When your team works in different places, you have fewer chances to notice how everyone’s week is going. The answer isn’t to interpret online availability as a wellbeing measure. It’s to create useful opportunities for conversation.
Keeping that connection takes care. Your team members have different responsibilities and circumstances outside work, so the same approach won’t suit everyone.
Make check-ins about more than progress
A project update tells you what has been completed. It may not tell you where priorities are competing, which meetings are making focused work difficult or where someone is waiting for a decision.
Make space for practical questions: Which part of the week feels most difficult? What’s getting in the way? What needs clarifying? Listen for the person’s experience rather than assuming that the same arrangement works for everyone.
Keep expectations clear
Ambiguity can make a distributed team harder to manage. Agree when people need to be available, where important decisions are recorded and how to raise an urgent concern. Review these arrangements when they stop working.
Changes to hours or working arrangements may need agreement beyond the line manager. Be clear about what you can decide and what you’ll take forward.
Give everyone a route into the conversation
- Share meeting information in a way everyone can access.
- Invite input without assuming silence means agreement.
- Offer a private follow-up when a group discussion isn’t the right setting.
- Close the loop on questions and concerns raised remotely.
Practise before the difficult moment
The same conversation structure can help in person or on a call: explain why you’re checking in, describe what you’ve noticed, ask for the person’s perspective and agree a next step.
Hybrid work doesn’t remove the need for that human connection. It makes it worth planning more deliberately.
Adapted from CPC's existing article on managing hybrid workers.
Practical workplace learning, not individual clinical advice.