The news around businesses doing course corrections and layoffs has been the talk of the town for the past few months.? This news is hard on everyone, for companies, and especially for employees. It. Is. Difficult. From the pandemic to the great resignation to layoffs, the corporate world is facing new challenges.?
Given the current situation, now more than ever companies need to work towards ensuring their employees who are retained can continue to trust their respective organizations and build long-term careers with them.?
Turning on the Captain America Mode - “I can do this all day” is one of his most remembered lines. This is a line Captain America would say to prove he would never stop fighting, regardless of the odds. It would be good to wear this attitude as a cloak when it comes to answering uncomfortable questions from your team members on the business’s relevance, layoffs, the company’s future, etc.?
The leaders should be ready to not only acknowledge the difficult scenario but also answer questions around pertinent topics. They need to make sure their teams are aware of the ongoing challenges and how the organization is navigating through them. This also means being transparent across the organization and not selectively.
At Dunzo we continue to stay open to all kinds of conversations. Some efforts that have fueled #transparency across the organization are:?
- All Hands - We run organization-level all hands on a monthly basis to share an update on important goals and highlight progress made by each team. This is coupled with our in-house radio which also publishes stories of how teams are making progress on the overall strategy. These forums have also been adopted by certain teams where they share updates at a functional level. The continuous conversation around goals is important to provide necessary context, keep the team motivated, and have a laser focus on key outcomes.
- Q & A at an organizational and team level - This helps us build and maintain a positive work environment and increase confidence between teammates so they rely less on Chinese whispers on issues such as funding, retaining employees, etc. Employees also have an opportunity to ask questions anonymously, and we make it our job to answer questions.?
- Open houses - Building forums for our employees (Dunners). Providing everyone with an opportunity to openly ask questions to the founders and other leaders. We have done over 30+ open houses since the start of 2023, in groups as well at the organizational level. This helped us increase our score by 30 basis points on understanding company direction in our engagement survey.
- 1:1 meetings - HRBPs play a crucial role in maintaining a sense check of how employees feel about engaging with the organization. In the current turmoil, HRBPs significantly increased the frequency of 1:1 meetings with individuals. At Dunzo, we do quick but regular check-ins, close to 100 meetings per week, with different employees across different teams. The meetings help HRBPs understand various problems that arise while working remotely as well as build trust and engagement in the organization. We are also able to solve individual-level problems quickly and help address queries about the growth of team members. This has helped us increase exchanges and our eNPS score from 20 to 34 in the last 6 months.
In addition, leadership should also focus on the below aspects to continue building a stronger culture?
- Lead with #respect and #empathy - Giving equal importance to everyone. Be it a delivery partner or someone in the leadership team. Validate their feelings by hearing out their problems with an open mind.
- Grow with #speed and #ownership . Do not centralize everything -Building these qualities in the team and opening up opportunities for individuals to take ownership of their work helps build engagement. At Dunzo, we don’t believe in hierarchies, in fact, anyone with a strong and feasible idea can drive it along with relevant teams. As long as it is right for Dunzo, the leadership will support it and give space to experiment.
- #wellbeing - Balancing wellness and productivity is extremely important. We have engaged mental health providers to help Dunners establish a more fulfilling work-life balance.?
- Personalized Solutions - For culture-based problems engagement rate should not be the only metric used to predict success. Each problem is unique and it should be tended to in that manner. E.g. in Dunzo, we increased conversations between managers and team members of various teams. The more they spoke openly about problems, the better it was to find solutions and build a friendly work environment.?
- Celebrating (big-small) achievements - Celebrating wins is an important part of keeping your team inspired. We use Empulse at Dunzo to celebrate wins and achievements among Dunners.?
- Don’t Create Confusion. Communicate quickly and clearly - In times of difficulty there is already enough uncertainty. It's important to keep the communication clear and crisp. Be clear about what is expected and show up wherever needed. E.g. In Dunzo, the leadership team connects weekly with key teams on important updates to provide direction and support execution.?
These experiments and learnings from Dunzo can work as examples that anyone can use while building resilient teams in their organizations.?
