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Chris Preston, founder and director of The Culture Builders, on how transitioning to the new world of work requires understanding the wellbeing impacts of the pandemic.
It’s impossible to separate culture, employee engagement and mental wellbeing in conversations about managing people at work. So it’s no surprise to see these issues discussed together in conversations about the pandemic’s impact on our working lives.
We interviewed HR leaders recently for a survey, and they told us that only its effects on their people’s mental health and wellbeing matched Covid-19’s bearing on engagement with employees. These effects, by the way, were not always negative; the enforced changes to how we worked during Covid restrictions produced a wellbeing upside for many of us.
How are we getting on, then, in addressing these issues in a post-lockdown, brave new world?
Unprepared for poly-working
Pre-pandemic, safety and health practitioners and their colleagues in HR and occupational health were working together to ensure their work culture was a safe and healthy one. Long gone were the days when an employer’s duty of care was solely about accident prevention. Organisations were already creating strategies for physical and mental wellbeing, and performance-measuring their delivery of them. Now, two years on from the outbreak, that collaboration and onus on wellbeing has never looked more vital. It has seen workforces withstand the pressures of the crisis and, looking to the future, it must surely be central to business strategy.
As recently as October 2021, however, when the report of our survey, Poly-working: the evolution of hybrid working, was published, we found HR departments in many organisations still feeling unprepared for the adjustments needed in a world in which remote or hybrid working had come to the fore. Only 40% said they halved a fully-fledged plan to manage the transition to a post-lockdown world. Nearly half said they were still weighing up different options and approaches to manage the transition to a new normal.
It was clear, though, what organisations would prioritise in this transition. The top three priorities were:
- Employee connection and engagement (35.8%)
- Maintaining the mental health and wellbeing of your employees (35.1%)
- Maintaining productivity (33.1%)
Of the anticipated biggest human capital challenges requiring the most support from external specialist companies to aid the transition to the next phase of work, our interviewees scored ‘maintaining the wellbeing of your employees’ highest at 34.4%. This figure rises for companies with workforces of 501 to 1,000 to 40%.
This might be good news for consultants. More importantly, though, it’s an indicator perhaps that more resources will now be dedicated to wellbeing at work. This, in my view, is very encouraging for the future of work, and for the safety and health profession. I approach this from the perspective of a business management consultant, and I see a huge opportunity for the profession to step forward and take a leading role in shaping the new world of work.
How to manage remote workforces
In our report, we suggested a framework for managing a more dispersed workforce.
1. Set a clear purpose for your organisation – those using this opportunity to firm up what they are on this planet to do are seeing a renewed vigour and connection from their employees.
2. Autonomy and freedom, with principles – alignment and autonomy are critical factors for employee enablement and empowerment. We have to, right from the start, set out what’s required to make this new world work, on both sides of the worker/employer equation.
3. Employee engagement for a dispersed workforce – with a workforce spread across locations, times and work patterns, the task of providing a coherent communication and engagement offering internally will be harder than ever, but not impossible. The requirement will be to invest more in this traditionally neglected area.
4. Performance managed with greater onus on objectives than hours worked – with remote working, we lack the proximity to help steer people’s work. So, ultimately, performance will be down to two things: clarity and conversations, working with people to clearly outline outputs, and then regularly discussing that progress.
5. Resetting of leadership to be more trusting and empathetic – with offices becoming semi-deserted on a permanent basis, weak and self-focused managers and leaders will struggle. What is needed now is empathy, trust, engagement and coaching. Underneath these concepts is hidden a fair amount of practical action, but any organisation focusing on upping these four with their leaders will not go far wrong.
Now, consider these suggestions in the context of managing health and wellbeing at work. Let’s say we must carry out a psychological risk assessment. Occupational stressors might include pressure, lone working, targets, deadlines and demands from our managers. We know that how organisations choose to lead and manage in a hybrid working world will inevitably have a bearing on their team’s health and wellbeing.
The future of work offers many opportunities – to access and unlock new talent, to create workforces that are happier and experience less stress, to use physical spaces differently and to live an ethos that’s good for the planet. To capitalise on these opportunities, it’s clear that how we manage and measure wellbeing at work must now be central to our transition from crisis to the future world of work.
Chris Preston is founder and director of The Culture Builders
