Author: Workrowd

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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

3 ways to better support family caregivers right now

Do you know which of your employees are family caregivers? Statistically speaking, the majority of them likely are, although fewer than half of employers track this data. Researchers at Harvard Business School found that 73% of U.S. employees are caring for a child, parent, and/or friend. With the novel coronavirus forcing drastic changes to what caretaking requires, and pushing even more people into the caregiver category as their loved ones struggle to recover from COVID-19, it’s crucial that employers recognize the additional strain this can place on employees.

In the same HBS study referenced above, more than 80% of caregivers surveyed admitted that their caregiving responsibilities affected their productivity. Accordingly, beyond just being the right thing to do, taking steps to better support employee caregivers has a strong business case. While some employees may be hesitant to share details about their caregiving relationships at work, it’s important nonetheless that companies put structures and benefits in place to ensure employees can succeed no matter what they may be dealing with in their personal lives.

Considerations when designing a program to support employee caregivers

As mentioned above, the first items to take into account when determining how to support employees who are family caregivers are privacy and equity. Employees should not feel obligated to disclose their caregiving roles, nor should they have to question whether being a caregiver will potentially be used against them in deciding who will receive challenging assignments, promotions, pay raises, etc. While it can be useful to understand exactly which employees are caring for a child, relative, or friend, it’s more important to ensure that all your workers are aware of your company’s available accommodations as anyone’s caregiving status can change at any moment. Accordingly, focus on education and transparency more so than identifying your employees with caregiving responsibilities directly.

As part of your education efforts, it’s also important to ensure that employees know that your company both supports and respects employee caregivers. Build awareness about the challenges that family caregivers face, and how your company helps employees address them. Make sure that your sensitivity training for managers includes content on caregiving so that they can best meet the needs of their team members.

Lastly, don’t forget to factor caregiving into your benefits programs. If you can offer daycare and/or related subsidies, flexible work hours and remote work, and healthcare plans that are inclusive of a variety of family structures to ensure your workers can access coverage for those who need it, it will go a long way towards making your workplace friendly and welcoming to employee caregivers. Don’t forget to ensure that all your employees are aware of the full extent of the benefits you provide!

Recommendations for building inclusion for caregivers in your workplace

While the considerations listed above are crucial to form the basis of your program, these efforts will fall flat if your caregiving employees don’t feel welcomed and included within your workplace. There are a number of approaches you can take to building belonging for these team members, but we’ve listed our favorites below:

  • Connect employees with resources. Beyond offering specific benefits to support caregivers as mentioned above, and especially if that’s not achievable within your budget, simply providing a list of relevant resources can be helpful. Assemble information about the services and supports that are available to different types of caregivers, whether they’re responsible for an elderly relative, have young children, or are the guardian for an adult who is ill and/or disabled. Host these repositories somewhere easily accessible, and remind employees of their existence as needed.
  • Make your events inclusive and accessible. Obviously a lot has changed since the pandemic hit, but if all of your employee events are being held outside of work hours, they’re likely excluding folx whose personal lives include caregiving. Take people’s non-work commitments into account when you’re planning initiatives, opting for lunch and/or workday times rather than nights or weekends. If you do schedule programming during off hours, try to make it family-friendly, so people can bring their children/relatives rather than having to simply skip it.
  • Create a caregiver employee resource group. Caregiving can be extremely isolating and emotionally taxing. By connecting employees with their colleagues who are facing the same struggles, companies can build their employer brand at the same time they’re making something very difficult for their employees a bit easier. Through this group, employees can share recommendations of care providers, exchange supplies (e.g. passing on gently used children’s toys), and commiserate.

How are your employee caregivers doing today? Do you know? If not, the first step is to check in with them, then take steps to address their needs accordingly. If you’re looking for an easy way to aggregate resources for certain groups of workers, connect employees with shared experiences, stand up employee resource groups, and/or easily monitor employee engagement and wellbeing, Workrowd is here for you. Contact us at hello@workrowd.com to see how we can help you better support employee caregivers and make your entire workplace more inclusive.

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Company Culture

The reign of the customer focused organization is over

There is a frequently quoted phrase that says that, ‘your employees are your greatest asset.’ Unfortunately though, while most companies will agree with this claim on its face, there are relatively few that actually walk the walk when it comes down to it. This ultimately comes at a great and often unforeseen cost. In the U.S. alone, unhappy employees cost their organizations upwards of $550 billion per year.

We write a lot about the cost of disengagement, lack of diversity, and other metrics here on this blog, many of which intersect and interact with employee happiness. Ultimately, creating happy, healthy environments for employees that prioritize both physical and psychological safety, that include opportunities for training and growth, and which offer space for community, can drive business outcomes in ways that many executives overlook.

Great time and care is put towards nailing down buyer personas, learning everything possible about them, and seeking to impress and delight those prototypical customers at every turn. These are the hallmarks of a customer focused organization. Workers are rarely given the same treatment. At the end of the day though, if your employees are your greatest asset, shouldn’t you know them as well as you know your customers?

