11 Tools + Tips to Make Your Hybrid Workforce Thrive

Choosing to take your workforce hybrid is one thing, but implementing successful hybrid workplace solutions is entirely different. Like transitioning to remote work or starting a new fitness regimen, the decision itself is important but the work that follows is vital.  We’ve partnered with over 15,000 teams to make six million+ connections, and one thing we’ve learned along the way is the importance of choosing tools wisely and implementing them thoughtfully. Here are eight tools that can help support your hybrid team—and help them thrive.

Recommended Tools:

1. Donut: Our remote and in-office friendly, purpose-driven programs integrate seamlessly with Slack and build meaningful human relationships that create camaraderie and community
2. Slack: Slack has continued to expand throughout the pandemic to offer various tools that work together and act as a virtual headquarters for your team. You can manage online communications, create theme-specific channels, and track all goals, deadlines, dates, conduct video chats, and more. Imagine having all the benefits of your office at your fingertips and on your screen. It’s also made to integrate seamlessly with most project management software (including ours!).
3. Bonusly: Recognizing people for a good job is crucial for keeping employ and with each other. The work and equitable recognition will become trickier as we start to shift into a hybrid model. Bonusly is the recognition expert, and we love how their software focuses on peer-to-peer recognition, transparency, and regular, small wins to keep teams motivated and engaged.
4. Hypercontext: Hypercontext is software specifically built to help managers outline clear expectations, communicate up and down the chain and facilitate professional development, all while tracking goals. The goal visualization makes this a fun and interactive way for employees to see progress towards long-term projects. At the same time, managers can stay on top of performance, no matter where the team is located.
5. Guru: Imagine giving every employee a pocket superstar assistant that keeps them in the loop on project information, contact information for your team, and organizing internal communication.
6. Polly: If you’re looking to make immediately data-driven decisions from your team, look no further. This polling app integrates with Microsoft Teams and Slack to make sending and receiving responses immediate. There are options to send responses to polls anonymously or voluntarily, and over 30+ templates to help with whatever you need (like meeting coordination)
7. Notion: Our team uses this project management system daily to transparently track tasks, document processes, and share essential policy updates. Notion is easy to set up, inherently flexible in terms of layout, and better for search than other tools we’ve tried.
8. Miro: One thing we’ve missed during this period of remote work is collaborative whiteboard sessions. Miro makes that accessible no matter where you’re working from and doubles as an interactive canvas to boot.

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Honorable Mentions

While they may not be tools, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention these three resources that have helped us (and our partners) prepare for hybrid work:

1.  Breakthrough Play: Gary is a strategic play consultant by day and improv comedian by night. His concept of purposeful play drives his facilitations and workshops, allowing teams to break down walls, explore their personal vulnerabilities, connect on a human level outside the 9-5 professionalism, and build stronger team communication and confidence. Gary’s interactive programs are designed to help your team become the best versions of themselves while learning how to level up their professional skills.
2.      Lifelabs Learning:  Lifelabs facilitates engaging science-based workshops that are guaranteed to help to transform essential skills into lasting habits. In short, they are here to support leadership training and change management while making it practical and interactive.
3.     Great Mondays: This culture design agency runs workshops, but also has a website with tons of  incredible resources for teams looking to rebuild perks and processes in their updated hybrid environment. When it comes to supporting culture in the workplace, their Culture Canvas is one of our favorite resources. Their team focuses on Culture Design which is based on the belief that when employees understand the why behind their work, they become more motivated, more invested and are happier doing it.

Feedback, feedback, feedback

Every hybrid team’s needs are unique. No matter the tool stack you build, making folks feel heard through feedback collection is key. You’ll learn important lessons about customizing each tool to your needs along the way—and give your team a sense of ownership by allowing them to participate in the procurement process.

In that spirit: we’d love to hear from you! Are there any tools you don’t see on this list that have worked well for your hybrid team? Anything you’ve been wanting to try? Hit the purple chat button to share your thoughts with a live human. We’ll be keeping this list updated as we learn more from our team and our partners.