Leading Employees Towards Enhanced Performance, Productivity, and Engagement in Hybrid Work

Master’s Thesis Blog – Pauliina Sten
Master of Business Administration, Digital Business and Management

Introduction

Remote work and hybrid work have been an interest of mine ever since the pandemic introduced the new normal and locked people inside of their houses and apartments. Especially the leadership point of view interests me and the leader’s possibilities to support the employees in virtual working locations. I was thinking about this same subject for my thesis throughout my MBA studies and as soon as the process of writing a thesis became current, I knew what I wanted to study about. Despite the post-pandemic era, I work most of the time remotely and I have a clear vision of the challenges and opportunities that lie in remote and hybrid work. I also knew from my own experience that leadership has a big influence on the success of remote and hybrid work, and I wanted to include this aspect in my work as well. I decided to study how leadership could enhance employees’ performance, productivity, and engagement while working hybrid. Consequently, I was lucky and found a case company that shared my interest in the topic and saw the opportunity to gain some ideas for the thesis for themselves as well.

The case company of this thesis is a global logistics solutions provider offering versatile transportation solutions all around the world. The Company X is a subsidiary located in Finland and part of a large logistics corporation. Company X employs more than one hundred people in Finland having offices in a few locations around the country. Employees of Company X are specialists in their work and a high level of self-governance is required to execute the work successfully. Hybrid work was launched at Company X over a year ago. The case company surveys employees’ feelings and views regularly and the latest survey, conducted in May 2023, forms the basis for the thesis research. The survey of Company X studied a few subjects and one of them was hybrid working. The part handling hybrid working is included in the thesis.

The survey consisted of multiple-choice questions and a couple of free-text questions. Answers to the free-text questions were divided into themes and coded for comparison. Based on the themes received from the questionnaire, interviews were planned, continuing in line with the questionnaire’s themes. Since the questionnaire focused on the views of the employees, the interviews collected then the views of the team leaders. The questionnaire was quantitative, whereas the interviews were qualitative with semi-structured theme interviews.
Literature

The thesis consists of a few key terms and these terms are explained through literature findings. These terms are hybrid work and organization (a blended model of traditional office-based working and remote work); leadership (a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal); leadership versus management (management creates order and leadership movement); and virtual leadership (leading regardless of physical location).

In addition to the above, the REALM model by Wiatr & Skowron-Mielnik (2023) was introduced in the literature part to depict the important aspects of hybrid team management:

• Relationships: A hybrid team can include different types of remote working types and the leader must have the ability to form relationships with all employees and between the employees. It is the team leader's responsibility to make the team members feel relevant and included, thus making them work towards the shared goal while ensuring equality and nurturing social relationships.
• Effective communication: Communication in hybrid teams happens at the office and via remote channels. Leaders must communicate in a uniform style to ensure all team members receive the same information. Effective and consistent sharing of information prevents siloing between the team members in different locations.
• Autonomy: To ensure employee autonomy, self-governance in performing the job, and awareness of the commitments, tasks must be distributed precisely. ”The hybrid team leader should therefore analyze the work in terms of location-related limitations, with reference to the employees’ competences and deadlines, and distribute tasks in such a way that they are carried out autonomously, without the need of control by the leader or other employees.”
• Leading beyond ego: In this aspect, leaders are seen in the middle of the hybrid team and their task is to facilitate and coordinate. The leader brings the hybrid team together, sets the rules, and shares the vision of the common goal. This attribute leans clearly towards transformational leadership: team leaders should take into account team members' ”...different needs and wishes of people as well as their talents and skills, has an opportunity to use all those different demands in the right way and support the employees in developing and demonstrating these key skills and behaviors.” Empathy and requesting feedback are closely connected to the term.
• Motivation through trust: Effective and successful hybrid working is built on trust that stems from results. Results show that employees are working despite the remote locations. To succeed in this, the hybrid team leader must ensure the team members have the necessary competencies to do the job: ”In hybrid work, it is more difficult to compensate for competency deficits - in the office, you can always ask someone, replace someone - at home, you have to be able to perform the task on your own.” Employee coaching, feedback, professional growth, competence development, and enhancement of self-esteem are closely connected to this term.

The REALM model was included in the thesis to assist in conducting the interviews and to reflect the research findings.

Conclusion

In hybrid work, the team leader’s role is even more emphasized since remote working challenges the team. Maintaining the team functional, ensuring that goals and requirements are known, and information is shared evenly need to be ensured. Company culture, trust, leading by example, and clear roles help employees to succeed in hybrid work.

As a result, it can be concluded that Company X could enhance employee performance, productivity, and engagement through leadership in hybrid work with the following measures: increasing the availability of the team leaders, emphasizing the common goals, and cooperating with the team leaders from other teams.

References:

• Beno, Michal, 2021, On-Site and Hybrid Workplace Culture of Positivity and Effectiveness: Case Study from Austria.
• Northouse, Peter G., 2022, Leadership Theory & Practice.
• Wiatr, Anna; Skowron-Mielnik, Beata, 2023, Hybrid team management: The long and winding road.

Biography

Pauliina Sten has a versatile background in worldwide project logistics and international trade. Her work requires a high level of self-governance andindependence, both attributes needed in remote and hybrid work. Her goal is to engage the leaders to consider the needs of the employees while working hybrid, to achieve a higher level of employee performance, productivity, and engagement.