The benefits of shifting focus from customers to employees

The quote in the first sentence of this post is often attributed to Richard Branson, who also said “I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.” By that logic, if you’re an entirely customer focused organization intent on making your buyers happy while neglecting your employees’ needs, your goal of happy customers will always remain out of reach. If your employees are treated poorly, that will translate into the level and quality of service your customers receive. Starting out at the employee level ensures that your workers will be prepared and committed to performing in a way that leads to success with customers.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, researchers note that the benefits of positive cultures far outweigh those of “cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners” workplaces focused purely on client outcomes. They furthermore state that the costs of negative cultures come in many forms including adverse health outcomes, disengagement, lack of loyalty, and more. Conversely, employees at organizations with positive cultures experience wellbeing at levels that boost engagement and productivity. Both the costs and benefits are clear, making it a no-brainer to orient your company goals around employees, rather than customers.

How you can become employee-focused

For many companies, this will not be an easy shift. Some version of ‘the customer is always right’ or ‘our customers come first’ is embedded into the value system of a large swath of organizations. In and of itself, this isn’t a problem, but very few say the same, or even anything, about employees. Accordingly, becoming employee-focused will require a significant reframing of how the company operates in pursuing its core business functions.

While there may have previously been an expectation that employees would work an unhealthy number of hours in order to meet and exceed every customer demand, the focus instead should be on empowering employees with the tools and support they need to fulfill their duties in a reasonable timeframe. This may include pushing back on customers where needed and appropriate. We have included a few concrete ideas of how to begin the transition below:

  1. Inform your employees of your plan, and solicit their input. It’s important to evaluate where your culture stands currently before you can decide how to proceed. Start by asking your employees. Making them feel involved and valued is the first step towards becoming more employee-focused.
  2. Revise your values and systems to prioritize employee wellbeing. As mentioned above, your employees’ happiness and wellbeing must be bumped up to the top of the priority list. This means that many of your policies will likely need an overhaul. Rather than fixating on presenteeism and/or hours worked, develop new performance evaluation criteria based on quality of work completed. Invest in your employees’ development. Give them opportunities to connect and build community with their colleagues rather than pitting them against one another or discouraging socializing as a productivity drain.
  3. Lead with transparency and empathy. While some aspects of culture change can rise up from the grassroots, change of this sort needs to be modeled at the top in order to succeed. Strive to infuse your interactions and communications with empathy, and be open and transparent with employees at every opportunity. When done well, you’ll see a ripple effect throughout your entire organization, as people mimic and repeat the positive behaviors they’ve seen within and among their own teams.

The singular focus on customer happiness is an outdated notion that needs to go the way of the telegram. It’s time to do away with the customer focused organization and usher in a new era of employee focused organizations. Workrowd’s platform empowers employees to build workplaces they love, and equips executive and people teams with the data they need to manage and measure employee wellbeing. If you’re ready to become an employee-focused workplace, come check us out at workrowd.com.

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Employee Experience

Designing your employee experience strategy for impact

As the pandemic drags on, delivering a top-notch employee experience has become both more difficult and more important than ever before. Employee needs have shifted and intensified, and the uncertainty has made it even more challenging to design an effective employee experience strategy. While many organizations have looked towards large-scale policy changes and benefits overhauls, there are actually quite a few small changes that can do wonders for your employee experience during this critical time.

It’s important not to let your employee experience decline amidst all the turmoil. According to a Pew research Center survey, more than one-third of Americans have experienced clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both since the pandemic began. Given that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses as much as $300 billion and is responsible for 120,000 deaths each year, this is not a statistic to be taken lightly. Aside from just being the right thing to do for employees, companies have a financial imperative to help support the mental health of their workers throughout the duration of this crisis.

Key areas to focus on to boost your employee experience

Employee needs will obviously vary by organization and individual, so the best thing you can do is to ask your people how you can support them. Broadly speaking though, a large number of employee needs fall into the three buckets outlined below. Solving for these issues is a great place to start when looking to adapt and improve your employee experience strategy today and on through the next phases of the global pandemic.

  • Making employees feel valued. At this difficult time when many employees are compromising other aspects of their life (health, childcare, etc.) to fulfill their work responsibilities, the worst thing an employer can possibly do is to make their workers feel that they don’t matter. Employees who don’t feel valued are unlikely to see any reason to give their all at work, and will be significantly more likely to leave if they have the opportunity.
  • Making employees feel safe. Taking every precaution possible to protect the health of your employees is a crucial component of delivering a positive employee experience at all times, but especially in the current climate. That means letting workers who can work from home do so, taking every safety measure possible for those workers who have to be onsite, and responding promptly to complaints and requests. This plays into the issue of value mentioned above; if safety isn’t shown to be a top priority, employers will have a hard time convincing their employees to come in and give their all while constantly worrying they may get hurt and/or sick.
  • Making employees feel connected. Last but certainly not least, employees need to feel connected, both via effective systems and tools, and to community through bonding with their colleagues. Carve out dedicated time for people to socialize, and make sure everyone has the tools and training they need to stay up-to-speed with their teams. While all three of these areas are crucial to focus on, connection is one of the easiest to overlook. Don’t leave your employees isolated and struggling during a time that’s already so difficult.

