How to Spark Innovation in a Hybrid Workforce

At the end of 2022, VMware released their latest workforce trends report, The Distributed Work Dilemma: When Innovation and Job Satisfaction Compete, which features unique insights from 5,300 global HR, IT, and business decision makers, and employee-level respondents. The findings of VMware’s survey provide insight into how both employees and leadership are feeling about the future of work, focusing on topics such as workplace location policies, job satisfaction, power shifts, employee turnover, and how organizations are turning to automation, to enhance efficiency collaboration and job satisfaction. I had the opportunity to discuss important trends in the distributed workforce on a recent episode of the Future of Work Podcast with Renu Upadhyay (Gupta), Vice President of Marketing, End User Computing at VMware.

Here are four key takeaways from my podcast conversation with Renu that can help teams increase connection and spark innovation in the distributed workforce.

1. Hybrid work requires leaders to be flexible and adaptable, and lead with empathy

Three years since the COVID-19 pandemic forever changed the world of work, hybrid work has become our reality. It isn’t just where we work, it’s how we work and how we connect. VMware’s report found that 53% of employees will never work for a company that doesn’t offer work-from-anywhere or hybrid policies. This tells us that hybrid work isn’t going anywhere. Doing hybrid work well means allowing employees to have more agency and flexibility and empowerment in terms of their day-to-day work.

Renu and I discussed that in this new hybrid landscape, leaders cannot work from a fixed mindset. You must have an evolving mindset and be flexible, adaptable, and creative. The future of work is still evolving, and every organization has to figure out the right balance of what is going to work given their unique business and circumstances. Empathy for both our employees and customers becomes essential in an always evolving landscape.

2. Employee experience isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have

Prior to the pandemic, employee experience was something many leaders didn’t prioritize. In the hybrid normal, it’s impossible to ignore. Employee expectations have forever changed, and employees expect their company to ask what they are looking for, how they can deliver great work, and how they can collaborate in a meaningful way. There is a normalization now of talking about employee mental health and well-being, and understanding that if people can’t be their best selves and are burned out, then how are they supposed to be good managers or leaders? Research shows most employees feel burned out and disconnected from their coworkers. In VMware’s report, 50% of cybersecurity respondents said they had suffered from burnout in the past two years.

A silver lining of the pandemic has been that we are finally listening to what employees say they need to do their best work, especially when it comes to well-being, and that’s a good thing. We’re seeing a normalization of the conversation around how one’s personal life can impact their team’s day-to-day workflow, leaders having more empathy and understanding for how (and where) their employees are showing up, and having more flexibility around where one-on-one meetings are happening given each employee’s personal circumstances. Being a manager is not just about getting through a to-do list anymore. It requires understanding your team members more holistically.

3. Be intentional about fostering team collaboration and innovation

VMware’s report found that employees prefer flexibility, with 82% of respondents indicating they have higher job satisfaction when they can work from anywhere and aren’t mandated to go into an office on a regular basis. However, nearly two-thirds of all respondents also indicated that their organization is more innovative when employees are together in the office. This creates a challenge: How can leadership encourage meaningful innovation without impacting job satisfaction? Renu and I both agree that leaders and managers have to be intentional about how innovation and collaboration are being fostered in a distributed environment. It’s not enough to mandate people come into the office—especially if no one else is in the office when they come in!

The key is to make sure individual teams are being intentional about when they are coming together to work in-person and creating time for collaboration and idea sharing. This could also mean setting aside time for in-person office hours where employees can approach leaders, “walk around time” where managers are going around the office to visit their colleagues, and white boarding and ideation sessions for focused brainstorms. 79% of survey respondents said they've implemented mentorship and apprenticeship programs as well as meetings set aside for informal virtual gatherings, and 69% have increased the frequency of team retreats to bring everyone together.

4. It’s important to re-imagine how we measure innovation

Innovation is at the core of everything that we do in terms of business; customer satisfaction, performance, customer acquisition, how fast we're getting new products out and building new revenue streams. But you can't grow what you don’t measure. The past three years have taught us that innovation is not about measuring just productivity. It’s not about how many hours an employee logged into an application, it’s about how they can make a difference and how they can contribute to their organization. VMware’s research found that organizations with anywhere- and hybrid-work policies are more likely to have metrics in place to measure innovation; the top metrics being customer satisfaction, improved team performance, increased revenue, customer acquisition, and speed products or updates are released to market.

At the end of the day, innovation requires investing in digital tools and infrastructure to enable hybrid work, as well as creating a positive culture based on employee trust. VMware's report found organizations that implemented monitoring technology reported higher levels of employee turnover because monitoring technology created a lack of trust. Again, hybrid work isn’t about watching your employees. It’s not about whether they are online or where they are working from, as much as how they are working and coming together. Is your team able to connect? To share ideas? To innovate together? These are the key questions for the new world of work.

Learn more:

-Listen to the Future of Work Podcast conversation between Adam Smiley Poswolsky, Workplace Belonging Expert and Renu Upadhyay (Gupta), Vice President of Marketing, End User Computing at VMware.

-Read VMware’s 2022 Report: The Distributed Work Dilemma: When Innovation and Job Satisfaction Compete.

Disclosure: This article is part of a paid partnership between the author and VMware. This article was originally published by the author on LinkedIn on March 23, 2023.