The Secret to Building a Hybrid Workplace | Part III: Hiring Hybrid Employees

This article is a part of our series about building the ultimate hybrid workplace. Learn about the benefits of this type of workplace and how to leverage collaboration while working with both in-person and remote employees.

A hybrid workplace is when a company has a combination of in-person and remote employees. 

With a hybrid workplace, businesses have the opportunity to hire top talents who aren’t limited by location or time zone. However, that doesn’t mean you should just hire any employee that fulfills your hard skill requirements, such as education level and work background. They must also be able to optimally and effectively work in a hybrid work environment. Here we’ll go over what traits to look for when you’re building your team.

8 Employee Traits to Prioritize in a Hybrid Workplace

1. Collaboration

Working remotely means that it’s easier for individual employees to feel like they’re working alone and not in a team. Make sure employees you hire are open and willing to collaborate and work in teams and actively communicate when they need help. Failing to collaborate will only result in missed deadlines, internal conflicts, and mistakes, which can cause bigger problems later.

2. Transparency

Because managers don’t have a complete picture, hybrid workplace employees must be fully transparent about their workload and the like. They need to communicate when they’re overwhelmed or when they think they can’t meet a deadline. By doing so, team members and leaders better understand their capacity and can adjust their expectations accordingly. They can also help employees grow and meet objectives.

3. Agility and Flexibility

Many companies are also still experimenting with the hybrid setup, so employees need to be open to change. 

4. Goal-oriented

Hybrid employees need to be aware of deadlines, company standards, and policies and take steps to work toward goals. Without a goal-oriented mindset, they can easily fail to follow through on goals and objectives especially without in-person oversight.

5. Growth Mindset

On the other hand, employees shouldn’t only focus on daily/weekly goals—they should also aim toward growth. They should have a vision of where they want to be three to five years from now and have a fair idea of how to reach this. Having a growth mindset means that employees are willing to go the extra mile for personal and business growth.

6. Customer-centricity 

Customers play a big role in any business’s success. You need employees who care about customer relationships, growth, and acquisition as much as you. With a customer-centric mindset in a hybrid workplace, they’ll actively look for ways to improve customer experience.

7. Determination

Again, because managers won’t be able to monitor new employees as much as in a traditional work environment, they need to be extra determined in their work. Hybrid workplace employees need to have perseverance and a strong mind to finish required work excellently and on time—whether they’re working remotely or in-office.

8. Strong Communication

Tied strongly to collaboration and transparency, the main key to a successful hybrid workplace is to have strong communication. Employees need to communicate when they need access to certain resources, when they need deadline extensions, and when they’ve encountered problems. Failing to communicate results in bigger problems, especially when no one else knows what you’re going through.

Leverage the Right Tools for a Fully Collaborative Hybrid Workspace

A hybrid workspace is the future of work, as it supersedes the shortcomings of both in-person and remote work arrangements.

However, a hybrid workspace doesn’t come without its weaknesses. To overcome these, encourage a culture of collaboration by empowering and supporting your employees with the right tools.

Aircall understands the challenges of collaborating and aligning teams with various work settings, which is why we don’t provide just any calling tool. We provide a calling tool that allows you to record and transcribe meetings in real-time so you gain full transparency even if you’re not attending the meeting. Plus, it has Business Hours Features that help employees maintain a work-life balance while having an optimized employee scheduling. Most of all, Aircall integrates with over 80 tools that help improve communication, streamlines team workflows, and more.