3 low-cost ways to put these ideas into action

There are myriad ways to target the three areas listed above, but we’ve included a few of our no or low-cost favorites below to get you started. Remember that the most important thing is to do what’s right for your workforce and to involve employees early and often.

  1. With people working from so many different locations, it can be a great time to get creative with your employee recognition efforts. If you previously did yearly employee awards, it may be worthwhile to increase their frequency to quarterly, or even monthly, to let employees know you notice their hard work and appreciate them. Awards can simply involve a certificate and ‘bragging rights’, or can include a day off or a gift card.
  2. Aside from allowing all employees who have the ability to work remotely to do so, communication is critical. Remind your employees frequently what steps the company is taking to keep them safe, and update them as things change. If you have the budget, consider having masks and/or hand sanitizers made with the company logo for distribution to employees.
  3. While the Zoom fatigue is real at this point, that doesn’t mean it’s time to ease up on the employee events. Double down on helping your employees feel connected to their work and their colleagues. Try hosting a talent show where team members pre-record a performance, then everyone gathers to watch the submissions and vote. Additionally, never underestimate the value of your employee resource groups to keep folx invested.

As the pandemic continues to drag on much longer than any of us hoped, you can’t let your employee experience strategy fall by the wayside. It’s crucial that companies remain vigilant in providing a stellar environment for employees regardless of whether they work onsite or remotely. Hopefully this post gave you some helpful ideas, but if you’re looking for more, check out Workrowd’s platform. We’ve packed it chockfull of best practice resources, streamlined tools, and transparent access for everyone in your organization. Visit us at workrowd.com.

Categories
Employee Experience

New HR tech criteria for the post-COVID workplace

Prior to the pandemic, employers had a multitude of objections and apprehensions about remote work. While it may seem as though this type of flexibility has only become a real option in recent years amidst advances in digital technology, remote work in its current form has actually been around since the 1970s. In fact by 1987, even before the invention of Wi-Fi, the number of telecommuters in the U.S. had reached as high as 1.5 million.

With the myriad digital tools now at our disposal, and after many companies successfully shifted to an all-remote workforce essentially overnight, employers no longer have a case for objecting to work flexibility. Concerns about connectivity, productivity, security, etc., have all been proven to be largely unfounded, and the risks associated with denying employees the right to remote work with no valid justification are high. Accordingly, if you don’t want to watch your employee engagement, retention, and overall employer brand plummet, you’ll need to put systems in place to ensure your employees can comfortably and successfully work from home, even after COVID-19 is no longer a threat.

The Pros and Cons of Remote Work

Enabling employees to work remotely has both positives and negatives for the company as well as for its workers. Some of the benefits include:

  • Employers can source the absolute top players from a global pool rather than being constrained to recruiting from only the talent in their immediate vicinity
  • Remote working can drastically decrease employer overhead e.g. through reducing the amount of office space that’s needed, and potentially lowering salary demands
  • Employees gain more time and a better work/life balance from not having to commute

On the other hand, remote work can also create some new challenges:

  • Employees working from home while many of their colleagues work onsite can quickly become isolated
  • Communication can become more difficult and less effective when some employees are only connecting with teammates at predetermined times and from behind a screen
  • Some employees may indeed be less productive working from somewhere other than the office, particularly if their home environment has a large number of distractions

Luckily, there is a wide array of tools that can help counter the negative potential impacts of remote work. With so many options though, your search process can rapidly become unwieldy. Read on for our take on how to make HR tech work for you and your team during these new and challenging times.

How to make HR tech work for you

As with any other digital tool, HR tech should work for you, not the other way around. Historically, HR software has been all-consuming and clunky, focused on providing complex functionality to HR professionals with minimal regard for employees. Increasingly though, HR tech is migrating towards a focus on empowering employees to self-serve to a large extent, mirroring consumer tools in their usability, and equipping People teams with much needed data and transparency. Just as HR tech has evolved to meet new needs in the market, HR tech purchasers also need to evolve their approach in order to ensure they get the functionalities they really need.

As opposed to other department-specific tools, such as those for sales teams, accountants, marketers, etc. which have limited user groups, HR technology products need to serve everyone in the company. Accordingly, any procurement process should involve a cross-departmental vetting team in order to maximize the chance of success. In addition, training should be thorough and ongoing, rather than something that’s provided one-time, after which employees are left to fend for themselves.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, ensure that the tools you’re purchasing actually solve the problems your organization is facing. Too many times, buyers are either talked into believing that they need the newest, shiniest tool, or settle for something that doesn’t quite meet their needs with the expectation that the vendor will customize it for them or they’ll just be able to make it work. Ultimately though, neither of these represent effective routes to building a top-notch employee experience.

