The role of the employer as a ‘social safety net’ has been a huge shift in recent years, brought about by the high expectations of Millennials and Gen-Z workers. Even before the pandemic, 68% of employees said a company wellness scheme was a big factor in choosing where to work.
At Spring, we know from conversations with tech start-ups, scale-ups, and disruptors that the pandemic has lifted personal well-being higher up the business agenda than ever could have been planned for before. This also means there has been a fundamental shift in focus on culture and employee value proposition for leading tech companies.
So, as we begin to emerge from the pandemic and become more forward-thinking, now would be a good time to check in with teams and consider how best to lay solid foundations to not only attract and retain talent but also create the conditions for them to thrive.
Levels of contentment with working life over the past year vary dramatically at an individual level. Those working from a single room, perhaps in a parental or shared home, or new hires who haven’t physically met anyone, will feel stress in different ways to those with complex family dynamics.
We aren’t just talking about the forced move to home working. People have lost the fundamental human connections on which spontaneous interactions thrive, and could be depleting stores of social capital in historical relationships. This is a truth even in companies where productivity has stayed the same or even increased over the last 18 months.
We know that young people are especially vulnerable. According to a recent FT Series: A New Deal for The Young, even younger employees with stable jobs worry about fierce competition, long working hours, and an increasing spill-over between work and home life that could damage their health and relationships. Another recent study shows 74% of young people have experienced loneliness.
It’s also important to be aware that anxiety levels may actually be increased by a return to the office as much as by a continuation of working from home. The way to avoid fall-out from all this is to activate a clearly communicated and well-designed “return to the office” (or not) plan, grounded in a solid understanding of how people are really feeling. Whatever the workplace model of the future looks like for your business, as business leaders it is your role to lead your team through this transitional period with honesty, transparency and authenticity.
How leaders can help teams thrive in uncertainty.
- Over-communicate – make yourself available, hold regular all-hands meetings, survey the team, listen well, celebrate wins, and discuss setbacks openly.
- Be transparent – share your own challenges, admit when you don’t have all the answers, don’t shield the team from the truth, listen to their stories.
- Be human – give flexibility, show understanding around personal schedules, respond with empathy, create team rituals, know your team. Tailor your benefits package accordingly.
When analysing the data, leaders may be pleasantly surprised. A recent Index Ventures study showed that over 80% of employees enjoy remote working, driven by feeling trusted by their employers, more valued in their role, and from huge improvements in work-life balance. It may be that employers can afford more flexibility than they previously realised. The key questions to ask are: What kind of culture do I want us to create for the long term? What is the right employee value proposition to attract and retain talent in a post pandemic world? Historic ways of working and employee dynamics, coupled with the experience of the pandemic, will be a guide. But according to Gartner, there really is no alternative but to rethink workforce models and employee value propositions with as much razor focus on employee experience as customer experience in an increasingly competitive talent space. The fundamentals of how people work and how business gets done in a post-pandemic era is changing.
Top Tips for maintaining an excellent remote culture during a transition to a new workplace model.
- To counter Zoom-fatigue, re-ignite a sense of spontaneity. Assess the different ways you communicate and determine what needs to be in real-time and what can be email or instant message. There are great new platforms available to shake up collaboration (see below).
- Onboard new team members fast and get them working effectively with existing employees. A nice example we recently saw was user manuals each employee creates – laying out how they like to work, how they communicate, what’s their management style, etc.
- Intentionally create water-cooler moments for spontaneous social interaction. The times before and after online meetings present an opportunity for a personal chat, informal mentoring and to recognise contributions.
- Find ways to enable engagement with and between employees through cultural rituals ready for or as part of a return to the office. Connecting groups across the company for virtual ping-pong, online yoga, or movie nights can build a sense of togetherness and community.
Exploring new technologies. Here’s a guide to the best tools around.
| For collaboration / brainstorming: | Mural, Whimsical, Miro |
| For knowledge hubs / documenting: | Notion, Guru |
| For project management: | Trello, Asana, Basecamp, Clubhouse |
| For culture / team temps check: | Donut, Friday pulse, Karma |
| Video that doesn’t have to be real-time: | Loom |
About Spring Partners
Spring was founded in September 2020 by Nicki Lynch and Joanne Thompson to be a new kind of consultancy purpose-built to work at pace for mission-driven tech start-ups, scaleups, and disruptors. Our clients are working on key societal issues like democratising work experience, creating a sustainable fashion revolution, or improving the collection rate of payments for small businesses to ease cash-flow tensions.
With backgrounds in consultancy at Bain & Company and experience as CEOs of tech start-ups, our focus is the commercial and operational challenges that come with success and fast growth.
