The People Magazine

For those who might be coming across this phrase for the first time, employee coaching is increasingly becoming a great tool to facilitate personal and professional development. Unlike sports coaching that dons an authoritarian and dominating cape, employee coaching is more about collaboration to bring about shared progress for an individual as well as the organization. Most organizations today are adopting executive coaching as a means to equip their executive team with the skills and tools to facilitate effective leadership. However, scaling it to the level of employee coaching is still loaded with ambiguity, especially with the rise of a remote workforce. The most effective way is to create a rationale to conduct employee coaching beyond the realms of the four office walls and take small steps to create a virtual practice.

Employee coaching and excellence

Before we move on to a few starting practices to make virtual coaching effective, it would be good to understand why coaching is important beyond the executive level and how its importance augments with the workforce going remote.

Benefits to the employees

Let’s start with the benefits of employee coaching to the obvious beneficiaries, i.e. the employees. Coaching is most importantly a tool to help employees gain greater clarity over their long term goals and align them with their professional aspirations and performance. Employee coaching then enables them to work in a more structured and goal oriented manner which yields better performance and greater productivity. Research shows that 80% of those who have experienced coaching in the workplace report positive impact in their performance, productivity, communication and wellbeing. It augments collaboration, self reliance, invariable leading to more promotions and better appraisals.

Employee coaching has an impact beyond the professional realm as well. It is an effective way to efficiently create a work-life balance which is not skewed towards either side. At the same time, it equips individuals with self awareness and self knowledge to effectively deal with any challenge that might come along the way. Therefore, it is a win-win situation for both personal and professional development.

Benefits to the organization

It is not only the employees that benefit from employee coaching, organization as a whole stands to gain. On the most obvious level, better performance and greater employee productivity translates to more revenues. At the same time, employee engagement and, therefore, retention gets a great boost. With coaching, employees feel valued at the workplace and acknowledge organizational effort towards the former’s development. This encourages employees to stay longer, augments their motivation and converts them into advocates attracting the best talent. On a deeper level, employee coaching boosts leadership capabilities with clarity of thought and action in the organization. This translates to seamless succession planning with greater ownership coming from the employees, a dream for every business leader.

Coaching in the age of remote work

Conventionally, coaching has been a very in person experience where a human connection is crucial, primarily because physical presence and body language makes it easy for a coach to demonstrate support and accelerate engagement. This is the reason that most organizations have a bias towards executive coaching because the target group is smaller and in person coaching is possible. However, with the transition to remote work, organizations are transitioning to employee coaching and exploring ways to keep the momentum going, albeit virtually. While there are some challenges in the way, fortunately, a few quick hacks can offer some relief.

Set clear expectations and roles

The first step is to emphasize on the clarity of expectations and roles. This means that the employee on the receiving end as well as the coach should be on the same page as to what the coaching seeks to achieve. One set of coaching series could have a particular objective and each session could be one step towards achieving the same. The reason this becomes more important in a remote setup is because virtual interaction can be distracting at times. Therefore, it is very important to establish upfront what the expectations are from both the parties.

Regular check ins and agreement on next steps

Next, the check ins have to be more frequent and regular as compared to the physical sessions. While once a month might be a good start for an in person practice, virtual sessions require greater frequency, like once a fortnight or even once a week. At the same time, it would be a good idea to keep the sessions shorter and more frequent. Ending each session with a few next steps would also help.

Leverage the power of technology

Finally, it would be best to invest in some good digital tools to facilitate employee coaching. On a macro level, organizations could leverage tools to automate session scheduling and reminders. On a micro level, experimenting with coaching apps or more robust platforms could be a nice idea. Such platforms offer expert employee coaching to help them navigate any challenges employees might be facing. The advantage is two fold. Firstly, the entire coaching experience is customized to the personal needs of the employee along with organizational objectives, giving the impact of a 1-o-1 coaching. Secondly, it is entirely online and virtual and does not require physical interventions for effectiveness.

Employee coaching: The rising need

Undoubtedly, employee coaching brings about a plethora of benefits for individuals as well as organizations. However, its importance is increasing manifold given the current circumstances. With so much uncertainty and ambiguity all around, it is natural for employees to feel lost, demotivated and disengaged. To combat these challenges and ensure employee performance and more importantly wellbeing, organizations need to bank on the secret weapon of employee coaching, albeit virtually. Thus, exploring solutions with a technical bent of mind is the best bet, for coaching is one of the most effective tools today to enable organizations navigate their way and embrace the new normal.

Empathy in the Workplace: An Overlooked Route to Engagement

With employee engagement becoming a core business need, organizations are experimenting with different practices, tools and approaches. Among others, empathy in the workplace is coming out as a highly effective but often overlooked approach. Material incentives and rewards can generate transactional engagement. However, empathy in the workplace forms the base for emotional engagement which augments employee performance beyond tasks, aligning them to organizational goals. According to a recent study, 96% of employees consider it important for their employers to demonstrate empathy.

The struggle with empathy

Organizations today recognize the value of empathy in the workplace to drive engagement but struggle to reap benefits from the same. Several reasons contribute to this challenge. Firstly, most leaders and managers use a cookie cutter approach to team management and engagement. Whereas, empathy based engagement requires a personalized approach based on understanding employee needs and expectations. Secondly, empathy might also lead to unveiling of organizational and leadership weaknesses which are seldom welcome. Finally, tracking material incentives for engagement is easy, whereas the impact of empathy might be difficult to demonstrate in the first go. Thus, most leaders push it to the background.

Creating empathy in workplace

Undoubtedly, there are several practices for organizations to create an empathetic and compassionate work environment to promote emotional engagement. Here are a few practices from the starter pack to create empathy in the workplace.

1. Give up the assumption game

To begin with, everyone needs to adopt a greenfield view of their coworkers, which requires giving up any assumptions you have. Unconscious bias and stereotypes are the biggest obstacles to creating empathy. Whatever the situation, it is best to ask the other person, instead of assuming. Asking not only adds clarity to the situation, but also leads the other person to believe that you are trying to understand their situation, and that’s what empathy is all about.

2. Communicate- Listen- Ask- Understand

Empathy in the work requires a two-way communication. It goes beyond simply giving orders and tasks to the employees. It involves a dialogue where everyone in a conversation makes a genuine effort to listen to the others. The idea is to give others a chance to put their points forward, genuinely listen to them, interject and ask questions. This does not mean one needs to listen to and agree with whatever comes to the table, but points to the need to have healthy conversations, disagreements and debate.

3. Accept and respect feelings

Next in line comes the need to accept that humans are an amalgam of both emotions and rationality. Expecting employees to leave their feelings at home and only bring their rational self to work is simply unrealistic. This means that leaders need to be sensitive about their actions and words when engaging with employees. Again, the idea is not to disregard disagreements. Rather, the objective is to promote constructive criticism within the bounds of respect, dignity and ethics to ensure anyone’s feelings are not hurt.

