How to build meaningful connections with employees in an increasingly virtual world?
Rachel was at the top of her game. The youngest to ever have been made the Vice President of Human Resources in an organisation that boasted of tenure. She had this amazing knack of just figuring out what it is that the other was motivated by. Always had something up her sleeve. Her team, barely if ever saw her at her desk. She was constantly around the office, engaging with business heads, talking to the staff, bantering with housekeeping – she made it all look so easy.
This year was going to be exciting for her. The company was opening up centers in two new locations, geographically close but servicing two very different service lines. She was involved from the word Go! Right from selecting, recruiting and on-boarding HR personnel for those centers, she was acutely aware of the different mindsets coming to work. Millennials would probably swarm to the workplace in pursuit of many of the digital roles they needed, and the generational gap would be probably more evident. Creating a solid on-boarding experience, and promoting greater engagement with three generations working side-by-side could needed a layered approach, not the standard one-size-fits-all solution.
Rachel read. She read all that there was to read about their jobs, the high-stress environment, the travel needed from different parts of the city. She looked long and hard at their resumes to figure out patterns, and to understand what kind of people they were - what motivated them. It started out well enough. They seemed to like her and she visited the offices whenever she could.
The employee engagement survey results that came in later that year were unexpected.
Engagement across all the three centers had declined. It was at an all time low, but on the face of it, employees went about their jobs in exactly the same way.
Rachel decided to dig deeper, and personally facilitated focus group discussions across the organization.
New Location One: Good infrastructure, responsive managers and HR, very little actual connect with peers, no system of giving feedback to admin, HR and support teams
New Location Two: Good managers, parking issues, uneven cooling in the workspace, unresponsive HR staff, no hotline to support functions to get things moving
Old Location: Don’t know what the business is doing overall, no connect with peers in other locations, very little growth and L&D opportunities
See what was happening here?
Many employees in the old location didn’t realize what was happening at the new offices. They lost sight of where the business was headed as a whole. With a lot of management attention on the new locations, they felt left out.
The new locations felt disconnected from the majority of the old support staff that worked out of the old location. They felt that there was no one who listened.
In a world that increasingly relies on Zoom, Webex, Skype, Chats, telecons, emails with people operating out of varying time zones - how does a CHRO ensure that the employees are able to be meaningfully connected with each other? If you have to use an app to talk to someone, then most people stick to work related matters. The social glue is missing.
Rachel went about fixing this in a rather unusual way. She realized that the reason why she wanted to talk to some of her friends all the time was that it was fun to connect with them. By launching an intra- company Facebook of sorts, she gave employees a fun medium to connect with each other. She used tech to combat tech stress, but in a way that was intuitive and easy. People across the locations began liking the goofy pictures of each other and that started developing a bond.
We also talk to other people because we get to learn something from them.
Rachel built in monthly sessions with subject matter experts (SME) across the 3 locations open to all. Every month somebody who knew something better than the others would do a small high tea session. Again people connected, learnt something new and enjoyed a meal together. Even better, she let the SMEs themselves reach out to people. They emailed all their colleagues telling them why they were passionate about a certain topic and that they would like to share what they knew.
We get drawn to others because we are curious and want to expand our horizons.
Rachel formalised the mentor- mentee program across the three locations. The only caveat- the mentoring partner needed to be in another location and the mentee had to reach out to the mentor themselves.
To run all this seamlessly, Rachel worked diligently with her team across all the locations.
These engagement initiatives came at a cost, but at the end of the second year, the engagement scores were consistently high.
In a virtual world, where people connect with each other only to be engaged in some form of quid pro quo, meaningful workplace relationships are fast becoming rare. But it is only those relationships where you feel that a colleague cares for you and will stand up for you- that you would find the encouragement to come to work every day and give your best.
What do you do to ensure that your employees stay connected? And engaged?