The pandemic has changed everything — from the way of living to the method of conducting business. Today, remote work has become a new normal. This, in return, has brought many changes in the workplaces, including remote recruitment and management.
All these workplace changes have directly affected the employee experience and engagement. In fact, a study showed that employee engagement has risen 73% during the COVID-19, which is a great thing.
But on the contrary, 1 in 4 workers are planning to quit their jobs after the pandemic. That means not all employees are adjusting to the post-COVID-19 changes, and that’s all because of your poor employee experience.
As per a recent Gartner survey among 214 HR leaders, 64% prioritize employee experience right now compared to the pre-COVID-19 world. That’s because employees are more vulnerable and unsure about their job safety today than ever before the outbreak.
Therefore, to retain and recruit in the post-pandemic times, you have to understand how employee experience is changing and what you can do to improve it. So, let’s have a look at the prominent employee experience changes.
Change 1. Increase in flexible work environment demand
Today, many organizations are encouraging their employees to work from home as the COVID-19 wave after wave is coming around the globe. In fact, in a survey, 317 CFOs stated that 74% of companies are planning to permanently shift to remote work post-COVID-19.
Here to make remote work environments successful, a flexible work system is highly important. That’s because flexibility allows employees to balance their work and home life smoothly without burning out themselves. Additionally, when your employees are satisfied on the home and work front, they will feel more energetic and productive.
Change 2. Effective collaboration technologies
One of the biggest hurdles with remote working is poor collaboration. Remotely, employees face the problem of reaching out to their managers or peers, or subordinates on time, which negatively impacts their experience.
Therefore, to keep your employee content in the remote work system, you have to get the right collaboration apps or programs for your employees. Instead of different messaging, video conferencing, and other communication apps, provide a tool to your employees for smooth communication and insightful analytics.
All in all, to keep your employees engaged in the post-COVID-19 era, you have to provide a robust collaboration solution to them.
Change 3. Explosion of data
When technology usage increases in your organization, it will also expand data collection. For example, remotely, company’s have to collect a variety of data, including virtual attendance, employee monitoring, and so on.
Now, the problem here is that all these monitoring and tracking technologies can overwhelm your employees. Additionally, it might put their personal data in danger.
Therefore, the best solution here is to utilize a highly reputable tool to collect and manage data. Importantly, managers have to inform their team about the company’s data protection and management policies.
Change 4. More focus on company culture
Company culture will also take a 360-degree turn in the post-COVID-19 workplace. Since the economy will slowly revive, the competition to acquire the best talent will be more fierce. As a result, potential job seekers will dig deeper into the company culture.
In short, the way employees think has changed during the pandemic. For example, organizations that have prioritized employee safety during the pandemic outbreak will likely garner the most interest from the candidates.
Also, remote teams will also shift company culture and employee experience. The more companies hire remote employees working under flexible schedules; it will become more challenging to maintain the company culture among the workforce.
That means managers have to build stronger and personal bonds with their globally scattered teams to maintain a good employee experience.
Change 5. The constant need for feedback and recognition
If all these unpredictable changes are hard for organizations, they are super hard for their employees too. Many workers are struggling to adopt the new communication and management technologies, which is increasing their stress.
Therefore, today employees are seeking consistent connections with their managers, especially remote employees. As employees are also learning to work under the new normal, constant feedback on their performance can provide them a better outlook. This will help employees to adjust their work accordingly to the new normal and establish a better connection with their other team members.
Importantly, if managers recognize employees’ efforts to adjust to the changing work environment, it will encourage them to make resilient efforts to improve their productivity.
Change 6. More attention on the well-being
The pandemic has diverted employees’ attention towards their financial, physical, and mental well-being. The employees are now more interested in enhanced sick leaves, better financial assistance, flexible schedule, etc.
This pandemic has shifted employees’ experience to more personal factors rather than external or luxurious factors. For example, today, employees aren’t looking for paid family trips; they want more leaves to help their families when they get sick.
Change 7. Humanitarian work environment
The pandemic has shown the value of humanity to organizations. It emphasizes how your employees are people first and workers second. However, many companies haven’t yet taken this lesson and are making it adverse for their employees by pushing them to work in high-risk areas.
So, here if you wish to boost your employee’s experience, you have to address workplace inequalities and assure your employees that you will build a humanitarian workplace environment.
Endnote
The post-COVID-19 workplaces are indeed different — the way employees think to the way they work, everything is different now. This means, there is an urgent need for organizations to adopt new policies to enhance their employee experience.
Thus, whether you run a small or large team, employee experience is something that you need to reanalyze today. It is time to re-establish a connection with your employees and assure them you are always on their side.
Once you anticipate the exact degree of change in your employee experience, you can quickly revive from the pandemic impact. So, for a better future, you need to re-evaluate your employee experience policy right away.
Author Bio:
Dr. Neha Manchanda is a founding team member of GreenThumbs. She is an Organizational Psychologist with a Ph.D. in the subject. Her expert services are extensively sought by leading multinationals.