4. Value contribution, beyond incentives

Most organizations believe that hefty rewards and attractive bonuses are all it takes to boost engagement and create empathy. While they may act as hooks, they require other supporting measures too. Creating empathy in the workplace requires leaders and managers to value employee contribution at regular intervals. A simple path on the back can go a long way. Empathy is not just about appreciating results and performance, it is more about acknowledging the efforts, irrespective of the outcomes. Thus, organizations must initiate the practice of valuing contribution and efforts of every employee with words of appreciation and gratitude.

5. Leverage digital tools

Finally, it is very important for individuals to have a high emotional quotient to develop and promote empathy in the workplace. While some might naturally have a high EQ, others need to develop it as a part of their development plan. Conventionally, organizations depended on workshops and sessions for the same. Off late, with the transition to remote work, many organizations are adopting digital tools to boost their EQ of their employees. In addition to offering virtual presence, they can be calibrated to personal requirements and pace of learning, thus, augmenting empathy at different levels.

Developing empathy: Need of the hour

While the need for developing empathy in the workplace has been long standing, its urgency has increased manifold in the face of global uncertainty and ambiguity. With no clarity of what’s to come and everyone reacting to situations in their own ways, it is very important for leaders to don the cape of empathy. Unless everyone comes together and makes a genuine attempt to understand the situation of others, empathize with them, meaningful employee engagement will be a distant dream.

Emotional Engagement at Work: Does it Really Matter?

Garima Shukla

The focus on employee engagement has been around for quite some time now. However, the understanding and practices supporting it have been rather limited. For one thing, engagement has generally been understood in transactional terms, for a particular job, role or task. Lately, forward looking organizations are moving towards what they call emotional engagement, which goes beyond a transactional relationship of the job at hand to encompass engagement on the company values and vision.

Why emotional engagement at work matters

When organizations first hear about emotional engagement, the first thought is, does it really matter? Well, the simple answer is YES. If you look closely, the employees who are only transactionally engaged simply focus on the financial returns and incentives. Transactional engagement simply means using rewards and recognition to engage employees, making it nothing more than a business deal. However, emotional engagement encourages employees to align their professional growth with organizational success. They closely map their goals to the company vision and chart out a path which is beneficial to both.

While those who are transactionally engaged come out as focused, disciplined as the ideal models for engagement, their contribution to organizational growth is rather limited. Whereas, emotionally engaged employees tend to go out of their way to drive growth. At the same times, emotional engagement is consistent across good and bad times, and these employees tend to have higher levels of satisfaction, wellbeing and work-life balance. In a nutshell, emotional engagement at work is an imperative for both the organization as well as the individual.

Achieving emotional engagement

While the rationale is clear, let’s look at some of the baseline practices that can help organizations achieve emotional engagement at work.

1. Empathetic managers lead the way

To drive emotional engagement at work, it is very important for managers and leaders to don a cape of empathy. Only when employees feel confident that their managers take the effort to actually understand the needs and expectations, will they go an extra mile and engage in something beyond a transactional relationship.

2. Acknowledge the value of their contribution

Expecting employees to be emotionally engaged from day one might be going overboard. It is only with time that this form of engagement comes along. One way to facilitate the same is by acknowledging how their work and contribution is making an impact and enabling the organization to move towards its goals. Most organizations lag behind in not recognizing and appreciating efforts. It can be even a tiny dent, but acknowledging the value of their work will help them map their performance to organizational goals and augment emotional engagement.

3. Cultivating human bonds and relationships

Human connections and relationships are the key drivers of emotional engagement. Employees cannot simply be passionate about the four walls they work in. Thus, it is very important for managers and leaders to form bonds with their employees. Creating bonds also encourages employees to go out of their way and facilitate collective responsibility. At the same time, when senior leaders showcase their passion towards the vision and go out of the way to contribute, it creates a ripple effect, which amplifies if they have a good rapport with their team.

4. Inclusion of diverse voices

For employees to be emotionally engaged at work, it is important that they feel they are heard. This translates to ensuring that all voices are included in every discussion. When an employee believes that his/ her thoughts are not only heard, but also acted upon, makes a difference. It is not only about capturing different voices, but also ensuring that action is taken on the same. The engagement itself translates from purely transactional to emotionally driven.

5. Coaching and constant communication of organizational values

Finally, to drive emotional engagement where employees identify with the organizational mission and are enthusiastic about going an extra mile requires them to be aware about what the mission is. Simply putting the mission, values, goals in their onboarding document or spelling it out to them during the induction is not enough. It is important to constantly communicate the same through different formats. At the same time, workplace coaching can go a long way into reiterating the values the organization stands for and promote emotional engagement.

Marching towards success

Starting with these proven practices can help organizations swiftly walk through this phase of uncertainty and ambiguity. Emotional engagement encourages employees to work and contribute with the same passion and commitment, irrespective of disruptions. It would be a good idea for organizations to gauge the emotional engagement score of their employees and introduce tools and practices to augment the same. After all, change is the only constant, and an emotionally engaged workforce has the potential to face change, head on and come out as winners.

A Guide to Effective 1:1 Meeting for Managers: What, Why, How and When

What are the benefits of 1:1 meetings?

Oftentimes managers avoid having personal 1:1 meetings with their team members because they find it difficult, time-consuming, or unnecessary. Yet, there’s nothing that boosts employee performance, morale, and retention more than having a regular 1:1 check-in with their manager.

In this article, we will discuss all you need to know about conducting impactful 1:1 meetings with your team members.

Table of contents

What are 1:1 meetings?

10 tips for effective 1:1 meetings

How to take 1:1s to the next level - step by step guide

What are 1:1 meetings?

The idea of 1:1 meetings was first popularized by Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, in his book High Output Management. In short, 1:1 meetings are weekly personalized conversations between a manager and their team members to ask questions about work challenges and performance roadblocks and finding solutions together.

These meetings are not for discussing progress reports or performance reviews, instead 1:1s are great opportunities for managers to connect with their employees and uncover ways to guide and support them.

What are the benefits of 1:1 meetings?

The advantages of personally knowing your employees go way beyond immediate improvement in employee performance. When handled correctly they enable managers to enrich employee experience and drive retention.

Let’s discuss some other reasons why you need to have frequent 1:1 meetings —

1. To build trust and relationships

It is well known that as much as 50% of employees who switch organizations leave their jobs due to issues with managers. According to Gallup research, 70% of the variance in employee engagement is influenced by the managers they report to.

1 on 1 meetings can eliminate this risk by providing managers with timely insights on what motivates their team members. As a manager, when you know their aspirations, their pain points you can customize your solutions to empower them individually as well as build relationships.

1 on 1 meetings are also great for reducing the risk of false assumptions and personal biases that arise naturally. It helps you put aside personal favourites and connect with all team members to create a sense of equality and trust within the team.

2. To catch early signs of problems

When employees trust their managers, they open up and interact honestly. Most employees in 1 on 1 meetings talk more freely with their managers than they do in group meetings, especially introverts.

