Jens-Peter Saul, global CEO of the Ramboll Group, reportedly built a Lego structure at his home in Copenhagen and discussed the effort in a blog-post on his company’s Yammer account. This particular blog was a commentary on how he was battling the lockdown blues.
That is said to have opened the floodgates of creativity: Other employees of this engineering consultancy company started posting videos of their lockdown pursuits, which included a rooftop garden by one from Chennai.
Gayathri Shankar, head - HR Operations, Ramboll Middle East & Asia Pacific, explains, “By showing how the lockdown was impacting him, the CEO was modelling a positive approach and encouraging employees to talk about their unique coping mechanisms.”
With work on a rather unusual terrain, and life stalked by pandemic-related uncertainties, organisations see the necessity of opening new lines of communication, and creating a feedback loop, so timely interventions may be possible.
“Jens-Peter runs a fortnightly blog on Yammer, where people give their feedback, and he replies immediately,” explains Gayathri.
Prione, a tech support services provider for SMBs, has a programme “Leadership Speaks”, where the top brass talks about their lockdown experiences, an initiative aimed at loosening the employees’ tongue.
“Through a tool called ‘Engage’ that checks for ongoing engagement, we feel the pulse of our employees working remotely. From the things that emerge from ‘Engage’, we tailor our responses to their needs,” explains Shilpa Vaid, HR Head, Prione.
There are two strands to virtual employee engagement that starkly contrast with each other. One is aimed at spreading lightness, as it seeks to compensate for the lack of in-person interactions, the water-cooler conversations, and the lunch-time banter that serve as a glue uniting teams and drive collaboration. The other is marked by gravitas and is made for addressing challenges that employees may be going through, as they work and live in social isolation.
The lighter stuff
“We asked our people to record funny videos about how things can go wrong while working from home. It was done just for a laugh,” says Bijumon Jacob, senior vice-president and Head of HR, Temenos India, a banking software solutions provider.
Prione organised what it called “Parents of Prione”, where employees could share videos of where 24/7 lockdown parenting left them: hopelessly out of their depth, or had them triumphantly get ahead of a learning curve in their parenting journey.
Shilpa points out that the initiative was launched to appreciate the unavoidable challenges that some parents had to face due to the lack of a support system. Half-a-dozen of the videos were shared on the company’s internal platform for the inspiring stories they told, Shilpa adds. Organised under #ParentsofPrione, ‘Sunglasses Day’ got the employees’ children to don inventor and sustainability-champion hats and make sunglasses using upcycled waste.
- A growing number of companies are now welcoming the family into the virtual workplace, letting them share screen space, and sometimes even hog it. This is a welcome change since the lockdown began, and as a trend, it may 'humanise' the home office further.
- Bijumon Jacob, senior vice president and head of HR, Temonos India points out that during the lockdown the in-house trainers organised educative sessions for employees’ children.
- According to an AMD India communication, junior AMDer are encouraged to participate in a digital programme 'Rainbow of Hope’ that gets them to draw a rainbow and share their thoughts about staying at home. The project encourages collaboration, and the parents could be a part of it. The drawings and notes are posted on the company’s Yammer page.
- “It is perfectly all right if an employee’s family pops in during an official video call: we know they are working from home. Sometimes, the family say hi and hat is just fine,” says Gayathri Shankar, head - HR operations, Ramboll Middle-East & Asia Pacific.
During the first three-months of the lockdown, Kissflow, a digital workplace software services provider, ran “Lockdown Diaries”, an initiative patterned on office banter, with the employees encouraged to just shoot the breeze about the trivial aspects of everyday lockdown living. Goading employees to stay committed to learning a new skill over 21 days, “Lockdown Challenge” came fitted with a greater purpose, but the larger objective was the same: Infusing fun into work away from office.
Abhishek Paul, culture shepherd, Kissflow, says: “It is necessary to allow space for employees themselves to lead a lot of engagement activities, we used to do this before in office, and we are continuing to do this now.”
The tough questions
Beyond all of this, the fact remains that everyone is pitted against a pandemic, and working under unusual circumstances, and they would do with some solicitude.
Usually, a little nudge to follow a healthy routine is what would be required. “On Outlook, we have been sending a calendar reminder: ‘Drink water’. Twice or thrice a day, there will be a pop-up,” says Gayathri.
And sometimes, a virtual commiserating squeeze of the hand may be in order.
“Eight of our employees tested positive, and one person from the HR department was put on the job of just connecting with all of them, or their families and see if they would need any help,” says Bijumon.
Ophthalmic optics company Essilor had inked in a system whereby every employee would be contacted by the HR department every two days, discloses Srees PP, head of Group Human Resources, Essilor South Asia.
Says Srees, “Based on the questions from employees that come into the Google folder, and the interactions, we know their concerns, and are in a position to offer reassurance.”
