Bridging Remote and On-Site Teams: Communication Strategies for Hybrid Financial Workplaces

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a gigantic remote work experiment across global industries. As finance firms transition to post-pandemic operations, most are adopting a “hybrid” model combining on-site and remote workers.

The hybrid approach aspires to “get the best of both worlds”. Employees gain location flexibility while firms retain physical offices and in-person collaboration. However, this split of on-site and virtual teams also poses new challenges in terms of communication, culture, and governance.

This article will explore key issues hybrid financial firms face in bridging remote and in-office staff. It will also offer actionable strategies to overcome barriers and unite geographically dispersed employees.

What Are Hybrid Financial Workplaces?

Hybrid financial firms have core teams working from a physical office location, while others operate from home or third-place workspaces. Some staff may divide time between on-site and off-site. Hybridity exists on a spectrum and can take many forms across locations, teams, and individuals.

The hybrid model aims to enhance flexibility and resilience via distributed operations. It emerged as a solution to fully-remote work’s shortcomings around collaboration, innovation, culture, and governance. Avoiding a physical vs virtual “us vs them” split is crucial for hybridity to succeed.

Integrating on-site and remote staff into a cohesive whole requires a concerted change to processes, software engineering products, leadership style, and metrics. Without thoughtful communication strategies, hybrid workplaces can heighten dysfunction between locations instead of eliminating it.

The Promise and Perils of Hybrid Working In Finance

Hybridity holds much promise, especially for financial services dominated by location-centric work. Wider talent reach, greater continuity, and reduced costs are some upside benefits. But the model also poses formidable challenges, including:

1. Trust deficit and relationship gaps: Physical distance and lack of in-person interactions can undermine trust building between on-site and remote workers. This manifests as a reluctance to collaborate across locations.

2. Information and visibility asymmetries: On-site teams may hoard context, plans, and decisions within local networks. Remote teams can be left guessing with poor access to unwritten knowledge. Innovation suffers from these information silos.

3. Leadership engagement challenges: Traditional management steeped in face-time and proximity struggles to adapt. Lack of visibility into remote working patterns poses compliance risks and undermines governance.

4. Cultural & technical fragmentation: Without shared context and norms between locations, teams can fracture across geographical lines. Disparate tools and broken integrations worsen divisions.

These issues demand targeted strategies centered on communication, transparency, and technical integration. Getting hybrid right in financial services requires unifying practices across the whole organization - not just pockets of remote and on-site staff.

Communication Strategies for Hybrid Financial Workplaces

The good news is that with the right strategies, the challenges of hybrid teams can be successfully overcome. Here are some best practices to bridge on-site and remote employees:

Foster Personal Connections

Don’t underestimate the value of water cooler chat in building relationships. Recreate this remotely with video calls for non-work conversations and virtual coffee meetings. Share hobbies and interests to foster personal connections. A buddy system that partners on-site staff with remote colleagues can also help build bridges.

Overcommunicate Work Issues

Information silos thrive when communication is focused solely on deliverables. Establish open channels for team members to discuss blockers, give progress updates, and ask questions as work happens. This transparency bridges knowledge gaps between on-site and remote staff.

In addition to work-related moments, it also improves employees' personal connections. As per the British Red Cross Loneliness at Work Report, 43 percent of remote or hybrid workers reported feeling a stronger bond with their coworkers.

Visibility & Accessibility of Leaders

Make sure remote staff have regular touchpoints with leadership via one-on-ones, skip-level meetings, office hours, etc. Leaders should also join team standups and socials. This visibility reinforces culture and gives remote workers face time with decision-makers.

Unified Platforms & Workflows

Standardize tools and systems across the organization. Using unified communication and project management platforms means every team member has equal visibility and input into work, regardless of location. Integrated workflows also aid compliance governance.

Inclusive Meeting Practices

Meetings are make-or-break for hybrid team inclusivity. Default to video conferencing instead of in-person meetings. Circulate agendas in advance so remote attendees can prepare. Facilitate active participation by directly inviting remote colleagues to contribute ideas. And always capture meeting actions for prompt distribution.

Distributed Leadership

Build a network of leaders across office locations to share the responsibility of engaging hybrid teams. Local team heads have better visibility into remote office dynamics and can relay challenges upwards. Equip these distributed leaders with training and resources to support remote employees.

Remote Onboarding & Learning

Just like culture, governance, and work norms have to be actively transmitted to remote staff, especially new starters. Virtual onboarding sets clear expectations around communication protocols, work practices, etc. Supplementary remote learning resources and access to subject matter experts bring remote workers up to speed.

