas, but we're regularly asking people for their input. Because when we do, people feel more respected and more engaged in whatever we're doing. All right. Last but not least, and I'll open it up for questions, folks, is proactively manage performance.

Again, it's a little bit-- as I mentioned at the outset today, it's a little bit more challenging to manage performance when you can't put eyes on people. I think most of us who have ever managed a remote worker or a hybrid worker would agree that it's harder to stay on top of people's workflow and to hold people accountable for higher levels of productivity if you can't see them day to day.

There's something that-- when we're in the same physical office and you can lay eyes on people, there's something at least at on a high level that gives you a comfort if you see someone looking like they're busy. Now, they may not be-- they may not be as productive with that busyness. I think we all know that activity is not necessarily productivity.