How to Maintain a Quality Employee Experience During Uncertain Times

Participating in the workforce both as an employee and a manager has been a rollercoaster ride over the past couple years. The pandemic induced massive layoffs in early 2020. A year later, hiring roared back to life as vaccination rates increased and along with it, the "great reshuffle" began with vigor. Still, many organizations struggle to attract and retain the talent they need to execute their most strategic objectives. Today, predictions of a looming global recession are all over media channels prompting re-organizations in some sectors and discussion on broader labor impacts across most industries whether worker-initiated attrition or layoffs.? This labor volatility generates uncertainty for both companies and their workforces, elevates stress levels, erodes employee engagement, productivity, and wellbeing. Combating these side-effects should remain a top priority for all organizations even as they tighten financial controls in other areas of their business. Here are a few ideas to maintain a quality employee experience during these uncertain times.?

Define your hybrid?

The "return to work" debate continues to play out across most organizations with almost all accepting some form of hybrid work. However, there are as many types of hybrid as there are organizations and people who work for them. Eliminate ambiguity around acceptable work norms by defining expectations at both an enterprise level and, more importantly, at a team level. Defining the right expectations of hybrid for your organization is a complex topic worthy of its own article. The most important consideration for this conversation is to meet as a team and align on team norms that clarify what is ok and what is not. In simplest terms, make explicit the who, where, when, what, why, and how you expect your team to be present and working toward team goals. Consider getting started with the basics… Which business functions require physical presence? When is physical presence desired? What are the teams’ standard working hours? How much flexibility do colleagues have during standard business hours? What are after hours expectations? Bear in mind there is no one right answer for all, which is exactly why the conversation is so important for creating the boundaries within which colleagues structure their work.?

Develop Asynchronous Collaboration Skills?

Meetings will always have a place, but they are expensive, so it is essential to use them wisely.?Asynchronous collaboration uses digital channels to share ideas, solicit feedback, and facilitate content revision without the need for a shared meeting and the inherent delays that result from gathering everyone in a meeting. This tactic is particularly effective for distributed teams, especially when those teams span multiple time zones and have few hours of overlap available for meetings. Asynchronous work tactics are effective for individuals who support multiple projects at the same time, and where teams have multiple members with similar skills that can answer questions when their peers are occupied elsewhere. A secondary benefit of asynchronous collaboration is the documented audit trail as ideas are discussed and feedback is shared out in the open. These audit trails accelerate new team member onboarding and make it easier to substantiate past decisions while minimizing extra work needed to do so. These benefits are amplified within organizations facing higher staff attrition.

Manage Team Transitions

Great managers coach their team members toward the career they desire. Sometimes that career is with another team or organization. Team member departures change team dynamics and workload regardless of the reason for their departure. All too frequently, your best talent is the first to leave because they are the most mobile, and those who stay remain or become disengaged. Team transitions (both departures and additions) introduce an important opportunity to assemble and align on adjusted team roles and responsibilities.??

For departures, managers need to determine if the abandoned work will stop or be re-allocated to other team members. Understanding existing team member commitments and capacity is essential for maintaining productivity and wellbeing. This is a great opportunity to review priorities with the goal of shedding low-priority activities to ensure the most important work continues uninterrupted.?

New joiners have a different challenge, finding their place on a new team within a new organization while operating in a hybrid environment. Recent research from Microsoft suggests more than half of those who changed jobs during the pandemic will change again because they struggle to fit in at their new organization. Managers need to be intentional as they enroll new members into team workstreams and social fabric. Onboarding new employees in a hybrid or virtual format is much easier when a team is already working asynchronously as the new team member can read about the work, see who is contributing, gain context, and develop a foundation independently. Still, a proactive team discussion to clarify roles, responsibilities and priorities is essential to ensure the entire team is clear on how to work together.?

Measure Employee Experience and Adjust?

Listening is one of the most important steps leaders can take when designing exceptional experiences for their customers and their employees. Employee engagement surveys have been the default method for gathering insights on employee experience on an annual (or semi-annual) basis. While beneficial for long-term strategic direction, there are a few challenges: 1) The pulse of an organization can change with one leadership memo and engagement surveys are rarely conducted with the frequency required to interpret these moments. 2) They can be influenced as managers prime their teams with statements like, “Please tell me if there is anything that would keep you from giving me a 10.” 3) Employees aren't always aware and don't have time to discern some of the root causes shaping their experiences.??

Employee Experience Platforms (EXP) provide a secondary, and more objective data set representing how teams work week to week. Microsoft Viva Insights uses signals from Microsoft’s enterprise collaboration suite, Microsoft 365, to provide insights into how your teams are working together and with others. These quantitative insights are a powerful tool for organizations navigating business transformations or driving organization effectiveness programs to improve business results as they provide managers with queues on how to improve work within and across teams for better productivity and wellbeing. Benefits occur quickly as teams review the metrics and discuss how they are working together, clarify expectations of each other, and adopt new ways of working.?

Summary

Volatility in our macro-economic environment contributes to uncertainty within your organization. Uncertainty is a distraction to your workforce resulting in lower productivity and reduced wellbeing. You can combat this trend with a focus on employee experience. Create clarity on your version of hybrid work, coach teams on how to work asynchronously, manage transitions with care and adjust accordingly, and measure the impact of these efforts using a people analytics tool like Microsoft Viva Insights to quantify and communicate the benefits of your efforts.?