However, essential to employee experience is understanding that it goes beyond employee satisfaction. Rather, it is a strategic imperative that directly influences organizational culture, success, and the ability to navigate an ever-changing business landscape.

Employee Experience Begins and Ends with Engagement

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That third pillar has been critically important over the past several years, especially as many organizations have “rebooted” their operations in the wake of a global health crisis, a newfound focus on “humanity,” and the need to be more talent-oriented to thrive during uncertain times. With this in mind, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange has developed the below infographic, Five Ways Business Leadership Is Evolving.

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The World Health Organization has found that one in four people globally will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives; and, the cost of untreated mental health issues to the global economy is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars. Poor mental health, from a workplace perspective, often results in disengagement, increased absenteeism, a lack of productivity, and more frequent turnover.

The movement towards focusing on corporate mental health and wellness seems to be evolving, though. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has discovered that 93% of business leaders are actively prioritizing mental health (and mental health awareness) as part of their 2023 leadership styles, a far cry from years past when this critical issue was near nowhere to be found.

Recognizing the challenges of poor mental health in the workplace, an increasing number of companies are taking steps to address these issues, such as offering mental health resources, such as counseling services and support groups. Other organizations are also promoting wellness initiatives (such as meditation classes on-site yoga, etc.) to help employees manage their stress and anxiety and transform the workplace into a more comfortable place to work.

Workplace culture has become a top conduit for revamping mental health initiatives, as it has become crucial to create a culture that promotes inclusivity and openness. By fostering a workplace environment in which workers feel comfortable discussing their mental health and, consequently, seeking support when they need it, businesses can ensure that their most critical asset (their talent) views the organization and its workplace as place that cares about them as people.

Business leaders can extend this progressive idea of workplace culture by developing and communicating policies that back employees who may be dealing with mental health issues; simply offering paid time off for treatment or providing flexible work arrangements can prove to be a major difference in truly supporting the workforce.

What this all boils down to, of course, is the role of leadership in reimagining workplace culture into an environment that promotes positive mental health. Senior leadership must be committed to these ideals of wellness and model the behaviors that map to supportive policies. The Future of Work has long been founded on the depth of talent, and, if businesses desire to thrive in 2023 and beyond, they must address corporate mental health, view these initiatives as both ways to humanize the workplace and retain talent, and, most importantly, creating a more resilient, productive, and healthy workforce.

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• Empathy must become more central of an approach in business leadership. As the competition for talent remains tight, business leaders should develop an inclusive workplace culture that encourages and prioritizes the human connections between leaders and their staff (such as scheduling more video conferences, checking in with workers more frequently, and developing “safe spaces” for workers to speak their minds and offer critical enterprise feedback). With so much of the Future of Work revolving around productivity and business outcomes, enterprise leaders must ensure that they are designing flexible work environments that allow an “elastic” means of getting work done.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion should be the “beating heart” of all talent- and work-led initiatives. DE&I is not just a response to corporate social responsibility or a checked box in regard to the major societal issues happening within the world at-large, bur rather an all-encompassing theory of change that involves the breakdown of barriers across the traditional workplace environment. Businesses must formulate work- and talent-based strategies around becoming an inclusive enterprise while developing a diverse culture that is open to new and innovative voices and candidates.
• Prioritize the value of employee wellness. Mental health, as well as employee wellness must be melded into core workforce strategies, similar to how new technology and new talent acquisition approaches have become key pieces of the Future of Work puzzle. The very essence of the Future of Work is to optimize how work is done and enhance the productivity of both talent and technology. Mental health is a critical factor in just how productive, creative, and innovative the workforce can be in how work is addressed and ultimately optimized. Executive leaders must cultivate an environment in which all workers, regardless of position, feel “physiologically safe,” as well as restructure paid time off (PTO) policies to ensure that workers can take the time they need to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
• Develop the ideal “worker-to-workplace environment” over the first few months of 2022. Heading into a new year, there is still very much a need, and, more importantly, a desire, for remote and hybrid work models. However, as the Omicron variant begins to cause surges of infections, there will be initial confusion and resistance over what really works and what is truly productive for both leadership and its talent as return-to-office plans face another barrier. Executive leaders still have the time and the ability to experiment with various work models and develop the best “worker-to-workplace environment” that is conducive to flexibility and strong business outcomes. Business leaders should continue to experiment over the next several months and track what is working, what is helpful for productivity, and how the workforce responds to these new environments. It will be especially critical to allow workers to have a voice and influence on the work models of the future.
• Cultivate an ecosystem of “talent sustainability” that contributes to overall workforce agility. Beyond talent acquisition initiatives, leaders must take a long, hard look at the most prevalent skill gaps within their businesses and understand how current and future changes in the market will affect the talent that is needed to successfully lead product development, sales and revenue, and overall enterprise operations. A deeper analysis of total available skillsets (both FTEs and non-employee) and resources available via private networks, talent clouds, talent communities, and talent pools will provide the necessary intelligence to determine which elements must comprise a sustainable ecosystem of talent. Which workers are engaged in an “agile talent” model that is repeatable? Which professional services are utilized on a regular basis? How will shifts in economic modeling alter how the overall business address how work is done? These are questions to ask and then answer to build true talent sustainability.

