How to Properly Engage Employees Working Remotely
From a leader standpoint, it may be difficult to properly engage employees while they are working remotely. However, it can be done and can be done efficiently. Find out here.
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Covid-19 caused a negative impact for individuals, families, and organizations worldwide. One of the problems Covid-19 caused for many organizations was that they had to completely change and shift their daily routine. Employees had to start working remotely. Working remotely has been controversial, some individuals enjoy working from the comfort of their home, which allows for a better work/life balance, and other individuals are motivated by waking up early and going into an office with other co-workers. With this said, working remotely can be challenging for anyone. It can create distractions and a loss of motivation when you are not seeing co-workers each day. Despite the concerns working remotely has already caused, many individuals still struggle with this remote working change due to the simple fact that change is hard.
From a leader standpoint, it may be difficult to properly engage employees while they are working remotely. However, it can be done and can be done efficiently. Start by motivating and engaging your employees while utilizing virtual meeting apps, such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, or Zoom to host meetings with your employees daily to keep everyone aligned. Most organizations know how to use them at this point but learning and creating an environment where motivating and engaging becomes paramount and burn-out is limited.
One of the most effective ways a leader can engage their remote employees is simply asking for and listening to feedback from their employees. As mentioned, virtually working is not for everyone and a leader should stay connected with their employees and stay open minded to the ideas and feedback for improvements as many roles have now begun hybrid or fully remote. Each employee works and excels differently, learning about each employee and how best they work will make the team effective and effective.
Lastly, provide your employees with the tools needed to succeed. A successful leader of a virtual or hybrid team should also be doing research on what the best resources are while working remotely and provide tutorials and various solutions for the employees. Doing this will make your employees feel like they are cared about and understood, which as a result will increase their productivity and engagement at work.
Remote working is a modernistic trend in the working community, but it will only continue to evolve. Times have changed (and continue to change) and managers and leaders need to learn to adapt to these trends and changes. To learn more about how to properly engage and supervise your employees remotely, check out this free short course on Leading Remote Teams.
For free performance and engagement resources head over to our Resource Vault!
The Unspoken Key to Engagement - Encore
With the evolution of technology, 24/7 news cycles and the meteoric rise of social media platforms, the overall landscape of how and when each of us consume our information has changed. And with that, so have the expectations each of us has on our communication needs and desires, even within our organizations.
Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, as well as many more virtual connection tools were readily available before a worldwide pandemic forced us to use them. While they were available, they were not a primary form of communicating. And today? Virtually (pun intended) every organization is using at least some form of these virtual workplace tools. It is obvious times have changed, and with that change, how we communicate has changed. And there's no going back. Nor should we.
Communication tools and how we communicate has been evolving, however our current environment has forced us to adapt rapidly in a way most of us were unaccustomed to and most likely never thought possible. So while our environment has gone 'all-in', it's time for us to go 'all-in' as well. We will dive into the 'why' and 'how' of this new communication landscape we must embrace, but let's focus on the 'what' first.
What do our employees want from us, and now except from us? What does it look like today? And what will it look like moving forward?
In the past, quarterly or annual townhalls or all-employee meetings as well as the occassional employee email blasts were the primary internal corporate communication tools. However, in today’s organizations employees want and expect more from their organizations. Now people want near real-time information delivered in different ways and formats. You may have been able to hold this trend off a little while longer, but the pandemic effect has arrived and waiting will only lead to disengagement throughout an organization. And not only should senior leadership be updating the employee population about the company, but employees and teams, more than ever before, should be communicating with one another on an ongoing basis. Engaged employees are your best advocates for increasing employee engagement and letting them share their insights and stories is a great way to enable those engaged behaviors.
Constantly engaging your employees through audiocasts, blogs, videos, interactive explainers and short surveys, as well as enabling and encouraging (creating the right environment) for the employee population to communicate with each other in these same unique and engaging formats builds and sustains employee engagement throughout an organization and at levels only few organizations attain.
Now let's discover the 'why' and 'how' to adapt to and attain this top-tier engagement through communication.
