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The world of work has changed at a faster pace in the last two years than perhaps any other time in human history. Travel restrictions, record low unemployment, remote teams, virtual cultures and candidate-led demand for pay, benefits and environment all combine to create one huge new truth: how we used to do things no longer works.
Like everyone, we at Engaging.io are having to learn, develop and morph as we go.
These are some of the key initiatives that we have developed to nurture our employees in a rapidly shifting world:
Flexible working
Flexible working doesn’t only mean working from home. Some people don’t have the right set-up or environment to successfully work from home, so employees need options for their workplace to be truly called a 'flexible' workplace.
Our staff can work from home, our office, shared work spaces or the beach. We don’t monitor the hours they work, only the output they create.
Workcations
As a result of our flexible work arrangements, we encourage our employees to take 'workcations'. What does this mean exactly? It means you can take your work set-up to anywhere in the world so you don’t need to use up all your annual leave to take the holiday of a lifetime, or to visit family that you might not have seen in such a long time.
Ed, one of our Account Managers recently took a workcation to Brazil which you can read about here: https://www.engaging.io/life-at-engaging/
Facilitating collaboration and virtual culture
There were, and still are, some great things about seeing people in person, and developing an amazing culture is one of those. However, creating a strong virtual culture takes more time and planning, but it’s essential to keeping people happy and supported.
No one enjoys never-ending pages of emails, fully blocked out calendars with back to back meetings all day or needless repetition of information.
On the other side of the coin, a lack of interaction and collaboration can lead to scope creep, delivery issues, loneliness and mental health challenges. We have put in place measures to try and facilitate collaboration virtually:
- Water cooler conversations have been replaced with non-client focused groups on platforms like Slack.
- Stand ups and face-to-face to meetings can be facilitated with virtual whiteboards like Miro.
- Encouraging setting core hours to focus on delivery rather than meetings can help reduce fatigue and centre attention on productivity.
Stay engaged
70% of communication is non verbal. If you’re not in the same room as your team you can’t notice if they’re walking a bit slower, smiling a bit less, being unusually quiet and so on.
As leaders we have to create opportunity to check in with our teams and make sure they’re OK.
HR systems can automate some elements of that for us, but at the end of the day there’s little substitute for an old fashioned call, video chat or face-to-face meeting where it’s possible to make sure people are just happy. Happiness is a grossly underrated currency.
We’re not alone in making this a focus, or in getting some great successes from our initiatives.
Check out some of the user stories from our team at: https://www.engaging.io/life-at-engaging/