Begin with a needs assessment, ensuring that employees’ voices are deeply incorporated into the process from the outset. Armed with a list of what’s needed, arrange product demos with providers that appear to have relevant offerings, but don’t get caught up in their marketing pitches. Refer to your needs list frequently to stay on track. If a provider offers to customize something for you, triple confirm that they have the ability to actually do so, and what the timeframe will be for completing the work.

There are a multitude of sellers out there, so there’s no need to settle for less than what you want. Ensure that the tool you select not only meets your needs, but also conforms to your security requirements and fits within your budget. Present the final contenders to employee focus groups to assist in your final decision.

Implementation is a whole separate can of worms, but in the age of COVID-19, it’s more imperative than ever that your HR tech works in the way that you need it to. If you’re looking to help counter the negative aspects of remote working that we mentioned above, we hope you’ll give Workrowd a look. We help streamline your employee communications, provide added transparency and tracking for HR, and keep your workers connected whether they’re onsite or remote. Visit us at workrowd.com.

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Hybrid/Remote

5 key issues your working from home policy should cover

Now that we are several months into the pandemic, many companies are looking to codify their whirlwind remote work implementations into policies that can serve them over the long-term. Unfortunately, for those organizations that did not previously have a working from home policy, it can be difficult to know where to start. There are many issues to take into account when assembling a comprehensive working from home policy, so we’ve dug into the research and summarized five of the most important below.

Why your organization urgently needs a remote work policy

According to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, the pandemic caused the U.S. to become a “working-from-home economy.” Late last year, prior to the pandemic, a survey by LinkedIn found that 82% of working professionals would like to work from home at least one day per week. At the time however, fewer than half of them were able to do so. Moreover, just 18% of people were fully remote.

By June though, Bloom notes that the percentage of people working from home full-time more than doubled to 42%. With 33% not working due to the crushing impact of the lockdown, and therefore just 26% working on business premises, the number of employees working from home is more than 60% greater than the number of those onsite. He furthermore writes that the working from home population now accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

With such high demand for work flexibility prior to the pandemic, and the smashing success of transitioning millions of people to full-time remote work overnight, it will be almost impossible for employers to revoke this privilege as they begin to return to the office. Accordingly, it’s critical that companies begin to put some formal infrastructure around what remote work will look like for their organizations over the long-term. Read on for suggestions of key issues to take into account.

Key issues to consider when assembling your working from home policy

Hopefully at this point it’s clear why you need a working from home policy. Just as policies are necessary for governing onsite employees, remote workers need support and guidance to help ensure they can succeed in their roles. When assembling your working from home policy, consider the following factors:

  • Logistics. As with any other undertaking, designing a successful working from home policy should begin with the basics. Determine and clearly lay out who is allowed to work from home and how frequently. If the same rules do not apply to everyone, be sure to explain why. In addition, be explicit about how work will be tracked and evaluated, so employees aren’t met with any unexpected surprises. Lastly, ensure that you have tools in place to keep everyone looped into all necessary communications.
  • Work environment. Many companies pump a great deal of money into optimizing their office environments and ensuring that employees have the furniture and equipment they need to be productive. The same should be true at home. Consider including a remote work stipend or similar as part of your new policy to help your employees equip their home offices as needed. In addition, once remote working is no longer necessary for public health reasons, your company may want to review and approve remote work setups over Zoom to ensure they meet your working standards and requirements.
  • Data Security. Data security is always a concern when employees are working off-site. Ensure that you have clear policies for how data is to be stored, transmitted, and managed, both digitally and for hardcopies. Thoroughly train all your employees on the tools needed to keep your data safe, and put systems and checks in place to make certain that they’re being used effectively and appropriately. Don’t put your employees in a position to cause a data or security breach because you didn’t properly design, structure, and communicate your remote work policy.
  • Compliance. There are more potential flags here than we can cover in this article, across fair labor laws, ADA requirements, and more. Suffice it to say that you should thoroughly research all the potential legal issues you may come across with remote workers, and address them in your policy. This is not an area where you can choose to be lax without the potential for serious consequences.
  • Equality & Equity. Last, but certainly not least, it’s crucial that you keep a strong focus on both equality and equity when authoring your policy. To the extent possible, employees should be treated the same, or at least the same as others at their level and/or in their position. The remote working policy should consider every employee and strive to enable the most flexibility for every worker within your company’s particular constraints. In addition, be mindful of prioritizing equity as well. If some of your employees may not be able to afford the same level of work-from-home setup as their colleagues, consider increasing their stipend or providing company resources to help support them in getting their workspace up to par and ensuring that they are not disadvantaged compared to their peers.

There are many issues to consider when putting policies in place for long-term working from home. The list above highlights several of the most important ones, but be sure to consult your employees to confirm you’re covering all the necessary bases. Of course, in addition to policies, your remote work strategy should include plans for how to engage employees no matter where they work. If your company could use a streamlined tool for employee communications, engagement programming, and people analytics, check out Workrowd. We’d be happy to discuss how we can help make a hybrid or even an all-remote work model work for your business.

