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How to Navigate the Uncharted Waters of Post-Pandemic Work Styles

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As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “A smooth sea never produced a skilled sailor,” and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. As regulations lift and many employees are immersed in the waters of remote work, many business leaders are sorting through what a flexible workplace will look like in the future.

With an increased appetite for workplace flexibility and a new kind of employer/employee reciprocity on the rise, there may never be a time when 100 percent of an employee base is back in the office. To strike the right balance, organizations will require tailored approaches and deeper discussions. They need to ensure employees are empowered to deliver excellent customer experiences while honoring their trust. By working to accommodate employee post-pandemic work styles, employers won’t just be helping their businesses but also the people who keep them running.

Work Style Over Space

Cultivating a work environment—and culture—that meets specific post-pandemic work styles will greatly serve employers.

Since March of last year, we’ve invited employees into our homes (digitally), and they have invited us into theirs. We’ve met their spouses, children, and dogs and cats alike. We’ve become accustomed to their more relaxed dress code, their mementos, their home décor. The working environment has gotten tremendously casual and intimate.

In light of this, this reorientation will require an even higher level of mutual trust between employer and employee. The employer should set high expectations, giving autonomy to employees, and hold them accountable for performance. They shouldn’t try to manage how, when, and where they work. In exchange, employees can experience a greater acceptance of work/life integration. As some re-enter the office space with an eye toward personal and familial obligations, this will be beneficial. It will also be valuable to others who remain in home offices, continuing to mesh their lives with the work they love.

How to Accommodate Post-Pandemic Work Styles

For any organization, it won’t be possible to duplicate company culture as it once was. Instead, to adapt and advance, culture must evolve, while keeping the organization’s core values intact.

Here are a few things leaders can do to navigate the workplace of the future while keeping employees’ post-pandemic work styles at top of mind.

Ensure Employees Co-Create the New Norm

It’s imperative to understand employees’ needs and hopes for this new world of work. You can achieve this through active listening via focus groups, ongoing employee pulse surveys, employee advisory groups, and honest discussions between managers and direct reports. Maintain the non-negotiables of culture and let go of any leave-behind elements of culture that can disappear. After gathering employee insights, leaders can co-create an envisioned future. One where the employee is involved in the development, understanding, and communication of that future so they can adopt, advocate for, and believe in it.

Hold Tight to Core Values

Regardless of work location, a company’s core values must hold steadfast. From hiring employees to making important business decisions, leaders should remain true to their core values and use them as guideposts.

Focus on the Mission

Mission-driven organizations are more important than ever. They keep people connected and engaged when not seeing each other every day. It’s crucial to instill companywide messages that employees are more than a “workforce.” Rather, they’re a community of like-minded individuals who equally share in the company’s mission.

Operate from a Place of Compassion

Empathy is key.  It’s vital to take employees’ physical and mental wellness into consideration. Many still struggle with mental health issues due to the effects of quarantine. Consider this when interacting with employees and making plans for their work future.

Create Ways to Communicate and Connect

Many employees experience office FOMO (fear of missing out). To combat this, position the office as a social gathering place for collaboration, mentoring, development, community-building, and more. In lieu of the historical face-to-face time, design other ways for employees to communicate and connect. Some examples of this are weekly social meetings, all-hands-on-deck brainstorms, fitness and cooking challenges, or virtual meditation breaks.

The work world will never be the same. Still, with high levels of trust, communication, and vulnerability, companies can work with employees to cultivate and accomodate post-pandemic work styles.

5 Reasons Why Workplace Flexibility Is Smart Talent Strategy

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Most of us, at some point in our lives, have worked in organizations that are rigid and unyielding. You know, cubicle world — acres of gray carpeting bathed in florescent light. We all know these kinds of work cultures breed mediocrity. They deaden the soul (not to mention productivity and creativity). A company may be able to survive being managed that way, but it won’t soar. Because top talent will have no interest in working there.

Savvy leaders understand that talent is the single most important factor in a company’s success. You can have all the basics down, but without the right talent, you’ll just be running in place. And to attract and retain that talent, you have to work with them to customize their jobs. This makes people feel valued, which leads to peak performance. The key is to be flexible and collaborative with hours and location. Telecommuting works for so many smart reasons for so many these days.

The benefits of collaborating with talent to design their optimal workplace flexibility include:

1) Buy-in. When you work with people to customize their work-life fit, you aren’t imposing anything on them. You’re treating them with respect and trust. Which will be returned. And when talented employees decide to work from home three days a week, they are making a serious commitment to the organization. Instead of working for you, they are working with you. This builds enormous buy-in and a better workplace culture.