Frequent and regular check-ins build a feedback culture within the organization which further helps in proactively identifying and solving potential problems before they snowball into bigger issues with more expensive consequences.

3. To recognize and motivate employees

While it’s natural to overlook smaller wins when you are overwhelmed with millions of other responsibilities, it demoralizes team members. When employees feel that their hard work is unnoticed for longer periods, they lose the motivation to put in their best effort. As a manager, you must make sure that you are using these quick interactions to recognize good work and saying thank you-s for their efforts.

4. To develop managerial skills

1:1 meetings drive managers to listen with empathy, provide constructive feedback, build trust and relationships — thus transforming them from managers into leaders. Also, 1:1s humble managers by making them receive genuine feedback from their teammates with an open mind.

Regular personalized feedback from employees helps managers identify what’s working and what’s not in how they manage their teams and helps businesses develop learning programs for managers accordingly.

10 Tips and best practices for effective 1:1 meetings

1. Start with the right mindset

1:1 meetings are meant to be discussions. As a manager, your job here is to find ways to support, guide, and coach your team. Don’t start 1:1s with a mindset to dissect the employee’s performance, rather use this time to show your employees that you care about them.

Remember that your employees are the focus of the conversation. Instead of forcing them to comply with your orders, allow them to come up with possible solutions. Listen without judgement and then suggest your solution. Keep things informal to make the employees feel at ease so they feel free to provide honest feedback.

2. Set a clear agenda

To have effective and focused 1:1 discussions, you need to have a clear idea of what is happening within your team. It helps to ask employees beforehand about their challenges or revisit previous 1:1 conversations history to come up with talking points to make sure both party’s time is being used properly.

Remember that 1:1 agenda should be collaborative and flexible. Both the manager and employee should bring their genuine concerns to the table.

3. Schedule regularly

The primary purpose of 1:1 meetings is to develop trust between the manager and the team’s members. Building trust takes time and requires consistency. Set the right cadence that your team requires. And once the cadence is decided, set them as recurring events in your calendar. Use a tool to integrate all 1:1s with your favorite calendar to save time instead of scheduling them manually. Regularly making time to talk to your employees will make them feel that you are really invested in their success and wellbeing. Thus, increasing their engagement and output.

Weekly cadence is good to keep in touch with your people without appearing as a micromanager. But if your team size is too large, then a bi-weekly cadence may be a good alternative. Scheduling monthly 1:1 meetings is usually ineffective as a lot can happen in a month which increases the chance that you’ll spend more time correcting mistakes than proactively solving them.

4. Remember, 1:1s are for everyone on the team

Often, managers tend to interact with team members with whom they get along easily. But remember, as a team leader you must conduct 1:1 check-ins with all members of your team without any preference. This allows your employees to know that you are not a manager who plays favourites and increases their loyalty to you.

5. The duration matters

Nobody likes longer meetings that take their time away from valuable tasks. On the other hand, if your meetings are too short, you will not have enough time to talk about important issues.

As a general rule of thumb, 30-45 minutes of weekly check-ins is good to go. Also, make sure both parties come prepared with their talking points so no time is wasted discussing pointless topics. This is where it becomes useful to use guided 1:1 meeting templates.

6. Customize 1:1s and ensure privacy

It is natural for some employees to refrain from giving honest feedback or sharing genuine concerns about the team's performance because they fear the consequences of being known by other team members as “the one who complains”.

Also, not everyone is equally comfortable in sharing their problems. Therefore, you must customize the tonality, context, and structure of your 1:1s to suit every employee’s personality and needs.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that everyone feels safe and their privacy is protected.

7. Ask questions

1:1 meetings are about employees and their needs. So, as a manager, make sure to ask as many questions as needed to get to the root of their workplace challenges and find the right solution.

Apart from asking only technical questions, also ask about their morale to understand how they feel about their work and employer as a whole. Be genuinely interested in knowing your employees. That’s the key to an effective 1:1 meeting.

8. Take notes

Taking notes is not only useful for future references, it also shows that you care about what your team members have to say. Moreover, taking notes during and after a meeting helps you to use the learning from one conversation with a specific employee for any similar situation in the future with another employee (or even to solve your own problem).

Also, taking personal notes (i.e. recording your own thoughts about the issue) turns out to be useful when you have to do a performance review at the end of the year.

9. 1:1 meetings for remote employees

1:1 check-ins are even more crucial when some or all of your employees are working remotely. Make sure to use a video call to understand the non-verbal cues related to a conversation.

Ask them about what they need to feel supported in their work. Frequently letting employees know that they are cared for by the organization reduces their stress of working in isolation and increases employee engagement.

10. Bonus tips

Sometimes holding your 1:1s outside of your regular office space creates an air of informality around them. This makes employees feel more at ease and serves the purpose better. For example, use coffee breaks, meet for lunch or have a walking meeting to discuss their challenges. However, make sure that informality does not lead to deviation from the meeting agenda.
It is natural to occasionally have your 1:1 meeting schedule be interrupted by some urgent work. In such cases, instead of cancelling, try to reschedule the meeting. It lets your employees know that these discussions are important to you and you will make time to find solutions to their problems no matter what.

How can managers take 1:1s to the next level?

Now let’s look at how you can structure 1:1 conversations to make the most of your discussions.

1. Before the meeting

a. Plan ahead

This is the time to set the agenda, create talking points, review previous conversation history and team priorities, and get into the right mindset. If things have been going well, remind yourself to focus on recognition. And if things are not going as expected, remind yourself to focus on finding a solution to the problem instead of finding faults in the concerned employee.

b. Set clear expectations

Share the agenda of the next 1:1 conversations with the concerned employee beforehand. Ask them to share their talking points as well.

Also, before you get into specifics about their individual performance, let your team know (on a regular basis) what success looks like for the team as well as for each role. This way, you will make sure that employees are not using 1:1 discussions to share excuses for not meeting expectations.

2. During the meeting

a. Ease the tension with a check-in

Many employees tend to perceive 1:1 meetings with their boss as intimidating. As a result, they avoid talking about the real problems and say what they think you would like to hear.

Ease the tension in the beginning of the discussion with a quick check-in about how they are feeling and doing. Casually ask about how they feel about their work, team mates, and what’s on the top of their minds.

b. Tell your side of the story

Next, share how you are doing at work. Talk about your work updates that may be relevant to the discussion. Seeing you opening up may help them to see you as a fellow employee instead of “the boss”. Thus, building trust.

c. Listen actively

We repeat this once again, 1:1 meetings are about employees. It is about finding out what is stopping them from being their best selves at work. To uncover their performance blockers, listening empathetically is key. Leave the urge to jump to conclusions or provide quick solutions and actively engage in what they have to say.

d. Welcome feedback

Take 1:1 meetings as a development exercise for yourself. Listen to what your team members have to say about your management approach. Take notes to recognize recurring patterns from different conversations and modify your managerial style accordingly.

