4 Strategies to Improve Hybrid Work With Communication

Professionals often refer to hybrid work as the “best of both worlds,” and for good reason. Hybrid work incorporates many of the strengths of in-person and remote settings for a more productive workplace, such as flexibility around work environments while remaining collaborative via technology. 

A hybrid workplace is the combination of in-office work time with remote or out-of-office work schedules—like employees working three days at home and two days in the office.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, most employees in large cities already work in hybrid settings. Employees in cities like Beijing work an average of 3.9 days in the office, and workers in London are in the office for 3.1 days. And with the rapidly changing technology, it’s not surprising so many companies are breaking out of the traditional norms for hybrid, remote, and distributed work.

Prioritizing communication within your team is essential to implementing and sustaining a successful hybrid work environment. This takes shape in both the approach you take to leadership and company culture when implementing hybrid work, as well as the tools that keep your employees aligned from wherever they are in the world, like Loom video messaging, Zoom live conferencing, and project management tools like Asana.

Read on to learn the top reasons to embrace the hybrid work model, strategies for maintaining communication and team collaboration, and how to adopt the right tool to foster a productive hybrid workplace.

You might have an excellent traditional workplace model right now, and maybe you’ve been hesitant to make a switch to flexible work in the past. Now you feel as if there’s a lid capping your team’s improvement or that the future of work is changing in your industry—especially when it comes to employee expectations for the workplace. 

When you embrace the hybrid office environment, you can experience the following benefits:

• Enhanced collaboration and productivity: When your employees have flexibility and autonomy in their work environment, they experience greater satisfaction and balance, which can improve their attitude and mindset around collaboration because they can work how they like to. You can boost this productivity with a strong tech stack, so your teams can work together no matter the location or time zone. For example, they can record video messaging with an asynchronous tool like Loom to tighten feedback loops or hop on a Zoom call to share ideas.

• Flexible work settings: When you don’t limit your hiring radius to your immediate geography, you can attract top talent and those seeking hybrid work schedule flexibility. 

• Lower overhead costs: Your company can use less office space, real estate, or fewer utilities to facilitate full-time hybrid and remote workers where they want to be, such as coworking spaces, home offices, and cafés.

• Retain employees longer: Hybrid flexibility can increase employee satisfaction and encourage team members to work at your company longer, saving you time and resources in recruiting and training new employees.

If you’re ready to make a change—and plant practices that will grow into the long-term benefits of hybrid work—there are a few steps you can take today.

Use these best practices to define and achieve a hybrid workplace that suits your team and company goals.

Strategy 1: Listen to your team first

Listening to your team might sound like Leadership 101, but most leaders often make this mistake. They gather ideas but forget to include their team’s input until it’s too late, like during an announcement to introduce remote work, implement a new communication tool, or overhaul performance metrics. Leaders who take the time to incorporate the unfiltered, authentic, and unique input from their teams can shape a better hybrid work strategy and increase buy-in from the team.

Leadership expert Simon Sinek often discusses the importance of speaking last. On his podcast, he states, “We say [...] ‘Here’s the problem we have—this is what I think we should do, but I want to know what you think.’ [It’s] too late. You biased the room.”

Whether it’s to transition to hybrid work, add a new video messaging tool like Loom, or solve a systemic problem, ask your team what they think. You’ll get new ideas and more personal investment into the strategy, and you’ll be able to identify core issues that make a big difference, like frustrations or pain points about existing communication processes or feedback loops.

You can then provide your input and find solutions to shift closer to a hybrid work model, such as adopting collaboration tools, cutting unnecessary live meetings, and providing training or resources that keep your employees feeling supported and connected.

Strategy 2: Lay out a roadmap with clear expectations

Before your team gets the green light to blend in-office time with remote work, outline the path they’ll need to take to transition into hybrid work or implement a new tool that drives collaboration.

To start, clarify what a more flexible workplace means. Include the following considerations in your hybrid work roadmap:

• Remote-to-office ratios: How many days will each person be in the office? Should everyone be in the office on the same days, or should you adopt an A/B rotating schedule? You can also establish staggered workday schedules where hybrid workers can arrive throughout the day at different times.

• Managing without the micro: Even though your team may have different in-person schedules, you should have clear goals and expectations for both on-site and off-site remote employees—this includes team collaboration as well as check-ins with management. For example, that could mean employees remain available to communicate in real-time during a specific window, even if they are not on-site. Or, maintaining clear boundaries around non-working hours, so no one is bombarded with notifications and requests in the evenings.

• True-fit tech stack: Consistent communication will be that much more important within your hybrid team. Pair your new schedules with the right tools, like Loom video messaging for feedback, updates, and training resources. Track projects in a project management tool like Asana or Airtable, or funnel your prospects through a sales pipeline within Hubspot. 

Another option to provide flexibility but also streamline expectations is designating days for specific activities. Here are a few examples: 

• A weekly “feedback day” where team members can send asynchronous video messaging to their coworkers about projects

• A day without live meetings so that everyone can focus on deep work

• An “in-office” day where most employees will be present, so you can get teams together to discuss ideas, innovate, and leverage social connections to improve products and processes

If you implement a tool like Loom for asynchronous communication, you can also use it to announce new company initiatives, such as the option for hybrid work. Video messaging that captures your personal excitement about the workplace transition or software rollout can be captured via webcam, and you can distribute a shareable link that the entire team can access whenever they are free to watch it. 

