Make your workforce feel like a workforce again

Adopt an employee experience journey that’s pandemic-proof.

2021 is here. But, so is COVID 19 and the safety protocol that was put in place to prevent its spread. This means the old normal isn’t returning anytime soon. It may not return at all. This affects everybody. Most of all, it affects businesses, who have transitioned into remote modes of working.

Don’t get us wrong. We have all transitioned to working from home quite efficiently. In fact, many top executives have expressed pleasure at how well remote working has shaped out. But, that doesn’t mean it is without its disadvantages. The most prominent being the evident lack of an employee experience program flexible enough to adapt to the new normal.

Let’s rewind a bit to the good old days’, circa January 2020; when there was no more than a cubicle’s distance between co-workers, meetings were held in boardrooms laden with coffee and snacks, and a job well done was rewarded with handshakes and slaps on the back. Back then, employee experience wasn’t such a looming issue. Fast forward to today, where the only way for co-workers to connect is through video calls, and meetings are attended from makeshift office desks in bedrooms. And, we all know what happened to handshakes.

In short, remote working, while amazingly convenient to begin with, got complicated in the long run because it’s not just about giving people a laptop.

On the one hand, it can’t facilitate the rhythms of office life. On the other hand, even the traditional corporate norms like the strict adherence to not entertaining work discussions once you leave the office premises for the day; have now become too difficult to observe or even implement.

As one of our clients confessed, “It’s not so much working from home. Rather, it’s sleeping at the office”. Don’t you agree? The situation we are in now will soon grow into a full-blown workforce crisis if damage control isn’t initiated immediately. And, by damage control, we mean an employee experience program equipped for the new normal.

Let’s look at some of the key advantages of adopting such a program.

Organizes work for a distributed workforce

For working from home to be sustainable, companies need to help their staff recreate the boundaries that existed in their physical workspace. An employee experience program can streamline this process by devising and implementing clear ground rules. For example, the kind of interaction that used to take place in the hallway can be now be taken care of with a quick phone call instead of a video conference. Setting strict work hours, keeping automated time logs, and maintaining a code of conduct best suited for remote working are some of the aspects that can be efficiently handled by an employee experience program.

Facilitates collaboration and flexibility

The office life we knew used to be well defined. The boss sat in a corner cabin, the tech people had a burrow down the hall; and the conference room was either in use or it wasn’t. Networks were formed spontaneously, and there was on-the-spot accountability, with supervisors keeping an eye from across the floor.

While working remotely, it is worth trying to recreate some of these informal practices. A sound employee experience program can facilitate this. To begin with, it can establish virtual spaces that foster impromptu gatherings with an informal collaborative atmosphere. So employees don’t feel alone, even though they are separated by distance and time.

This brings us to the advantage of the flexibility that remote working offers. An astute employee experience program leverages this flexibility to identify a wider talent pool that includes single parents, primary caregivers, and the specially-abled population — helping your company build a more diverse, capable, and happier workforce.

Reduces dependency on traditional work models

A while back, an executive we met told us, “We used to have all these meetings. There would be people from different functions, all defending their territory. We’d spend two hours together, and nothing ever got decided. Now, all such meetings have been canceled. And, guess what! Things didn’t fall apart”.

While some companies have learned to let go of such unnecessary charades of hierarchical practices, some are still clinging to it, not knowing how or when to let go. This can become a major bottleneck in the remote working model. Employee experience programs are built to streamline existing work hierarchies to better fit the challenges of today. Creating a new system that prioritizes and speeds up the decision making process. In short, those who move earlier, faster, and more decisively do best.

Accelerates agility

We define ‘agility’ as the ability to quickly reconfigure strategy, structure, processes, people, and technology towards value-creating and value-protecting opportunities. Many who were compelled to turn their business agile during the pandemic are declaring incredibly positive results today.

Agile companies are more decentralized and depend less on top-down, command-and-control structures. They create agile teams, which are allowed to make most day-to-day decisions; senior leaders still make the big bet ones that can make or break a company. This doesn’t mean agile teams are out of control. Accountability, in the form of tracking and measuring precisely stated outcomes, is as much a part of their responsibilities as flexibility is.

However, without the technical support of an employee experience program, all this is just wishful thinking. After all, agility is just a word if it isn’t grounded in the discipline of data. Businesses need to create or accelerate their analytics capabilities to allow the right questions to be addressed. This also requires reskilling employees to take advantage of those capabilities. Employee experience programs are built on the principle of agility. They are paving the way to flatter work structures that are faster and more flexible than traditional ones.

A company is an ecosystem where many parts fit together to form a whole. With the right guidance system, a healthy ecosystem of suppliers, partners, vendors, and committed customers can find ways to work together during and after times of crisis. The employee experience program is that guidance system.

For any business to thrive in the future we are awakening to; it is important to transition into a flexible, fully digitized organization, inside and out. Retail, healthcare, banking, and many more industries are already online, actively enabling contact-free transactions. A contactless economy is just around the corner. And, your business will need to adapt quickly.

The best way to prepare for it is by adopting end-to-end digital journeys, beginning with your organizational structure. An employee experience program customized to the needs of your business and your workforce can do wonders. With the analytical support and flexibility it offers, your workforce will bounce back with optimism, ready to take on any uncertainty.

I would love to hear from you on your thoughts on this blog pls write to me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayverghis/

Also, read my blog why employees are your no.1 customers on employee experience http://vijayverghis.com/employee-experience/