2) A Broader Talent Pool. If talent doesn’t need to be in the office, your talent pool is suddenly global, not local or even regional. You can build productive relationships with talent across the country or across the globe. With social networks, intranets, project-specific groups, and teleconferencing, distances become increasingly irrelevant. Caveat: There is nothing quite like face time, and creative sparks often fly when people are actually together in a room brainstorming. Telecommuting is a tool to be used judiciously.

3) Higher Morale. Studies show that organizations that offer workplace flexibility have less absenteeism and turnover, and higher levels of engagement and productivity. Again, it comes down to control. We all need to feel in control of our lives, and by working with talent on flexibility, you grant them real control. They feel trusted and valued, and their investment in the work, and in the organization, grows.

4) Smart Strategy. Many organizations today view workplace flexibility as a strategic move, not an employee benefit. The bottom line is that progressive companies have an easier time attracting and retaining talent. People with a lot to offer want to work at companies that treat them like adults and have empathetic, energetic, progressive cultures. On a more prosaic level, telecommuting can save costs on supplies, real estate, and utilities. Unilever, for example, permits 100,000 employees — virtually its entire workforce except for factory workers — to work anytime, anywhere, as long as the work gets done.

 5) Value Added. Truly engaged employees don’t leave the job behind when they’re off the clock. They carry their current projects with them 24/7, and are always open to new inspiration or insight. Ideas are all around us. Employees who are telecommuting, or working on schedules that they helped design, are out in the world more, open to input, away from an office environment where stagnation can set in. An employee with a well-rounded, active life will bring value-add to any job, and may well find inspiration – that can then be brought to the project at-hand — in surprising places.

Telecommuting can be a challenge for managers. They can’t just approach someone in person to discuss an issue. Balancing schedules and workloads can also be complicated if you’re managing telecommuters. But the results are worth it. It’s all about treating people like grownups. Workplace flexibility is an awesome leadership tool. Use it.

A version of this post was first published on Forbes on 08/18/2013

Photo Credit: sara_moseley via Compfight cc

What Will Millennial Managers Expect from HR?

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The challenges of recruiting and retaining Millennials have been well-documented. They’re demanding. If they don’t find meaning in their work, they’ll go someplace else. They expect flexibility in how they do their job. To hear many recruiters, managers and HR professionals tell it, Millennials are an exceptionally challenging generation of employees.

Now they’re becoming managers, and that could pose new challenges to HR organizations that have already struggled with Gen Y’s approach to work. For example, citing a study by EY, USAToday says that Millennial managers are often seen as entitled and don’t score well as team players.

Whether you like their approach or not, “Millennials as managers won’t be that much different from Millennials as workers,” Josh Bersin, Principal at Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting, LLP, told me. He notes that Millennials have different values and work experiences than their predecessors, which they’ll bring to their roles as managers.

For example, Millennials expect organizations to be transparent. The idea that budgets, salaries, diversity data and similar information should be restricted isn’t going to play well among the generation that grew up with Facebook. “Millennials are pushing organizations hard to be transparent about a lot of things that were kept secret before,” Bersin says. As managers, they’ll be in a position to press directly on HR to provide access to more information.

Expect to hear more demands for flexibility, too. Whether it’s the hours they’re in the office or how they approach a particular problem, Millennials tend to seek the solutions that work for them. HR, which often acts as a steward for carefully crafted policies and procedures, will be pushed to accommodate new approaches to any number of management issues.

“Millennial managers are not going to do something the way it’s always been done just because it’s always been done that way — especially if it doesn’t make sense to them,” writes Brad Karsh in his book Manager 3.0: A Millennial’s Guide to Rewriting the Rules of Management.

And if you haven’t yet begun re-thinking how you conduct performance reviews, you may want to consider what your Gen Y managers think about a traditional, checklist-style approach. Already, many organizations making their appraisals focus less on critiquing and more on coaching. That fits with Millennials’ expectations of a more open, communicative work environment.

Though their approach to work is different, Millennials will face the same challenges as other managers in leading their teams and meeting their goals. To support them, HR will have to be flexible, responsive and collaborative. Millennials are growing up, but, as Bersin notes, they’re not going to suddenly change their behavior just because they’ve gotten a management job.

Mark Feffer has written, edited and produced hundreds of articles on careers, personal finance and technology. His work has appeared on Dice.com and Entrepreneur.com as well as on other top sites. He is currently writing for JobsinNH.com, the top local resource for job seekers, employers and recruiters in New Hampshire.

photo credit: KDL Photography | Lookin photo credit: roland via photopin cc