The demand for remote working keeps growing, with technology enabling employees to balance personal life with their commitment to work. How can companies be preparing to meet expectations and adapt to a more remote workforce?
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You’ve no doubt already seen a plethora of blogs out there about the most effective ways to successfully work from home. Good lighting. Clear workspace. Stretch out every so often. But even once we set up our respective workstations, make to-do lists, and take frequent breaks throughout the day – there may still be elements missing when remote.
Just because working from home isn’t a new concept, it doesn’t mean it won’t be new to a lot of people. Whether they’re new to the working world or their previous jobs never required or allowed it, we reached out to six people in various roles and occupations who are new to working from home. Despite everyone’s circumstances being unique, they shared some common challenges that may speak to you as well.
We have hundreds of digital communication tools at our fingertips to keep everyone connected. Facebook, Teams, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet – the list is endless. Some companies even have several implemented for employees. So why are communication and collaboration persistently top issues for remote workers? It’s because of how we use them. This was something reflected in our interviews as five out of the six respondents stated that despite still feeling somewhat connected to their teams, it was hard to sustain throughout the day. It was specifically noted that it becomes much harder to gauge someone’s mood or tone, which impacted how the individuals felt able to contact their colleagues.
“I feel less connected to my team because of the lack of human interaction”
The issue of improving ease of communication and collaboration can be addressed by companies establishing best practices with their communication tools of choice. Where should employees chit chat? Where can they feel comfortable sharing a meme, a video or a funny anecdote? What is the best medium for feedback or high-level discussions? Very few tools can do it all unless they are specifically designed with remote teams or asynchronous communication in mind.
Regardless of age, when you first start a job, interaction can really influence how happy and settled you feel. Traditionally offices organise new joiner drinks, Friday breakfasts or similar opportunities for team bonding. This is the first thing lost when working from home. All of our respondents mentioned that they missed some social aspect since moving to remote working, be it being able to talk through an issue or question or even just missing the jokes. If you’re starting in a remote job it can be hard to find ways to bond or understand the team you need to collaborate and connect with. Perhaps more relevant to what people are facing in today’s world, how can you prevent team connections and bonds falling apart once everyone’s had to move to remote working? Especially at a time when businesses need their people to be pushing on more so than ever.
“I’m missing the jokes and the random spurs of out loud thoughts that lead to spouts of creativity in a collaborative environment”
We all need a nudge. When building our solutions, we firstly work to understand the user profiles who will be adopting the solution and then establish what nudges or prompts they might need to get the necessary work done, boosting motivation and productivity. It is here we use game design to implement the most effective mechanics to create these nudges. Activity loops which provide a prompt or call to action followed by some form of feedback are a simple way to keep people engaged. For example, the call to action could be a reminder to call someone that they have not spoken to in a while. The feedback would come in the form of the conversation that is then had. Or, the call to action could be a new goal set in a task that they must complete. In this instance, feedback could come in the form of progress markers or recognition within the team.
Most businesses are well equipped with the previously mentioned communication tools for meetings, catch ups and follow ups, but what about project management tools? People new to working from home can quickly feel detached from the usual buzz of the office or feel that their day has been unproductive even when filled with calls. Helping people feel like they’re achieving something is vital for sustaining motivation and consequently, productivity. While many of us see flexibility as the main benefit of remote working, the flip side is if everyone is being flexible how do you ensure everyone’s flexible schedules and needs overlap? Feeling like you’re all on the same page can be hard when you lose sight of what everyone is doing. Something a few of our respondents picked up on was the lack of project management and collaborative working tools to ease the situation and improve motivation and the drive for teamwork.
Thinking outside the box and utilising tools that encourage feedback, recognition and help track progress can help ease the difficulties that exist around collaborative projects. This can look like collaborative to-do lists, virtual timelines, progress bars or notification prompts to managers. Platforms and solutions can be designed to help everyone to stay in the loop with each other and on track with what needs to be done, as well as supporting the social need for interaction. When combined with a more conscious effort to update each other, even with non-work specific things, has positive effects as it will help to immerse the natural flow of activity that occurs in the office, into the online environment.
“Isolation is an issue because the office acts as a social space so being remoted from this has consequences”
We have the benefit of technology to help us tackle these challenges, but it’s vital to remember the humans at the heart of it. Users who will feel lonely even with 101 digital tools available to them, users who will feel untethered from their usual productivity and routine. Work communication needs to be functional to sustain overall productivity and performance, but communication is more than just ‘pinging’ each other work updates. We can all get better at making an effort to be there for each other. More meaningful and productive communication, finding more areas for collaboration, aiding in employee development and motivation. However, there is also an argument that companies could be investing in the structures and digital tools that will empower and enable their employees to be their best selves – wherever they’re logging in from. Current circumstances aside, if remote working is here to stay, practices and approaches need to be put into place to help employees work remotely, not alone.