Sanam Shah, communications manager at Loom, states, “Whether your team is dispersed, hybrid, or fully remote, you can implement policies like online meetings even when you meet in person sometimes, a central communication channel, and asynchronous video messages. Policies like these create an equitable and scalable business that will work with the modern world.”

Using the right collaboration tools and communication practices continually reinforces these hybrid expectations. Loom videos can be useful during “feedback days” to deliver the week’s goals and highlight areas for improvement, such as quality of office work, deadlines, and more. 

This approach can minimize clunky transitions into using a new tool, confusion around the roadmap, and keep your teams informed. Be prepared to tweak the roadmap throughout the switch, and collect valuable lessons learned in the process.

Strategy 3: Create an information hub for accessibility

Your team might enjoy the flexibility of hybrid or distributed work, but still struggle to find the most current copy of a design file, the latest code review summary, or even the benefits package they need to opt into by the end of the month. Centralizing company resources equips your teams with everything they need to succeed, even when they can’t turn around and ask a coworker where to find something.

Consider creating a wiki with a tool like Confluence to store important information, or suites like Google Workspace to save essential documents on Google Drive. Host evergreen solutions in a knowledge base like Loom to organize essential videos that provide step-by-step instructions, key presentations, and weekly updates from feedback days.

Strategy 4: Adopt collaboration tools

Your team has been eager to embrace the option of working in a hybrid structure, and you’re seeing progress along the roadmap that you built. Still, in an effort to remain connected—or perhaps out of habit—their calendars are cluttered with meetings that simulate an in-person workweek. The environment may be hybrid and flexible, but no one has time for the deep work they need to complete to keep projects moving.

Striking a balance between live meetings and deep work can be difficult whether you’re in the office or at home. Your employees still need to express ideas, maintain feedback loops, and take action on that communication. Thankfully, the asynchronous collaboration tools in your hybrid work roadmap can help your teams work together anywhere, at any time.

Remember to keep your tech stack lean, focused on the essentials and minimizing redundancy. You may have chosen a sales CRM like HubSpot, a project management tool like Asana, live video conferencing tools like Zoom, and a video messaging tool like Loom. This blend of tools infuses collaboration features throughout the entire hybrid workspace, from brainstorming ideas to building projects to product release or delivery. It gets even better when they integrate, automating steps and streamlining your workflows.

When you want to reduce live meetings and free up everyone’s bandwidth, use video messaging to provide an asynchronous update or highlight specific feedback via screen share. Your teams can send Loom videos back and forth that deepen contextual understanding. They can comment, annotate, and automate action steps with calls to action—driving marketing campaigns, designs, sales pipelines, and code reviews forward. 

Take advantage of stored communication histories so you can always reference feedback or ideas, a benefit for all office work environments. When team members work on a project, like editing in a Google Doc, they can track activity, changes, and comments so everyone can see what’s been improved and share ideas to polish the resource.

You can also use collaboration tools to build team workplace culture. In an interview with Loom, Logan Mallory, VP of marketing at Motivosity, a platform for employee recognition and rewards, recommends the following: 

“Try hosting two optional weekly meetings covering relevant work that isn’t mandatory, like a knowledge-sharing session or a coffee chat on industry news. By giving some low-pressure opportunities to connect, you’re not forcing people to join but giving plenty of informal interactions to balance out all the structured workflows and foster team camaraderie.”

Combining in-person interactions, live virtual employee engagement, and asynchronous technology allows your hybrid teams to communicate more efficiently regardless of time or location. 

Fujitsu, the information and communications technology company, valued flexible work but only moved to a full hybrid model once faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, the majority of employees felt the office was the ideal workplace. However, after they had experienced working from home, their idea of great workspaces and collaboration changed.

According to the Harvard Business Review, in only a few months, 15% of employees still thought the office was a better environment to work in, 30% believed it was better at home, and 55% liked a hybrid option.

Employee expectations changed around the world, and Fujitsu needed to embrace the hybrid flexible work model to maintain productivity and attract high-performance professionals.

Head of global HR Hiroki Hiramatsu saw the change in their hybrid employees and said to the Harvard Business Review, “We are not going back. The two hours many people spend commuting is wasted—we can use that time for education, training, time with our family. [...] We are embarking on a work-life shift.”

Because of the shift, Fujitsu could keep its employees happy, attract talent, and invest in its team. These shifts to hybrid models have contributed to continued innovation, like how Fujitsu’s team innovated quantum technology to make quantum circuit computation 200 times faster in 2024.

The key to successful hybrid workplaces is communication. If your communications apps function more like a bad game of telephone, then morale and productivity is going to suffer. Following up on a Slack, just to be routed to an email, just to get detoured to a doc comment—all to get on the same page with one coworker about one project—is tough.

If you can balance these practices in the office and remotely, you can sustain hybrid work and benefit from increased productivity, all while remaining connected.

Loom is an asynchronous solution for teams who need to stay in the loop regardless of time zones or work locations. Your employees can record their screens and webcams to share ideas and presentations, and collaborate on projects.

Bolster your other collaboration methods tools, such as a project management platform or chat app, by recording video messaging and commenting with Loom’s shareable links. You can capture tone of voice, body language, and real time commentary that convey much more than a written message. Your team can also share videos through email or as an embed on internal wiki or resource web pages.

Loom’s AI add-on speeds up collaboration by generating video titles, summaries, and invite messages. This lets you spend more time in deep work, sharing ideas with your team, and tackling projects.

Try Loom to optimize your hybrid workplace today.