CHRO insights: Belonging, recognition, and the unexpected challenges of the post-pandemic workplace

Another week, another amazing CHRO roundtable event. This discussion, our last of the year, was just as informative and spirited as the rest with HR leaders in the Chicago area gathering virtually to reflect on the evolution of inclusion and belonging within their organizations over the past 18 months.

As moderator for this event, I had the pleasure of hearing from multiple CHROs and it seems that across the board, there is a shared experience and focus moving into 2022. Some of the prevailing themes of our conversation included: being purposeful in the behaviors we coach, the role of recognition at both the individual and team level, and the new reality of navigating the complexities that vaccinations present across employee groups. ?

Setting the stage for recognizing desired behaviors

Before you can recognize and reward the preferred attitudes and behaviors of your teams, they must first be clearly articulated and then integrated into the fabric of the organization.

For some, this takes the form of values —?something that many CHROs have revisited and redefined over the past year or more to more closely align with the desired direction of the organization. For others, these guiding principles are thought of more so as core competencies that all employees should strive to excel at and embody. Regardless of what you call them, having a defined set of attitudes and behaviors is important for establishing an inclusive and productive workplace. Not only that, for a culture shift to take place, these competencies must also be embedded into programs and systems, continually promoted, and employees recognized against them. At Achievers, we help CHROs do just that with the holistic approach of our Achievers Employee Experience Platform?. One participant (also an Achievers customer) was able to speak to how the platform integrated with their existing systems and helped them to easily and organically reinforce core competencies across the organization.

Another HR leader spoke about how their CEO sends out a weekly note to all employees which includes the public recognition of employees — another great way to indoctrinate new employees into a culture of recognition, as well as reinforce it among tenured employees.

Recognizing the ‘me’ and ‘we’

One of the roundtable participants pointed out that they do a good job recognizing individual contributors but that they needed to do some work around acknowledging the excellent work done by teams. And so, they began to reflect on how they could highlight the outstanding teamwork being done and better show gratitude publicly. I found this noteworthy, as we often think of individual recognition as being the main motivator for engagement and performance, when in fact, recognizing teams also plays a critical role in nurturing desired behaviors and helping employees feel more included.

Within this particular organization, the CEO recognizes four teams each quarter at random and across regions and roles. What this approach revealed was the power of this level of visibility across the company. Whether top-down or peer-to-peer recognition, addressing the hard work and positive results of teams, while naming each individual contributor, nurture a sense of belonging. It also helped to recognize the more introspective employees who may be less likely to draw attention to their successes or seek praise, so that they too can receive acknowledgment and gratitude.?

The new challenges of the (emerging) post-pandemic workplace

As we neared the end of our discussion, a new direction in the conversation was sparked — one that was clearly on the minds of many CHROs in attendance.

As organizations welcome back employees to traditional office spaces and they reintegrate with frontline workers who have remained on-site while at work over the past 18 months, new tensions and challenges have presented around vaccination statuses, the use of masks, etc. With vaccination mandates becoming the norm and organizations having to take a firm stance on enforcement, it’s apparent that this new challenge is having unanticipated effects on inclusion and belonging.

Many organizations are seeing a growing divide among their vaccinated and unvaccinated workforce and are working to reconcile employee safety with external factors such as government mandates. While this challenge is a cue that we are exiting the worst of the pandemic (something I say cautiously), it does pose a new set of obstacles that CHROs will have to overcome with the support of the senior leadership teams and external council.

As I reflected on the day’s discussion, I was pleased at how this forum allowed us as colleagues to connect over the challenges we’re facing today and to share our experiences. Open discussion helps us all better support one another in building more connected and inclusion work environments.?

Learning from today to plan for tomorrow

As you look back on the past couple of years and map the way forward to build a more inclusive environment within your organization, you may also want to thumb through the Achievers 2021 Culture Report. In the report you’ll uncover trends and attitudes around belonging in the workplace as well as the five elements that drive a sense of inclusion and belonging, as developed by the Achievers Workforce Institute. I hope that you find it useful. I look forward to sharing more reflections on the CHRO experience with you next year.