As we face new challenges in the workplace and the world in general, it seems that working from home and remote workforces will become an increasingly common practice. Employees and employers alike will be feeling the strain to balance priorities and maintain ‘business as usual’ structures. Communication tools and software are imperative for ensuring connectivity. If implemented alone, without strategy and an understanding of how your team engage in their work, they can feel like tools to monitor and observe employees.
Here we will look at how even just a basic understanding of motivation can help you to ensure your employees or your team, whatever their profile or drives, stay engaged and motivated whilst working from home – now and in the future.
The RAMP model is based on Self Determination Theory and stands for Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Relatedness taps into our innate desire to be connected to others, Autonomy, the need to have choice and freedom. Mastery is a need to improve, feel progress and achievement. Finally, Purpose can be described as the “reason” we do things.
All of these can hold the key to make working from home feel as productive or satisfying as working in an office.
This is one of the most important aspects that can be lost when working from home. In the office you always have people around to talk to, bounce ideas off and even just share a lunch break with. Working from home can be calming for some, isolating for others – and in times of uncertainty it is important to find ways to stay connected, not micromanaged.
With remote work, it is important to accept that employees will naturally have more freedom and inevitably less structure than they may have in the office. If they are working from home to balance family life or health needs or extenuating circumstances with work commitments, flexibility is important. Flexibility doesn’t mean employees going MIA – which is a message for both employees and their managers. Don’t tie your employees to their desktops and phones out of fear. Connect with them and empower them to continue contributing and they will feel all the better (and perform more) for it.
This may be a little less obvious at first. If you are suddenly now part of a remote team, you might be feeling like your career progression has gone on hold, or maybe you’re struggling to keep up with your company’s e-learning system with other things on your mind. How can people develop their skills or experience when there is no one there to see them do it? Particularly if you’re from a more traditional working environment, working from home can end up feeling like you’re just sitting around. Mastery is about more than ticking boxes. Mastery is about achievement, and there are many ways for you to feel you are continuing to accomplish things professionally in a less conventional setting.
There are two versions of purpose that are important here. Firstly, finding some sort of value and meaning to the work you are doing – a reason why you are doing it. Organisations and employers play a huge role in this by helping to remind employees why the work they do is important, and emphasising that they are all part of a collective, collaborative group rather than remote satellites. The other aspect is philanthropic purpose, helping others. As mentioned before remote working, especially if somewhat involuntary, can be isolating for your team members. It is vital for team morale and motivation to keep up the human aspect of work rather than only pinging people for a favour or work related question.
In today’s competitive market, the period from when someone makes the commitment to join right through their first few months in the role is key. Key to ensuring that the new employee is engaged with their work and the organisation they’re joining, and feel their decision to join is reinforced and reassured along the way.
The benefits are that they get settled into their roles and are productive sooner. They begin their journey towards brand advocacy, and they are much less likely to leave earlier than expected. So, making sure that everyone joining has a positive experience is certainly worth the effort.
But what about when an employee wants to leave? Could a more positive experience at the exit stage – offboarding – be valuable for all concerned?
The reasons for individuals moving on to pastures new are always numerous and varied of course. Historically, when someone resigned, particularly if going to work for a direct competitor, then they were likely to be marched off site, not allowed to return to their desk and maybe forced to complete their notice period whilst at home on “gardening leave”.
Most people no longer join the work force looking for a “job for life”. It is highly likely at some point or another, many of us will move roles to satisfy our own individual motivations. As Business leaders, managers or owners, we need to analyse the reasons and respond to significant trends that cause people to move on, sometimes there is nothing you can do to prevent it happening. However, it does not mean there’s nothing that can be done to prepare for the situation. Utilising technologies to provide consistent, standardised experiences across an organisation can be critical for maintaining satisfied and engaged employees at any stage of their journey with you.
Despite the benefits, research suggests that only 29% of companies have a defined “Offboarding” strategy*
Given the vast opportunities in the market, and the emergence of new and non-traditional roles and skills every day, there is significant value in maintaining strong relationships with ex-employees – beyond simplistic networking on LinkedIn stalking that we have all become too accustomed to. Leaving people with positive experiences and a smooth transition could help make all the difference.
