We only need to have half an eye on the business press at the moment to see that organizations are gradually shifting their focus away from the initial business continuity or health and safety preoccupations and moving towards the post-pandemic landscape.
Many are concerned with how new working arrangements like social distancing, shift patterns, and offsite processes could affect their employment relationships — because these arrangements may well be here for the longer term.
The issues are however more fundamental than implementing effective processes and tools — complex as this can be in many business environments.
This crisis has highlighted an underlying shift in employment dynamics which was already under way.
If the speed of the workplace transformation instigated by COVID-19 has varied greatly across industries, it has also opened up some common questions regarding how we redefine the employee experience (EX).
Employee Experience: What Does It (Actually) Mean?
Essentially, employee experience is the sum of our interactions with our employer’s stakeholders (colleagues, managers/leaders, clients and vendors), as well as our physical and digital workspaces, work processes, and tools.
In addition, the organizational culture and values will influence those interactions and impact the employee experience.
If EX encapsulates the employee/employer relationship throughout the employment lifecycle, why does it matter so much in 2020?
The simple answer is that EX is at the heart of what attracts and retains the key talent, which is central to business results. The role of EX is becoming more, not less, important as the economic outlook becomes uncertain. This blog post offers some thoughts on how organizations, leaders and managers can influence employee experience in times of radical change.
Building a Workspace for the Future
It is the digital workspace which is now the centre of attention — and with good reason.
As we reconsider how work is done, and who does the work and where, an intelligent digital workspace allows for heightened agility, productivity, and user satisfaction.
Organizations that invest in digital transformation will be best equipped to reset the conversation around work, manage shifting employee expectations, and strongly position themselves for success.
The virtual workspace should aim to:
- Support a distributed workforce (multi-site, remote, shifts);
- Drive employee productivity and engagement by increasing efficiency of navigation so our time is spent on core tasks, and we’re doing the work that we were hired to do, that engages us, and with less distraction;
- Guarantee security from any (mobile) device;
- Allow for analytics for actionable insights;
- Make manager tasks quick and easy (e.g. approvals) for increased efficiency.
Thereby:
- Time is gained for learning and career development
- Supporting corporate and social responsibility and sustainability agendas (e.g. reducing carbon footprint with less office commuting, etc.)
Businesses have a unique opportunity now to reinvent the space where work gets done, in favour of more agile virtual solutions to drive recovery and growth.
Within this context HR has a key role to play, and greater collaboration with IT teams can help deliver a wide range of benefits for employees.
By working closely together, HR and IT can help ensure that workers have the digital tools they need to do their jobs as effectively as possible outside the traditional office environment and that a healthy work/life balance is struck.
There is also a role to play in encouraging wider company adoption of new technology and tools, helping shape more open lines of communication across the business to improve operational efficiency as well as shaping a more positive employee experience.
It would however be naïve to suggest that a digital workplace is the only factor affecting employee experience. Indeed, there are several other influences and considerations that are equally important to be taken into account.
Employee Care and Benefits — Past and Future
High-performing organizations recognize that flexible working arrangements are now an important policy for high employee engagement and retention.
Other companies, perhaps more resistant to remote working at scale prior to 2020 may well follow suit, as both employers and employees continue to discover the payoffs of greater flexibility.
A recent survey highlighted the fact that 76 percent of workers said they would be more loyal to their employers if they had flexible work options and with the increased move to distributed workforces, this will become an important option as part of a broader range of employee benefits.
The best employers are also reconsidering their mental health support tools, given the new and multiple sources of stress arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and economic disruption. This should include both immediate support tactics and longer-term support.
By way of illustration, my current organization is offering extended mental health programmes, crisis counselling, and mentoring.
In addition, we are making PTO conditions more flexible and facilitating childcare and work/life balance arrangements during the lockdown period across the globe. Times of crisis and adversity are also times for innovation and creativity.
Transitioning long-term to a remote workplace will require more than programmes and initiatives. Maintaining and nourishing company culture and the employee experience — the “fabric” of the organization — needs to be an ever more continuous and conscious activity than ever.
Connection and Communication
If indeed the future of work is grounded in a more generalized distributed working model, where employee interactions are primarily virtual and isolation and mental health are real issues, bringing EX and organizational culture to life is a crucial challenge.
There are no quick fixes when it comes to embedding new, enhanced practices into organizational culture. It is a relentless marathon of experimentation, refinement and continuous improvement.
Most important is to not over-engineer initiatives, keep actions simple, and ensure that they are repeated over time.
Some of the key learnings for building resilient distributed teams include:
- Active employee listening to understand stress factors, changes in engagement, and well-being. This helps build trust and confidence and informs the organizational approach.
- Communicate more than you think is necessary. Focus on clarity of processes, capabilities, and purpose, but also on what’s working and what is not. Be as transparent and as “real” as possible.
- Encourage collaboration, networking and fun events. Use technology to bring people together and support a positive work culture that feels inclusive (e.g. virtual coffee breaks or end of day get-togethers where teams can chat, let off steam, and share time that they might otherwise have spent around the office).
- Expect more conflict when teams are offsite. A degree of that is healthy, but watch for signs of burnout (e.g. if demands are overly high and resources low) or boredom (if demands are too low). Again, ensuring a high level of connection into each team member individually is essential to be able to detect these shifts.
- Sensitivity to unique needs. Employees’ preferred styles will vary enormously. Ask them how they would prefer to provide feedback (in-person or anonymously via a survey for example) and connect to overcome blockers or misunderstandings.
As in any time of increased uncertainty and change, leaders and managers play a critical role in demonstrating stability, confidence, and agility that allows employees to navigate through ambiguity, focusing on the positive challenge and the business outcomes.
To conclude, employee experience is central to attracting and retaining key talent, and EX needs conscious investment and nurturing in the context of the shifting nature of the post-pandemic work environment. Ultimately that much-solicited talent pool (including future employees) will judge organizations on how they behaved right now and to what extent they have successfully transformed their work practices, processes, and culture toward a new kind of employee experience.
At Citrix we’re helping build a better blueprint for the future of work where the employee experience is dynamic, fulfilling and productive. Learn more about our solutions and how they enable a great employee experience.
