New Rules of Engagement

What we’ve learnt from our engagement forums during 2020

On 27^th December 2019 a man in France was diagnosed with Covid-19.

What happens when a completely unforeseen event occurs that turns your life upside down and sets you off your intended course?

After you’ve recovered and made adjustments to survive or operate close to how you did before, you learn from it. Because that way you’re in the best position to exploit any emergent opportunities from the new journey you’re on. And harness the new reality you find yourself in.

This surely describes most of us in December 2020. A year in which we’ve learned a great, great deal that we weren’t expecting to one year ago. A lot of the learning we’ve generated at ClearVoice has arisen from our free monthly online employee engagement forums. We created the events in June on behalf of Engage for Success to support businesses through the pandemic. They featured sixteen guest speakers and attracted over 400 registered attendees – tag us on LinkedIn @ClearVoice (and follow us) if you were one of them. They’re one of our proudest achievements in 2020.

Since we’re all about engaging people – so you’re better prepared for a future of work which is human – one of our gifts to you is to sum up the key learnings from our engagement forums in one chunky stocking-filler. This is it. We hope you find our New Rules of Engagement for 2021 useful.

Lesson 1: Organisations and their employees are capable of coping with sudden, extreme shifts in their ways of working.

Organisations and their people are much more capable of coping with extreme shifts than they imagine; in this instance to majority remote working for office staff.  It proves they under-estimate what they are capable of and can truly achieve when they engage their people. Engaging people in the right way, using the right approaches is something we at ClearVoice can help you with.

Lesson 2: There are serious drawbacks of large numbers of employees working remotely

These drawbacks can negatively counterbalance the benefits if not well managed, including:

• A reduction in cross team working, collaboration and innovation.
• Employees’ discombobulation or loss of connection and ability to identify with the organisation and how they contribute to its future direction.
• An increase in mental health problems which are more easily hidden and therefore harder to detect.

Lesson 3: Leaders and managers need to work hard to minimise the impact of the drawbacks

Instead, they need to play to their organisation’s strengths by:

• Finding and actively encouraging new and creative ways for their people to collaborate.
• Facilitating opportunities for employees to connect with people they don’t know outside of their teams, departments or discipline.
• Utilising the many new apps, tools and platforms now available that support this, gamification being but one example.
• Stepping up their communication, to create clarity and transparency about how they propose to manage the change the organisation is going through. Explaining what the changes mean for employees and how people will be involved and can contribute.
• Put more emphasis on celebrating the little things which make a difference, claimed John Purnell of Anglepoise during our Managing a Remote Workforce forum in June.

For more ideas watch the recordings of our forums. Managing a Remote Workforce, Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing, How to Improve Collaboration, and How Internal Communication Transforms Employee Engagement.

Lesson 4. The world of work needs transformational leaders with high levels of emotional intelligence now more than ever.

If you’re not one you risk becoming a dinosaur (and you know what happened to them!).  

Facilitating collaboration and team working or trusting people to work well on their own is one example. Being flexible in how and when people choose to work, standing up for the team while showing that you’re human too. If you think these are compatible with transactional styles of leadership think again. That’s what Nigel Girling told our ‘Strong Leadership’ forum in July. Nor do employees need heroics or even charisma. The leadership style the pandemic has shown people want most is ‘transformational’. This is associated with high levels of emotional intelligence and enabling them to succeed as a result of an ability to understand, support, guide and empower them. Our online masterclass in Transformational Leadership will help upskill you in all the qualities you need in half a day.

Lesson 5. Play it steady while going through a big change

In shifting to remote working the lockdown gave organisations permission to try something new and mostly they succeeded.

It was spring. The air was clean, people grew appreciative of what really mattered, and there was even some excitement and optimism to ‘build back better’. Then the second wave arose, the economy continued to tank and we were back into lockdown. Just when we thought we were coming out we slipped back down the change curve. The 5th lesson in our new rules of engagement for 2021? Big change can’t be rushed. Take a deep breath, make sure your people are looked after and hang on patiently till all the aftershocks have passed and you can truly focus your attention on reconstruction.

If transformation is on your agenda for 2021 then why not read how our organisational network analysis can help you achieve sustainable change. Or simply book a free consultation with us.

Lesson 6. Workplaces are heading for a new hybrid way of working in 2021

But they will cross this bridge when they come to it. 

During our recent ‘Talents and Teams in Transition’ forum Luke Hutchison, Head of HR at Ecosurety summed things up well when he reflected that he expected the new hybrid model would combine the best of remote and office-based ways working but it would be different for everybody and he was hesitant to define it now.

We do indeed seem to be heading for a future of work characterised by greater self-directedness and autonomy by teams, flatter structures, more trust and freedom and collaboration among employees. With agile and flexible systems and polices, the latest technology and transformational leaders who are supportive and more aware of their organisation’s social and environmental responsibilities. But as we’re not out the Covid woods yet, we’re also about to separate from our biggest trading block. Many organisations will just want to focus on putting first things first. Such as getting through winter, being resilient and using this time to reflect on everything they’ve learned this year.

New Rules of Engagement for 2021 Summary

We hope this summary of our new rules of engagement for 2021, our blogs and newsletters this year have been useful to you. As ever we’d love to receive your feedback.

It’s said that outside your comfort zone is where the magic happens. It’s also where the learning happens. If we’ve all paid heavily for the lessons 2020 has taught us then putting our new rules of engagement for 2021 into practice is the way to obtain payback. The team at ClearVoice would be delighted to help you do that and partner with you to better prepare for a future of work which is human in 2021. For a free consultation just get in touch with us.

Wishing you a wonderfully uneventful(!) festive season and a very happy New Year.

At ClearVoice, we are experts in advising on and delivering employee engagement and culture change strategies that inspire your people and transform your business. We help you steer towards a future of work that is human by enabling you to truly discover how to attain and sustain high levels of employee engagement and create a culture where you and your people can thrive. For more information or help with reviewing your employee engagement and culture strategy in 2021, call or email us today.

Because today’s best performing companies put their people first.