Karen is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Paycor, offering a modern, intuitive HR solution built for SMB Leaders.
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Work as we know it is fundamentally changing, and change can be scary. But change can also be creative and energizing. It can be an opportunity to kick the tires of the way we’ve always done things, a chance to be creative about what work means to an organization — reshape boundaries, shed practices that no longer have a purpose, implement new policies and more.
In March, most left offices around the country and started working remotely. Suddenly, businesses were virtual, distributed organizations. These early days were the scary, uncertain part of change. But there were also opportunities for this change to be exciting.
Employees want to believe that tomorrow will be better than today — and they want to have a say in it. The employee voice has always been a part of my company’s culture, and bringing our “hive mind,” our deeply collaborative spirit, was of utmost importance as we navigated the virtual transition. It made all the difference in the last several uncertain months and, ultimately, changed our business for the better.
The first thing we as an executive team realized was that change couldn’t happen from the top down. To lay the groundwork, we all stepped up to be visible leaders in this new normal. We increased the cadence of communication. For starters, we changed our monthly all-employee meetings to weekly. Now, company leaders have weekly “fireside chats” with the whole company, followed by team-led breakout sessions. We found this to be an important step. It was crucial to let employees know that even though we were virtual, nothing had changed. Our leaders were still there, still committed to a shared vision, still as transparent and straightforward about our short-term and long-term plans. Once we reaffirmed that basic trust, our team did do what they do best — they started coming to us with ideas.
The results have been inspiring. For example, some employees wanted to promote mental health awareness and to remove any vestigial stigma that might be associated with it. They teamed up to be the face of mental health at Paycor (again, it’s important to have those visible leaders). They’ve pulled together all of our mental health policies and programs and then promoted them, inviting others to learn more.
Another employee is a big believer in and practitioner of mindfulness meditation. She runs a 15-minute mindfulness session every day at noon. There’s a weekly “curiosity session” where people can share their special passions and hobbies (I never knew we had a professional beekeeper at Paycor!). Many teams have embraced virtual happy hours and almost all teams have created a virtual hangout where team members can chime in (or not) anytime, on any subject. As a human resources professional and a leader of my company, there’s nothing more exciting than seeing employees come together to rewrite the rules of work.
If I could leave you with just three thoughts on how to get started, they would be:
1. Be a visible leader in your company. The best way to invite employees to share their ideas is to model the behavior you want by being present, accessible and transparent in your communications as a leader. It helps to communicate more, not less, so err on the side of overcommunicating, especially in these anxious times.
2. Keep your finger on the pulse of the organization. It’s more important than ever to have an open-door policy. Create some kind of feedback loop. Surveys are a good beginner’s step, but eventually, you’ll want to get data-driven, always-on sentiment analysis. It’s really the only way to get ahead of anxieties that, left to linger, could become problems.
3. If you don’t at first succeed, try again. If change comes too easy, be suspicious. Positive, productive change can and should lead to some false starts and dead ends. Take those temporary setbacks as a good indication that your organization is really stretching and growing, not just acting out the motions of change, but digging deep to make things better than they were before.
I wish you the very best in the coming months. Enjoy this moment; it’s a unique time and, who knows, it just may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rewrite the rules of work.
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