Let’s consider some of the benefits:
Where there is a keen demand for skills and talent, we may want them to come back and work for us again and we want to maximise the likelihood that they will want to. They are likely to have developed and grown and can come back as more rounded individuals with a broader experience of the market and able to make a bigger contribution to the success of the company. Stay in touch and create ways to demonstrate that even though they’re off the payroll, they’re still a valued member of the company’s extended community.
Not everyone who joins or leaves a company today will be a permanent employee. Some will be contractors, freelancers, consultants or gig-workers. Historically these roles have not been treated as well as the “permanent employees”, with less access to the everyday benefits and opportunities. The popularity and demand for contingent workforce will only continue to grow as businesses broaden their flexibility or offerings, and so the need to remain engaged with them is vital to ensure that they too will want to return or keep in orbit if their skills are required.
As our decisions become increasingly reliant on recommendation and reference, organisations today have a superb opportunity to harness the effect of their employees and ex- employees. People share their experiences amongst their networks and a positive review from someone who has left can be a powerful tool when attracting new people to join.
We don’t only want to retain their loyalty as an employer – we want to appeal to them as customers. Those leaving have a knowledge of the market, industry, products and services and we will want to ensure that they can recommend our business, as suppliers or partners, where appropriate. A positive experience as an employee is likely to strengthen their customer advocacy.
We need to move away from a world where we treat our customers so evidently better than how we interact with our own employees. There has always been a focus in delivering customer excellence, as there is a simple connection to ROI. If we were to enrich the experiences of employees, instead of viewing them as replaceable, we would empower and enable the workforce – thus strengthening business performance, productivity and power of influence. There is an eagerness to offer valuable experiences for employees in the hope they then value their organisation. Moving forward, we should also learn to get better at extending that appreciation to people and communities beyond their last day.
Lack of engagement in the workplace is an issue that isn’t going anywhere, any time soon. Everyone has days where they hit the brick wall or count the seconds on the clock until they leave; but the problem is when those days become the norm. Every year more research and statistics come out and cause concern as they reveal how the majority of employees feel unengaged at work, how even engaged individuals are at risk of burnout, and how just measuring levels isn’t actually helping anyone.
It was interesting to see in the recent NYT Smarter Living piece ‘Feeling Uninspired at Work?’ that the advice focussed on the individuals and employees: take some time to refresh your mind, send the email you’ve been meaning to send, find a way to tick something off your to-do list no matter how small. All positive ways to give yourself a sense of progress or accomplishment. That said, the achievements end up benefitting the employer as much as the employee. Which brings up another common frustration. The responsibility can’t always be on the individual to restart their motivation generator. Employers can also be providing the right tools and environment to make engagement in the workplace a possibility and a reality, rather than “something that would be nice to have”.
Employees today have endless distractions and opportunities just a click away, and in many cases face outdated management styles and frameworks that stifle motivation. Left unaddressed, disaffection, detachment and disillusionment are huge blockers for any company trying to roll out new objectives, embed values and culture, or retain talent. So, what do you do? Offer Taco Tuesdays for everyone? Redesign the office space to include more plants and natural light? Provide ping-pong tables? These are fine ideas and they can work as rewards, but they don’t move the engagement dial in the long term as they don’t address the root of the challenge – how to engage people in the uninspiring everyday processes or procedures they have to do.
No companies truly want their employees to be miserable. More than ever before organisations today are under pressure to craft modern, appealing offerings for employees, that stand out from the competition – attracting new exciting talent, developing employees into the best they can be, enabling the right work/life balance, supporting meaningful causes, offering more opportunities… It’s a lot to promise and consistently deliver. Where do you even begin?
We define engagement as an emotional and psychological attachment people have to a brand, product, idea or organisation. The feeling of trust you have towards a cosmetic brand because you like their ethics, their marketing, and the fact you can see results (albeit small) after using their products. Because of how they make you feel, you keep buying from them again.
So, in order to foster engagement in any environment, you need to start with the people. Understand their drives, their motivations, what they enjoy and what their pain points might be. Once you can better empathise with them, you will be in a much stronger position to work on impactful and meaningful engagement solutions. If your employees feel that you understand their needs and that your programmes empower them, rather than further complicate their day, they’ll then be more willing to adopt new approaches.
A lot of the work we do at Motivait comes down to helping companies enhance the experience of a specific area or process. A more exciting onboarding process, redesigning manager training and development, driving teamwork and collaboration. We use RAMP theory as a core part of our solution design process to encourage intrinsic engagement – a drive that comes from within – as this is what helps turn passive individuals into active participants. When their sense of Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and/or Purpose are reinforced, people willingly take part in specific activities and work towards objectives because they want to, rather than feel they have to.
