The world has changed much more in the last six months than it has in the previous decade, and no firm or industry has been spared. As the epidemic enters its third year, business leaders must transfer some of the emphasis areas we've developed to stay the course and thrive during this period of disruption to more long-term plans.
Companies focused on supporting employee well-being, shifting company culture online, and preserving virtual team cohesiveness early in the epidemic. While each of these areas is critical to provide employees with a meaningful work experience, many leaders are now questioning themselves:
What can we do differently in this new context to attain and maintain high performance?
Do we need to adapt our management structure to accommodate hybrid and remote working models?
What is the best way for company executives to start addressing these issues? More whiplash can impede good performance, therefore it's crucial to build on the previous two years' progress rather than pivoting completely.
Putting a Focus On Purpose And Professional Development
While leaders should rethink how they manage performance in the digital workplace, not everything needs to be redesigned. Some leadership tactics that have shown to be effective in the past can easily be applied to the virtual workplace.
A well-articulated vision that inspires and motivates employees, for example, is critical in assisting employees in feeling linked to the organization's wider mission. This, in turn, can foster a sense of ownership and motivate employees to perform better. Take your time if your company does not have this defined. It's critical, but it can't be rushed, and if it's fake, employees will be even more put off.
Great leaders must also urge their workers to strive for professional excellence by upskilling whenever possible. Professional development is a crucial motivation, and both Millennials and Gen Z place a high importance on feedback and skill improvement in their jobs, often even more so than monetary rewards.
Leaders may ensure that staff have the support and resources they need to succeed by seeing company goals through the perspective of talent investment.
Executive Attention Is Being Shifted To Excellence
Some executives believe that in-person supervision is linked to employee output. "I know my staff is working because I see them working, and I'm more aware of their hurdles because of that." However, some employees do better in a virtual environment than in a physical one.
Finding the correct techniques to encourage meaningful and efficient communication that allows for clear guidance and direction in the virtual environment is a challenge. It's impossible to succeed if you don't have a system in place to track and measure success. That isn't to say that leaders should micromanage their staff; rather, they should define key performance indicators (KPIs) that outline project, assignment, and job success.
Clear performance, accountability, and expectation guidelines improve employee performance and enable teams to work toward particular goals and metrics in the most efficient way possible. Here are three ways that leaders may foster a culture that encourages workers to achieve at their best wherever they work:
1. Determine the motivation of the "new" employee
Persona models such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram of Personality have long been used to help firms understand their employees' motivations and inform their hiring procedures. However, as we move toward a mixed workforce, new digital personas have altered how leaders drive their teams, particularly those with employees who prefer to work in person versus those who want to work remotely.
Employees in 2019 who fit neatly into a specific character have a new set of values today. To accommodate these changes, leaders' management styles and organizational procedures must adapt, including motivating teams in ways that deviate from the "standard" and taking into account specific working environments to allow people to thrive. Employees who are most effective when mixing work and social engagement, for example, require many touchpoints with their coworkers to feel connected when working remotely.
Leaders may build new best practices on incentive, ownership, and accountability to achieve high performance in 2022 if they have a comprehensive grasp of their employees' needs.
2. Rethink Hiring Procedures
Many CEOs used to hire anyone who seemed like a good fit, regardless of whether they should work in an office or at home. In a work-from-anywhere setting, however, this method no longer works.
When making hiring selections, it is increasingly a must for leaders to delve into these intricacies. That implies a company's ability to establish a work environment that catalyzes employees' performance should be equally weighed against whether possible new hires are a cultural fit.
How can leaders make these decisions more effectively? They must explicitly define the hybrid work experience and present a work-from-anywhere road map that takes into consideration any role-specific responsibilities that may be added to the experience. Some roles, for example, are easily moved online, while others are more difficult to maintain remotely. These considerations must be factored into the hiring process in order to more precisely identify people who will excel in specific areas.
New digital personas should also be used by leaders to best position incoming and existing employees for success. Is your employee the kind to turn off their computer at night, causing Slack or MS Teams to show as offline? Is it possible that they keep their status green to create the impression that they're constantly working? This is only one facet of new digital personas, and managers must manage their teams' culture to ensure that these unspoken messages have the desired effect.
3. Transform Your Physical Workplace Into A Virtual Workplace
It's not just about being managed and managed; it's also about collaboration and idea sharing. In the new working environment, several tried-and-true approaches may need to be tweaked. If whiteboarding sessions were a beneficial tool for teams when they worked in person, for example, leaders should look for digital alternatives that can duplicate the experience electronically.
The workplace is still far from being a digital-only world. While travel is more challenging, clients still need in-person attention. The ability to determine when interactions — internal and external — need to be brought into the real world and back online again will pay huge dividends for leaders instilling trust, accelerating business and enhancing performance.
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