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“We pushed out our return-to-office date to January 15. Hoping it sticks this time.”

“Back in May and June, our target date to get the office up-and-running against was September 16. It gave our working parents enough time to get situated with school schedules. But now, we just don’t know. It’s too hard to communicate a date to our staff because things are changing so rapidly.”

Those are some direct quotes from HR, talent acquisition, and procurement executives that I’ve spoken to over the past couple of weeks. And then there are these quotes, all from HR executives:

“My maternity leave crossed over with the mid-point of the pandemic. My team and I have all been fully remote since then, and I can’t picture any of us going back to the office except for bi-weekly or monthly team meetings or special projects.”

“Whether or not we mandate vaccinations or negative tests, the truth is that our business has fundamentally changed. We’re under 100 employees, which allows us to be a bit nimbler in how we communicate and operate within a virtual setting, and those employees that want to be back at our HQ have had the option for a few months now…but, I just cannot see how we go back to what we were doing before all of this started.”

“There are some big question marks we have. Our flexible workforce alone is anywhere between 800 and 1,000 people on any given day. We’ve done a pretty decent job of figuring out who is working where and how to effectively track how well projects are being completed, but there are some very stressful conversations ahead for our leadership team and what our 2022 looks like. Most of my team understand that things have changed, but how many really believe these changes are going to stick? That is the fundamental question at hand for us: do we attempt to slowly return to the way things were before? Or do we just accept that our organization has been permanently transformed?

While this is a random sampling of just six executives across the millions across the globe, now is a great time for us to remind ourselves of just how much impact the pandemic had on all aspects of our lives. Think of the first day it really hit home for you. That day didn’t necessarily have to be the true beginning of the pandemic as defined by the World Health Organization, so it ranges wildly for each of us.

I can remember the day after then-President Trump declared a state of emergency, editing a podcast for the following week’s edition of Contingent Workforce Weekly. My wife and mother-in-law spent most of that afternoon at the local Target (unmasked, if we can remember a time like that indoors!), stocking up on essentials in the event we were locked down in our homes for a couple of weeks (or more). That feeling inside of my chest, that sinking feeling, was more than just anxiety. It was my brain telling me that we were in something awful for the long haul.

In so many respects, the pandemic has had an incredibly profound impact on how we shop, how we interact with family and friends, how we travel, and ultimately how we live our lives. Some of us have been mildly sick with COVID-19, others have been hospitalized. Some of us have lost family members and friends. Some of us lost our jobs, homes, careers, and livelihoods. The economy may be bouncing back and the labor market may have recovered the vast majority of job losses from 2020, however, there is an indelible mark on every aspect of our lives, including business, that will never be the same again.

There are specific complications that we all wish weren’t part of our daily lives, and we certainly can all agree that the scale of tragic loss of life has been truly heartbreaking. I would bet there are several moments per day, too, when we say to ourselves, “I wish I could go back to the way things used to be” when we think of concerts, movies, restaurants, parties, holidays, etc. In due time, those pieces of life will come back to us at a much lower risk than they are today. For the world of business, however, we shouldn’t be thinking about pre-pandemic times, but rather the ways specific “accelerants” forever changed the way we work…forever. Consider that:

