DEI for the Blended Workplace
In 2020, remote work became commonplace for many. From allowing students to attend school from abroad, to helping employees with disabilities and chronic pain conditions work with necessary accommodations available at home but not in the workplace. It also acted as a double-edged sword, blurring the lines between home and the office, and causing exhaustion from an overload in virtual meetings.
Whether you appreciate being on-site, working from home, or a mix of the two, the blended workplace is becoming a reality. McKinsey reported that 63% of employees want to work in either fully remote or hybrid settings post-pandemic.
In essence, employees’ needs have changed over time and accommodations to support different working styles must be fulfilled. This will likely affect how you run your DEI programming, set goals and track metrics in the year ahead. In this article, we look at how to adapt DEI to fit a blended workplace.
How to adapt your DEI strategy to a blended remote-and-onsite workplace
As the blended workplace model (also known as the flexible or hybrid model) grows in use, your DEI strategy must shift to reach and engage with employees accordingly. To start, establish a protocol for blended meetings so that you’re prepared for each time. Here’s how:
Have the right tech available.
To ensure a smooth meeting, consider equipping your offices with central cameras and microphones that extend the room to those outside of the office or telepresence technology. Encourage remote employees to have their tech ready - to support this, send out a mini list of tips for effective virtual meeting practices or a tutorial for your virtual meeting platform. If you’re using a note-taking aid such as a whiteboard, try making it virtual or viewable on-screen for remote coworkers to contribute to. The Digital Workplace has several more tips on online and hybrid meeting etiquette.
📝 Tip: Have patience for tech problems and encourage others to do so as well! They’re a constant and will continue to be for some time to come. Consider recording all important meetings for team members to refer back to in the event that they experience lag or a weak connection.
Speak to people about what accommodations they need and how they can be included.
Use insights from remote and in-person coworkers to build solutions and effective accommodations. One important accommodation to consider is allowing for a five minute break between meetings so that remote coworkers rearrange their set up or check in with others at home such as children. This practice also helps all meeting attendees to reflect on the previous meeting and refocus!
Here are some extra articles around accommodations that might be helpful:
Keep engagement high by preventing social isolation.
What happens when half of the meeting attendees are in the office and half are dialing in remotely? What about when there are nine people in a room together and one person is dialing in? Social and physical disconnect can be demotivating or even alienating for colleagues. To address this, make sure there are norms established that ensure that people who are remote have equal opportunity to participate and interact.
Have opportunities where remote and in-person employees can get to know each other before they engage in DEI learning and discussion. Find ways to include remote coworkers in conversations as they are most susceptible to being left out. Also try sending out optional surveys to measure employee satisfaction and sense of belonging.
Avoid prioritizing in-person coworkers.
Being in-person determines a lot of how connections are built and potentially, who gets promoted. As an employee or leader working on-site, it’s possible to place greater value on in-person interaction and participation. Keep in mind that people choose to work from home for various reasons. Caregiving, a lack of accommodations for disabilities or chronic pain at the office, and wanting to escape a discriminatory or toxic workplace culture are just a few of many valid reasons. Evaluate your own personal biases towards remote work and performance.
Invest in remote and in-person tools to aid DEI learning.
DEI learning can be tricky to navigate in a blended workplace because of varying formats of content delivery. Crescendo offers Learning Moments for time-efficient, bite-sized DEI learning. Moments are accessible by all on Slack and Microsoft Teams and can be customized to deliver according to employees’ individual preferences. Users can also share their Learning Moments with teammates to start conversations. Book a demo to see them in action today!
