Employees Feeling Disconnected? Read This to Find Out What’s Missing.
Leading through change can be difficult. Not only are we seeing a lot of managers struggling to maintain connectivity, one-third of employees have reported feeling disconnected from their leaders.
The good news is you don’t necessarily need to start organizing company game nights to alleviate this problem; you can simply look to your team’s connectivity at 3 distinct levels:
1) The connection between employees and their direct managers
2) The connection between employees and their work teams
3) The connection between employees and your organization as a whole
Whether they’ve shared a physical space throughout the pandemic, remain fully remote, or have adopted a hybrid workstyle, your employees need touchpoints across all these areas to feel genuinely in sync with their roles.
So if your team’s been feeling disengaged despite your best efforts, it’s worth taking a closer look to see which key connections may be missing.
1. Connecting employees with their direct managers
Research from Gallup shows this is the most important employee relationship. No matter how strong their other connections may be, if an employee doesn’t feel supported by their manager, their engagement will suffer.
Here are a couple of tips for shoring up this critical point of connection:
· Schedule regular 1:1 meet-ups. A good rule of thumb is to spend a minimum of one hour each month with individual employees—and as much as one hour each week with new or more junior staff.
· Avoid forcing relationships. For employees who are naturally quiet or reserved, or who find it difficult to open up, working on a task or project together can be a pleasant way to connect without feeling pressured.
We recommend hour-long interactions so you and your employee can have plenty of time to discuss topics outside of work.
2. Connecting employees with their work teams
Most employees consider themselves part of a bigger work team, and want to feel connected—even if they’re working from home.
Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to organize trivia nights over Zoom (unless your group LOVES that, of course!). But you should be providing some opportunities for your employees to connect at a team level.
Here are some suggestions for making that happen.
Build personal time into team meetings.
Whether your team meets virtually or in person, they may appreciate having time and space to connect around personal events.
Our team at AMWTW, for example (which has always been 100% remote), sets aside 30 minutes at the start of each weekly meeting to share anything we have going on. It could be a great book we’ve been reading, or it might be a bigger milestone in our lives. Either way, we love this connection time so much that we’ve been known to call in during vacation just to catch up!
If you do choose to follow this example, make sure you give everyone the opportunity to speak rather than leaving things in the hands of whoever feels like talking.
Our team makes it a point to “go around the room” so everyone will get a turn to contribute. Even if they don’t share a lot, this is a great way to make space for less vocal team members.
Organize dedicated team time.
It’s important to also carve out longer periods of time where your team can be together without having to focus on work. A friend of ours shuts her restaurant once a year to hold a team day, for example—even though her team works together on a regular basis.
At AMWTW, we try to get together in real life for 3 to 4 days twice a year. When that’s not possible, we’ll dedicate an afternoon each quarter to playing games online or doing a yoga class together.
Even if it’s as simple as sharing a long lunch every quarter or month, you should choose group activities everyone is comfortable with, and re-evaluate those activities as new employees come on board.
3. Connecting employees with your organization
To help employees feel more connected to your organization, try to keep them in the loop around shifting business priorities, what the founders or executive team may be planning—and how their roles fit into this bigger picture.
There are several ways you can do this:
· Hold town hall forums. All-hands meetings can be a meaningful way to tie the interests of employees to those of your organization. For best results, remember to a) invite multiple members of the leadership team to get involved (rather than just having the CEO speak), and b) give people the opportunity to ask questions so you can hear what they’re thinking.
· Use transparent internal messaging. Senior leadership email communications and company updates are a great way to keep employees tuned in to how their day-to-day efforts are impacting the success of the organization.
· Encourage employee feedback. For authentic, actionable input, make sure your employees have mechanisms for giving feedback at an organizational level that don’t always involve going through their manager. Executives can foster these conversations by not just saying their accessible but by proactively booking time with employees a couple levels down from them, at least a few times a year.
Remember, HR problems can’t be solved by blanket policies. If you need help implementing meaningful, lasting solutions to connection issues within your organization, get in touch and let’s set up a complimentary discovery call!