• Distributed teams are the norm now, and, both workers and executives have realized the benefits of the remote and hybrid work models. “The Great Resignation” is occurring mostly because workers have been enabled with the flexibility they’ve always craved, and now that businesses are sounding the “return to the office!” alarms, those highly-skilled workers are choosing to take their talents elsewhere. Work-life balance, the capabilities to attend to homes and/or children during the work day, and an overarching sense of flexibility are all attributes of the ideal workplace for today’s workers.
• The move to virtual collaboration also sparked a revolution in the realm of digital transformation. Many businesses eschewed a major remote work overhaul in pre-pandemic times because they thought it could takes several months to achieve. In reality, the move to remote happened for many organizations in a matter of weeks. This proved that moving more operational components to automated and repeatable processes would be much simpler task than originally thought (note: no technology implementation project is easy, but it’s much more fluid today than it was years ago).
• Today more so than ever before, businesses are focused on true organizational agility. In fact, Future of Work Exchange research finds that 73% of businesses desire to become truly organizations in the months ahead. This laser-like focus on business agility, in which organizations can respond dynamically to real-time situations and challenges, is absolutely a direct result of learning first-hand what it was like to face staff shortages, supply chain disruptions, revenue shortfalls, and a global health crisis all at the same time.
• There are so many question marks around business travel that some are pondering whether or not we will ever have “road dog” positions anymore that require 75% or more working hours traveling for work. This is not welcome news for airline, hospitality, and similar industries that were decimated by the pandemic, however, the rise of virtual conferences (even though many of us are certainly facing burnout from these, admittedly) means that more and more leaders have access to the content that was only available at traditional conferences and tradeshows. Too, do organizations that rely on in-person events pivot to hybrid conferences? Scale down to one-day symposiums instead of full-blown, three-day events? There are always going to be limitations in the virtual model of collaboration, especially when it comes to key client relationships. However, with so many businesses thriving during uncertain times without the aid of corporate travel, are forced to wonder if we’ll ever return to pre-pandemic levels.
• The relationships between leaders/execs and their workers has been fundamentally changed as empathy becomes a key component of the management playbook. Employee wellness, wellbeing, and mental health are now all crucial pieces of the Future of Work movement and business leaders are taking note: 77% of executives anticipate that empathy-driven leadership will become a more critical foundation of the employer-employee relationship. An empathetic culture promotes positivity, open communication, better productivity, and is a major solution to worker burnout. As times change and uncertainty continues, workers can be comforted knowing that their leaders are emotionally invested in their wellbeing and support them from both professional and personal perspectives. Eighteen months ago, the notion of empathy-led leadership was not discussed or even on the radar for the vast, vast majority of enterprises. Today? It’s how the typical business wins the war for talent.
• Changes in how businesses think about their workforce are opening doors that were closed just 18 months ago. Societal changes are sparking a bigger focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). The rise of remote work has allowed hiring managers to expand their talent acquisition efforts beyond their backyards. The utilization of extended or non-employee talent has risen to 47% of the average company’s overall workforce. Business leaders are rethinking and reimagining how work gets done from the bottom to the top; they understand that there are now no boundaries in how they find and engage talent, nor is there a major difference between traditional and non-employee workers if skillsets and expertise are top-of-mind. The myriad changes in the world of work has transformed the way enterprises address talent acquisition and hiring initiatives.

There are always going to be professionals that would like business to return to the ways it was before the pandemic, and those individuals cannot be blamed for wanting to return to a world that was less stressful. But if we take all of the things that have changed about how we get work done, how we view our talent, how the relationships between leaders and their staff have changed, how empathy is now a key element of the modern workplace, and how we have all benefited from the newfound flexibility within our roles, we all have to ask…why we would ever want to go back to the way things used to be?

The post Let’s Just Say It Now: The Business World Is Never Going Back to Normal appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

During my first couple of weeks, I thought I landed a dream job…right out of college. I was covering political issues, police budget cuts, school committee meetings, and so much more. During my second or third week as “designer version” of my role, when I had to put together nearly 50 pages of ads, stories, features, pictures, etc. using Microsoft Publisher, the owner saw me yawn and rub my eyes. “You’ll do great in this industry, kid,” he said. “As long as you don’t get tired, you’ll be fine.” I thought he was joking, so I smiled. And less than a year later, I left the industry for good.

I clocked more 18-hours days than I could remember. I once worked 28 straight hours because a co-worker up and quit during an argument with the owner. In order to attend a Red Sox game (during their magical 2004 season, no less!), I had to make up the work when the game was over (at 10:30pm). When those same Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years, I wasn’t at home celebrating; I was in front of a desktop computer putting together my second of three newspapers that evening. At the age of 22, I was burnt out, unhappy, and regretting having a dream that involved writing for a newspaper.

