Siloes in the workplace and how to start dismantling them

Have you noticed it yet?

The newest workplace silo creeping on to the scenes?

In the last 2 weeks I've had conversations with at least five clients who told me about a challenging situation that was brewing and that, when we look at it, was stemming from the new breed of silo that's starting to appear in our organisations, the great "purely office-based / hybrid + wfh"divide

In these organisations at least, there are the grumblings of new cliques and sub-cultures where some colleagues who are purely office-based are creating new rules and new processes that favour their also office-based colleagues, and (in the main) not their hybrid working and purely wfh colleagues

If you're sitting there now, having read this and thought "oh sh!t, that's us too!" what are you going to do about it?

Managing behaviours as opposed to skills is one of the most avoided areas of management

We don't know how to approach the issue, so we leave it a little longer, hoping it will go away on its own. And of course, it doesn't

We may even scratch the surface and make a comment about noticing something, and more often than not, the individual involved will feign ignorance and say they're not aware of it. So, what do you do then?

The fact is that bad behaviours in the workplace breed negativity and further bad behaviour

And un-checked bad behaviour then starts to effect motivation and productivity in those who can see it going unchecked

So, what can you do about it?

> As a team, agree your new hybrid working team values and behaviours. > Talk about the challenges to both working styles and agree what can be done to alleviate them > Encourage team cohesion and joint pursuit of your organisation's mission rather than focussing on the minute specifics of individual job descriptions > Agree how you're going to hold each other accountable for the upkeep of these agreed new behaviours

If you want to know more, we cover this and many other management challenges in Motivate, my 12-month wellbeing-led management skill and confidence certificated programme