Metrics Focused on Outcomes

Judge hybrid teams based on outputs and outcomes rather than physical presence or visibility. If the work gets done successfully, the model is working. Leverage collaboration analytics in enterprise software to glean insights into the health of hybrid teams. Act early if issues emerge.

Maintaining Culture & Governance Across Hybrid Teams

Company culture is transmitted through people practices like training, social events, and performance management, which are designed for office-based staff. Governance norms are also embedded locally via policies tailored to in-person work.

With remote members, extra effort is needed to disseminate cultural knowledge, and compliance practices and acclimatize new hires. Below are some tactics for consistent culture and governance across hybrid finance teams:

Build a Network of Distributed Leaders

Rather than centralized, top-down oversight, a distributed leadership model engages frontline team heads across different locations. These distributed leaders take ownership of engaging remote staff in their locale.

The inherent proximity remote office heads have to their teams allows them to discern unspoken challenges. They can relay crucial on-ground insights to company leaders who lack this visibility.

Equip these distributed leaders with training, resources, and mentorship to support remote employees. Work through them to disseminate culture, track compliance and boost local engagement.

Customize Onboarding for Remote Employees

Inconsistent onboarding processes reinforce the distance between established on-site employees and incoming remote hires. New starters lack context in company norms, which worsens isolation.

That is why customized virtual onboarding experiences are crucial. Beyond logistics, clearly set expectations around communication protocols, work practices, etc. Introduce new remote hires to virtual buddies as go-to contacts.

Create supplementary training resources and mentoring check-ins exclusively for remote employees playing catch up on context missed by seasoned on-site folks.

Focus Performance Metrics on Outcomes

Location-centric leaders often wrongly correlate physical presence with productivity. But judging remote staff based on face time rather than work output is fundamentally unfair.

The only relevant metric is whether hybrid teams meet goals and key results, however, they choose to work. As long as the work gets successfully completed, the model is effective.

Inclusive cultures celebrate outputs, not office attendance. Analyze collaboration analytics and digital achievement signals to glean insights. If remote teams fall behind, address root issues early before problems spiral.

Reinforce Governance Digitally

Just as culture norms have to be actively transmitted to distributed teams, so must governance practices - especially for regulated industries like finance.

Leverage digital channels to reinforce compliance and security awareness. Conduct mandatory cybersecurity modules and share regulatory update newsletters with all employees regardless of location.

Audit remote staff practices more frequently while being cautious not to undermine trust. Automate processes wherever possible to leave less room for human lapses.

Unified communication trails in services like Slack also provide transparency over due diligence.

Communication Technology Recommendations

Equipping hybrid financial workplaces with user-friendly, enterprise-grade collaboration tools is essential for success.

Video Conferencing

Platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco WebEx provide reliable video and audio for meetings. Features like digital whiteboards, screen sharing, and breakout rooms facilitate engagement.

Instant Messaging

Solutions like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat enable quick communication via chat rooms organized by topics, teams, or projects.

File Sharing

Dropbox, Box, SharePoint, and OneDrive centralize content access and synchronization across devices.

Productivity Software

Office 365, GSuite, and cloud-based tools facilitate content creation and transparency on work status.

Project Management

Platforms like Asana, Trello, and Monday.com provide Kanban boards to visualize and advance projects.

Making Hybrid Work in Financial Services

Early hybrid remote models were reactionary responses to pandemic-enforced disruption. However sustainable hybridity requires long-term reimagination of people practices, leadership approaches, infrastructures, and processes.

The strategies in this guide are a starting point for financial institutions to bridge geographical and cultural gaps between on-site and remote teams.

With concerted effort, the best practices around communication, transparency, and distributed leadership can erase walls between locations. Well-executed hybridity gives financial firms the diversity and productivity benefits of flexible work without its dysfunction.

While the shift will require investment in change management, new technology, and employee experience, the payoffs warrant it. Hybrid is the future of how world-class financial firms will operate.

Key Takeaways

To recap, here are the main ideas around making hybrid work successful in financial services:

• Hybrid models combine the best of remote work and physical offices. However, bridging the geographical barriers between on-site and virtual teams poses challenges.
• Disparities in relationships, visibility, access to information, and leadership can fracture hybrid teams across location lines. An intentional effort must be made to connect remote and in-office staff.
• Communication strategies like informal social hours, overcommunication norms, and buddy systems help forge relationships. Unified collaboration platforms provide equal visibility.
• Adapting meetings, distributed leadership models and people practices foster consistent culture across physical and digital worlds.
• With the right infrastructure and change management, hybrid working unlocks productivity, innovation, compliance, and talent benefits for financial firms.