As the spread of the coronavirus slows down, Europe is cautiously trying to get back to business with restrictions loosening across the continent. Denmark is opening up their shopping malls, The German Spy Museum in Berlin opened its doors for the first time in weeks, and Austrians can head over to hairdressers in Vienna after two months of lockdown.
With many European countries relaxing some of their restrictions, many are returning to public life. It’s a slow change and many restrictions will remain for the coming months. So, does this mean that your employees should slowly come back to the office? Hold your horses.
Health and safety first
Whether your employees have been working remotely or staying home due to business closure or health concerns, you need to ensure a healthy and safe transition back to the office. In other words, you need to determine when and how you can call back the troops.
We have developed a pulse survey solution that helps HR, IT, Operations, and Leadership teams address each employee’s unique needs and concerns to make a safe and positive transition back.
Pulse surveys collect real-time feedback, are flexible and
adaptable, which allow the addition and removal of questions based on previous
measurements. They allow for a proactive system that adapts to your employees
and their experiences.
The Return to Work Pulse Solution
Our solution helps organizations quickly understand and address the employees’ unique concerns and needs to create actionable plans for transitioning teams back into the workplace.
Pre-built assessment questions and an automated
point-in-time report cover the following topics:
Health and safety needs
Company and manager communication requirements
Readiness to reintegrate
This solution can be used for planning the reopening, as
well as readying the organization, teams, and managers for a variety of
situations including:
Employees returning back into the workplace
after an extended period of remote work
Employees returning to work from extended
self-quarantine or personal health safety concerns
Employees who interact with the general public
and/or customers and are returning onsite
With our reports, you can use real-time employee experience
data to make the best plans for your organization —
and your employees — as you transition
back to the workplace.
Are you interested?
Our consultants are ready to help you get through this. Book a demo.
If you’d rather handle it on your own, you can! We have a template you can use for inspiration and implement your own pulse solution using Enalyzer.
We don’t know when we are going back to normal and
therefore you should prepare for the following months. A remote workforce,
especially under these circumstances, has its own challenges that you need to
understand and address. By collecting feedback, you can communicate with your
employees, ease their concerns and uncertainty, and stay connected with the
state of engagement and well-being amongst them. Reading time: 3 min.
Remote working has always been part of Enalyzer’s DNA. It provides our employees with flexibility that helps them balance their life with their work. This is, of course, common within our industry but we are in unprecedented times and we have found ourselves, together with many others, with a remote workforce in the blink of an eye.
In light of this crisis, we had to take into consideration how working from home for extended periods of time and without preparation can impact our people and therefore our company. We, like others, are making sure that we stay connected while physically distancing. However, we are in untested waters and therefore we are continuously measuring employee engagement and well-being to make sure that employees have the tools they need and feel taken care of during this crisis.
Barriers and challenges
Many organizations have the tech and possibility to enable
employees to work remotely, however, home offices are not for everyone.
Especially when this reality was implemented without any notice and for an
extended period of time.
Not all employees can be equipped mentally or technologically to work from home. Some employees might not have the appropriate space or set up to work productively at home. This can be anything from not having the correct tools, such as a strong Wi-Fi connection or space to having to balance children or housemates. The simple act of finding office space can be a stress factor.
Now more than ever, employees are looking at their managers
for advice and sources of motivation. However, even some of the most
experienced managers might find it difficult to lead from a distance. As a
blessing in disguise, managers can use this as a learning opportunity by
leaning toward other managers that have more experience with remote working or
are more naturally equipped to do the job.
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be a struggle
without a pandemic. Remote workers can struggle with juggling these two,
especially with a home filled with distractions making it impossible for them
to switch to ‘work mode’.
Working remotely within this crisis can bring many
challenges but you can use this as a chance to reimagine the way we work, which
can only happen by actively listening, showing empathy and acknowledging
employee concerns.
Communication and clarity are vital
Your employees are working from home, potentially for the first time, potentially with a partner and/or child, mix that with financial stress, the uncertainty of long-term employment and a global pandemic and you find yourself with the perfect recipe for anxiety and stress. It’s a lot to handle.
Humans can power through change but uncertainty brings stress and anxiety. During these times, workers are looking to their managers to lead, even more than governments or other organizations. Your workers need you to communicate clearly with them and they need you to tackle their issues head-on. They need to be informed of the health and goals of the organization. Now more than ever, your entire workforce needs to know what is happening and what they need to focus on, so you can all work together towards one goal.
Once you start sharing, your employees will follow suit.
Make sure they feel supported and encourage them to connect with each other so
you can keep up morale.
Listen and adapt
Managers need to overcommunicate with their employees to stay connected. Frequent online meetings, remote lunches, and coffee, as well as chit chat, are magnificent ideas. The same goes for online surveys.
At the start of every week, top management can send a survey that starts with a short video greeting or weekly newsletter and a one-pager that updates everyone on the current situation and state of the organization, and most importantly the goals and priorities everyone needs to follow.
Your survey should be short but address the six challenges
remote workers face:
Work-life balance
Distractions
Lack of sense of belonging
Lack of communication
Lower reliability and accountability
Increased security challenges
The collected feedback can be visualized and analyzed using online reports to get a thorough understanding of not only the current state of the organization but how it develops through time. With aggregated data and online check-ins, managers can actively listen and adapt to the new normal.
We don’t know when we are going back to normal and therefore
you should prepare for the following months with a remote workforce. By
collecting feedback, you can communicate with your employees, ease their
concerns and uncertainty, and stay connected with the state of engagement and
well-being amongst them.
How do we stay connected at Enalyzer?
We are more than surveys. With a quick and easy Enalyzer-Airtable integration via Zapier, we decided to create a little spin-off of our employee board and make a remote working edition. Check out our home offices.
Check out the webinar about staying connected with a remote workforce
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