Tips to Drive Employee Engagement after a Crisis
Covid-19 is having severe social and healthcare impacts globally and in business, there will be winners and losers. Organisation structures, practices and workforce engagement levels have been severely tested, and few businesses can remain the same as we emerge from the crisis. The uncertainty and severity of Covid-19 has forced many organisations to take immediate steps to minimise the impact on the business. Out of necessity, responses have mainly focused on two major fronts – defensive practices and survival tactics; but as these measures take hold, we are increasingly seeing the impact on staff levels of engagement and morale. Addressing the impact of these changes and re-engaging with the workforce will be critical going forward.
Preventative practices like the introduction of social distancing and remote working and survival tactics such as furloughing, temporary salary reduction and even layoffs have increased uncertainty and anxiety for staff, leading to growing frustration and lower levels of motivation and engagement. Many employees have their reserves of discretionary effort and goodwill eroded.
Now, more than ever, there is a need to reinvigorate the workforce to unlock future value and tap into new growth opportunities whilst guarding against unpredictable risks.
As we move from rapid response to medium-to-long term recovery, every company needs its people on-side. Strong staff engagement, team cohesion and re-establishing trust will become even more critical to positively emerge out of the crisis.
What do businesses need to consider to effectively re-engage the workforce?
Businesses need a considered approach to create the conditions that will re-engage employees. This includes specific strategies to boost morale and commitment levels as well as deliberate support to drive performance and ensure work remains meaningful after the crisis.
So how do we re-engage the workforce and build motivation whilst re-establishing trust so individuals can succeed and thrive post COVID-19?
1. Deal with Reactions and Create Transparency
Deal with reactions to how your survival and defensive measures were introduced in your business during lock-down – this includes how were decisions communicated, what did you prioritise when making decisions, how did the company behave to staff and customers and what were the actions of leaders? Get feedback on staff perception of how the changes were implemented. Determine lessons learnt and show how these will be applied when making organisation-wide changes and for business continuity in the future
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2. Provide Opportunity and Support for Employees
Understand that Covid-19 will have changed employee’s expectations about work and life – the crisis has further revealed the fragility of life and many people would have re-evaluated where their priorities lie between their work and other commitments. Discover what these new expectations are, define the critical levers you can pull to positively impact them and provide the opportunity and support that may be necessary for staff to seamlessly integrate these into their new working practices.
3. Empower Teams by Designing the Right Jobs
Consider how work may need to change as you pivot your operation for the future. Empower teams to test new processes, ways of working and design jobs to give people freedom to exercise autonomy and accountability, as well as the confidence to fail fast and learn quickly, focusing on outcomes and impact rather than tasks and inputs. This will require the leaders of the business to create a “safe environment” that means that workers will not be penalised for doing the right things, even if they do not produce the desired results immediately.
4. Establish ways to Understand Employee Sentiment
Leaders have a critical role to shape the right business environment which can drive high engagement, particularly in the aftermath of a crisis. Investing in open, two-way, regular communication but also being able to authentically communicate difficult decisions and ‘own mistakes’ when they occur is key. Treat staff with respect and as professionals, helping to connect their jobs to the bigger picture and giving them assurance on the value they deliver to re-build the business.
5. Effectively Manage the Return to Work
Manage the return of furloughed employees. Ensure you have a robust plan on how to transition furloughed staff back in and consider they may be returning to an amended organisation, work structure and/or routines and may require additional support and time to get back into the swing of things. Do not just overload them and expect them to be fully up and running from the first day back.
6. Test, Learn, Review
Take advantage of the positive aspects of the new working practices you have adopted. Run retrospectives to gather key learnings and if not already in place, make a commitment to embed techniques of test, learn, review into your working practice going forward.
7. Reengage Employees on the Rationale
Explaining workforce decisions and “owning the consequences” is a critical part of authentic communication with the workforce. Communicating any redundancies remotely will be particularly challenging. Re-engage employees on the rationale for your decisions and through transparent and open communications and actions, build understanding and forward commitment.
As lockdown restrictions start to ease, Businesses need a thoughtful approach to create the right conditions to reengage employees. This has been a challenging time but also a period of reflection by many members of the workforce. Strong staff engagement, team cohesion and re-establishing trust are critical successful transition through the crisis. Organisations that manage this transition well will establish a strong platform for future growth and success.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julian Holmes is an HR Professional with hands-on experience of helping businesses deliver value from Organisation Design, Strategic Workforce Planning and Workforce Analytics. At Deloitte, he led major transformation programmes and was a co-founder of the Workforce Analytics Practice. At Concentra, he helped bring OrgVue, a leading Organisation Design solution, to market. Julian is working with Sia Partners UK as an Associate Partner helping Clients create future value from their workforce. https://sia-partners.co.uk/ and can be contacted at julian.holmes@sia-partners.com. This article was created with Julius Ajeigbe in the Sia Partners Business Transformation team.