Back to Hyves?
More scribbles in the workplace by
Purpose, Potential and Perspective
The sunniest period of the year has arrived and the moment we have been waiting for for a long time seems to have finally arrived: we are getting more freedom. This means that many managers are faced with a choice. Because, are we going to ..:
Back to oldskool: We go back to the old normal, so massively to the office
Remote is here to stay: we liked working from home and we want to continue doing so
Hybrid is the new way: we are going to find a balance between oldskool and remote
Research shows that more and more managers are willing to offer more flexibility about where, when and how employees can work. Many organisations are therefore considering a hybrid form of work. In this article, we discuss how organisations can successfully embrace this new form of work by addressing three important points. First, we provide a brief summary of this article, then we explain these points in more detail, and we conclude with a practical example.
In short
As employees gain more flexibility over where they work, collaboration with technology becomes even more important. After all, technology makes it possible to access company data remotely and technology provides the opportunity to collaborate remotely with colleagues and customers. Especially in the last year and a half, many of us have already experienced that the use of technology is essential to carry out your work in today's digital age. Unfortunately, this new way of working is not yet flawless for everyone. This is because technology initially threatens our basic psychological needs, which can be disruptive. By responding to purpose, potential & perspective you can prevent this disruption.
The first step towards more scribbles and respect:
Organise digital meetings with all teams to discuss how each team - and each team member - can contribute to the organisation's objectives. You can respond to this:
Purpose: These sessions create a digital connection where employees understand the common goal and how they can contribute to achieving it.
Potential: These sessions provide employees with insight into how they can contribute to the organisation's objectives. If employees do not yet have the right skills or work experience to do so, the team can immediately provide the right support by, for example, drawing up a personal development plan.
Perspective: Through these digital meetings, all team members immediately receive an informed perspective of the organisation's objectives and the team's contribution.
Tech: With a performance management system, you can immediately digitally record all established goals and agreements made. In this way, everyone can keep an overview, see the progress and easily give and receive feedback. This can be done in various ways, from an excel overview to an advanced system. Not sure where to start? We are happy to help you choose.
What bad luck! Scramble away!
The year 2020 was the year in which many employees were forced to undergo the transition to remote working , but also the year in which they saw a exponential growth in the use of technology in their work. Not entirely surprisingly, these major changes demonstrable tensions unsurprisingly, these have resulted in major changes for many employees. Now is also the time to properly implement this new way of working - where remote and tech are central.
Recent research by Deloitte shows by means of a simple but effective model how to bring together the forces of technology and people. This model also makes the link
to the Maslow's pyramid. In Maslow's pyramid, growth and development are at the top. Within organisations, you naturally want employees to be able to develop themselves, so that they perform better. However, technology can have a disruptive effect and thus appear to threaten people's basic psychological needs. By responding to purpose, potential & perspective you can prevent this disruption.
Purpose and belonging
With a purpose , you give people the feeling that they are contributing to something bigger and that their contribution is important to achieving the shared goal. In the digital world, a purpose is important because technology initially creates a sense of distance.
When people are in the office, they can feel the energy of being together. People also experience a sense of common purpose in the office by bumping into colleagues and talking about strategy. When colleagues are physically separated, some of this can still take place virtually, but it will dramatically reduce.
To compensate for this, it is important for leaders to formulate a concrete purpose. A purpose - through which employees experience that they are contributing to something greater - creates a sense of connection, even if colleagues work together at a distance from each other. In addition, it is important - even in a virtual setting - that leaders discuss overall goals and ensure that employees feel that their work is necessary for the success of the organisation.
Potential and esteem
It is important for every organisation to develop the potential of its employees, but digitalisation in the workplace has made this a strategic necessity. To maintain a competitive advantage, it is important for organisations to implement innovative technologies. For employees, this means that they are saddled with yet another challenge, as implementing new technologies can be difficult and frustrating.
It is nice and important for employees to have the right skills, so that they can work together with technology effectively. This requires support from the organisation. It is also nice for employees to work in a company culture where there is understanding and room for development. For organisations, it is important to teach employees that continuous adaptation offers security in today's digital world. With the right mindset employees come to realise that developing skills is a tactical necessity, with which they also create security for themselves.
Perspective and security
In today's digital world, where everything is changing at a rapid pace, it is important to give employees perspective. Without an informed perspective, everyone - in today's digital world - is working in isolation from each other and there will be a sense of insecurity. This is also evident from Research by McKinsey in which employees clearly indicate that they do not yet know enough about their employer's plans after Corona. Organisations may have announced a general intention to embrace a hybrid form in the future, but too few of them - employees indicate - have shared a detailed policy. And this lack leaves many employees feeling uncertain. It is therefore important for managers to provide employees with an informed perspective on the post-pandemic workplace, where it is valuable to consider people's need for security.
Are you ready to Unfurl?
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our lives, including where and how people want to work. Employees naturally have their experiences of the pre-pandemic workplace (read oldskool), but now also of remote working. These experiences influence what employees want and expect to see in the post-pandemic workplace.
One lesson we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is that digital adoption has increased enormously. In today's digital age, cooperation between people and technology is very important. Therefore, it is important that this (mandatory) cooperation does not result in tension among employees. The well-known Maslow pyramid clearly illustrates that technology primarily disrupts our basic psychological needs, while we need these basic psychological needs to perform well and grow. And well-performing employees are, of course, what every company wants.
Pimp my profile
Finally, we share a practical example where we have successfully implemented Purpose, Potential and Perspective with one of our customers.
A well-known media company with about 100 employees came to Unfurl because they wanted to get the most out of their employees. To improve the potential of this organisation, we held team sessions at various organisational levels. Together with the MT, we set the organisational targets with the associated key KPIs. Subsequently, we held team sessions in which the question was "how are we as a team going to contribute to the organisational objectives and what do we want to achieve together? The results of these sessions then formed the basis for individual discussions between management and all employees.
By communicating the organisational goals to all employees in this way, the purpose and perspective of the organisation became clear to all employees. Each employee was given an insight into what his or her added value to the organisation would be and which direction the organisation was heading in. In addition, during the individual interviews, attention was paid to the individual potential of each employee. In what way could the employee optimally use his or her potential and at the same time contribute to the organisation and his or her team? This process was supported by means of a software package that provided insight into the objectives at all levels and formed the basis for a continuous dialogue about purpose, perspective and potential.
Since the introduction of this method, employees indicate that they feel more connected to the organisation. Employees also know how to find each other in remote work. This results in more commitment to the course that the organisation is taking. As a result, employees are more involved and happier in their work.
Who, What, Where?
Do you want to know more about how to integrate purpose, potential and perspective into the DNA of your organisation? Or do you want to know more about implementing the right technologies? We would love to have a digital cup of coffee with you! Press 'Let's Unfurl' to contact us.