‘Half Of My Team Are In The Office, The Other Half Are WFH – How Can We Make It Work?’

In a world of in­spi­ra­tional memes and #girlboss In­sta­gram posts, it’s easy to for­get that we all get stuck at work, or feel like we can’t find a way for­ward at times. Sue Uner­man is the Chief Trans­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer at Me­di­a­Com and Kathryn Ja­cob OBE is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive at Pearl and Dean. To­gether they wrote The Glass Wall: Suc­cess Strate­gies For Women At Work And Busi­nesses That Mean Busi­ness. Their new book Belonging, The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion and Equality At Work is out on now. Each week an­swer your work ques­tions with prag­matic, hon­est ad­vice that’s proven to work…

Q: My office is opening up and some colleagues are regularly going in, others are going in less frequently. I am really worried about how we make sure that no one feels left out, if some of us are in a meeting together and others have called in. I'm also worried about what this means for myself - especially as I think that when kids are back at school there will be occasions when I am not able to go in because the class has been told to self isolate.

A: KJ : This is going to be an issue that affects lots of people and lots of workplaces. Firstly, consider whether it is possible for those people joining remotely to have a defined role in the meeting rather than feel that they are spectators. It is also crucial that any pre meeting chat doesn’t exclude them. Empathy is key here. You need to ensure that every meeting is one of active participation irrespective of location. I know it is tough though.

SU: Consider creating a new role, a role for an inclusion chair for each meeting. This could rotate, and it shouldn’t be a role that belongs to the most senior person. But it needs to be empowered. So that there is one person who is in charge during that time of looking out for everyone whether they are physically present or present online, and they can call the meeting out for leaving people in the cold. You might want to have a safe word to make this fun rather than onerous. So you could say “It feels to me that Kathryn is stuck in the freezer – can we get her out!” rather than telling people off.

KJ: It is also important that there is clarity around your meeting purpose and expected outcomes. As always but especially in a hybrid meeting. That way if you are remotely working you know where you are and where you can contribute rather than desperately trying to gain traction as the talk freewheels across a number of subjects. We’ve all been in meetings where people have raised their hands or put something in the chat and those people who are together in the office have carried on without acknowledging it. It is incredibly frustrating and also makes people feel that participation remotely is worthless.

SU: I have recently spoken to someone who was excluded from a meeting for the first time because she couldn’t make it into the office when everyone else could. She was told, bluntly, that it just wasn’t worth the effort to dial her in. Imagine how worthless this made her feel, and I know her, she certainly can and would have contributed. Does she feel that she belongs in that team now? Despite years of working with them? Sadly the answer is no, and it will be a journey to recoup that sense of belonging that is so crucial to getting the most out of everyone in the team. It was a moment of rejection but it will take a significant effort to restore that balance. What a shame, it surely wasn’t intended, but as always unintended consequences are no less real. It makes it more difficult that she hasn’t found a way of expressing how she feels to the person running the team, she feels like she is going to sound petty or emotional.

KJ: In her situation, I would turn the focus from me into a wider concern. Perhaps I would phrase it along the lines of “I know it was difficult for you to facilitate me joining that meeting, but here are some of the inputs I would have offered. Incidentally, it might be worth noting that for people who are not as established as I am, excluding someone again, on the basis of physical proximity, might really cause them some concern and damage their feeling of being a valued team member”. That way you highlight the bad behaviour, and you frame it in a way that is pointing out what they did wrong and how they can address it in future, without it being personal to you.

SU: On another level, understanding how to make hybrid meetings work (where some people are physically together and others are calling in), is an opportunity to make the meetings work better in any case. In our book Belonging, the key to transforming and maintaining diversity, inclusion and equality at work we include exercises to supercharge any meeting. For example we recommend that you discuss with the participants how they like to work, how they like to contribute (some people like to interrupt and jump in with ideas, others like to mull over a topic and only participate when they have really thought through their point of view thoroughly for example.) We suggest that you ask them – how are you on a bad day? Kathryn and I have different ways of showing up when we are under stress. I get very very quiet, and need to be left alone till I have sorted myself out, whereas Kathryn will reach out to her friends for reassurance and advice. There’s lots of different ways of reacting to stress, none of them are necessarily wrong, but not everyone is the same and it is a great idea to find out how you can bring the best of everyone together.

KJ: On the self isolation issue in respect of schools, you will not be the only one concerned about this. How about finding out how many people might be affected and creating a network to support each other as well as informing your employer collectively about the issues you face. This way, they become aware of what might happen and can develop an appropriate policy. Good luck and stay safe.