This would not only help you become a better leader but also improve your team’s performance and trust in you when they see that their feedback is being valued by their boss.

e. Hold employees positively accountable

Although the true purpose of 1:1 meetings is to recognize employee efforts and boost their morale, sometimes you will need to hold difficult conversations. Instead of criticizing their performance or behavior, talk about the high expectations you have of them. This would show them that you believe in them and thus encourage them to work harder.

Also, the quicker you provide feedback about their performance the faster they can correct their course.

f. It’s okay to get (a little) personal

1:1 meetings are two-way discussions. While talking about performance, it’s okay to share personal stories in similar situations (if any). Bringing little vulnerability to the discussion helps to eliminate fear.

Moreover, employee performance can sometimes be affected by issues outside of work. Asking them how they are doing in their personal life (without being intrusive) will make them know you care about them on a personal level while simultaneously giving you a clearer picture of the root cause of performance fluctuations.

3. After the meeting

a. Discuss next steps

Solutions are useful to the extent they are practical. At the end of the meeting, create a set of action points and a timeline to keep track of improvement. Having a clear roadmap would motivate employees to continuously improve their performance.

b. Maintain a history

Apart from taking notes during the 1:1 meeting, it is useful to keep a history of all previous 1:1 conversations in one place that gives you a better contextual understanding of an employee’s problems at a later time. SuperBeings automatically saves all 1:1 meetings history without any additional effort from your side.

Final Thoughts

1:1 meetings are undoubtedly the best way to receive regular feedback from employees and drive continuous conversation between team members and leaders. As a manager, 1:1 conversations are your most powerful tool to develop a team of high performing individuals.

Using tools like SuperBeings can help you plan your meetings in advance, provide AI driven recommendations if you need help with specific problems, and suggest several 1:1 meeting templates to guide the conversation. It also keeps a conversation history for your future reference.

In conclusion, whether you decide to use a specific tool to guide your 1:1 meetings or plan to do it yourself, approach all of your 1:1 conversations with your teammates with a compassionate and solution-oriented mindset. This would make you the leader your team members aspire to be.

Decoding Employee Engagement with Inclusion and Diversity

Employee engagement, inclusion, and diversity are buzzwords for organizations all across the globe. While organizations look at these two ideas exclusively, the focus on creating a link between the two and boosting the latter as a means to promote the former seems to be on a low priority. However, if you look closely, a focus on inclusion and diversity is bound to open ways to augment employee engagement and experience. Research by CEB, now a part of Gartner, found that workers in highly diverse and inclusive organizations result in a 26% increase in team collaboration and an 18% increase in team commitment. Another study shows that in diverse organizations, individuals work 12% harder, are 19% more likely to stay longer with the organization This clearly illustrates that inclusion and diversity promotes engagement resulting in commitment and collaboration.

Promoting Inclusion and Diversity to Drive Engagement

It is important to understand that inclusion and diversity is not only about onboarding diverse groups of people. Rather, it goes a step further to ensure that these diverse groups have an equal say in every organizational decision like others at their level. To boost engagement with inclusion and diversity, organizations need to expand their understanding of the term. Diversity in race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity is not enough. Focus on including diverse experiences, perspectives, thoughts, etc. need to be included to breed real engagement. At the same time, an engaging culture does not come to life simply by diversity hiring. There needs to be a push from senior leadership to ensure bias-free operations, appraisals, work allocation, among others.

Gauging Inclusion and Diversity Effectiveness

Undoubtedly, inclusion and diversity has a direct impact on employee engagement and experience, resulting in organizational success. At the same time, gauging employee engagement from an inclusion and diversity lens is very important. The idea is for organizations to check the engagement pulse across the organization and not just for the majority group. Here are a few quick ways for organizations to understand the effectiveness of inclusion and diversity while measuring employee engagement.

1. What does the minority say‍

Most organizations look at figures of employee engagement to judge how many employees are engaged and satisfied. However, it is equally important to qualitatively evaluate the engagement surveys of those who add diversity to the team. Their engagement quotient is what plays an important role. Try to understand the concerns of the minority groups in terms of engagement and experience to create a truly inclusive and engaging culture.

2. Encourage 1-o-1 conversations‍

It is very important for empathetic managers to indulge in candid personal conversations with all employees. Instead of asking direct questions on whether the diverse groups feel engaged or not, there need to be conversations around how they feel at work. Managers must create confidence in their team members to share concerns or worries. Additionally, these personal conversations must be for all. This reflects to the point that neither should diverse groups be ignored nor should they be the only focus of attention.

SUPER TIP: Build your organisation's inclusion and diversity by using Superbeing's feature of guided 1:1 conversation.

Employee Engagement: The Right Way

If you look closely, your organization will give you small yet clear indicators on how strengthening inclusion and diversity has a positive impact on employee engagement and experience. For instance, greater inclusivity promotes a sense of belongingness which leads to greater engagement. At the same time, a greater focus on diversity and inclusion can help organizations capture better applications during recruitment, which is essentially the starting part of employee experience. 86% of individuals claim that workplace diversity is an important attribute to consider when they are looking for a job.

It is important to collaborate with external facilitators and platforms to point out and combat the unconscious biases that might exist in organizations, delaying the realization of these indicators. Additionally, creative behavioral nudges can be highly effective to facilitate subtle changes to promote a more inclusive workplace. The bottom line is that inclusion and diversity is the first step towards employee engagement, unless an employee feels included in the culture of the organization, engagement will be far-fetched.

Continuous Performance Management in 2022: What, Why and How

Wouldn’t you agree that the unleashing of the pandemic coupled with the dynamism and uncertainty is pushing businesses to rethink all aspects of their scalability, including performance management?

Invariably, there is a sentiment to move away from the traditional methods focused on annual interventions to invest into something more continuous and regular.

In this article, we will explore the rise of continuous performance management, what it means, its merits, and how you can leverage its unique capabilities.

What is continuous performance management?

Continuous performance management entails focusing on different performance management processes at regular intervals throughout the year, on an ongoing basis. The central focus here is to highlight the importance of a holistic performance management approach, marked by regular check-ins and frequent feedback to facilitate better business results.

Contrary to the traditional performance management approach, which solely focuses on annual interventions and check-ins, continuous performance management advocates the need to connect more frequently to foster a sense of belongingness, engagement, and an enriching experience.

Why are organizations shifting from annual to continuous PM?

You need to adopt continuous performance management to keep pace with the new employee expectations, changing nature of the businesses, and customer experiences to enable organizations to not only survive but thrive. Organizations today no longer operate in a stable environment. Invariably, goals, timelines, expectations, cannot be set a year in advance and be left to annual interventions as advocated by traditional performance management systems.

The market dynamics, cut-throat competition, and agile business conditions are pushing organizations to constantly reinvent and innovate to ensure business continuity. Therefore, performance management, monitoring, evaluation and realignment, once a year can no longer suffice the changing requirements.

Moreover, continuous performance management, by the virtue of facilitating regular connections, has the potential to foster greater communication and collaboration, which can enable businesses to thrive in a connected world. On the other hand, the traditional annual appraisal approach promotes silos in working, preventing engagement and creation of shared value.

