Engaging your employees during pandemic
In the present business situation during the COVID‐19 pandemic, employee engagement has become one of the utmost prominent primacies for human resource managers and practitioners in organizations due to lockdown. The paper is to determine the engagement of employees by various companies during coronavirus pandemic. Organizations nowadays are constantly developing innovative and effective means to engage the employees during this tough time. This paper is a conceptual paper that is based on various research papers, articles, blogs, online newspapers, and reports of World Health Organization. During this pandemic situation, organizations are evolving many engagement activities like online family engagement practices, virtual learning and development, online team building activities, webinars with industry experts, online conduct weekly alignment sessions, team meet‐ups over video conference for lunch, short online game sessions, virtual challenges and competitions, online courses, appreciation sessions, communication exercises, live sessions for new‐skill training, online counseling sessions, recognition and acknowledgment session, webinars dealing with anxiety and stress, providing online guidance for exercise and meditation, social interactions in a virtual office, classrooms training modules digitally, e‐learning modules, and many more creative learning sessions. Work‐from‐home regime engagement activities are very fruitful for employees as well as for organizations. Those organizations doing these kinds of engagement activities for their employees are learning new skills and developing themselves. Employees are feeling committed to the organization and stay motivated during this tough time of COVID‐19 pandemic.
1. Take a ‘supportive management’ approach
During the work-from-home scenario, senior management who did not have remote working measures in place at the pandemic outset had to find a way to manage their team’s performance from home. Some common online methods used were daily team meetings and frequent 1-1 check-ins. For many, having frequent check-ins led to micro-goal setting and gave employees the opportunity to receive constant feedback. This ‘coaching’ approach allows management to easily assess and measure progress whilst also boosting team-productivity which, in turn, keeps employees engaged – giving them a sense of purpose and achievement in reaching goals. Increased communication between management and employees allows issues and concerns to be voiced, allowing time to more easily anticipate or resolve them. Commitment from the top, to adopt such a supportive management approach, has proven to be beneficial to all.
Equally important for employee engagement is for an organisation to have a culture of recognition, to drive engagement - an aspect of the ‘coaching’ method described earlier is praise. Research shows that high performing teams have a praise to criticism ratio of 5:1, meaning they give each other 5 times more positive feedback than criticism. Praising employees keeps them engaged; the feeling of being trusted releases oxytocin in the body, making people more energetic, creative and reliable, so praise your employees!
2. Create a positive work environment
For the majority, a change of environment was the biggest challenge, going from the office - where everyone is among colleagues in work-mode, to home - where varying contrasts abound such as being alone, or having young children at hand or elderly to care for or even a neighbouring baby or pet making noise, all of which would be disruptive to any workflow.
That said, the flexible working environment, that most employees experienced during COVID-19, has changed our understanding of work-life-balance. Working from home has allowed employees to do their work whilst also attending to personal needs (e.g. taking care of children, elderly and pets and errands) simultaneously. This has served as a reminder to managers that there are a number of non-work related factors that can affect an employee’s mindset and therefore their engagement. Employees have proven the ability to maintain balance between work and personal needs, albeit through a forced period of testing. In the post-COVID period, management must not forget the importance of constantly creating a positive work environment for their employees. This must include making sure that work fits into their employees’ lives and not the other way around. It is essential that management pays attention to factors that impact employees outside of work. Some recommended solutions are; working from home, child care facilities, pet friendly areas, parental leave and mental health days. When employees feel that their personal needs are valued by management, their emotional connection to the organisation is strengthened and they are more likely to stay on. Indeed, in the remote working scenario of COVID-19, the flexibility to determine one’s working hours has sometimes resulted in the increased commitment of employees who were willing to work beyond expected hours, as a direct result of positive engagement.
3. Encourage ‘trust in leadership’
During COVID-19, employees had to trust leaders to take the right direction and to make tough decisions for the future. A key part of trust in leadership is transparency, where employees have visibility into what is happening within their organisation. This is particularly important during a work-from-home scenario, where employees are reliant on leaders to take crucial decisions for the future of their jobs and the organisation. A key part of this has been communication between management and employees on how the organisation is tackling COVID-19. By way of examples, in some organisations, discussions have centred on the effects to the organisation, strategic plans for acquiring clients and re-shuffling of roles, etc.
To inspire this trust in leadership in the post-COVID-19 period, we recommend having frequent check-ins and transparent conversations between directors, managers and employees so that employees feel included in what is happening within the organisation. Moreover, it is also imperative for employees to learn about individual growth opportunities. Leaders who invest in the learning and development of their employees will be encouraging engagement - not only relating to education and training but also the learning that occurs through constructive feedback; a crucial element to achieve a learning organisation “status”. Another benefit of having frequent team meetings, is that a constant feedback loop can be developed, whereby employees are continuously improving their work through transparent communication with management. These practices will boost employee engagement and help organisations to retain their employees for the longer term.