Business may have started to feel a little more like usual, but that’s not to say all employees have recovered from the impacts of the pandemic. HR has a unique opportunity to help them navigate “survivor syndrome” over the months ahead, writes Sandra Porter.
As many businesses take a deep breath following the uncertainty of the last 24 months, it’s tempting to relax and appreciate a sense of relief that the business has survived and can now move forward.
However, the events and emotions of the last 24 months will not be easily forgotten. The employee experience of the pandemic may have been traumatic and has been left with wounds that need to heal.
This challenge is three-fold: On an organisational level the business may be pivoting, adapting to new market conditions, operating a new business model, creating different products or services with new suppliers or technologies.
This requires a new strategy, business plan and financial model. This can create pressure and hesitancy across the organisation as it finds leaves its familiar path behind and takes a new direction.
At the team level, surviving employees may also be navigating what Bruce Tuckman described in his 1965 team development model as the “forming, storming, norming, performing” stages of development.
Supporting employees
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As new teams consciously or subconsciously mourn the loss of previous team identity they may be submerged into new team structures with different leadership, roles and expectations.
Team tension
Along with significant opportunity this can bring resistance, tension and conflict between team members.
As teams begin to form and define their objectives and ‘modus operandi’ there is often a period of wasted opportunity that can be problematic for both the individuals within the teams and on the businesses’ ability to be able to create momentum and demonstrate progress.
On an individual level employees will be moving through what Kubler Ross defined in her book on Death and Dying in 1969 as the ‘change curve’.
As morbid as it sounds, the five series of emotions felt by people when dealing with significant life events are just as pertinent in the workplace, particularly like pandemics as we have just experienced.
Kubler Ross asserts that at times of overwhelming change we experience emotions, moving from denial and anger, through bargaining towards acceptance and performance.
The time taken to progress through each of these stages is different between individuals and is often determined by their individual and collective resources.
Don’t ignore it
Too often businesses move through these phases in blind ignorance. The appetite to restabilise a business at a macro level can overlook the needs at the micro level.
There is a tendency to suffer the symptoms without exploring the causes. These symptoms can include increased absence levels due to stress, workplace disputes, insubordination, poor engagement, a sense of bereavement and a lack of trust in leadership.
In these challenging times, what can HR do at both a strategic and tactical level to enable the business to minimise the impact of these potential derailers and accelerate performance?
HR professionals now have an opportunity, or maybe responsibility, to forensically diagnose the problems and prescribe the right solutions.
There are three key stages that require attention, understanding and action:
Explore
We have many tools available to us to diagnose current levels of engagement. This could be through undertaking an employee engagement survey, focus groups, exit interviews and focused one-to-ones. Being able to help employees reflect on how they are feeling and highlighting their needs should provide insightful qualitative and quantitative data on readiness for change.
This should help inform a discussion with the management team to reflect on the current experience, set priorities and also to measure progress as the business moves forward. You should also reflect on what the people metrics for your business are telling you.
There is a tendency to suffer the symptoms without exploring the causes.”
My book outlines more than thirty people metrics that provide insight into the health of a business. These range from vacancy fill rates, average days of absence, revenue per employee and employee attrition. Using data effectively can help highlight potential root causes and focus energy in the most pertinent areas.
Educate
We have an important responsibility to educate the management team about the experience of change and their role in managing employees, and themselves, through change effectively.
Discussing how people might feel at different stages of the change curve and how this can manifest in the workplace can be transformational. Where managers are able to identify indicators of denial, reluctance, anger or bargaining can provide a new lens through which to look when seeking to resolve issues.
Successfully managing change requires this level of curiosity, understanding and patience, to be effective over the longer term.
Holding workshops with management teams to bring their attention to the employee experience and tactically how they can manage these emotions can help them feel more confident in dealing with the issues on a day-to-day basis.
Enable
By using the insights gathered from the exploration stage and the discussion at the education stage, HR professionals can then develop people practices around the key priorities.
These priorities could be for increased communication, clarity on the business strategy, revised training programmes, flexible working practices. Developing the understanding, planning delivery and securing resources to enable managers to better support their team members is a significant opportunity for HR professionals to both protect employee wellbeing, empower managers and accelerate business performance.
In response to change business leaders will often go one of two ways – put their head in the sand and hope that everything will be fine, or will raise their head above the parapet and take responsibility for delivering change through their employees.
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It is the expertise of HR professionals that can provoke business leaders to interrogate their reality and then provide the necessary practices to both support the employees and exploit the business potential.
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