The future? Hybrid.

The biggest (and only) certainty we all have at the moment is that the future of organizations will not be the same as what we have experienced in the past. There also seems to be a consensus that remote working is here to stay, even when teams can physically return to their workplaces.

This conviction is changing the way we think about team meetings, training, corporate events and, most obviously, teambuilding. In the past we had face-to-face team moments, then we abruptly switched to remote experiences and now it’s essential to think again about redesigning them for a future that will be hybrid.

Hybrid immersive experiences, what are they?

These are experiences that take place physically in the field, as they did in the past, and that involve the whole team, wherever they are!

They are certainly the most appropriate to apply at times when the organization wants to convey a certain message to the whole team, in a teambuilding format, for example, but where some employees are in person and others are remote.

For example, we could have part of the team or organization in a hotel in Portugal, with the challenge of finding and unearthing a real treasure chest, with various physical challenges along the way, but whose location coordinates are the responsibility of the remote intel team, which has to solve some online puzzles to obtain this information, which it then passes on to its colleagues in the field.

In reality, hybrid immersive experiences are not just a response to the new context in which we live, as they can be extremely useful for organizations that have always had and continue to have employees scattered around the globe. In these organizations, holding corporate events or teambuilding moments with the whole team was often postponed until the next opportunity to have all the employees together physically.

We know that many moments of development have been lost for these and other teams, simply because the most appropriate format was not adopted, but it is possible to design an emotionally powerful moment, with everyone taking part and conveying the necessary message of reflection that serves as a basis for team development.

In the future, we will be able to choose to work remotely or in one of the various physical facilities provided by our organization somewhere on the planet. Many of us already do this today. Some of us will never get to know many of our colleagues personally, in the flesh. But the possibility remains within our grasp of being able to build highly effective teams in the context that we will increasingly experience in the near future. A hybrid future.