Providing truly meaningful employee experiences goes a little deeper than many companies are ready to deal with.
As I’ve said before, I think it’s great that there’s been so much focus recently on employee well-being. That being said, I believe that a lot of companies are going for quick fixes and concentrating on window-dressing rather than substantive measures.
Don’t get me wrong – I think things like ride-sharing, and health & wellness programs, and continuing education programs, and enabling remote work, are all good ideas. These all provide useful resources and opportunities.
But the fact of the matter is, I don’t think there’s a net gain to the worker in participating in a stress-busting meditation class when they have to go back to their desk and deal with broken processes, difficult to use tools, and bosses who can’t be bothered to say, “Good morning!” when they walk into the office.
It’s past time to start bringing the personal back into the workplace. Working with people who care builds a team consciousness, which builds trust, which in turn helps workers to be more engaged. There was an interesting study done on this lately – you can read a little more about it at https://www.hrdive.com/news/a-simple-hello-from-managers-can-engage-employees-new-study-finds/567965/. And by the way, reaching out to workers can still be done even when the workers are remote. It doesn’t take much to send off a brief message, but the cumulative effect can be enormous.
And if you really want to make your workers’ lives better, it’s time to start asking them what they really need, not relying on cookie-cutter feel-good programs from HR. Yes, this is much harder. It will require managers having difficult conversations with their peers – and their managers – about roadblocks and gaps. It will require developing new and better processes rather than just shuffling it off as, “Well, that’s just the way it is, we’ll have to work around it.” And it will require devoting time, energy, and money to efforts that don’t have the same cachet as Reiki or “Keto for Energy” would.
It will also, for some companies, require some fundamental cultural changes. Things like universal adherence to the rules and consequences when they’re not followed sound like basics, right? That’s not always so, unfortunately – which leaves the worker who is trying to follow a process at the mercy of other workers and teams who know they can get away with jumping the queue for priority, or tossing half-finished work over the wall and expecting the recipient to complete it for them.
A lot of workers take intense pride in doing their job properly. Their role holds a large place in how they see themselves as individuals. So, they put their heads down and soldier on, but they absolutely see that there is a rigged system, and this absolutely contributes to the steady erosion of worker engagement and morale.
This has to stop. The rules need to be clear, they need to apply to everyone, and there need to be consequences when the job’s not done right.
So, engage with your teams. Understand their pain points, and act as their champions and advocates. Play fair, and make rules that apply to everyone equally. Acknowledge work that gets done, and don’t allow favorites to get away with non-compliance. That’s what being a manager and a leader should be about.