We are now approaching 12 months of managing remote working in some form or another. In the summer of 2020 some teams met for awaydays, others went back to the office for a couple of days a week some continued to work remotely.

I recently (during Lockdown Three) facilitated an action learning set with a Fundraising & Comms Team. We started by talking about connection and relationships at work. There was definitely a sense that they were missing face to face connection and that remote working was getting them down. The default was to look longingly back to the pre-COVID world and hope that we can go back to those days again then we will feel connected again. The truth is lack of connection and collaboration was an issue in open plan offices. Yes you can’t beat face to face connection but it’s not the whole picture.

It’s also important to remember that while many have been working remotely for a year many have been on furlough or out of work so we are all at different stages on a journey of adapting and finding ways to connect and collaborate.

That said many employees feel that they don't want to go back to the office full time. Accenture COVID 19 Consumer Research found that 35% of respondents want to work from home in the future and 73% said they enjoy working from home.

So how prepared are we for hybrid working? What will that look like? Why, you are probably asking, is it relevant for supporter experience?

Well we at the Supporter Experience Collective have long seen the need for teams to adapt to a more agile way of working. An agile way of working lends itself well to a hybrid approach to work. It might mean staff come into the office for a focused period of time to tackle a particular problem, or small working groups meet face to face over a couple of days. Online tools, like Mural, also mean that those who aren’t in the room can engage with the content as well.

Here are some thoughts on how you can prepare for the future of work which will not involve going back to normal.

• Learn from the past 12 months - build in some time to reflect as a team on what has gone well, what hasn’t and what have you learnt. Ask your team how they feel and ask them how they would like to work moving forward.

• Keep trusting our staff to do their best work flexibly. How? Focus on outputs not presentism. What does someone need to achieve, by when and how will you know they’ve been successful. Rather than you need to be at your desk 9-5, 5 days a week, doing something - what you do isn’t as important as showing up right!

• Use the times that we have to meet face to face really productively. Really focusing on 'the meeting' as an opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and connect. This will involve changing how we meet and putting more structure into collaborating. Asking what are you trying to achieve? Does a decision need to be made? If so then who needs to be in the room?

• Support those who have come into the workforce during the virtual world - this involves re -thinking inductions, mentoring, buddying and making connections across departments and teams. For some the virtual world will still be new to them - ask how they need to be supported to help them work at their best. For others the virtual world is all they know and they may feel constrained by the ‘old ways’. How can you support them to understand the needs of others in the team?

• Ensure that  you have the tech in place to manage a hybrid workforce. I've managed a team where half the team were remote and the other team were office based. Tech was a huge barrier to helping the team feel like one team. Think about what tools you are going to use to help you work in the real world and remotely.

Is your team ready to work in the hybrid world? The Supporter Experience Collective are running a virtual challenge to help you deliver a new fundraising idea in just two weeks. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to test a new way of working and bring others along with you even in a hybrid world join the challenge and learn how you can solve problems collaboratively both virtually and in real life. You can sign up here.