The past year has been an exercise in change and adaptability. In this episode HR pro turned consultant and the author of the well-known HR Bartender blog Sharlyn Lauby covers what management questions are top of mind for organizations, including how managing people has changed, the concept of self-management and helping managers manage in this new environment taking into consideration their well-being and stress levels too.
Along with host John Hollon they touch on what organizations are doing to create a strong internal culture with a distributed workforce. Sharlyn shares some fun virtual ideas for reallocating the in-office experience funds to build employee morale, improve culture and the feeling of belonging.
Here’s how the conversation went… This interview has been edited and condensed.
John Hollon: How have things changed for you in your work as an HR and talent management consultant during the past year? What are organizations looking for when they reach out to you now and what kind of workplace and talent management trends are you seeing in the wake of the lockdown and so many people now working remotely?
Sharlyn Lauby: One of the first things that organizations are talking about is how do we help employees work better remotely? I like to call it self-management. A lot of times when we’re in an office environment, managers might manage and communicate by looking around. Ie. I can see you and I remember that I need to tell you something, or I need to brainstorm with somebody so let me just walk around the corner and go sit in that person’s office. Now what you’re finding is that organizations are saying, how do we do that in a remote environment? How do employees solve their own problems without anybody around? How do they learn without anybody else around? How do all of those things happen when we are independent or more independent? I see a lot of conversation about individual accountability and individual productivity – that whole self-management concept.
The other thing that I see a lot of organizations talking about right now is how do we create virtual learning opportunities for people without sacrificing quality? I think when all of this started a year ago, a lot of organizations said, ‘you know what, we’re going to be all back together again. So we don’t need to think about certain stuff.’ Like how to do a performance appraisal when we haven’t seen our employees for the past year? Or how do we conduct in-person training? They thought we don’t need to think about those things. Now it’s been a year we have to do that, we can’t simply push it off anymore.
John Hollon: Let’s talk about the challenge and difficulty of building a strong workplace culture when so many people are working remotely and the workforce is so widely distributed. How have organizations fared in this regard? Are companies right now concerned about how they are building their own internal culture when everyone seems to be working someplace else?
Sharlyn Lauby: A year ago when all of this started I think companies made a lot of decisions on the fly. They just decided this is what we need to do and I don’t criticize a company that made that call, they needed to make a decision that was good for their workforce and they did that. But now time has passed.
It’s interesting because I think that there’s a percentage of the business world that’s saying if we don’t all get back together and start having an office environment we’re going to dilute our culture. I tend to fall into a different camp and that’s the group of people who are saying, these changes are now becoming part of our culture. Granted, I think managers and organizations have things that they need to figure out but I do believe that companies are looking for ways to be more intentional with their actions, setting up those one on one meetings, trying to find ways to do virtual fun things and brainstorming. Organizations are really trying to evolve their culture as a result of everything that’s happened.
John Hollon: Is it possible that the company or an organization can have a hybrid model? I’ve been reading that some companies are talking about, maybe the way to help with the culture is to have a day or two or three a week, depending on the company, where people came back into an office and so you work from an office part of the time and you work from home part of the time. Are you seeing that? Is it possible to like do that? I agree that what we’ve been doing for the last year is now part of the culture whether we wanted it to be or not and we have to just cope with that.
Sharlyn Lauby: There will be moments in time where employees will want to connect in person and the hybrid model is being talked about a lot. Many years ago I worked for a consulting company where none of us really had an office per se. We would come into a space and let’s say for example, you and I were working on a project together. We would arrange to be in close proximity to one another because that way we could work on our project together, we weren’t interrupting anyone, we could brainstorm together, we could work on deliverables that we needed to work on and the next day, maybe I needed to work with someone else in the office. It’s the idea that office space is used a little bit differently.
I’m hearing organizations talk about reserving a space. We reserve a space, it’s cleaned for us and then if we’re not using that space, someone comes through and they clean it for the next people who are going to use that space. Instead of thinking of having an office maybe with pictures and plants around your desk area, think of your office as being very portable. The focus is on the relationship and the work, not on the space.
John Hollon: Have you seen anything, any decisions, that companies or organizations have been doing during the lockdown that particularly impressed you, or struck you as a really innovative solution to some of the workforce and talent management challenges that we’ve been facing?
Sharlyn Lauby: One of the things that I thought was pretty impressive when companies were making the decisions to send employees home was, several companies just said, ‘Take whatever you need’. You need your chair, take your chair. You need your monitor, take your monitor. You need files and pens and whatever, just take it. There wasn’t a, ‘oh, we need to worry about the inventory’, it was, take whatever you need in order to be productive and I think that’s awesome.
The second thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of organizations that have funds dedicated to the office experience, (those who have baristas in the office, free food and those kinds of things) they’ve taken those funds and said, we’re going to send pizzas to everybody’s house or send gift cards to everyone and say, have lunch on us today, get it delivered. That kind of thing to help employees feel a little bit like the company remembered them and some of the things that are going on. Some organizations said, let’s try to do something nice and special for employees.
John Hollon: What I like about that is the unexpected nature of it, because my experience has been employees really love it when they get caught off guard a little bit, and you do something nice for them that they didn’t see coming. I think so much of us, what we do, how we judge things, runs on our expectations. It’s when you have no expectations at all and something nice comes your way that you’re really pleasantly surprised and that’s a real morale builder. If you want to build a culture, that helps a little bit.
Sharlyn Lauby: I used to work in the hotel industry and one of the things that we did all the time was thank families for sharing employees with us. I could see this as being a perfect time to send dinner to somebody’s house and say, ‘Hey, we just want to let you know that we’re thinking about you and your family and we hope you’re safe and we hope you’re well’.
John Hollon: I can remember as far back as 20 years ago talking to a CEO or boss about working at home part of the time and getting it routinely rejected. Suddenly, everybody’s scrambling to do it and then all the objections they had, that I heard for 20 years, suddenly are moot. Because they had to do it.
Sharlyn Lauby: You’re absolutely right. A lot of organizations that did not think the remote work model was going to be feasible are now stepping back and saying, you know what, this really is very feasible and employees are doing a great job.
John Hollon: Do you hear much in the way of companies reaching out to you to talk about things having to do with employee morale during all of this?
Sharlyn Lauby: One of the big areas that organizations are focused on is helping managers manage. A lot of times managers are used to managing employees that they see all the time. Now, we’re talking about an environment where I don’t see an employee, I manage them not based on time, but I manage them based on results. That means having more intentional conversations about what expectations are, what the deliverable is going to look like, making sure that employees feel like they can reach out to their manager if they run into any obstacles along the way. Helping managers manage in this kind of environment is important.
When you think about the fundamentals of management, they spend a lot of time in meetings, running their departments, and they’re not doing that now. So we need to think about what kind of direction do we need to give to our managers, so that they’re staying, not just managing everyone else, but that we check on their well-being and they’re not stressed out. Managers are working from home too and they have all of the same challenges that we talk about employees having. They have kids that might be partially being homeschooled, and they’re working at home with other members, or maybe they have a caregiving responsibility. We have to view our managers not only as the people who are taking care of our employees, but we have to view managers as employees, and they need that same kind of direction and coaching so that they can be successful.
John Hollon: We wholeheartedly believe that everyone should have a job that they love, one they’re passionate about. So Sharlyn, what do you love about what you do?
Sharlyn Lauby: I love that it’s always changing and evolving. I have a personal confession to make: I have a very low tolerance for boredom. The fact that I look around and the work is always changing and growing and expanding and evolving, is very exciting to me.