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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

Building connections within an intergenerational workforce

For more than a decade, a favorite trope of news outlets has been the war between the generations in the workplace. As Millennials began to enter offices, article after article appeared on how ‘Generation Me’ was going to create widespread strife with their need for constant feedback and praise, their obsession with technology, and more. These attitudes and habits, the reporters alleged, would put them completely at odds with their Boomer supervisors.

As we’ve seen, Millennials have deeply impacted their workplaces, but not necessarily at a faster rate than any other generation, and certainly not in a way that’s out of sync with the broader societal forces acting on their companies. Ultimately, having an intergenerational workforce can be of great benefit if it is effectively leveraged. We’ve assembled some suggestions below to help you make the most of the age diversity present in many U.S. workplaces today.

An unprecedented five generations working side-by-side

For the first time in history, there are now five generations active in the U.S. workforce. While there is some dispute as to the actual dates that comprise each generation, the groups are as follows:

  • Silent Generation (born between 1928-1945)
  • Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
  • Generation X (1965-1980)
  • Generation Y/Millennials (1981-1996)
  • Generation Z (1997-2012)

The oldest members of Generation Z are now 23, meaning that some of them have been in the workforce for 5+ years at this point. Meanwhile, the youngest members of the Silent Generation are only 75. These 75+ workers comprise between 5-10% of every state’s workforce, while countrywide, their proportion is expected to exceed 10% within a few years. With more than 50 years’ difference between the lived experiences of these two cohorts, there are bound to be some disagreements and misunderstandings. However, just as with other types of diversity, having such a range of perspectives can also be a great asset to your business.

Strategies for enabling employees of all ages to succeed

Despite their superficial differences, regardless of age or generation, many employees ultimately want a lot of the same things out of their work experience. These include opportunities for learning and growth, camaraderie and community, and to feel valued and respected. Luckily, a number of these can be achieved through the same and/or overlapping initiatives. Below are some ideas for helping employees to bridge the generational divide and drive your organization forward.

  • Provide everyone with streamlined, user-friendly tools. In order to mitigate any issues stemming from varying levels of tech-savvy, design your employee experience with a focus on easy-to-use tools that make everyone feel empowered and fully able to contribute. Particularly with your communications systems, provide clear training to all employees so that no one is at a disadvantage in conversations and meetings due to challenges with technology. While this is applicable to facilitating inclusion across all demographics, it is particularly relevant for an intergenerational workforce as younger people are often more comfortable adapting to new technologies more quickly than older populations. Putting everyone on an even playing field will minimize opportunities for frustration across age gaps.
  • Develop a two-way intergenerational mentoring program. Young people have a lot to learn from their older peers in the workplace, but this sentiment holds true in the opposite direction as well. There is a lot that younger people can teach their colleagues from other generations, and that should be acknowledged and capitalized upon. Establish an intergenerational mentoring program where the exchange of information flows both ways. More seasoned employees should be encouraged to be open to the input and ideas of younger coworkers, and new professionals should be urged to be receptive to the wealth of knowledge that older peers have amassed over the course of their careers. Provide conversation and activity guides to help your pairings make the most of their relationship, and consider holding innovation events such as hackathons to help them put their combined knowledge to optimal use.
  • Start an intergenerational employee resource group. While most frequently focused on race and ethnicity, employee resource groups can also be a useful tool for building productive connections in an intergenerational workforce. Historically, age-based employee resource groups have typically focused on one specific demographic, e.g. young professionals. Ultimately however, companies would likely benefit more from creating opportunities for what is effectively a group-based version of the mentoring program outlined above. By creating a space that’s not explicitly focused on work in which team members from different generations can interact and team up, companies can finally combine and leverage all of the knowledge and skills within their workforce into more than the sum of their parts.

Having an intergenerational workforce can be either a blessing or a curse. For those organizations that operate in opposition to it and pit older and younger workers against one another, they will find that the antagonistic relationship between employees of different age groups can become a significant drag on productivity, engagement, and more. For organizations that view it as an asset however, and seek to build productive relationships between employees of various ages, they may very well find themselves on the forefront of innovation and broader success.

If you’re looking for a straightforward way to seize upon all three of the strategies listed above, check out Workrowd’s platform. We can help you set up and manage mentoring programs and employee resource groups, all while centralizing and streamlining employee communications. You can reach us at hello@workrowd.com.

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Hybrid/Remote

Building inclusion with a hybrid workplace model

Many companies are now facing an unfamiliar talent and engagement landscape, with some employees having been let go, others moved to new roles, certain populations back in the office, while their peers continue to work remotely, etc. Navigating the increased complexity inherent in a hybrid workplace model is something HR departments, executives, and team leaders everywhere are grappling with in the midst of all of the other COVID-related disruptions. One additional ‘disruption’ is the increased focus on inclusion in recent months, following multiple high-profile incidents of racial injustice. Unfortunately, most organizations were already struggling to build and manage inclusion when the majority of their employees were in one place; how can they foster it now that employees are geographically distributed and having very different employee experiences?

