A Rise in Hybrid Teams Increases the Need for Manager Skills Development and Team Building

The top driver of hybrid team use was the COVID-19 pandemic, but hybrid teaming is expected to continue in the post-pandemic future, according to ATD’s latest research.

The report, Developing Hybrid Teams: Combining Office and Remote Work, sponsored by GP Strategies, found that 47 percent of organizations surveyed expected their use of hybrid teams to stay the same five years from now, while 34 percent projected an increase and 19 percent anticipated a decrease. The potential loss of collaboration or teamwork and concerns about the potential drop in productivity were the top barriers that organizations cited with the increased use of hybrid teams.

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Manager training became vital during the pandemic. Managers needed specific training on managing in person and virtually, coaching employees, and team building. Selected by 87 percent of respondents, communicating tasks, priorities, and expectations within the team was seen as the most important skill needed by managers, while team building was most important to 74 percent of those surveyed and rated the most challenging skill by 71 percent.

“Slightly less than a quarter of organizations (23 percent) provided training specifically for hybrid team managers,” according to the report. “Fifty-two percent provided general managerial training, and 22 percent provided training on virtual or remote management. Organizations that provided specific hybrid team manager training or a combination of general and virtual manager training were more likely to be high performers.”

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Other key findings that emerged from this research include:

• Before the COVID-19 pandemic, only 20 percent of managers oversaw a hybrid team at the average organization. Today, the number is 69 percent. In the average organization at the time of the survey, about a third of employees fell into each category: workers who were fully in the office, workers who were fully remote, and workers who rotated between the office and another location.
• Providing teams with basic tools to succeed in the virtual environment is crucial. About a quarter of organizations did not provide employees with virtual meeting room software, and those organizations were less likely to be high performers.
• Organizations that provided hybrid team managers with training that covered managing both traditional and virtual employees (either in the form of assets specifically for hybrid managers or as a combination of virtual management and traditional management assets) were more likely to be high performers. Training for managers on team building in a hybrid setting was associated with better organizational performance, which is consistent with the finding that the biggest skills gap for hybrid team managers was in team building.
• Training employees on hybrid teams on how to collaborate and communicate in a hybrid setting was associated with a higher likelihood of the organization being a high performer, as was training on how to leverage technology tools to work more effectively in a hybrid setting.

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