Building Community and Engagement with Hybrid Teams
June 26, 2025
By Gayle Horyn, VP, People and Culture, Maplesoft
Hybrid workplaces have become the standard for tech companies. Initially seen as a compromise between in-office and remote environments, hybrid has evolved into a model of its own.
Over the past five years, Maplesoft has transitioned from a primarily office-based workforce, through 100% remote during the pandemic years, to a hybrid model. Today, most employees work from an office two days a week and several are fully remote. Maintaining our strong culture has been a top priority throughout this transition. The principles of Trust and Transparency, Communication and Connection helped us maintain engagement through the pandemic and beyond.
Trust & Transparency
Trust & Transparency go hand in hand. At Maplesoft, our leadership team has committed to being as transparent as possible. We run quarterly all-hands meetings where we review company financials, good or bad, and share product and strategy updates. Employees have learned to trust that the company will be honest with them. Even when we don’t have all the answers, or during difficult times when the news isn’t positive, we maintain regular and transparent communication.
The other side of the equation is trusting employees. One of our core values is Respect, and it starts with treating employees as the professionals that they are. Leaders trust their teams to do their jobs; we don’t monitor start and stop times or require proof that people are working. We focus on outcomes. Individual issues are treated as such; we do not generalize.
Communication
Being remote during the pandemic forced us to be more mindful about communication. We asked leaders to increase touchpoints through regular one-on-ones with all employees and more team meetings. We increased the frequency of company-wide meetings and written communication. We tightened up our communication channels, committing to Zoom for virtual meetings and Slack for informal chats, quick questions or updates, and social messages. Email was reserved for more official communications, meeting invitations, etc. We turned off other tools to ensure everyone was using the same platforms.
The pandemic introduced us to terms like synchronous vs asynchronous communication. Without being overly prescriptive, we incorporated these concepts into our daily work. We have learned what topics require ‘live’ discussions and where we can replace meetings with a Slack discussion or share information in advance to reduce ‘on-camera’ fatigue.
As we returned to the office, we quickly discovered that hybrid meetings were less effective and we agreed to, wherever possible, plan meetings that were all online or all in-person, not mixed. We learned through trial and error what types of meetings and conversations were better suited to online vs in-person.
These pandemic-era changes altered and improved our corporate communication strategy and continue to allow our teams around the world to stay informed and connected without feeling overloaded.
Connection
New ways of communicating led to new ways to connect. Slack used to be a tool used primarily by our development teams; now every employee in the company has an account. It has become the virtual equivalent of water cooler chats and popping by someone’s office. We use it for team updates, quick questions, direct messaging and fun. We have channels dedicated to IT announcements and office alerts, as well as social channels like cooking from home, photography, crafts and pets!
Our workforce spans seven countries, including Canada, US, UK, Germany, France, China, and Japan. Building relationships and connections across various small offices and remote groups had always been a challenge. With all communications suddenly online during the pandemic, our head office employees found themselves in the same situation as our remote employees. This was big lesson for us.
Being fully remote leveled the playing field. The changes to our communication strategy allowed our existing remote employees to feel more connected to their colleagues. They made connections and were involved in discussions they may have missed out on in the past. Maintaining this was one of our key objectives as we transitioned to hybrid.
During the pandemic, we heard that employees felt connected to their own teams but were missing the connection to others across the company. We launched a few initiatives to intentionally connect people virtually. We started regular trivia games with Kahoot and employed a Slack tool called Donut to randomly pair people for 15-minute calls. These initiatives helped our team build connections where they didn’t exist before and get to know people in new ways.
While we were remote, we moved several of our traditional in-person events online. As we transitioned to a hybrid model, some of these changes became permanent, allowing everyone across the company to participate together. We replaced our end of year celebration with a social Zoom call; training sessions, lunch and learns, guest speakers and our annual hackathon are held online so that teams from all over the world can connect, celebrate and learn together.
While including remote employees is critical, it is also important for us to engage in person when we can. We balance remote events with live gatherings such as monthly office lunches, celebrations and various social functions throughout the year.
One challenge we faced when transitioning from fully remote to hybrid was to demonstrate the value of coming to the office. People were productive at home; the flexibility was compelling. We attempted to articulate something intangible: what we gained by working in-person together; something beyond individual productivity. We focused on establishing purposeful time together. Finding a common day to come in so that everyone was able to connect with the right people was an important decision. We are learning to plan in-person meetings and events on those common days and schedule online meetings on our work from home days; fully realizing the benefits of a hybrid model!
While hybrid may have been thrust upon us, it has become a legitimate and valuable model of working. In order to be successful, organizations must be intentional about what they want to accomplish and how they will work together.
Author bio
Gayle Horyn is a Human Resources professional who has worked in the tech space for over 20 years. Currently, Gayle serves as the VP of People and Culture for Maplesoft, a global organization with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. Maplesoft has provided mathematics-based software solutions to educators, engineers, and researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for over 35 years.
Maplesoft joined TAP Network in 2024.