Elements of continuous performance management

With a firm understanding of the what and the why, let’s understand the key elements that make continuous performance management stand apart. The following four elements ensure that businesses are not stuck with rigid goals and metrics and give them the room to innovate and create value:

1. Dynamic goal setting

In a continuous performance management system, focus on dynamic goal setting with more importance towards near and short term goals. The objective here is to ensure flexibility and continuously reinvent the goals based on business needs and market circumstances. Dynamic goal setting ensures that the goals are regularly validated and updated to create maximum organizational impact.

2. Frequent feedback

The next element for continuous performance management is frequent and two-way feedback. There are two facets at play here.

First, feedback and performance corrective measures should be shared regularly and in real time to ensure implementation and performance improvement.
Second, the feedback should flow in both directions.

While the traditional approach focuses on a top to bottom feedback, the continuous performance management advocates a bottom up feedback mechanism as well. Thus, the objective is to have a holistic and regular approach to feedback.

3. Regular check-ins

While frequent feedback is a more formal intervention, regular check-ins are an integral part of continuous performance management. Regular check-ins seek to address challenges and realign expectations during the course of a task or a project.

Instead of waiting till the end, as advocated by annual performance management, the continuous approach believes that regular check-ins between employees and their managers, amongst co-workers and across the organization lead to better collaboration, greater alignment and collective responsibility.

4. Self evaluation

Continuous performance management requires organizations to introduce the element of self evaluation. Under the traditional approach, the leadership and managers are solely responsible for evaluating the performance of employees.

However, the continuous performance management approach encourages employees to evaluate their performance on a regular basis. The objective is to identify for oneself the challenges as well as the opportunities to contribute to one’s own professional development, and, thereby, further organizational growth.

5. Constant recognition

The final element of the continuous performance approach for our discussion today is constant recognition and appreciation. Continuous performance management provides the opportunity to regularly monitor employee productivity and value creation, and, consequently, reward the top performers.

The idea is to appreciate efforts and good performance in real time — even for smaller wins — rather than wait till the end of the year. This has the potential to act as an incentive for the recipients to feel acknowledged and valued for their contribution as well as for others to improve and get rewarded the next time.

Top seven benefits of continuous performance management

There are several benefits that organizations that have adopted continuous performance management claim to have reaped. Here are the top seven which make the most sense for organizations as well as individuals:

1. Greater engagement

Regular check-ins, frequent feedback, and interventions lead to greater avenues for employees and managers to connect and collaborate. Employees are often more happy and satisfied as opposed to traditional performance management.

According to research, 95% of managers report they are “unhappy” with traditional performance reviews. Therefore, a continuous approach leads to a greater sense of engagement and belongingness. Employees feel a part of a larger vision when they are frequently reminded of the big picture and their contribution to the same.

2. Better financial results

Continuous performance management seeks to ensure that performance challenges are addressed in real time to augment productivity and impact the bottom line. Statistically speaking, companies adopting continuous performance feedback significantly outperformed competition at a 24% higher rate.

Therefore, continuously evaluating performance and focusing on development can lead to better financial results for the organization.

3. Increased retention

When they are constantly engaged, appreciated and included, employees’ commitment and dedication towards the organization increases. Invariably, this reduces the voluntary turnover rate and promotes greater retention.

Furthermore, when employees stay longer it creates a positive employer branding facilitating attraction of top talent, as well as building a strong succession pipeline.

4. Greater organizational connectedness

Frequent check-ins and interventions not only augment engagement but also facilitate greater connectedness. Connecting and collaborating to review performance and improve it ensures that employees know more about one another, are able to build authentic relationships, and the workplace dons a more human and impactful cultural fabric.

5. Real time improvement

Under the traditional performance management system, employees and managers wait till the end of the year to voice their concerns about what’s not working well, which invariably is quite late, especially in the fast paced world today. The team members of managers who provide weekly feedback instead of annual are 5.2 times more likely to strongly agree that they receive meaningful feedback. Continuous performance management enables real time feedback and improvement to ensure that only the most effective and efficient practices and processes are followed.

6. Promote a high performance culture

Continuous performance management pushes employees to work hard and give in their best all year long and not just on the days closer to the annual review. Globoforce research shows that 51% of employees believe that annual reviews are inaccurate, and 53% say it does not motivate them. Whereas, a continuous approach promotes a sense of responsibility to perform well everyday and each day counts. Invariably, this leads to a culture where high levels of performance becomes a norm.

7. Greater agility and resilience

Finally, organizations which adopt continuous performance management are agile and resilient. They are capable of reinventing their goals, processes and practices, and adapt to any changing circumstances. This agility and resilience is critical for business continuity and maintaining a competitive edge.

Why do some organizations resist continuous PM?

Despite the remarkable benefits and advantages, organizations are apprehensive and reluctant about adopting a continuous performance management approach. There are three major reasons behind such reluctance, including:

1. Lack of managerial buy-in

Continuous performance management requires greater efforts and interventions on the part of the managers and leaders. They often see it as an additional burden and shirk away from this responsibility as they are unable to see the immediate merits for themselves as well as for the organization.

It is important to create the right case and explain to them how in the long run, continuous performance management can create a seamless high performance journey.

2. Waste of time

It is true that frequent interventions and continuous management requires a greater time commitment than annual reviews. This is, thus, seen as a roadblock where organizations feel it is a waste of time.

However, it is important to undertake a cost benefit analysis to understand how continuous performance management holds the key to various tangible and intangible benefits mentioned above, which would require additional resources and commitment if a continuous approach is not adopted. Using a continuous performance management tool saves 100+ manager hours by automating the entire process.

3. Lack of right metrics and tools to measure

Finally, many organizations do not have the right tools or are unaware about the right metrics to make sense of the value created by continuous performance. In such a situation, this transformational approach is dismissed as ineffective and not an organizational priority. Here, organizations must partner with the right platforms that can help gauge the results of continuous performance management and translate it into organizational impact.

How to implement a continuous performance management system?

An understanding of the key elements, benefits and apprehensions of a continuous performance management system leads us straight to comprehending how to facilitate organization-wide implementation for the same. These following six steps can enable organizations to start implementing and reaping benefits of the continuous performance management system:

1. Facilitate employee and leadership buy-in

It is important to start with seeking a buy-in from the leadership as well as the employees. Continuous performance management requires some investment in tools and resources to facilitate regular check-ins and frequent interactions. It also requires a mindset shift and greater effort on the part of managers and employees to connect more frequently and align performance and goals often.

Therefore, the first focus must be on getting everybody in the organization onboard with the idea by illustrating the top benefits both for the organizations (like greater productivity and business continuity) and for the employees and managers (like greater growth and development).

2. Invest in manager training

Manager and executive buy-in must be followed by considerable investment and focus on manager training. This involves investing in training to facilitate behavioural change amongst managers to facilitate competencies for coaching and transforming the way they communicate.

