As we get used to this new normal, we do so with a clearer view of what it means to live, work and transact in a pandemic-stricken world, thanks to the lessons learnt from the past two years.
COVID-19 has fuelled a rapid acceleration in the transformation of work, bringing about changes that will have deep and varying impacts for years, even decades, to come.
I’ve seen many companies forced through accelerated wellness transformation. Still, the best place to start is by reading people’s views on the subject, learning from each others’ trials and mistakes and creating a transformation plan that impacts all business areas. And this is even more important for growing businesses that are expanding rapidly.
These five trends are the key to arming any founder with the knowledge and power to kick start their wellness transformation to help their people thrive.
Power will shift from employers to employees
Many employees have re-evaluated their values over the last two years, and, in turn, the psychological contract between employee and employers has changed.
Salaries and office sizes are no longer key reasons to take a job. Instead, employees want to be seen as individuals with unique needs centred around wellbeing and living a fuller life.
“We’re seeing a shift to living lives based on a more fulfilling, intrinsic, and sustainable definition of success,” noted Thrive Global Founder Arianna Huffington in her article The Great Resignation.
“Coming out of this forced pause, the intangibles of life that make it worth living have become a lot more tangible. If people have connected with this in the past year and a half of lockdown-inspired reflection, they’re unwilling to give it up, and if their current job doesn’t allow for it, they’re willing to look for one that does.”
As the world recovers, businesses will get back on track, and the war for talent will intensify. To keep employees happy and thriving, companies must carefully rethink how they can meet employees’ needs while still achieving business goals. Those who do so early will benefit the most.
A bigger emphasis on psychological safety
The concept of psychological safety is simple. Team members should feel safe enough to voice their concerns or push back without fear of rejection, retribution, or marginalisation.
Also Read: Emotional leadership in a post-COVID-19 business world
While simple, it remains one of the hardest things to achieve, especially when so many factors, culture, hierarchy, personalities, unconscious bias, and value systems, are at play.
In a world where everyone exists as tiny frames on a screen and colleagues hardly speak to each other outside of meetings, psychological safety takes on even greater significance.
McKinsey aptly explains, “Given the quickening pace of change and disruption and the need for creative, adaptive responses from teams at every level, psychological safety is more important than ever.
“The organisations that develop the leadership skills and positive work environment that help create psychological safety can reap many benefits, from improved innovation, experimentation, and agility to better overall organisational health and performance.”
Hybrid work and omnichannel employee experiences
The abrupt disruptions of 2020 forced organisations to find immediate, alternative solutions to traditional work and learning methods, including virtual meetings, video, email, mobile apps and intranets, among others.
Last year, companies began identifying and fine-tuning the methods that best suited their needs, a trend that’ll likely continue. Over time, professional education and employee engagement programmes will increasingly be delivered via omnichannel methods, so finding an optimal online and offline balance soon is key.
With no precedence to learn from and a plethora of tools to choose from, this herculean task will require time, resources and, most importantly, patience from all parties involved.
According to a 2021 Microsoft report, “A thoughtful approach to hybrid work matters. […] The way companies approach the next phase of work, embracing the flexibility people want to retain and learn from the past year’s challenges, will impact who stays, who goes, and who ultimately seeks to join your company.”
Renewed emphasis on resilience
For decades, organisations have been built around efficiency, with leadership effectiveness, employee productivity and supply chain efficiencies sitting at the epi-centre of our work culture.
COVID-19 hit the pause button on this, putting even the sturdiest of organisations to the test. The result? Workforces did not cope well, mental wellbeing plummeted, and companies suffered because they were built around efficiency, not resilience.
To create more responsive, resilient organisations, we must now reconsider business roles and structures, but this time with agility and flexibility built-in. Employees should have adaptive and flexible roles where cross-functional knowledge and ongoing training serve as features of their employment.
In 2020, in an article for Harvard Business Review, Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker wrote, “Many leaders have announced the intention to build back their businesses more resiliently, but not many know how to do so. […] As a result, very few companies can explicitly design for, measure, and manage resilience.”
Also Read: Life goes on: What will life in the post-COVID-19 era look like?
Ingrid Laman, VP, Advisory at Gartner, reminds us that “Diversity leaders will need to be involved in role design and creating flexible work systems to ensure that employees of all backgrounds and needs are considered when the organisation designs new workflows.”
Scalability
As organisations welcome employees into the new hybrid setups, questions that many HR leaders will face include, ‘How do we scale communications and wellness programs to hundreds, if not thousands, of employees in different locations?’ and ‘How do we put everyone on a synchronous journey while still meeting each individual’s needs?’
The new hybrid model is invariably more complicated than a fully remote one. At every level, new strategies, systems and workflows will need to be put in place, and many practices that have been the norm for decades will now be tested.
This will require several iterations before leaders can find a rhythm that works for them, whether a business comprises 10, 500 or thousands of people.
“How do you personalise for thousands? One way is to create multiple methods for listening at scale: reactive listening, proactive listening, and keeping both on a constant loop,” offers Forbes contributor Glenn Llopis.
McKinsey also shares, “Without a road map or playbook for what the next normal should look like, people must adopt a test-and-learn mindset collectively.”
McKinsey further proposes two key areas where organisations can differentiate themselves from competitors: external tools and partnerships and staying open.
“The need of the hour is for HR to collaborate on and leverage the landscape of HR tech solutions across the employee life cycle, from learning, talent acquisition, and performance management to workforce productivity, to build an effective HR ecosystem.”
A windy road ahead but a valuable journey
In all likelihood, we will need to confront more viruses in the future, in both the real world and the ‘cyberworld’. COVID-19 gave us a front-row view of its disruptive nature and impact.
While companies will require mental rewiring before they can be safeguarded against future calamities, ensuring the wellbeing of their people and seeing the positive impact on business growth will make it well worth the effort.
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