The importance of prioritizing inclusion

These are important questions that every company should be asking right now. Building an inclusive workplace is undeniably the right course of action, for employees’ happiness, security, and wellbeing, but also for the company’s bottom line. A study by Deloitte found that as compared to their less inclusive competitors, organizations with inclusive cultures were:

  • 2x more likely to meet or exceed their financial targets;
  • 3x as likely to be high-performing;
  • 6x more likely to be innovative and agile; and
  • 8x more likely to achieve better business outcomes.

Moreover, Quantum Workplace noted that engagement is low for employees who believe inclusion in their organization is moderately or very weak, while it is high for those who believe inclusion is strong in their organization.

We’ve written extensively about engagement here before, but suffice it to say that it’s not something you want to overlook as it has far-reaching impacts across productivity, retention, happiness, and more. Particularly during this time when employees need support more than ever, it’s crucial to find strategies to build inclusion across your entire team, rather than letting silos crop up between remote and in-office employees. Below we’ve assembled some suggested tactics and approaches to managing engagement in a hybrid workplace model based on established best practices.

Strategies for building connection across remote and in-office employees

For your employees who are returning/have returned to the office, the new COVID accommodations may have made a previously comfortable environment feel foreign and unwelcoming. Respecting people’s different experiences with the virus and their individual efforts to protect themselves can make it difficult to connect with colleagues, even ones with whom they were previously friendly. In-office folx will need support and guidance to participate in building an inclusive workplace just as much as their remote peers who face more obvious inclusion challenges.

Some steps you can take to ensure everyone is included and feels that they belong as part of your hybrid workplace model are:

  1. Level the playing field. If there are meetings where at least one person will be remote while others are in the office, require that everyone join via video conference. Having one employee trying to participate from a screen while all of their colleagues are together in one room puts that individual at a deep disadvantage. Conversely, requesting that everyone participate from their desks, no matter where they sit, ensures everyone’s voice matters equally and shows remote employees that they’re both valued and respected. This strategy has the bonus effect of further mitigating viral transmission risk by reducing the number of times employees gather in-person in an enclosed conference room, so it’s a win all around.
  2. Open up communication channels. This may seem obvious, but there are a number of components to making this work. The first is to clearly describe which channels should be used for various types of communications, across email, chat apps, meetings, and so forth. Another is to encourage inclusive practices such as choosing to use chat rooms where project discussions are visible to everyone rather than one-to-one email threads that may exclude people and leave them in the dark. Third is to stress the importance of check-ins and ensure that managers are holding one-on-ones with all of their team members every week, along with at least one whole team meeting. For some teams, daily 15-20-minute video calls to touch base may be warranted to keep everyone looped in and engaged. Lastly, emphasize the importance of documenting conversations via digital means rather than relying on in-person conversations that don’t include the entire team, especially for the sake of remote workers.
  3. Develop a buddy system. Find ways to promote interaction for both in-office and remote workers. There are apps that pair up random employees for get-to-know you chats, programs that will help you launch a mentoring program, and as always, our personal favorite, employee resource groups. Create social infrastructure for your employees to interact across distances and you’ll reap the benefits.

The requirements of our new virus-ridden reality can make it difficult to keep your workforce engaged and connected. As you design your strategy for the coming months, make sure you’re catering to both employees who work in the office and their colleagues who are remaining remote. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to help keep employees on the same page across project teams, employee groups, and the organization more broadly, give us a shout at hello@workrowd.com. We’d love to show you how we can streamline the complications a hybrid workforce brings and increase engagement and inclusion for your team.

Categories
Employee Experience

Ensure managers are asking employees these 3 questions

Managing people is difficult. Tasking some employees with the job of monitoring, motivating, inspiring, evaluating, and disciplining others in addition to fulfilling their other job responsibilities is a lot to ask. People are complex creatures with diverse sets of values and ideas, and managers are expected to understand and cater to each individual in order to get the best out of every team member. Given all of this, the fact that 58% of managers report that they received no management training at all is shocking. Do your whole company a favor and set your managers up for success with dedicated training and support. For those just starting out, we’ve combed the research and assembled a list of three questions managers should ask employees in order to engage their team members.

The High Cost of Bad Managers

Bad bosses cost the U.S. $360 billion per year. This may seem like an outrageous sum, but when you consider that three out of every four employees report that their boss is the worst and most stressful part of their job, and that 65% of employees say they would choose a better boss over a pay raise, it’s easy to see how that level of dissatisfaction could lead to some significant losses. Bad managers contribute to a whole slew of negative business outcomes including employee disengagement, decreased productivity, absenteeism, and critically, serious retention problems. According to a SHRM study from last year, 60% of people who had recently left a job say they did so because of their manager.