Continuous performance management requires a greater degree of communication and collaboration between managers and employees, and, therefore, investment in building leadership, mentorship and coaching skills is instrumental.

3. Set dynamic goals and OKRs

Once everyone is onboard with the right skills and competencies, the natural next step is to set goals and OKRs which are dynamic, agile and flexible. A focus on SMART goals can facilitate continuous performance management. Second, the goals must be agile and flexible. This suggests a move away from the traditional rigid goals which leave no room for transformation.

The goals should be aspirational, but at the same time must be dynamic enough to change to keep pace with the changing business conditions. Conditions like the pandemic of 2020 cannot be anticipated a year in advance, and business goals must be flexible enough to be reinvented based on the circumstances in hand.

3. Foster a culture of 1:1 conversations

Based on the goals and OKRs, the next step for effective implementation of a continuous performance management system is to foster a culture of 1:1 conversations between employees and their managers. These regular conversations must have a structure and cadence to ensure they are not missed out.

Such conversations can help eliminate roadblocks by discussing challenges and potential solutions. Connecting regularly also helps to build authentic relationships and breed trust. Finally, this can lead to a greater sense of belongingness, improve engagement, and ultimately boost performance.

4. Collaborate with effective platforms

Next, organizations must leverage different platforms that help facilitate effective continuous performance management. For instance, SuperBeings enables organizations to measure employee pulse as well as capture the level of performance with daily pulse surveys. Based on the responses, managers can align their outlook and benefit from industry best practices to create a high performance culture.

The objective is to collaborate with tools which can facilitate the process of capturing and analyzing employee data on a regular basis and translate into meaningful insights to manage and improve performance.

5. Measure and optimize

Finally, it is important to measure the effectiveness of the continuous performance management system and understand its impact on organizational productivity and bottom line. While some aspects of the process will work well, others will require some work and optimization to achieve the desired goals.

It is also important to gauge the level of adoption and reasons behind low adoption to address the same. Choosing a platform that integrates in the flow of work requiring zero context switching for employees and managers, thus increasing adoption.

Continuous performance management: 5 best practices

Most fast growing organizations agree that steps for implementation coupled with a few best practices form the secret recipe for successful continuous performance management. Let’s look at the top five practices to ensure maximum impact.

1. Two way goal setting

The goals must be created collectively. This entails involving employees in the goal and OKR setting process to ensure a sense of commitment and ownership. When employees take part in setting the goals they tend to be more accountable. Furthermore, they have a better understanding of their role in achieving them and what is expected out of them.

2. 360 degree feedback

Continuous performance management requires a focus on feedback from different stakeholders. This involves managers, subordinates, co-workers, professionals from other departments as well as self evaluation. The idea is to get a holistic picture of the employee’s performance, not just on technical skills and productivity, but on different ways they are able to create value for the organization.

3. Transition in frequency

The transition from the traditional annual performance management must be gradual and incremental. Transforming annual reviews to daily reviews in one day will topple the status quo and lead to an overwhelming situation across the organization. Therefore, annual management should be transitioned to quarterly review and interventions and with time, frequency should be increased to make it a continuous effort.

4. Leverage technology

A focus should be on integrating the available technology tools with existing processes to facilitate greater effectiveness and reduce the cost and time to start from scratch. For instance, leveraging platforms like SuperBeings that integrate with Slack or MS Teams can be instrumental in promoting better and regular communication and collaboration between teams. It also helps gauging team pulse and capturing the level of performance regularly to identify areas and ways to improve.

5. Shift focus from performance evaluation to development

Finally, continuous performance management requires organizations to shift away from the traditional notion of evaluation, which focuses on measuring productivity and organizational impact. Rather, the focus should be on employee development to facilitate the growth and development of the most important organizational asset and resource, the employees. The idea is to align organizational and employee goals and promote a more collaborative approach which entails impact for businesses as well as those who participate to foster its success.

Final thoughts

As we draw this discussion to a close, it is evident that continuous performance management is integral for organizations to thrive in the new normal. On one hand, it helps meet the need of the new millennial workforce for most fast growing organizations which expect and demand frequent feedback. On the other hand, it enables businesses to stay agile and resilient to reinvent and innovate and stay relevant with the changing market dynamics.

If you are starting your journey towards continuous performance management platforms like SuperBeings can facilitate a smooth ride. With capabilities to continuously gauge employee pulse and translate it into meaningful insights for better performance and manager development, To build a high performance culture book a demo below.

11 leadership mistakes to avoid as a new manager

Becoming a manager is no doubt a career breakthrough, but it often comes at a cost of higher accountability and more responsibility. Mistakes new managers make can lead to a bad reputation, disengaged employees, high employee turnover, and slow but sure downfall of the organization.

Leadership commands more responsibility and liability towards a bigger opportunity and puts you in direct charge of people. Managerial mistakes often happen without deliberate intention or knowledge. Therefore, the utmost priority of a newbie manager must be to learn from the biggest leadership mistakes ever made and avoid them at all costs.

‍Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. -Paul Hawken

The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority. -Kenneth H. Blanchard

Mistake #1 Living the title, not the role

Attaining the role of a manager or a leader is so fascinating that it prompts many new managers to settle down and live in their achievements rather than prepare for another journey. It is one of the most common leadership mistakes that you must avoid. This jeopardizes their career and reputation.

The role of a manager involves planning, organizing, leading, and controlling people, assets, and the organization positively. An effective leader must take pride in the unique responsibilities assigned to him as a manager.

A newbie manager must become proficient at;

Communication and collaboration
Building interpersonal relationships
Leadership and mentoring
Project management
Critical thinking

Mistake #2 Micromanaging instead of trusting your team

A boss who micromanages is like a coach who wants to get in the game. Leaders guide and support and then sit back to cheer from the sidelines. -Simon Sinek

Micromanagement is an old school style that lets the manager closely observe the activities of a person rather than a process. A micromanager always wants to control the people around him.

A survey by Trinity Solutions, stated in Harry Chamber’s book “My Way or the Highway”, found that 79% people said they experienced micromanagement at work, 69% of them said they considered leaving their job because of it whereas 36% actually changed their jobs.

What's more alarming is that 85% survey participants said that micromanagement negatively impacted their morale.

This leadership mistake has several harmful impact in the organization leading to —

Loss of trust and relationship with teammates
High employee turnover
Dependant staff
Losing focus on the big picture
Low confidence and fear of judgement
Less innovation and employee engagement

Mistake #3 Being too friendly or not bonding with the team

It is a managerial mistake to be too friendly with employees or not at all bonding with them. Being a leader requires having a perfect balance of freedom, friendliness, personal boundary, and emotional connection with the employees. Being too friendly as a leader may lead to employees ignoring tasks or asking for undue favors. While not bonding at all with the team alienates the leader from the team pulse.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people. -Steve Jobs

Socialize with your employees often to win their trust. Motivate them and inspire them. As a manager, you may often need to take a tough decision against issues that arise often. And you must be cautious as a new manager not to act against the people but against the real issue.

