Effective Employee Engagement: 3 Lessons that Emerged from the Chaos of 2020

I’ve led marketing teams in B2B and B2C organizations for more than 15  years, but never in my career has a focus on what people really need and want ever been as relevant as it was during the first half of 2020. 

Sure, we’ve been leaning into the idea of workplace flexibility over the past few years, by expanding support for family leave, adding mental health benefits to our insurance policies, and allowing a small portion of our workforce flex hours. We’ve reluctantly agreed to let full time employees work from home one or two days a week. We’ve slowly opened our minds to hiring people who live in other states without requiring them to relocate, and we’ve adopted video conferencing as a standard business practice to accommodate such scenarios. 

But if we’re honest with ourselves, the motivation behind these gradual adaptations has previously been less to do with providing a work/life balance and more to do with what was best for business. This year when the pandemic hit, we knew instinctively that the workplace had changed permanently, and that the new business practices we quickly adopted to stay afloat would forever alter how people viewed employment. 

Off to a Good Start

According to recent research by McKinsey, 80% of employees surveyed say leadership at their organizations acted proactively to protect their health and safety, and 78% say their organizations did a good job of responding to the pandemic. Companies sent employees home and, by the next day, we're holding Zoom meetings and collaborating on Google Docs or Teams. Work continued for the most part uninterrupted. 

But as it turns out, business continuity wasn’t all that mattered. Temkin research affirms that engaged employees are happy employees — but how do you keep employees engaged with work when their lives are turned upside down by something no one can control? 

Overnight, working parents became teachers and caregivers. Suddenly, their time and attention were divided — by no fault of their own — as they struggled to manage two equally important full-time jobs. For some, partners, spouses or family members were suddenly unemployed, which added economic stress as and the guilt that goes along with being grateful for still having a job. Some people had to shelter in isolation because of COVID-like symptoms, waiting anxiously for test results. Those with pre-existing conditions were stuck entirely indoors, while others without roommates or family nearby were completely isolated when they signed off of Zoom. Still others may have lost loved ones to the virus. Emotional and mental fatigue were inevitable.

As employees struggled with fear of the virus, anxiety about the future and concern or their families, business leaders were faced with career-defining challenges. Could they lead the way in times of crisis? Could they inspire employees to remain productive and efficient, while helping them through unforeseen struggles? Could they help inject humanity and empathy into the workplace enough to keep teams engaged and dedicated? 

A New Approach to Employee Engagement

The pandemic laid an essential truth bare: We’re humans first, employees second. What does revenue matter - and how is it even possible - if your employees’ minds and hearts aren’t in the game? 

As leaders across industries realized this essential truth, the drive toward productivity softened, and a new focus on well-being emerged. We started seeing emails that began with “I hope you are well,” and ended with “Stay safe” or “Take care of your family.” We spent the first 5-10 minutes of each Zoom call checking in and sharing stories. We greeted children, and we waited on mute while dogs barked and doorbells rang. 

And we didn’t mind. We related. We connected. We saw each other in a different light. Many of us realized for the first time why the manager in accounting is often abrupt or the marketing director always looks tired. We found new empathy for our co-workers, and we bonded with them on new levels.

None of this is news to you — there’ve been dozens of blogs on the topic, and you’ve lived through it yourselves. But “what comes next” is still up for speculation. Will the humanity we’ve shown toward our co-workers persist once the threat of Covid-19 subsides? 

3 Good Lessons I Learned

The workplace is forever changed for the better, and as leaders, we can seize this opportunity to build loyal, enthusiastic and passionate teams that collaborate more effectively, support each other more fully, and achieve higher levels of performance.

Here are three lessons I learned from leading a growth-minded marketing team during the pandemic:

1. Engagement doesn’t require a commute. Now that people have had to embrace sustained remote working, many will be reluctant to return to a physical location. And we’ve learned that it’s really ok. In fact, in many cases, it enhances productivity. In Silicon Valley and other large metropolitan areas, people may travel an hour or more each way to the office, and the resulting stress and fatigue of the commute makes them less effective on the job. Remove that requirement, and you have happier, more rested, more balanced humans on your team who are grateful for the flexibility and appreciative of a better work/life balance. By giving them the flexibility to choose where they work — and in some cases, when — builds loyalty and leads to more, not less, engagement and productivity.
2. Transparency = trust. Researchers have proven time and time again that Transparency is the number one factor in employee happiness, yet it took the Covid-19 crisis for many organizations to put transparency to the test. Historically, organizations have been careful to shield employees from certain information, and only share the positive. This practice often led to shock and resentment, when the truth of an underperforming quarter or imminent layoffs unfolded at the eleventh hour. When Covid-19 hit, I knew it was critical to check in with my team more frequently than before. Near daily check-ins and weekly all-hands became the norm. But why should this new approach be abandoned after the crisis dissipates? The reality is, people can handle bad news, and the more time an organization gives them to adjust to and prepare for it, the more they’ll trust and respect the organization.
3. Work does not define us. Employees’ personal and professional lives are now intertwined in ways never before imagined — and that’s unlikely to change. Through the narrow lens of Zoom, we’ve seen into peoples’ lives, and it’s no longer possible to regard employees only as boxes on org charts. We can’t unsee what we’ve seen. What we now know about our co-workers, customers and partners provides a deeper understanding of who they are, and will enhance our working relationships by awakening the empathy we instinctively have for each other, leading to better collaboration and, as a result, better business outcomes. 

The real test will come when the country reopens completely. Will we take back the best of the old world — looking someone in the eye, shaking a hand, feeling the energy and chemistry of people connecting in person — but manage to leave behind the baggage that draws a hard line between home and work? Will we act on our heightened understanding that employees perform optimally when they trust the organization and can connect with coworkers on a personal and emotional level? 

I advocate for keeping the new spirit alive. If we can continue to support employees as whole human beings, with needs and aspirations outside of work, more top performers will emerge. Under the right set of circumstances, they’ll shine even brighter.