Retain Top Talent

Is there an increasing trend of employees being disappointed in their employer's response/support of working from home? How does this effect productivity and engagement in the coming hybrid work environment?

Good article on ideas of working and managing remotely. We're not all McKinsey-type companies, but there may be a few nuggets we can take away from this article - as work evolves toward permanent remote or a hybrid environment.

Key points in the article: measuring results, culture, teamwork, and the Manager as the lynchpin. Same exact things I've been discussing with my clients for the last 4 months. No one seems be putting much energy or focus behind these ideas. In most companies, it's business as usual = nothing is different than when everyone was in the office.

Interesting article on the Fortune.com website related to a blended experience of working remotely and having people in the office. It''s going to be hard to put the "genie" back in the bottle after giving people a taste of working remotely. Are you preparing for the new abnormal environment of a blended work experience?

As you know, I've been doing a webinar on How to Manage Remotely which takes all our content over 2 decades on hiring, performance management, and employee engagement and mashes it together with the element of working remotely.

The first of 8 elements I cover in this webinar is that companies must provide the infrastructure to allow employees to work well with each other. Here's the statistic that shocked me:

The Right Technology. According to a recent Gartner poll, 54% of HR leaders reported that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the single largest barrier to its success. This “technology” category encompasses everything from email to internal messaging platforms to video conferencing tools.

This is pretty consistent with the comments shared by CEOs in my webinars.  If this is a barrier to getting work done - what does that say about the productivity of your organization?

Do you have a playbook for returning back to work in the office or in the new abnormal? Josh Bersin provides some ideas around rethinking your business model.

Good article from Forbes pointing out key issues to sustain your culture in a hybrid model of part-time and full-time tele-commuters. How do you connect people to purpose, accountability, and shared experiences when they are seperated from their bosses, peers, and subordinates?

Interesting article on the thought process of shifting from an old-school mentality that everyone must be together in the office for collaboration and determining if they were working hard to a more flexible work environment embracing work from home. Have you considered this shift or are you still stuck in a 1970s model of management, oversight, and lack of trust regarding your employees? This might become the edge by which companies are able to attract better talent in the future.

As I have been teaching in my Complimentary one hour Vistage Workshops on Managing Remotely in a Crisis - this is a horrible method to manage performance. It's micro-management and "big brother" looking over your shoulder. It basically says we don't trust you. It's the easy way of out defining real performance mangagement like outcomes, deliverables, expecations, metrics, and KPIs. STOP using monitoring software. It creates a culture of mistrust.

Some good reminders about keeping the folks who are still working remotely both engaged and motivated. Some of these ideas I've been sharing in my zoom workshop for Vistage Groups on Managing Remotely in a Crisis: regular check-ins/1-to-1s, setting goals/outcomes, having fun and team-building.

Interesting article in Fast Company challenging the idea of bringing folks back into the office now that restrictions are lifting. Have you considered a hybrid approach to home/office work?