Mistake #4 Reluctance to giving and receiving feedback

“All leaders make mistakes. They are part of life. Successful leaders recognize their errors, learn from them, and work to correct their faults”. -John C. Maxwell

Managers are the focal points of organizations that employees look up to. They appreciate working in a company where a manager gives feedback and takes feedback. Often managers seem to take credit for any success and push down the blame to the lower level. Effective managers must take responsibility at both ends. They know that feedback is not a personal attack, instead a tool for self-awareness and growth.

On the other hand, new managers often tend to avoid giving feedback because they —

Find it uncomfortable and distressing
Do not know how to do it properly
Consider it as challenging and demotivating
Unable to handle the pressure
Do not organize and find time

Sometimes, new managers end up criticizing team members instead of providing honest feedback. As a new manager, remember that often it’s not what you say but how you say it creates a larger impact.

Mistake #5 Not delegating tasks and activities

“The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker, but the manager.” -Peter Drucker

Not delegating tasks is one of the most common mistakes new managers make. While as a new manager it is common to think that no one else can complete vital jobs perfectly, it hinders organizational and team growth, and increases project completion time.

Great leaders know that no one is indispensable and believe in the abilities of their people.

“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.” -Anthea Turner

As a manager, remember that your job is to build a great high-performance team and a motivated workforce who knows what to do, when to do, and how to do it.

Mistake #6 Not ‘leading’ people

All managers are not leaders. Though management and leadership are interlinked, there are considerable differences in both.

A leader motivates the team and gets the work done. The credit goes to the team. Whereas a manager tries to control and micromanage their team to get the work done.

“The manager administers; The leader innovates.” -Warren G. Bennis

As a new manager, avoid the critical mistake of bossing people around. Instead be a coach and mentor them. Inspire people instead of inducing fear in them. Develop your team members and contribute to their growth, instead of shutting them down.

Mistake #7 Not setting clear objectives or a specific vision

Visions are crucial for team engagement and performance.

Employees perform better when they know how their work fits into the bigger picture. It makes them feel that their job is important to the overall business.

There’s no better intrinsic motivation than meaningful work. Setting clear, measurable OKRs is the first step toward ensuring that employees know what’s expected of them. But as a new manager, don’t just assign tasks, give your employees a purpose to work on.

Mistake #8 Having a people-pleasing attitude

Sometimes being a leader will require you to take a stand, make hard decisions, and have difficult conversations. Which means sometimes you will be seen as the ‘tough one’.

Especially in a remote work environment with minimal face-to-face interaction, it’s easier to adopt an “yes man” tendency to avoid disagreement. But it’s important to remember that not all disagreement is a conflict.

Having a ‘too nice’ attitude will get you approval, but it will eventually lead to distrust. Because ultimately people prefer honesty and consistency over niceness.

Mistake #9 Misunderstanding motivation

The two types of motivation are intrinsic and extrinsic. Understanding motivation only in terms of monetary benefits and ignoring the emotional aspect of a role is a mistake first-time leaders often overlook.

“An employee’s motivation is the direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager.” -Bob Nelson

As a leader, it is your job to understand what truly motivates your people; what are their challenges and aspirations, and support them through all. Recognizing the efforts of your team members and appreciating them publicly can go a long way

Mistake #10 Not being available or accessible to the team

Employees look up to their managers for immediate support and guidance. Managers should not walk away after assigning someone with a duty. As a leader you must ensure that they have the resource, training, and assistant they need to get the job done effectively. If you lead them from the front, employees will do their best.

On the other hand, employees should not feel disconnected from their managers. They must feel free to approach their leaders as and when needed without any fear.

“A recent management study revealed that 46% of employees leaving a company do so because they feel underappreciated; 61% said their bosses don’t place much importance on them as people, and 88% said they do not receive acknowledgement for the work they do.” -Jack Canfield.

Mistake #11 Managing conflicts the wrong way

Conflicts when managed constructively, can be the key to creativity and growth. Yet, in workplaces, conflicts are seen in a bad light.

New managers often try to handle conflict in an amateur or biased way. An adamant and stubborn manager may dominate and focus on winning his sides during a conflict, instead of solving the problem and finding a win-win situation for all parties involved.

Here are a few ways you can eliminate the tension of undue conflicts —

See disagreements as opportunities to know your teammates well.
Be transparent and communicate with the employees and senior leadership clearly.
Plan, organize, and prioritize in advance to avoid unnecessary work-related issues.
Ask for help if needed from the employees or the senior leadership and adapt to your working environment.
Regular 1:1s and keeping a track of employee pulse are great to predict early signs of conflicts and resolve before they escalate.

Final Thoughts

“Be a leader with a ladder, not a manager with an order.” – Debasish Mridha, Author

Some managers inspire people whereas other managers hold people accountable. A good manager helps others to perform well. A bad manager micromanages and induces fear. Being a new manager is no doubt challenging but with awareness, empathy, and humility you can become the leader you team members aspire to be.

10 Challenges of working from home for employers & how you overcome them

You must have noticed the shift that is happening towards how work is carried forward and how strategically it is allocated. It is hard not to notice the challenges of working from home, especially with the onset of Covid-19 pandemic which demanded a sharp shift in how people approach work.

By recent statistics almost two-thirds of working professionals are working from home at least once in a week, where it progresses on to 53% professionals who work remotely half the week.

Working from home has always been prevalent, and relevant to a point, since it catered to the possibility of highly talented professionals located at different geographical areas to join together and bring the best out of a given situation.

In addition, the outward embrace for high flexibility within the workplace brought by remote work gives much rejuvenation to the workforce. Now they can work on their own schedules, in their pajamas, possibly with their pets on their lap, and can doze off between probable working hours just as long as the daily target is met at the end of the day.

Remote work also benefits employers who have a wider radius to hire from since there is hardly a geographical constraint. They can also drive in more funds to the business and the well-being of employees since they considerably cut costs with having no infrastructure or other tangible equipment.

All in all, telecommuting has fundamentally altered the way people think about work and how it is dealt, with new innovations rising to elevate the platform to really be employee friendly. Such a transformation that seeks to erase what has been generally accepted throughout is surely bound to come across hurdles that need to be overcome and problems that need to be addressed.

Here are some fundamental challenges that remote working brings to light and how they can be tackled.

1. Employees Driven Towards Social Isolation

The social component that is linked to office-based working is unparalleled. When in an office, you engage in many conversations and discussions as well as productive contemplation that just does not hit right in the case of remote working. Even though consistent social interaction at the workplace can potentially cause distractions, interaction with other people on a regular basis positively impacts the employee’s mental health and boosts their morale.

As a consequence, remote employees can feel isolated and lonely, especially when they are living alone. For all you know, a remote employee can pass through an entire week at their home without having to step outside.

