The recent easing of Victorian restrictions has seen the slow trickling of employees back into offices. While it’s been a difficult time for everyone, it’s fair to say that the COVID-19 wrecking ball of uncertainty brought one certainty: that we have all learned a lot from it! From everything to do with how, when and where we like to work, to how we lead in a distributed environment, the mass remote working experiment was a steep learning curve, providing us with some valuable insights on employee engagement that we can take forward into our ‘new normal’.
Now, we know that companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%[1] , have 89% greater customer satisfaction and 50% higher customer loyalty[2]. It’s clear, therefore, that employee engagement will play a huge part in how our businesses recover, and how our people respond to their new working environment.
Here, we discuss five employee engagement considerations for navigating a successful transition back to the office.
1. Clear, frequent, and transparent communication
An essential ingredient of a smooth, safe transition back into the office is frequent, clear, and consistent communication. It’s only natural than some employees will feel nervous about returning to work, so regular updates that explain the rationale behind any workforce decisions are key.
According to research, businesses that openly and honestly communicated with their employees about COVID-19 were the ones that earned trust and benefitted from an increase in engagement, with 63% of employees wanting daily updates and frequent communications.[3]
This could be communication around newly introduced COVID-19 workplace health and safety (WHS) procedures, or changes to workloads and work patterns. While it’s critical that communication is clear and frequent, it’s equally important that it remains human and personalised, and gives your valued employees a sense of comfort during a stressful time. Using HR technology with employee broadcast software to automate company-wide communications helps to speed up the process and ensure no one misses important updates or that warm welcome! HROnboard offers this functionality via its ‘Welcomes’ app, allowing employers to send broadcast communications to their workforce on important matters such as returning to work. Read more about this functionality here.
2. Health and safety
Feelings of safety are never more important than in times of a global health pandemic, and each business type will have its own unique set of challenges. From rethinking hotdesking and meeting spaces, to restarting factories and retail locations – protocols will need to comply with state guidelines around COVID-safe business operations.
But when talking all things WHS, let’s not forget psychological safety. After all, we’re dealing with employees who may still feel apprehensive after having been stood down, or who have been dealing with sick relatives, or home-schooling their children – amongst other stressful circumstances. Acknowledging these situations and showing you care goes a long way and will increase feelings of psychological safety in what is an anxiety-ridden period.
3. Managing the ‘hybrid’ workforce
Some employees may not be able to return to the work so soon, if they are in a vulnerable group or perhaps live with someone who is. This means that your people may be split between office and home – making employee engagement more of a challenge. But there’s no need to worry; with the right tools, technology and processes in place – together with the right training – successfully managing a hybrid workforce is entirely possible!
Managers should be upskilled to manage a hybrid workforce, with the quality of management being critical for supporting their teams and keeping them engaged.
Making sure that communications channels such as Slack remain active – despite a large portion of your people now being in the office – helps your remote workers remain engaged and included and boosts team cohesion.
4. Connect learning to strategic business priorities
In times of recovery, we will rely on our precious talent more than ever to help us rebuild our organisations. And we know that our people feel more engaged if they see a link between their work and business outcomes, with research showing that 49% of companies whose employees saw a clear link between their work and the company’s strategic objectives enjoyed lower staff turnover.[4] Therefore, aligning training needs to critical business priorities is a no-brainer when building an engaged, productive post-COVID workforce.
Offering virtual learning modules that can be completed at each employee’s own pace, wherever they are, will ensure that learning and development opportunities aren’t neglected in the ‘rebuild’ phase of COVID-19.
5. Provide a successful re-onboarding experience
Remember to acknowledge the past experience of employees returning to the workforce after being stood down. They’ve been there before, they’ve been exposed to onboarding essentials like the introduction of corporate mission and values, as well as rules and regulations.
But it can’t hurt to provide a light refresher for all of these areas, as people can and do forget! Ask for updated personal details (tax, bank, contact details), create new log-in details for technology, and update contracts as required.
Working life has changed. It’s unlikely that employees – old or new – will be returning to a pre-pandemic “normal”. To help ease a sense of upheaval for returning employees, try to personalise the onboarding experience as much as possible, be transparent, and be open to answering any questions that come your way!
HROnboard, an ELMO company, offers a best-in-class software solution that reduces the amount of time HR teams and leaders spend securing the best candidates and undertaking the critical onboarding process for new hires. Our solution also helps manage internal employee role changes and can create a smooth and seamless process for exiting employees.
ELMO Software offers innovative cloud-based HR & payroll solutions to more than 1600 organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, helping them to manage, engage, and inspire their people. Our solutions span the entire employee lifecycle, from ‘hire to retire’. This includes a comprehensive suite of complementary solutions that further enhance the onboarding experience, namely Recruitment, Learning Management, HR Core, Survey and Connect. For further information, contact us.
[1] PostBeyond, The Year of Social Advocacy in the Workplace, 2018
[2] Korn Ferry, Measures for Success, 2018 [1] Edelman, “Special report on COVID-19 demonstrates essential role of the private sector”, 2020
[3] Edelman, “Special report on COVID-19 demonstrates essential role of the private sector”, 2020
[4] LinkedIn, 2020 Global Talent Trends, 2020