More often than not, small changes that then add up to a larger impact over time is the best starting place. Seeing progression is important, much like the NYT article referred to when suggesting ticking off items of a to-do list. What is even more powerful is having the acknowledgment or encouragement come from colleagues or managers, rather than always being self-generated.
Simply developing mechanisms for positive feedback when tasks are usefully achieved can improve people’s motivation to continue. Creating an environment where employees can see the corporate values in action, rather than just listing abstract concepts, through champions and leaders leading by example. An engaged workforce will be more open to collaborating, committing, and representing, once they understand the reciprocity and value to their contribution in the greater scheme of the organisation.
Solutions and practices that reinforce the idea “we want to make your experiences with us better!” are all it takes to start shifting perceptions. Once they take root, they can then become vehicles for promoting and influencing desired behaviours and be a step closer to achieving company objectives, values and culture you’ve set out for success.
So – you have begun your own company-wide introspection to define your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Maybe you’ve already got the definition agreed upon and you’re ready to release it into the world. Before you start printing out posters, it’s first time to think about the actual delivery and communication of these concepts and how you’re intending on conveying them to your workforce. In other words, how to articulate and bring your EVP to life.
Essentially, a company’s EVP is the employment offering between employer and employee; the employer’s commitment to help satisfy what employees need and want from their work, in exchange for their daily efforts and energy towards the organisation’s goals. While all organisations have an EVP, not all intentionally define, shape and formalise it into strategy.
Furthermore – and a key differentiating factor – not many organisations go as far as articulating and delivering their EVP into actual, lived ‘people experiences’. Experiences that are unique to your organisation and represent company identity, goals, mission, values and norms. Learning paths, development opportunities, flexible working environments – the attractive offering or incentive that makes people want to work for you, and want to keep working for you. In many cases, the best starting point for translating values from their broad definitions, into executable, comprehensible approaches and behaviours for employees to adopt is often through your EVP, by setting, establishing and managing expectations and desired behaviours from the start of their journey with you.
Employees who can effectively understand and embody company values make excellent brand advocates and ambassadors, championing initiatives and promoting services. But, of course, the relationship works both ways. While it is valuable to establish how an employee can take on core company values and work within the EVP, it is also crucial to remember companies are judged against their own EVP too.
These “people experiences” range across the employee life-cycle touch points, taking place through the key, daily tasks, activities and processes that seem small or routine or even mundane, but add up to move an organisation closer to its goals. As a result, these small events can serve more than their original, purely functional purpose. They are also moments where employees, partners, prospects, clients and customers all interact with your organisational brand, and through those interactions people will appraise or reflect on whether their experiences with you truly align with the commitments you claim to stand for. And depending on what judgement they reach, they will determine whether they reciprocate value (e.g. employees giving discretionary effort).
Being able to manage and articulate your employer brand ensures you are in the best position to attract, engage and retain the people needed. It’s about standing out from your competition and communicating a consistent EVP in experiential terms. For example, this could be about providing a rich, realistic preview into your organisational norms during employee attraction, to training and ongoing reinforcement for how staff should handle customer communications during service disruptions.
Taking the familiar employee life-cycle, here are some example ideas to illustrate how you can articulate and bring an EVP to life:
If you’re interested in doing something to impact and support your organisation’s EVP, why not get in touch and see what we could create for you? info@motivait.net
Happy employees drinking chai lattes, playing pool and table tennis, being creative and brilliant. That is the vision some have come to imagine is the ideal work environment. We have all seen the pictures from companies like Google, with chilled out developers working in converted phone boxes and sliding down the helter-skelter to their next meeting.
The reality is, of course, often very different. The practicalities of most office environments mean that these sorts of extreme designs are not possible. However, that does not stop people trying. The number of times I have seen a pool table or foosball table awkwardly shoehorned into a corner is incredible.
The reasoning behind this is often honourable. Someone somewhere has been given a bit of money to try and increase employee happiness, and therefore engagement, based on a poor employee satisfaction survey result.
It may seem a generous and forward-thinking idea, but it is often a poorly planned “knee-jerk” reaction that fails to address the deeper issues that may be affecting the feelings of the employees or why there may be a low level of engagement.
In reality, satisfaction and engagement surveys have certain issues that could affect the true vision of employee engagement. For starters, not all employees may believe they are anonymous, leading them to refuse to take part, fearing that “Big Brother” is watching. Others may take it as an opportunity to vent frustrations that are not directly related to their overall engagement with the company. Yet more may be too busy to do it, probably those that are actually the top performers! So, the survey never really represents to true levels of engagement across the whole company.
