THE NEW REALITY
By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia
Someone once said that “eighty percent of success is showing up” perhaps we should add “in your pyjamas” and it would fit better with how some employees are experiencing the new reality of working from home.
We all know that this pandemic left employers with no alternative other than to direct their employees to work work-from-home.While some companies may have existing work from home policies the current work from home regime has been forced upon us and comes complete with many headaches, regardless of whether existing work from home policies were in place or not.
THEN AND NOW
There’s lots of research published pre COVID-19 regarding the positive impact having your employees working from home could have. Typically the studies demonstrated double digit productivity growth and significant increases in staff retention. Usually thou a number of environmental requirements were specified to deliver these types of results.
Firstly, the employee had to work from a home office, secondly, nobody was allowed into the room during the workday except for the employee, and thirdly a “home office “could not be a bedroom!
Pre COVID-19 most homes certainly provided an acceptable level of solitude for the work from home employee; children were safely tucked away at school, kindy or Nana’s place! In the good old days, the biggest distraction to a good day’s work at home was likely to be catching up on a Netflix episode, or taking time away to carry out a few home chores.
In this new reality in which we live, three key elements have changed; children, space,and choice. Employees are at now home and likely working alongside their children and in some cases their partner, in unsuitable spaces and they have no choice about it.
Its not hard to see how this impacts people’s anxiety and stress levels and affects their ability to perform their roles efficiently. It’s likely if you ask you’re people how they’re coping with this new reality, they will not complain to much or own up to increased stress and anxiety. Most employees are highly conscious of the fragility of employment at the moment….so they’ll put their best foot forward, soldier on and leave you guessing.
HOW WE HELP
As an employer, you can’t change the work from home directive, this won’t change until the Australian government provides direction on the next steps of easing the lockdown restrictions. However, there are certain factors that could help employers understand if and where their employees may need support without relying on employees owning up.
But what are those factors and how do you measure them without adding to the stress and anxiety?
As an assessment business, Great People Inside is used to creating assessments for the recruitment of new people and the development of existing people and teams. Although the size of the challenge is unprecedented, the essential work of analysing and developing your work from home team hasn’t changed. It’s what we do all day every day.
And because we customise assessments for specific purposes, we’ve developed a series of new assessments, informed by extensive, independent research, over many years, into the characteristics required for people to successfully work from home.
These assessments are hugely relevant to the current global situation and will allow you not only to undertake a ‘health check’ on all of your people (not singling out those you think are struggling), but to respond to what it tells you. With our Partners, we can offer individualised online development, provided by subject experts, to help your people cope with a situation that is far from their ‘old normal’.
OUR NEW ASSESSMENTS
The Remote Employee assessment helps you discover if your current employees have the skills needed to be productive and motivated when working remotely.
The Remote Manager assessment provides key information on the efficiency of managers leading a remote team, assesses their ability to manage different work styles and create vision, motivation and momentum in a remote team.
The Remote Team assessment provides important information regarding the efficiency of a team when working remotely. It shows the way members interact with one another and, at the same time, presents the optimal conditions in which that team can reach the highest level of productivity.
The VUCA Manager assessment identifies leadership potential in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. By measuring capacity and potential, it highlights an individual’s strengths and development gaps relative to the leadership needs of the organisation.
Is your team working remotely? Do you know that they’re coping OK with the isolation? Would you like to know?
Contact Great People Inside on [email protected] or call us on 0405-691845 and let us help you maximise the impact you have on your organisation AND your people.
About David Leahy
David Leahy is the Director of Great People Inside Australia (GPI). GPI Australia provides state-of-the-art and fully customisable assessment and development solutions to help select, match, onboard, manage, develop, engage and retain top talent. Recently launched in Australia, GPI is seeking a limited number of Australian Channel Partners, so this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. If you’re interested in being part of our mission, why not enquire and learn about our unique and exciting Channel & Referral Partner program. Contact David at [email protected].