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Listen to build for the future

Let’s not pre­tend this is going to be easy. The past few months have been dif­fi­cult on a range of lev­els. But now the world is open­ing up for busi­ness again, what can you do to ensure your employ­ees are moti­vat­ed and ener­gised to cap­ture the dif­fer­ent oppor­tu­ni­ties that lie ahead?

It’s crit­i­cal to under­stand the dif­fer­ent ways in which staff might be feel­ing the chal­lenge, says Arjen Swank, senior employ­ee engage­ment spe­cial­ist at Effec­to­ry, Europe’s lead­ing provider of employ­ee lis­ten­ing solu­tions.

Some will have been work­ing flat out, per­haps tak­ing on extra work to cov­er for fur­loughed col­leagues. Oth­ers will have had months of inac­tiv­i­ty, poten­tial­ly deal­ing with ill­ness or even death. Some will be des­per­ate to get back to work. Oth­ers may have learnt to enjoy the lack of nine to five and be return­ing in a very dif­fer­ent frame of mind.

If your com­pa­ny has had to make redun­dan­cies, peo­ple may be wor­ried about their own future and feel­ing inse­cure and unen­gaged.

Leadership’s role

Swank believes it is the job of a leader to refo­cus all these dis­parate respons­es, bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er into a team and cre­at­ing a clear vision so every­one is con­tribut­ing to the same end-goal. “This is a moment to reset cor­po­rate objec­tives and rebuild trust,” he says.

Agile strategies

Employ­ee lis­ten­ing sur­veys, car­ried out by Effec­to­ry for glob­al clients and with respons­es num­ber­ing more than 120,000, show com­pa­nies are focus­ing less on long-term strate­gies at the moment; the hori­zon is one to two years, instead of the next decade. The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has brought to the fore the need to be flex­i­ble and agile, a mind­set much need­ed in employ­ees as well as employ­ers.

Employee listening

Don’t ignore your staff if you are refor­mu­lat­ing cor­po­rate strate­gies, says Swank. Employ­ees are on the front­line of cus­tomer ser­vice; they see at first hand how your cus­tomers are feel­ing and can mon­i­tor what could be very rapid changes in sen­ti­ment. If you want a snap­shot of cus­tomer atti­tudes, lis­ten­ing to your staff could be the quick­est way.

“Staff are also ambas­sadors for their com­pa­ny,” he adds. If they know they will be lis­tened to, they will be more like­ly to ask for and feed­back com­ments from cus­tomers: valu­able data for an agile organ­i­sa­tion.

Remem­ber that the way your organ­i­sa­tion inter­acts with employ­ees says a good deal about cor­po­rate cul­ture. Staff who are stressed and appre­hen­sive need to feel safe and secure if they are to re-engage with cor­po­rate goals, and this may be best achieved through small­er teams and local lead­ers who know indi­vid­u­als per­son­al­ly.

Effectory dataset

Swank says: “Infor­mal, col­lab­o­ra­tive lead­er­ship will help devel­op the kind of ‘all in it togeth­er’ men­tal­i­ty that ensures a high lev­el of trust.”

Trust works both ways. The past few months have shown that many of us can achieve as much or more by work­ing at home; offer­ing staff the oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-engi­neer their work-home bal­ance could do a great deal to help engage those who are strug­gling with issues such as child­care. Trust­ing staff with the auton­o­my to make deci­sions that best suit them, as well as the com­pa­ny, can lead to a high lev­el of moti­va­tion.

But for such a shift to be sus­tain­able, it needs a cor­po­rate cul­ture that allows for dis­parate work­ing hours; staff may be putting in the hours at times out­side the tra­di­tion­al work­ing day.

Now is the time to engage with the bright­est minds in your com­pa­ny. “Organ­i­sa­tions will need to inno­vate faster than their peers and you will be miss­ing out unless tap­ping into the cre­ativ­i­ty of your staff,” says Swank.

To make sure you hear all voic­es and not just those who shout the loud­est, you need a lev­el of objec­tiv­i­ty, with­out the emo­tion that can come from stressed peo­ple in a fast-mov­ing sit­u­a­tion.

Ques­tions need to be well thought through to pre­vent a tsuna­mi of neg­a­tiv­i­ty; it’s human nature to spot the down­sides before the upsides. Respons­es need to be analysed and fol­lowed up, with the out­come being a clear, prac­ti­cal action plan.

Only then will your lis­ten­ing cul­ture ensure the organ­i­sa­tion has the flex­i­ble and agile mind­set need­ed to cope with what­ev­er the future holds.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.effectory.com