Even at the best of times, fostering a good workplace culture is a priority for employers. But in 2020, it’s taken on a new urgency.
With many organisations subject to Covid-enforced hiring freezes, retaining key staff has become more important than ever. And without being able to rely on old mainstays such as Friday afternoon pub drinks or water cooler chit-chat, creating the sort of culture that keeps employees around is now also more of a challenge.
The big question for employers is: how can you keep staff happy and engaged when you’re not in the same building?
“I get asked this a lot,” says Jason Laufer, the senior director for LinkedIn Learning and Glint in the Australia Pacific region. “[This year] has really been a massive shake-up.”
Luckily, Laufer says, “there’s a number of things you can do”, starting with thinking about the tools and processes that can help with people management. Just as organisations turned to technology such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom to keep their teams connected at the dawn of the pandemic, today leaders need to consider data-led tools such as Glint as a way to stay plugged in to their staff’s performance and job satisfaction.
These tools go beyond just the recruitment phase of HR: they’re designed to help leaders get the best out of staff across their entire employment. They also monitor whether staff feel happy and supported.
Glint conducts quarterly company surveys that allow employers to pulse-check the mood among staff. That data is delivered to organisations in a number of ways: one is a heat map that shows HR how different managers are performing against peer groups or industry benchmarks. The platform is also equipped with artificial intelligence that generates alerts when it sees decreased employee performance, so leaders can intervene before they have problems.
Data-led tools are also important because they reveal staff pain points. Concerns can’t be addressed if employers don’t know what they are.
For instance, Glint data insight reports have found that burnout risk among employees reached a two-year high in August 2020, and that one in five employees feel their employers aren’t doing enough to help them feel connected.
That matters, Laufer says. “Employees who [say] that their employers help them feel connected are four times more likely to report feeling well supported in their organisation. So there’s a direct correlation between feeling connected, feeling well supported and being productive.” To that end, he recommends “having really pointed initiatives” to foster connectivity, such as regular virtual huddles and one-on-ones.
Offering ongoing virtual training can also help keep staff engaged. Laufer calls it a “super important factor” in retention because it makes employees feel invested in. And there’s a big appetite for upskilling right now: LinkedIn Learning has seen a spike in the amount of hours spent on the platform in 2020, with many of its most popular courses this year focused around remote work, time management and working from home (WFH). Essential training courses around software such as Excel have also been a big hit, as employees strive to master the tools they need to be effective while working from home.
Managers can’t push the pause button on capability building, so the moment belongs to virtual learning. Photograph: damircudic / Getty Images.
Ultimately, using data-led tools in HR and management is about going beyond just the logistical elements of facilitating remote working and thinking long term. That’s imperative for employers, because we know the WFH era won’t end when the pandemic does. Laufer says employers expect almost 40% of staff to regularly work from home once the Covid threat has passed, while a majority of Australians want the option of remote work in the future.
“If the pandemic was a month and then it was all over, we probably would have gone back to normal,” he says. “But here we are eight months, nine months in, and the world has pretty much changed forever. So organisations need to move towards what employees want around remote work.”
Laufer believes 2020 has revolutionised the Australian workforce. “It really has fast-tracked the work-from-home era. And what our data is showing us is that employees, albeit challenged by the pandemic and the restrictions, are actually enjoying more flexibility working from home and getting more balance.”
It’s clear that remote work is here to stay. Now, the task for employers is creating a culture that thrives in the new normal - no water cooler necessary.
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