Employee engagement: managers need support, too

Managers are in the best position to help their employees’ social and emotional needs in the hybrid workplace, but managers themselves need more support, too, said a recent blog from Harvard Business Review.

In this hybrid work world, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, for a corporate leadership team to facilitate deep connection from the top-down, wrote Clara Shih, CEO of Service Cloud at Salesforce in Keeping Hybrid Employees Engaged. And despite its benefits, an online work experience sometimes is not as good as an in-person experience.

Imagine the last live concert you went to, Shih wrote. Now try to imagine watching the same concert on your computer. It’s just not the same.

“Even if you’re lucky enough to not have distractions or disciplined enough to not be multi-tasking, the online experience is nowhere close. In a remote work environment, the ground game [i.e. one-to-one and one-to-few interactions] becomes more important than ever in driving employee experience, engagement and loyalty.”

While people feel isolated and fatigued working from home, most (81%, according to a Harvard Business School survey) don’t want to give up the flexibility of not having to come in every day. So, how do leaders replace the “daily social dopamine hit we used to get from interacting with co-workers in the office”? Shih asked.

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Managers are in the best position to provide support to employees because of the relationships they have with each member of their team. But managers themselves need more support.

A Gallup study showed those in management positions have taken a greater mental health hit than individual team contributors. Over the last two years, many newly promoted managers in particular have been overwhelmed by having to suddenly manage remote workers facing health and childcare issues, relocation, and a slew of other personal challenges.

Company leaders and HR teams need to support managers with specialized onboarding, training, metrics and ready-to-use FAQs and playbooks, such as what to do when an employee stops engaging during team meetings or has a family member who gets sick.

“In these dynamic times, corporate leaders also need to grant managers greater autonomy to cut through some of the bureaucratic red tape and make the right decisions to support their employees in real time,” Shih wrote in the blog published Aug. 11. “With continually evolving COVID mandates and office policies, many situations are unprecedented and urgent, so managers need to be trusted to make the correct decisions in the moment in addition to knowing where to go if additional support is required.”

Once managers have the support they need, they can take steps to foster emotional connection, team bonding, and fun to compensate for the loss of proximity in the office.

For example, this may include checking in with employees by phone or text “just to say hi and let them know I’m thinking about them” or ensuring the next in-person meeting is planned so the team has something to look forward to. It could include being much more deliberate about giving out recognition frequently, celebrating small wins, and encouraging managers across the organization to do the same.

“Not only are new methods required to address employees’ social and emotional needs, who carries out these methods is shifting from traditional corporate structures… to the line managers…” Shih wrote. “Providing employees with space, flexibility, and psychological safety isn’t enough — companies need to go beyond these table stakes to offer today’s remote and hybrid workers experiences that address their human need for the authentic connection, team bonding, and fun that used to come with in-person proximity at the office.”

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