With the evolution of technology, 24/7 news cycles and the meteoric rise of social media platforms, the overall landscape of how and when each of us consume our information has changed. And with that, so have the expectations each of us has on our communication needs and desires, even within our organizations. Now we expect and get frustrated if we don’t have near real-time information at our fingertips.
Effective employee communications have always been lacking in most organizations, even prior to this evolution occurring. In all of the employee feedback surveys we have administered rarely do employees answer positively when surveyed on the timeliness and effectiveness of company information. The results always show a need and desire for more timely and effective communication and connection by and from employees.
But now, the expectations and requirements for better communications are even greater. With this global pandemic, organizations are having to communicate more frequently and in different ways than ever before. So, what was a slow evolution has quickly become a fast-moving revolution. The challenge will be as things settle to a new normal the desire for more communication now becomes an expectation. You can already hear the comments, “We used to get a lot of communication and information but that has all but disappeared”.
It will not be acceptable to go back to how we communicated with our employees before and a new approach and commitment to developing more effective communication strategy will be required. This landscaped has changed more rapidly than anyone could have anticipated, what is your plan to meet the ever-increasing employee communication expectations?
To discover more about employee communication and what Cornerstone Learning can do for you, visit our communication page.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
The New Performance Environment - Employee-Led
Employee-Led performance is the key to shifting performance results from top-down driven to one that is employee owned, leader supported and enabled by the organization.
“The problem with specifying the method along with the goal is one of diminished control. Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
In a traditional performance environment, much of the role and responsibility for ensuring performance results, conducting performance feedback, developing accountability and providing effective change management resides with formal leaders in the organization. In addition, training focused on developing core leadership skills, activities and behaviors is generally reserved for these leaders and not the general employee population.
This leader-led performance model, unfortunately, limits true performance ownership and we limit the potential and impact of having everyone no matter what their title or position lead from where they are.
Employee-Led performance is the key to shifting performance results from top-down driven to one that is employee owned, leader supported and enabled by the organization. As a foundation, it is important for an organization to create a baseline of expected leadership skills, activities and behaviors that everyone from senior leadership to entry level individual contributors understand and exhibit. This creates a foundation of common leadership expectations and a “language” of leadership that defines your organization.
Of course, roles and responsibilities vary and the level of leadership impact changes but developing a core set of leadership competencies in everyone and giving control and responsibilities to create ownership is critical to tapping into and leveraging the value of every employee leading where they are.
Tips for implementing an employee-led performance environment:
Create awareness and set an expectation that everyone can and should lead where they are.
Support developing the leader in everyone with coaching and training.
Establish cross-functional employee-led teams chartered to improve a specific issue or process. Provide resources and support the team. Give the goal, not the method.
Reward and recognize employee-led success.
Come back next week as we discuss how to own your own performance!
If you’re looking for help in administering your employee survey, or just need help in building an effective survey question list, don’t hesitate to contact us! We’re here to enable your success.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
A Career of Engagement - From Day One to Retirement
Employee engagement is not a yearly project to undertake after an engagement survey is conducted and the results shared. Top-tier organizations create a powerful competitive advantage by developing engagement strategies that intentionally engage every employee, every day, in some way.
NO PODCAST THIS WEEK.
WE’LL BE BACK STARTING A NEW SERIES NEXT WEEK, THE NEW PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENT.
Employee engagement is not a yearly project to undertake after an engagement survey is conducted and the results shared. Top-tier organizations create a powerful competitive advantage by developing engagement strategies that intentionally engage every employee, every day, in some way.
Over the last few weeks we have shared a model for enhanced employee engagement that creates a complete, employee lifecycle of engagement and works whether you are in a world of face to face interactions or remote connections.
Triboarding (onboarding, reboarding, and transboarding) cultivates a performance environment and culture that, beginning day one, identifies, values, and develops each individuals unique talents and connects them to the organization (onboarding), while intentionally creating opportunities every day to leverage those talents whether on engagement teams, performance teams, functional teams or as valued individuals in their roles (reboarding). And finally, to ensure sustainable individual and organizational success, creating an engagement strategy that proactively develops employees which ensuring they are ready for their next career milestone prior to promotion or as they leave the organization they become advocates and leave in a very positive way (transboarding).
