Why it pays to really get to know your employees

With remote work­ing now man­dat­ed for many of us, mak­ing it work for dif­fer­ent groups of employ­ees is the next big chal­lenge for busi­ness lead­ers. Why do some peo­ple work well vir­tu­al­ly while oth­ers strug­gle? The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is affect­ing every­one, but employ­ees are not all the same. It’s time for employ­ers to look beneath the sur­face and real­ly get to know their employ­ees.

To find out how indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty types feel about remote work, Dr Chi­diebere Ogbon­naya, senior lec­tur­er in organ­i­sa­tion­al behav­iour and human resource man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, sur­veyed 3,200 work­ers across the UK. Respon­dents were asked to rate them­selves on per­son­al­i­ty traits such as con­sci­en­tious­ness, intro­ver­sion, neu­roti­cism, open­ness to expe­ri­ence and agree­able­ness.

What Ogbon­naya dis­cov­ered was that those who were curi­ous and eager to try new things were less wor­ried and less mis­er­able about work­ing remote­ly. Intro­verts and those who are gen­er­al­ly agree­able also report­ed high­er lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion. Con­verse­ly, peo­ple who are neu­rot­ic were more like­ly to report worse men­tal health when work­ing remote­ly. In addi­tion, those who scored low on con­sci­en­tious­ness – put blunt­ly, those who are dis­or­gan­ised – also strug­gled to work remote­ly.

“We often think of remote work­ing as a good thing, as hav­ing more free­dom or a bet­ter work-life bal­ance,” says Ogbon­naya. “Yes, it may well be, but not for every­one. Some peo­ple strug­gle with depres­sion and anx­i­ety or even get frus­trat­ed when asked to work alone. I think we should give more atten­tion to how peo­ple’s per­son­al­i­ty traits affect their well­be­ing.

“When some­one is messy and dis­or­gan­ised, they find it hard­er to plan or man­age their time prop­er­ly. This caus­es a lot of anx­i­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they have to work remote­ly. Neu­rot­ic peo­ple have sim­i­lar prob­lems because they tend to have more angry and depressed moods than oth­ers. We need to sup­port them bet­ter. For exam­ple, give them more flex­i­ble dead­lines and avoid putting them under too much pres­sure or stress.”

Consider the circumstances your employees face

It’s equal­ly impor­tant for busi­ness lead­ers to con­sid­er the dis­parate cir­cum­stances peo­ple face. The pan­dem­ic has, for instance, exac­er­bat­ed gen­der inequal­i­ty. Women have spent 15 hours more on domes­tic labour each week than men, accord­ing to a study by Boston Con­sult­ing Group.

We’re all expe­ri­enc­ing the pan­dem­ic dif­fer­ent­ly and Melin­da Bri­ana Epler, founder and chief exec­u­tive of San Fran­cis­co-based Change Cat­a­lyst, points out that “Black, indige­nous and Lat­inx folks are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly feel­ing the impact of the job loss and inse­cu­ri­ty, extra par­ent­ing duties, COVID-19 and racial injus­tice; now is not the time to ignore these”.

Peo­ple in their 40s who have chil­dren and live in a four-bed­room house are expe­ri­enc­ing the pan­dem­ic in a very dif­fer­ent way from some­one who lives in a one-bed­room flat in Hack­ney, east Lon­don, with their fam­i­ly, says Michael Moran, founder and chief exec­u­tive of career and tal­ent man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy 10Eighty. Younger peo­ple whose social life cen­tres around their work­place strug­gle more than those whose friends large­ly work else­where.

Epler notes that many peo­ple have a new job they didn’t bar­gain for: teach­ing their chil­dren. “Lots of peo­ple are feel­ing uncer­tain­ty around job secu­ri­ty, fur­loughs, fam­i­ly mem­bers who have lost their jobs, also of course COVID, whether it’s life dis­rup­tions, anx­i­ety and depres­sion, Ill­ness, death of fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends,” she says. “Per­son­al­i­ty tests are great when we’re not in a pan­dem­ic; now is the time to real­ly get to know your team by ask­ing what they need and lis­ten­ing.”

Mar­i­lyn Chap­lin, chief human resources offi­cer at NTT, echoes this point. “It’s vital to have con­ver­sa­tions with every employ­ee to set expec­ta­tions and find out more about the impact of remote work­ing on their sched­ules and them per­son­al­ly,” she says.

Work will stay flexible in the long run

It’s clear that new forms of work­ing are here to stay. Chris Kane, author of Where is My Office?: Reimag­in­ing the Work­place for the 21st Cen­tu­ry, says: “Many peo­ple are ask­ing them­selves, why do I need to spend a for­tune, have a long com­mute, and a lot of per­son­al and men­tal dis­com­fort to go to an office to send emails?” For busi­ness lead­ers, man­ag­ing groups of peo­ple who are work­ing in a vari­ety of work set­tings calls for a lot more empa­thy and a move away from a com­mand-and-con­trol man­age­ment style.

What’s more, the eco­nom­ic fall­out from the pan­dem­ic means com­pa­nies are going to be keen to cut costs, as well as try­ing to keep the right employ­ees, by being an employ­er of choice, says Kane. “So they’re going to have to recog­nise employ­ees’ needs,” he says.

In Novem­ber, Stan­dard Char­tered, for exam­ple, announced it plans to offer flex­i­ble work options to more than 90 per cent of its 85,000 employ­ees by 2023. This will include flex­i­bil­i­ty on both time – the num­ber of hours and days – and loca­tion, which could include the bank’s premis­es, near-home work­spaces
or home.

In addi­tion to changes brought about by the pan­dem­ic, Tanuj Kapi­lashra­mi, group head of human resources at the bank, cites pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, well­be­ing and car­bon foot­print as dri­vers of this deci­sion. “We also see this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal to a wider and more diverse poten­tial future work­force,” she says.

Busi­ness lead­ers, who want to under­stand their employ­ees, need to con­sid­er both per­son­al­i­ty types and indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances because men­tal health and well­be­ing can no longer be ignored. And this means see­ing employ­ees in a more holis­tic way, in oth­er words as human beings, rather than office drones.