You are a project manager responsible for the overall management of a large project to introduce your company’s technology into a new hospital. Some of your team members are co-located and others work virtually. You notice in hybrid project meetings that these engineers who are working remotely tend to be far more reticent than the other team members in volunteering ideas for solving problems.

This issue has coincided with the arrival of a management student from the local university who is keen to study a real-life management problem for her final-year undergraduate research project. You have asked her to study the experiences of these engineers in hybrid team working with a view to recommending any changes that may be necessary.

You ask her to start the research by sitting in on the project team hybrid meetings and, particularly, observing the behaviours of team members. What suggestions would you make to your student to help her structure her observation of the meetings?