Strategies to Support Pandemic Change in the Work Environment

 Strategies to Support Pandemic Change in the Work Environment  - from kitchen table of Michael Legut, PhD. and Dr. Mary Anne Brady.

The pandemic has introduced many changes in employees work activity, schedules and locations. Companies who create strategies and cultures that focus more on the human issues, have the potential of benefiting from a more flexible, engaged and dynamic work force.

 

The following table is a refinement from previous versions. Our consulting experiences have shown more disruptions are evolving from the pandemic.  Our research indicates that there are opportunities to leverage some of the traditional organization culture elements while integrating more employee needs.

Organization Elements

Current State Scenario

Future State Scenario

Proposed Strategic Action

Work Location

Employee work activity and location is based on the company’s ability to arrange work from different locations such as satellite, contractor and remote facility sites.

·        Technology and knowledge workers work from most any location.

·        Options to reduce commuting activity are made available (National average for daily commutes is 53.2 minutes round trip)

·        “Quit rates” become problematic. Trends indicate there are on-going staffing issues. These have increased by 2.3%. and in 2020, average quit rate was 24%.   

Organizations’ shift to consider more human issues and add flexibility in work locations based on staffing needs: skill availability, family demands, work-life balance, health, safety and financial issues.

·   Policies address employee retention, and allow staff to work off-site per job function to reduce or eliminate health risks and commute time.

·   Leaders articulate a vision for embracing more human elements in strategic decisions.

·   More efforts employed to build trust with customers by establishing employee trust by soliciting employee input.

Conduct a comprehensive company-wide employee survey to evaluate the type of work activity that allows hybrid locations based on job function.

·        Identify individual and team needs for on-site versus remote work activity.

·        Upgrade technology and  infrastructure to facilitate healthy, secure and multi-site work locations.

Company Policy

Work activity policies are adjusted to manage health concerns, costs, process flow, maintain brand/image, and sustain knowledge sharing.

Expand financial responsibility for technology, cyber security and work space safety.

·   Upgrade current infrastructure.

·   Employees get reimbursement for home office set-up and maintenance.

·   Evaluate performance expectations for job responsibilities for multi-site work locations, allow more flexible options for working.

 

Review current human resources management policies and integrate employee survey findings as needed to provide policy makers and employees with formal guidelines for rewarding staff working in hybrid work environments.

·        Offer tuition reimbursement for technology or interpersonal communication courses (Amazon offering tuition benefits for 750,000 hourly employees, (Cutter. 2021).

·        Authorize technology reimbursement for hybrid staff to support business level performance. 

 

 

Business Strategy

Strategy focuses on shareholders, customers, staffing, supply-chain, community, climate issues

·     Maximize technology to improve business processes, increase customer access, exploit innovation and leverage new markets

Maximize company visibility by expanding existing recruiting channels, grow in existing markets, and expand customer base with a well-being approach.

·   Expand recruitment and retention for job skills versus geographic restrictions. 

·   Improved ways of supporting people to perform at their best and prioritize employee retention and retraining.

·   Foster peer training.

·   Right-size brick-and-mortar investments.

·   Promote health well-being options with customers.

 

Conduct strategy scenario planning to develop and fund initiatives that integrated Covid recovery adjustments, employee survey feedback with talent retention, quit rates, advances in communication technology, marketing and sales, AI, remote business processes, and changes to on-site physical workspace needs.

·        Include customers, suppliers, academics, and consultants for industry and trend analysis.

·        Invest in strategic workforce planning tools and targeted recruiting to address skill gaps in technology and virtual team leadership skills.

·        Reconfigure work schedules and office space to engage and support hybrid work for employees.

 

Culture Influence

Cultural values and expectations for “butts-in-seats” are represented in plans for employees to return to offices.

·        Employee performance, productivity, training and career advancement remain dependent upon in-office relationship and with leaders managing and evaluating.

·   The company cultural norms shift  to value and expect trust in the leader/employee relationships.

·   Performance measures focus on work outcomes to assess employee performance and career advancement. 

·   Leaders are valued for empathic management style and building employee relationships.

·   Diverse communities are included and valued to expand geographic competitiveness.

·   More emphasis on respecting cultural differences in communication and employee behaviors..

 

Assign a mixed group of senior and other management level leaders to identify cultural changes needed and shepherd cultural change action items through-out the company.

·        Senior leaders should also employ trusted external cultural transformation experts to get an external perspective of company’s current culture and support leaders in identifying change strategies to address culture issues that foster adoption of flexible work activity options versus the cultural expectation for butts-in-seats.

 

Hopefully this blog will help leaders consider options regarding how the pandemic will impact their company policies, business strategies and culture. As always, my goal is to help leaders consider options to lead their companies in the post-pandemic world. For additional discussion, I can be reached at www.leaderimage.com or on my LinkedIn page.

 

 

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