Hybrid teams are a concept that most companies have never tackled before. However, as the workforce shifts to adapt to the new pressures and trends, hybrid teams are now widespread and common. Many companies are still asking their team members to work safely from home, especially with further virus variants on the loose. Those needed in the office often find themselves working on tandem with still-remote coworkers and business partners, building hybrid teams in every direction.

Of course, the ones most responsible for this transition are managers, those who will be leading teams of both live and remote employees. It’s no surprise managers are updating their skill sets to better manage hybrid teams from the office or from home, which ever the situation calls for. Many of these skills are technical, requiring managers to smoothly manage all-new software from virtual meetings to project collaboration platforms. Let’s dive into the top 5 tech skills that leaders will need to manage their new hybrid teams.

1. Dashboard Mastery of the Digital Workplace
The one thing all modern managers have in common is digital dashboards. The virtual workplace is made of shared software-platform work spaces where projects are collaborated on and files are shared. Whether you use one enterprise program or a dozen in a stack, a manager’s dashboards not only keep them informed and provide data-driven direction for improvements, but you can also (in many cases) customize the dashboards seen and shared by your team.

Dashboard mastery is your path to shaping what your team focuses on and how they mentally prioritize the dashboard information.

2. Hone Your Office Web Camera Techniques
Today’s business leadership has spent more than a few hours on web-cam leading and participating in virtual meetings. As a professional, this has become part of the job description so it’s time to hone your camera appearance skills. Business leaders and professionals today are adding new tech to the office to improve their professional appearance on camera. Ring lights, better cameras, directional microphones, tailored backgrounds and well-aimed camera angles are all part of a professional’s normal office equipment and tech skill requirement now.

3. Lead Meetings that are Engaging to Remote and Live Members
As a business leader, however, looking professional on camera isn’t your only virtual meeting challenge. You will also be mastering how to hold a meeting that is engaging for your entire remote team. Can you speak to a room of people and into a camera so that you are effectively engaging with remote and live meeting members? It’s time to start practicing that skill if it’s not in your repertoire already.

Many managers are taking hybrid meetings the other direction, inviting on-site employees to engage from their desks so that the entire meeting is effectively virtual, therefore can be lead with a unified method of communication.

4. File Management and Project Integration
On the other side of new leadership tech skills is the ability to manage the flood file integration from remote and on-site team members. For some industries, very little has changed as file management and collaborative digital projects were already the norm. However, for teams whose workflow is less digital by nature, the hybrid approach requires far more file submission and often data merging and project branching than ever before.

Become familiar, comfortable, and then savvy with the kind of file and data management necessary to manage a remote and live hybrid team together as they all send in work to be combined into the team effort.

5. A New Level of Analytics and Data-Driven Planning
Finally, bet prepared for the analytics. With everyone working together online, it is now possible to track more performance data points than ever before. Want to know how fast your team is submitting work, fulfilling orders, or even how much time they spend reading a document? Now you can. The challenge is both to master collecting the analytics you want and then making strong data-driven decisions to see even greater performance or achievement.

To find out more about how to deliver a delightful Employee Experience while working in a hybrid environment, speak to ServiceNow experts at ADVANCE, a ServiceNow Implementation Expert and a leading Managed Service Provider.