Imagine you find that a particular department has low morale. Do you really think that putting a pool table in the coffee room will lift that long term? Did anyone in their survey cite a lack of a pool table as their reason for being unhappy in their role? Of course not. You need to dig deeper and understand the root cause of the issues, then work to improve that. But you can only do that if the employees trust you, which is where things like a well thought out Employee Value Proposition (EVP) start to become so important!
The same can actually be said of many gamification implementations in companies looking to boost employee engagement. They are introduced to try and add some flavour, fun or competition to boost productivity or happiness. Just like the pool table, this often doesn’t address the core issues. In fact, with badly implemented gamification the issue could be compounded. If a company can afford to invest in that, why can’t they invest in something that employees actually want? That’s why it is so important to plan a gamification solution so carefully and why we put so much time into the user research at the start of any project. If you don’t understand them, you can’t possibly design something that will resonate with them and be accepted.
This doesn’t mean you should not install a pool table, but make sure that it is part of a structured plan to improve all of the factors affecting employee engagement, not just a patch with a “that’ll do” attitude attached.
Onboarding is nothing new. If you have worked at any medium or large company you are likely to have been through it, but it was probably called induction. For many, it is a few days of icebreakers and PowerPoint slides explaining the company in more detail, various important departments and other information needed to get going.
If you are a gamer, you would know this better as the tutorial level at the beginning of the game.
In both cases, the end goal is the same, get a new person being productive as efficiently and effectively as possible.
The big difference is the delivery mechanisms used.
An employee’s first look at the “real” company happens during onboarding. This is the first exposure to other people they are likely to be working with, to the true corporate culture and to some of the more practical aspects of their new day to day life. It is also the company’s first opportunity to make them feel at home and like a valued new member of the team. Sure, they will know something about the company, they would have had interviews, done research, possibly gone through assessment centres, but this is different. It is a time where a company can ask itself the question “What do we want our employees to think of us?” If you want them to think of you as a company driven by a culture of “death by PowerPoint”, it might be best to stop reading now.
Onboarding does not stop in the first few days after the induction, though many may feel this way. A study for the Academy of Management journal found that the first 90 days of a person’s new job were essential for creating social connections and bonds to the company. If they felt supported during this time, then they felt more positive towards the company.
Baek and Bramwell of Cornell University conducted research into how you measure the effectiveness of onboarding. They concluded that one of the best measures of an effective onboarding experience was time to proficiency. They defined this as the time it took a new hire to reach full productivity within the context of their role.
For this to happen, a new employee needs to have a structured onboarding experience, with specifically defined outcomes, and an experience that is hopefully engaging to them. At the end of their onboarding employees need to have achieved four clear objectives for the best chance of ongoing success (Bauer et al):
Some are also of the firm belief that onboarding into a new company can (or should) actually start from the day a new employee signs on the dotted line. The time before they step foot on company property is ripe for helping them start to understand some of the basics about their new employer. Much of what would traditionally be done in a conference room over a few days, can be achieved online during the weeks they are waiting to start the new role.
Games and gamification are already being utilised in the attraction phases of recruitment, with games being created to simulate everything from a day in the life of a new employee to testing an employee’s soft skills.
Following that trend into the employment phase of an employee’s journey, we can make use of gamification to create unique and engaging experiences that keep them informed and interested up to and during their first few months of employment.
Creating these kinds of experiences takes time and expertise, balancing the needs and culture of the company with needs of the new employee.
We consider these weeks and months as a quest, creating a structure around what they need to learn and understand early on. Each stage or level of the quest represents new knowledge and experiences that will help them to learn. Focusing on intrinsic motivation, we choose mechanics that support the player’s with social connectedness, education and goals to focus on, all in an environment that promotes exploration and discovery at their own pace. To this we this we add mini-games and interactive learning materials all tied together with interesting narratives and storylines. This gives the players reasons to want to continue rather than just knowing they have to continue.
Good onboarding can lead to higher rates of retention in companies, some statistics quoting as much as 69% higher retention after 3 years for companies with great programmes. It gives employees the opportunity to feel at home and become productive faster. Don’t waste this key opportunity to create a more engaged workforce by relying on traditional or even default methods, simply because “That’s how it’s always been done”.
Lately I’ve been thinking back over my career to the times when I have felt most engaged. Having been immersed in the world of engagement and motivation for the last 6 months at Motivait, I’ve so far found that many people and organisations often have very different ways of determining or measuring engagement, as well as different methods of igniting it in the workplace. Some have been considering engagement surveys, others are revamping office layouts, or improving communication tools, or even encouraging more flexible working hours. Read more
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