By Alex Foster, Vice President of People Experience at Kelly
In today's workplace, hybrid work arrangements have become the norm, rather than the exception. According to Gallup's 2024 workplace data, 55% of remote-capable employees work in hybrid arrangements, while 26% work exclusively remote and only 19% work entirely on-site. This shift demands thoughtful approaches to team building and employee engagement.
The challenge facing many leaders is a tough one: How do you create cohesive teams when members split their time between home and office? How can you maintain connection when people aren’t always on-site on the same days?
Let's explore practical strategies to unite hybrid teams through intentional engagement activities that work in today's distributed workplace.
Before adding new engagement activities to your calendar, focus on executing the fundamentals. The foundation of engaged hybrid teams starts with basics that might seem obvious, but often get overlooked:
Improve your meeting routines
Hybrid meetings present unique challenges—from technical glitches to uneven participation.
Start by:
You also need to equalize the experience among attendees. When some team members are in a conference room and others are remote, have everyone log in from their computers with cameras on. This creates visual "squares" of equal size for everyone, simulating a shared space. Stay current with technology updates that improve remote collaboration features—these tools constantly evolve to better support distributed teams.
When in doubt, return to these core practices. Many teams find that simply executing these fundamentals consistently creates significant improvements in team engagement.
Activities for engagement shouldn't feel forced or superficial. Research from ADP Research Institute shows hybrid employees are 1.7 times more likely to be fully engaged than their on-site counterparts—the key is creating activities with clear purpose.
Informal interactions often spark innovation and build relationships. To recreate this in a hybrid environment, facilitate small group conversations using breakout rooms for smaller discussions during larger meetings. Create intentional opportunities for the casual conversations that would naturally happen when people work in person. These small group interactions should have enough structure to be productive, while allowing natural rapport to develop.
People connect best when united by common interests or goals. Build micro-communities by supporting affinity groups that bring people together based on shared interests. Connect team members working on similar projects across locations, and create learning cohorts focused on specific skills development.
Different meeting formats serve different engagement needs. Implement a mix of formal and informal gatherings throughout your calendar. Consider scheduling quarterly town halls for major updates, regular team meetings for operational needs, and optional "office hours" or coffee chats for informal connection. Begin gatherings with simple check-in questions like "On a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today?" or "Share two words that describe your current state" to build personal connection.
When asking team members to gather in person, be intentional about why you're bringing them together. The purpose should justify the commute.
When planning in-person gatherings, consider using the four C's as your guide:
If team members are coming to the office only to spend the day on video calls, that's a missed opportunity. Reserve in-person time for activities that genuinely benefit from face-to-face interaction.
For teams spread across different locations, create virtual experiences that foster connection. Consider sending gift cards for food delivery services, so teams can share meals virtually. Organize online team-building activities like cooking classes, scavenger hunts, or trivia contests that create shared experiences despite physical distance.
Create spaces for non-work conversation through dedicated Slack channels or virtual water cooler sessions. Structure collaborative activities that take advantage of digital tools, like shared whiteboards or collaborative documents.
What makes these activities work is commitment and presence. Virtual activities succeed when everyone agrees to be fully present, not multitasking or checking email during the event.
Gallup's workplace research shows a concerning trend: remote-capable employees working on-site have experienced the largest drop in engagement since 2020. These employees, whose jobs could be performed with flexibility, but who are required to be on-site, often feel their autonomy has been limited.
To combat this and ensure all team members feel valued regardless of location, practice active and regular listening. Conduct pulse surveys quarterly or more frequently, asking specific questions about whether work feels meaningful and if people feel cared about. Use this data as conversation starters with your team, not just metrics to track on a dashboard.
If you can, give everyone a voice in hybrid policies. Gallup research shows that teams who set hybrid policies together are most likely to feel the policy is fair and positively impacts collaboration. Involve team members in decisions about which days to come into the office and discuss collaboration needs as a group to develop solutions collectively.
Individual check-ins matter tremendously in a hybrid environment. Schedule regular one-on-ones regardless of work location and pay attention to engagement cues like camera use, participation in meetings, and deadlines met. When you notice changes in behavior, have open conversations about what might be happening—these discussions often reveal simple solutions to engagement challenges.
Beyond location flexibility, engagement stems from finding meaning in one's work. Employees need to see how their efforts matter in the bigger picture. Connect work to purpose by regularly discussing how individual contributions connect to team and organizational goals. Create opportunities for employees to see the impact of their work on customers or end users, and share success stories that demonstrate how the team's efforts make a difference.
Giving employees control over how work gets done also boosts engagement. Empower teams to improve processes by encouraging them to identify inefficiencies in current workflows. Celebrate process improvements, automation efforts, and steps eliminated from unnecessary bureaucracy. This creates space for "discretionary effort" by reducing unnecessary work and allowing more time for innovation.
Recognition builds motivation across all work locations. Implement structured appreciation programs that work across locations, create time in team meetings for peer appreciation, and consider sending physical tokens of recognition to remote team members. These small gestures reinforce that contributions are valued regardless of where work happens.
Engagement isn't just the responsibility of formal leaders. Create a culture where everyone feels responsible for the team's success.
Foster "teamship"—a community where team members look out for one another. Encourage everyone to notice when colleagues seem disengaged, and create psychological safety for team members to check in on each other. Recognize and celebrate when team members demonstrate care for colleagues, reinforcing this as a valued behavior.
Help managers address engagement challenges effectively by developing compassionate leadership skills. Train leaders to approach disengagement with curiosity rather than judgment, support them in having difficult conversations when engagement issues arise, and provide tools for addressing challenges, like crucial conversations training.
Effective engagement strategies evolve through careful monitoring and adjustment. Track engagement through brief, frequent pulse surveys to gather real-time data. Monitor turnover rates and reasons for departure to spot trends. Pay attention to productivity and quality metrics that might indicate engagement issues, and compare your results to industry benchmarks to understand how your organization stands relative to others.
You won’t bond your hybrid teams by adding superficial activities to your calendar. You need to thoughtfully design work experiences that acknowledge the different challenges faced by team members, while creating connection points across locations.
The most successful hybrid teams find their rhythm by executing the basics, meeting in person with clear purpose, creating various touch points for connection, empowering all members to contribute to team culture, and continuously adjusting approaches based on what's working.
When hybrid work arrangements are thoughtfully implemented, they can actually boost engagement rather than diminish it. The goal isn't to recreate the office experience for remote workers, but to create a new model that takes advantage of the best aspects of both remote and in-person work.
By focusing on meaningful connection, purposeful collaboration, and shared leadership, hybrid teams can build engagement that transcends physical location.