How can we turn the tide on such a massive problem in our workforce? Ultimately, as opposed to many of the systemic societal issues employees and companies are facing right now, the issue of bad managers can be broken down to the smallest unit: individuals. Change starts with folx in management positions being willing to learn and make adjustments in order to do better by their direct reports. Companies can help facilitate this with trainings, coaches, and digital learning resources, but ultimately, if the individual doesn’t want to or isn’t ready for change, none of these offerings will make a difference. Once managers decide they want to take that crucial first step though, there are some baseline criteria they can follow to ensure they’re empowering their employees rather than the opposite.

How Managers Can Make Change in the Short-term

The journey towards becoming a better manager is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s no denying that managing people is hard, which is why it bears repeating here. Adapting to new employees, constantly learning about and seeking to improve oneself, and just trying to stay sane through all of it can be a real struggle. To help with this, we’ve trawled the research and assembled a list of three simple questions to help managers make a positive change in their relationships with their team members starting this week. Encourage managers to ask the following questions during their check-ins with employees (and ensure they’re having regular check-ins with employees to begin with!):

1. What went well this past week?

Ask your employees about their successes, and truly listen to their answers. Acknowledge them for the accomplishments they mention. Recognition helps build employees’ self-esteem and engagement, and kicks the conversation off on a positive note. The key here is to make sure you’re really paying attention and providing genuine praise so the employee feels both heard and appreciated. You may be surprised by the results of simply making the time and headspace to truly check in with them.

2. Are you facing any roadblocks?/What are you struggling with?

Let your employees know that you’re there to support them, and that if they’re having problems, they should feel comfortable to freely express them to you. Many issues that ultimately become dire could have been averted if they had been addressed earlier. Encourage employees to share any areas where they’re feeling underresourced or otherwise unequipped, and assist with solutions to the best of your ability. Knowing that you have their back will do wonders for your relationship, and will greatly improve the employee’s work experience.

3. What can I do to be a better manager?

Ask your employees how you can improve, and be genuinely open to hearing their responses. Inviting and accepting feedback can be disarming in a way that opens doors that would have otherwise remained closed. The key here is actually being willing to work on the areas employees identify for you. Record their comments, and let them know how you plan to address them. Then actually follow through on your commitments.

With the bar so low for managers today, there is ample low hanging fruit to be picked in efforts to improve. Simply providing this list of questions managers should ask employees can make a noticeable difference. Consider offering leadership training for your managers if you have the budget, and if not, try to at least assemble a repository of free resources for them to consult. Better yet, organize your managers into cohorts to study the materials and practice the recommendations together. If you’re interested in an easy way to organize and manage employee support groups, check out Workrowd. We’ve got everything you need to streamline your professional development experience and help your team keep each other accountable. As always, we’re at hello@workrowd.com.

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Employee Engagement

Employee engagement ideas for socially distanced workers

There’s no denying it at this point; social distancing is here to stay. So what do you do when your employees are back in the office, but all the employee engagement ideas you used to rely on – happy hours, group lunches, office amenities – are off the table? Although these activities and benefits have long been mainstays of most companies’ engagement efforts, they are ultimately only superficial strategies. Especially during these difficult and confusing times when employees are dealing with so much in addition to work, the focus of engagement efforts should be on supporting your team with compassion and empathy. Companies that do will reap the benefits for years to come.

Reframing How You Practice Engagement

The first step towards keeping engagement high while distancing measures are still in place is to stop thinking of engagement in the classical way. Just like inclusion can’t be developed through a once yearly unconscious bias training, true engagement does not stem from foosball tables or holiday parties. While these are great bonuses, true engagement comes from employees feeling seen, heard, and appreciated at their companies. Stop approaching it as if you can bribe your employees into being engaged; buying things like snacks and games as a substitute for actually investing in your employees is not going to work. Engagement is something that is built not bought.

Accordingly, think about what has made your own experience at companies better or worse. Were you motivated to work harder for the company that brought in lunch once per month, or the company where you felt genuinely supported and valued for your contributions? Employees need to know that their employer cares about them every day, not just when there’s a special event, so engagement initiatives have to be ongoing rather than one-offs. Begin thinking about employee engagement ideas as part of an integrated strategy and you’ll be in a much better position to serve your employees regardless of whether they’re in-office or remote, mid or post-pandemic.

Strategies and Activities for Boosting Engagement

Now that you’ve got a new framework for how to approach building engagement, it’s time to start designing your strategy. Some key requirement to keep in mind include:

