For managers: Develop a better environment for hybrid work
How to ensure mental wellbeing in a limitless work environment
Together with the Association of Danish Lawyers and Economists, DJØF, and selected experts, IDA has developed three first aid kits to help you as a manager deal with hybrid forms of work in the best possible way.
This theme focuses on limitless work – that is; in what ways our work life can be without limits, and how you can best handle this as a manager.
This page includes:
- A video with Associate Professor Anders Raastrup Kristensen, PhD, who describes the challenges of limitless work, and how best to handle the challenges that can arise.
- The article: A manager's positive role in the limitless work life prepared by IDA on the basis of the publication Ledelse uden grænser (Management without limits).
- A dialogue tool and a handout to be used in the dialogue on workplace experience with limitless work.
- A tool to help you and your employees to better reflect on personal boundary management strategies, which can also be used in the team as well as in 1:1 conversations. The tool is developed in collaboration with organisational psychologist, PhD, Vivi Bach on the basis of her research on limitless work.
How to start the dialogue
Our ways of collaborating have developed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic - and they are likely to keep doing so. When your team or department meet in new constellations, you need to talk about how you can best work together. You can choose the tool that best suits the situation at your workplace. You may also choose to work with both tools if you are looking to explore the theme of limitless work in greater depth.
If you want to work together in the team, you can begin by doing as follows:
- Start by showing the video at a joint meeting and discuss the most important challenges and strengths of flexible work life.
- Divide your staff into small groups and let them discuss one or more of the tools. If you use "Become aware of your boundary management strategies", remember the handout "Five forms of limitless work" as well.
- Recap with all the groups together and let the groups present the main results from their discussions.
- Agree the next steps with the team, and who does what.
If you want to begin by entering into dialogue with you staff individually, you can show them the video and send them the tool "Become aware of your boundary management strategies" to give them the opportunity to prepare and reflect in advance of your next 1:1 conversation or personal development review.
Video: Limits in the hybrid work life: Challenges and possibilities
Start by watching the video with Anders Raastrup Kristensen for a general idea of the challenges and possibilities of a limitless work life.
The role of the manager in the limitless work life
As a manager, it is important to keep in mind that limitless work can be a source of both well-being and dissatisfaction. So, if you want to promote well-being, it is your responsibility to create a framework for limitless work within which all employees can function and thrive.
Based on the challenges and possibilities of limitless work, we have gathered seven tips for managers who lack specific tools to handle the limitless working forms.
A managers positive role in the work life without limits
Your role as a manager in the work life without limits is less about instructing, motivating or supervising, and more about helping your staff to flourish in changing and loosely structured contexts. Get seven tips on how to create the best framework for limitless work.
Tools for the department
Download two tools to help you start a conversation on limitless work at your workplace. You can share the handout "Five forms of limitless work" with your team before the dialogue to help you define and discuss from the beginning limitless forms of work that affect your workplace. The tool for dialogue will help you ask and answer the right questions when the department needs to find possibilities to improve well-being and make room for differences between staff.
The "Become aware of your boundary management strategies" tool can be used in the team to raise the issue of boundary management strategies and collaboration. But as a manager, you can also use it to become more aware of your own boundary management strategies, as well as in 1:1 conversations with employees, such as personal development reviews.
Tool for dialogue on limitless work in hybrid teams