Triboarding will guarantee your organization moves from employee engagement being an annual or bi-annual project that attempts to rectify issues to an intentional, dynamic, employee engagement strategy that becomes a powerful, competitive advantage for your organization.
Click here to download more information on the Triboarding process and how Cornerstone Learning can help you achieve a robust employee engagement strategy.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
A Career of Engagement - Phase Three - Transboarding
We complete our series on Triboarding, cultivating a lifecycle of employee engagement, by highlighting a key factor that not only enhances employee engagement but also top-tier employee retention and growth: Transboarding, which helps in planning for and enabling success.
We complete our series on Triboarding – cultivating a lifecycle of employee engagement by highlighting a key factor that not only enhances employee engagement but also top-tier employee retention and growth: Transboarding, which helps in planning for and enabling success.
So far in this series we have established a firm foundation for a career of engagement by creating a unique and impactful Onboarding experience that we continually build upon daily with intentional Reboarding and re-recruiting activities that engage and reengage every employee every day in some way. To complete the employee lifecycle we must proactively enable the smooth and successful transitions employees make throughout their careers through Transboarding.
Career ladders are fast becoming relics of the past, being replaced by dynamic and agile talent mobility strategies. A number of trends are accelerating this evolution: expectations are increasing for more rapid career advancement, an aging workforce with more people retiring early means more people are shifting into new positions. Coupling those with the complete disruption and uncertainty in the global workplace today requires a focused and intentional strategy for talent flexibility and mobility. Transboarding enables ongoing, flexible, successful talent transitions by proactively identifying, developing, and cultivating the unique talents and skills of individuals.
Transboarding ensures:
Employees proactively have access to the right resources that help them succeed be it with training, coaching, mentoring, or technology.
Employees understand and are connected to the vision, values and priorities of their new workplace function, which often may be different from the function they were in previously, even within the same organization.
Employee’s have clarity and alignment to what success looks like from day one in their new function and the resources they can call upon to assist.
As an employee transitions out of a role into a new role or leaves the organization that the successor is properly transboarded and set up for success day one.
Transboarding completes the entire employee lifecycle of engagement from prior to day one onboarding to intentional efforts that continually engage each day to enabling effective talent transitions and mobility.
To discover more about the lifecycle of employee engagement and what Cornerstone Learning can do for you, visit our Triboading page at www.cornerstonelearning.com/triboading.
Click here to download more information on the Triboarding process and how Cornerstone Learning can help you achieve a robust employee engagement strategy.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
A Career of Engagement - Phase Two - Reboarding
This week we explore the engagement strategy of “reboarding,” the planned and intentional effort to continually “re-recruit” and engage every employee, everyday, no matter the position or tenure.
Last week’s focus, onboarding, sets the foundation for a career of engaged performance. This week we explore the engagement strategy of “reboarding,” the planned and intentional effort to continually “re-recruit” and engage every employee, everyday, no matter the position or tenure.
Just remember back to the first 90 days of any job you have had, the excitement and enthusiasm and that welcoming feeling most organizations provide to a new employee. While a new employee’s productivity level is generally lower, their commitment and engagement are commonly higher.
Highly engaged organizations create a workplace environment that feels like the first 90 days, everyday, where everyone feels highly valued, supported, and appreciated. Unique talents are identified and leveraged, questions and opinions are welcomed and encouraged, and people look forward to coming into work knowing they can and will make a difference no matter where they reside in the organization.
Take the same approach, time, and efforts you do to attract and recruit new talent into the organization and continually reboard and re-recruit those currently making a difference throughout your organization. Employee turnover will decrease and overall employee engagement and commitment will increase.
Next week we discuss proactively preparing your people’s skills and talent today for tomorrow’s opportunities.
To discover more about the lifecycle of employee engagement and what Cornerstone Learning can do for you, visit our Triboading page at www.cornerstonelearning.com/triboading.
Click here to download more information on the Triboarding process and how Cornerstone Learning can help you achieve a robust employee engagement strategy.