Working in a hybrid environment offers many advantages, but also raises challenges for both HR teams and employees. Managing a workforce split between the field and the office calls for ongoing refinements to ensure fair and effective coordination.
One of the main pitfalls of this model is that the data used for management comes mainly from the central organisation, often sidelining field teams. This results in a partial view of reality and a risk of decisions being disconnected from day-to-day operations. However, predictive analysis is now emerging as a genuine driver of growth and differentiation. In this context, how can we make full use of data from a hybrid working environment without rendering field teams invisible?
We help you identify the risks of management skewed by incomplete data and reconcile the realities of the field with those of the office.
Hybrid environment: a new challenge for data-driven management
HR data analysis in the context of hybrid management aims to better manage talent dispersed across multiple workplaces. The resulting reports and dashboards provide key insights into office attendance, working habits, and the specific challenges of managing a hybrid system. However, some data is easier to capture than others.
Multiple – and sometimes conflicting – workplace realities
Office-based tasks revolve around planning, analysis, and management. Operational teams, on the other hand, focus their efforts on execution, resolving on-site issues, or direct interaction with customers.
While field training is delivered mainly through informal channels, employees based on-site have easier access to training, mentoring, and tutoring.
All companies aim to improve the performance of their salespeople, repair technicians, engineers, insurance assessors, and logistics operators… This ambition and with it, a drive to ensure mobile staff enjoy the same working conditions.
Remote work, however, isolates field teams and erodes workplace connections with their colleagues. Implementing a comprehensive data-driven management strategy helps build bridges that create positive synergy.
The temptation of “office-centred” management
The workplace location does not determine your team’s ability to perform well or to thrive. Yet HR strategies often sideline field operators, who receive less support and have fewer opportunities for growth than their office-based colleagues.
In a hybrid working environment, office-centred management is not intentional but often stems from sidelining field teams.
When all employees work in the office every day, interactions with members of other departments and feedback happen naturally. Management becomes more challenging with a hybrid working policy, so it is in your best interest to minimise the creation of silos.
Which teams are most at risk of becoming invisible?
Teams that work mainly remotely may experience a sense of isolation. Salespeople, technicians, and operators at various levels in the field feel less connected to the rest of the team. This feeling of exclusion often goes hand in hand with difficulty in having their ideas heard.
This results in:
- A low level of recognition
- Difficulty in maintaining strong relationships with the rest of the team
- Exclusion from decision-making
International teams are also less likely to take part in workplace mentoring, training programmes, and informal conversations.
The biases of management based on incomplete data
Data-driven management in a hybrid environment can promote fairness, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace. It can also lead to biased behaviours, as highlighted in Progress’s study on the hidden risks of artificial intelligence.
65% of respondents suspect bias in their organisation’s data, while 78% anticipate the situation will worsen.
Exclusion from untracked activities
Do you treat the people you see regularly the same way as those you see only occasionally? Proximity bias does, in fact, affect data analysis and predictive models. These models are only reliable if the information feeding them is reliable.
Incomplete, inaccurate, or duplicated data can lead to distorted interpretations, bias decision-making, and even exclude non-instrumented activities from the equation.
Under-representation of field skills in HR tools
Operational tools within companies do not take into account field expertise and local specificities. Without these two aspects, the data collected may theoretically cover the key areas of your business. In practice, it overlooks a salesperson’s performance, a technician’s tacit know-how, or the current needs of a group of workers.
According to the 2024 Hybrid & Augmented Work Observatory, this trend complicates collaboration and onboarding for new hires. 57% of respondents believe it undermines spontaneous interactions, while 65% of professionals see breakdown in team cohesion as the main risk of the hybrid system.
Consequences for fairness, recognition, and performance
Management based on incomplete data leads HR managers to set the same objectives for all employees, without considering field realities. This can result, for example, in salespeople with unattainable targets, unvisited clients, and a sense of frustration among field teams.
Distance is also replacing travel time as a criterion for allocating field assignments. However, this notion varies from one region to another, which can disadvantage certain agents and undermine fairness between field teams.
Reconciling field data and office data in a hybrid environment
Data-driven management streamlines communication with leadership by relying on objective, factual information. The main challenge for hybrid companies lies in integrating reliable field data – team performance, results achieved, challenges encountered… Here’s how to implement a successful data environment policy.
Strategic data environment: better capturing weak signals from the field
Performance indicators provide an overview of your company’s health. Through predictive analysis of the collected data, you can identify priorities for developing your HR policy in a dashboard.
The process then makes it possible to detect weak signals from the field, including:
- Declining engagement and motivation
- Difficulty in meeting targets
- Increased absenteeism or lateness
- Changes in workplace behaviour
- Neglect of safety…
Adapting measurement and analysis tools to hybrid contexts
According to Forbes, 71% of companies planned to accelerate their investments in Data Analytics from 2018 onwards. This trend is clearly materialising today.
However, optimising management tools must follow a logic of adaptation. Your hybrid working environment requires digital governance through data to make more sophisticated use of information.
At the same time, share actionable data with managers – continuous learning, internal mobility, talent onboarding, knowledge transfer… Reconciling field data and office data makes it possible to visualise the true state of financial and strategic operations and assess risks.
Involve frontline managers to enrich the data
Frontline managers play a decisive role in ensuring compliance with remote working policies. Their position as mediators between leadership and employees:
- Ensures smooth and effective communication
- Helps safeguard employees’ mental health
- Supports the balance between productivity goals and teams’ flexibility needs
This versatility makes them key conduits for gathering field data and enhancing your company’s data-driven management.