  • Ensure your employees have what they need. While it’s frequently overlooked as a component of engagement, the foundation of your program should be making sure employees have the knowledge, tools, and support to succeed at your company. Employees who don’t know where to go if they have a question, who don’t have a clear understanding of expectations, and/or who don’t have the necessary tools to perform their jobs well won’t be helped by any of your other attempts to boost engagement. If you have team members who aren’t empowered, who don’t see a path for themselves at your organization, and who don’t feel valued, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to overcome those challenges. Start here, then build your strategy once you’ve got employees’ basic needs squared away. This step is especially critical during the pandemic.
  • Open the lines of communication. Another key engagement strategy is to make sure employees feel that they have a voice. If employees know that they can express concerns or new ideas freely and with the expectation that they’ll be listened to, they’ll feel valued and therefore much more likely to be engaged. Utilize different communication channels to provide both extro- and introverted employees with ways to participate. This may include surveys, anonymous suggestion boxes, focus groups, town hall-style meetings, and more, but most importantly hinges on managers making sure they actually connect with and listen to their team members. Foster a culture of open communication at all levels and watch your engagement scores increase.
  • Supercharge your employee groups. Last but certainly not least, build community within your employee population. A Gallup study showed that employees with even one close friendship at work were seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. Initiatives such as employee resource groups, rec sports leagues, professional development clubs, and so on go a long way towards helping your employees build the relationships and support networks they need to foster strong positive associations with coming to work. Make it easy for your people to find their niche within your company, and bond with those who share their interests and/or life experiences. Your bottom line will thank you as these connections will improve collaboration and communication across your organization, in addition to increasing engagement, productivity, retention, and more.

We know it can be daunting to try to crack the code and come up with effective employee engagement ideas during such confusing and stressful times. If you could use some support from tools to resources to metrics, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@workrowd.com. We’d love to learn more about what you’re struggling with so we can determine how to best help. No one should have to walk this uncertain road ahead alone.

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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

Disability accommodations in the age of COVID-19

According to the CDC, 61 million U.S. adults live with a disability; that’s more than a quarter of the population (26%). The word ‘disability’ spans a wide range of physical and mental challenges across mobility, cognition, mental health, hearing, vision, and more. Some disabilities are readily visible upon meeting a person, but many are not. As businesses struggle to reopen responsibly amid the ongoing pandemic, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your employees with disabilities are supported. Read on for some tips to understand and equip your people with any disability accommodations they may need to remain safe from infection.

Many disabilities increase the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms

For a variety of reasons, your employees with disabilities may be at increased risk of harm from COVID-19. In terms of physical health, adults with disabilities are three times more likely to have heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer than adults without disabilities. A study released in June found that patients with these and other underlying conditions who contracted the coronavirus were six times more likely to be hospitalized and twelve times more likely to die from it than peers without these compounding issues. Accordingly, while every employee should be maximally protected from COVID-19, employers should take extra care to prevent exposure risks among their employees with disabilities, in order to minimize the potential for dire outcomes.

Similarly, mental health disorders can be deeply exacerbated by the conditions the pandemic has created. Many people without a clinically diagnosable mental health condition are experiencing crippling levels of anxiety and depression from social isolation, financial hardship, and the loss of loved ones from this virus. Simply reading the news on a daily basis is enough to destabilize a person’s mental health.

As we wrote about here, mental illnesses and disorders can deal a crushing blow to metrics like productivity and engagement in the workplace. In fact, depression and anxiety conditions alone are estimated to cost the world economy $1 trillion per year. People with cognitive disabilities are also at increased risk of mental health problems, making it even more imperative that they have resources at their disposal to support themselves during these challenging times, as well as disability accommodations to keep them safe and healthy.

Steps to keep employees with disabilities safe from infection

The first step to protecting employees, whether or not they have a disability, is of course to follow all evidence-based recommendations to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Facilitate social distancing, require mask wearing, limit use of common spaces and appliances, and sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. Make all signage clear and accessible, using high-contrast, large font and placing it at heights that are visible to those in wheelchairs. Ask employees for suggestions of how to make the workplace even safer, and implement those ideas where possible. Communicate your policies early and often, and require strict adherence in order to prevent situations where employees may feel at risk of exposure or peer-pressured to violate rules.

Another important step is to offer opportunities for employees to request individual accommodations to your policies. Being mindful of privacy guidelines, ask which employees have special circumstances, from having a disability themselves, to having someone in their household who is disabled, to ensure they have an open invitation to voice their needs. Seek to truly listen and understand their situation, so you can be positioned to best help them. Objectively assess their level of risk, whether or not their job is essential and if it can be done with limited in-office time, as well as what disability accommodations you can reasonably grant. Lastly, ensure that whatever decision you ultimately make is in compliance with all regulations, particularly those around EEOC and ADA.

Communicate the outcome of any deliberations clearly and compassionately to your employees. In instances where you were unable to grant accommodation requests, explaining why will go a long way towards ensuring that individual does not feel slighted or unduly denied. As circumstances evolve, encourage an open-door policy around accommodation requests and continue to remain aware of employees’ situations and health in order to provide the best employee experience possible despite the less than ideal circumstances.

Supporting employees with varied and changing needs during the global pandemic isn’t easy. Make it easier by talking to your employees and being transparent with your processes. Consider starting a disability employee resource group to help your team members who may be struggling, including those who may be new to disability as a result of COVID-19 complications. If you could use a tool to assist you in standing up an ERG, providing additional employee support, and streamlining your communications around pandemic safety, check out Workrowd. We can help you help your employees, and measure the results through automated surveys and reports.