Hence it becomes an alarming factor for remote working that employees do not engage in social interactions. Community workspaces are a good solution to the problem. Here, you have essential social interaction even if they aren’t employed by your own company. Apart from that, any remote organization extensively carries out its communication through technology and the internet. Having a virtual office, wherein group calls and texts can be facilitated, gives better relief to employees and further ensures that their concerns are addressed. In addition, creating a channel for personal sharing whereby employees can suggest trips and vacations can strengthen employee retention.

2. Sinking Productivity Levels

Productivity of employees under remote work may vary from individual to individual, much like an actual office space. But the distinction comes when employees at an office are asked to deliver a daily target before their daily working hours are over. With a remote working environment, even if daily targets are set it cannot be supervised and managed like the former.

Hence, even though research suggests that employees at remote offices tend to have high productivity, it is generally cumbersome to cultivate productivity achieved at an office space without having in-person supervision.

In order for a proper solution, you need to surpass the threshold of having control over virtual supervision, wherein you can effectively create and evaluate clear goal-setting and deadlines for employees using an HR software. You can ensure productivity levels are maintained by each employee and provide reinforcements to employees that are temporarily lacking in productivity levels.

3. Employees Adjusting To a Sedentary Lifestyle

Employees being challenged by the transition of a sedentary lifestyle is too common, even with actual office working environments. But in the case of remote employees, they are by nature tethered to their devices, and it becomes increasingly difficult for many of them to enforce lunch breaks and other rest intervals by themselves.

In an office, you have a clear end point where you finish up your work for the day and leave the premises. It is not possible for employees in remote work as the notifications that are work related stretches far after the normal working hours.

Remote organizations should really stress on the relevance of taking steady breaks and rest, that refreshes them and gives them the much necessary relaxation. When you get the indication of employees that fail to comply with this, discuss this matter with utmost concern re-iterating the harmful effects.

4. Physical Discomfort In An Home Office

When you build an office space for housing employees and generating work performance out of them, you take into consideration many factors that elevates their comfort and well-being. They take care of office furniture like chairs and desks that are ergonomically built, and are placed around ample lighting at eye-friendly angles. This is completely absent in the case of remote working, unless employees take care of it themselves.

How this can be tackled is by educating yourself on the importance of a good working space, even at your home, and encouraging proper utilities are available for preventing possible distractions. Some employers even go to the extent of providing furniture to their employees wherever they are located to ensure their workspace is devoid of any discomfort and disturbances.

5. Problems With Teamwork and Collaboration

Humans are social creatures. So even the fundamental essence of a working space incorporates that very interaction for sprouting new ideas and more creative means of carrying out a specific idea. When a physical environment is absent to create a space conducive for collaboration, it is essential to employ new methods into making that happen.

The physical separation of your remote team can prevent sparks of new ideas and innovations unless there is a software solution to play a large role in ensuring remote collaboration. Like previously stated, having a software support to engage in video conferences and other modes of communication alleviates this challenge.

Superbeings is one such platform that caters the needful functions required for efficient remote collaboration. It comes up with an active system of measuring your team and conducting benchmarks based on parameters on skill and job design. It further empowers your talent and ignites your potential by insights and recommendations.

6. Difficulty In Adjusting With Software For Employees

How effectively work is managed often owes to the software used for functions. In an office environment, software upgradation and gradual updation can all be managed since all the equipment is confined inside a workspace. With a remote workspace, possible issues that can arise include faulty software, employees using different software and other compatibility issues.

Cloud-based solutions including Qandle, Slack, Google Workspace etc., comply with business standards to deliver top-notch professional software that can be relied on constant functions involving in a company. These platforms not only provide a comprehensive solution for a centralized communication system but also acts as the biggest assistance for information sharing in a remote setting.

7. Security Issues Springing Out of Remote Work

When you have a remote team that has access to organisational files and documents, the information is open to many security threats like viruses and other malware that can spread from the system of any of the employees. While this issue can be largely prevented at an office space, it is troublesome for virtual workspaces.

For remote employees, almost as with any other necessities, it is essential for them to install antivirus software on their devices to protect their system from such malwares. There are other methods like inculcating a remote access VPN to encrypt the connection between employee devices and the company database.

The important factor to be addressed is that just because a company works partially or entirely remotely, they can’t compromise on security standards and protocols, and should ideally follow the decorum followed by any other normal organization.

8. Balancing Work And Life

A Work/Life balance is undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing remote employees. It surrounds issues like overworking where the employee devotes too much time for work stretching beyond his or her working schedules, or the other side of the coin which is working too little, often caused by distractions present at home.

When you remove the workday commute and make your home the workplace, you bridge the gap between the employee and the workplace, but you also invariably make it difficult to conclude your work at the end of the day. As stated earlier, with remote employees being tethered to their work devices, they have the tendency to stretch their working hours to fit unfinished tasks and overdo tasks for various reasons. On the other hand, stating personal reasons and also succumbing to household distractions, an employee can potentially work too little than what is expected and derive low productivity.

The challenge can only be mitigated by stepping back and taking a break. However convenient remote work claims to be, it can still be overwhelming if you do not manage to find an equilibrium between work and life. You have to chart an agenda for work yourself and strive to complete your work within your restricted time, and allow yourself to take breaks and even enjoy yourself in the process.

9. Reluctance to Consistently Work From Home

Remote work is an alternative to working at office spaces at specified timings. It is an innovation that seeks to provide a pathway to how work can be carried out with efficiency. But that vision in itself can be hindered when employees incline against working from home in the long run.

While this matter can be channelised to a plethora of reasons from finding work from home less rewarding than working at an office space and also link many distractions while working from home, the reluctance prevents the employee from embracing the positive aspects remote work can provide.

The best option here is to provide choice for employees. If there is a unison in such a concern, employees can have the option to work at an office by also providing some level of flexibility. Or else reinforcements like a pay raise or other incentives can hold the employee and persuade them to rise above the surface of uncertainty.

10. Issues Linked with Clarifying Work Tasks

In a remote environment, it is difficult to ascertain whether a given group has understood the tasks assigned to them or if some of them wasn’t able to follow. In an office setting, you always have a proper delegation of work and managers to act as mentors for clarifications and suggestions, while with a remote system it is rarely the case.

Remote work only flourishes with constant communication. Since there is no physical environment to depend on identification of tasks and ensure its delivery, the only means accessible for remote work is by effectively communicating the matter and doing the needful. People who find it difficult to grasp certain tasks can be further enlightened on the topic by one-on-one calls and messages.

Conclusion

Evolution in work stems from innovative stands in deciding how work can be done in a manner that is most convenient for the management, employees as well as the target customers. Remote working, albeit with their limitations, is a revolutionary step towards allocating professionals from around the globe to work together for a common goal. Remote working makes it possible for a freelance designer located in the Alps to work on a project in Mumbai. Remote working makes it possible to spend your weekdays with your family and work in your pajamas.

Many of the issues sprouting from positioning a remote work system can be solved by giving priority to frequent and consistent communication, managing flexibility and ensuring employees have the right software and equipment. So, before closing doors to remote work, embrace the possibility of it.

Can Employee Appreciation be Your Ladder to Organizational Success?