Nearly 17 years later, the very problem of worker burnout is unfortunately all too-common.

Business professionals are facing an epidemic on top of a pandemic: extreme burnout and work fatigue. Eighteen months of combating an increased workload on top of managing remote learning, an extreme lack of social interaction, and a rollercoaster ride of anxiety during the worst public health crisis our our lifetime. Some industries (such as healthcare and human medicine, veterinary medicine, light industrial, etc.) have experienced such an increased level of work that employees are facing the worst burnout issues of their careers. Staff shortages have been to blame for the majority of burnout cases, as businesses are often forced to “do more with less” in a period of continued uncertainty. And, within sectors that have experienced “boom” times over the past year, there has been a greater demand for products and services, resulting in organizations placing even more pressure on their workforce to perform.

In addition, workers that have moved to fully remote or hybrid models still routinely face a “blurring” of work and life balance, with care for children and their homes (on top of an additional workload) contributing to late nights on the computer, extended time on mission-critical projects, and work on the weekends. Worker responsibilities have surged, as well, as businesses seek to align staff shortfalls with the existing workforce.

Unlike pre-pandemic times (when burnout was still very much an issue), employees facing the epidemic of burnout now also have to contend with additional social, political, and health issues that are all comprise the world that is 2021. And it’s so much more than simple “stress,” too: mental anguish stemming from a workplace environment (and YES, a home office counts!) can have significant ramifications on business professionals, including irritability, physical illnesses, mental health issues, waning productivity, and, worst of all, a constant questioning of if the position/role (or, even worse, the career itself) is worthwhile.

Here at the Future of Work Exchange, we’ve talked at-length about the value and impact of flexibility and empathy in how executives manage their workforce. Business leaders can extend these concepts to ensure that they address the core issues behind worker burnout and improve overall work-life balance. To start, organizations must:

• Institute deeper communication between managers and staff. Workers aren’t always willing or able to give away information in a conversational setting with managers, and, managers shouldn’t be playing coy with their workforce’s emotions. Open up the proper channels of communication and get right to the issues at hand: leaders asking if their employees how they feeling and allowing them to freely discuss the physical and mental impacts that all avenues of work are having on their work-life balance. Communication may seem like a gigantic obstacle, but more often than not, once the gates of discussion are open, both sides will begin truly understand the perspectives of what is occurring from a burnout perspective.
• Provide a more flexible system of paid time off, vacation, and mental health support. Scroll through LinkedIn on any given day and you’ll read about various companies taking a progressive approach to workforce management, whether it’s offering extended time off, additional benefits for fully-remote workers, and services/offerings for mental health support. No worker that’s currently clocking 60-hour weeks will turn down an opportunity to develop a better plan for vacation or time off. Although workers with mental health issues may be hesitant at first, once they feel comfortable taking advantage of such benefits, they should utilize whatever the enterprise offers for mental health support.
• Consider a dramatic short-term shift in the overall workplace structure. The long-vaunted “four-day workweek” has been effective for some businesses over the past several years, however, not all organizations could shift to this model and be successful from a productivity perspective. With that said, though, running such a dramatic short-term experiment could reveal so much about its longer-term success a viable option…quite simply: if you haven’t tried, how do you know it won’t work? Now is the perfect time to move to a four-day workweek, especially with many return-to-office plans on hold due to the continued impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. If a two-month experiment reveals that workers are happier, more productive, and better engaged with their roles and with each other, then it’s an experiment worth conducting.
• Develop a direct line of collaboration regarding upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Although not a front-and-center issue when it comes to worker burnout, there is sometimes a hidden root cause: a misalignment between a worker’s total skillset and the work they are performing within a stressful or demanding environment. It’s not so easy juggling a career with an anxious home life in what was supposed to be the waning months of a pandemic but has now turned into a horrifying repeat of the early months of 2021. Managers must institute a direct line of communication about career paths and “where” workers want to be in the future. If there is an opportunity to undergo training for a different unit or department, there’s no better time than now to kickstart that initiative before burnout gets worse. The last thing executives want to experience is another period like this past spring, which were the largest on record regarding worker resignations across the United States. Existing experience and expertise is always going to be an incredible benefit, even if the long-term fit between the worker and his or her current role isn’t set up for long-term success. Employers must give these workers the opportunity to leverage their unique talents and apply those skillsets to other facets of the greater business.

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