Who are the people that influence you the most in the workplace? Who are the teams or the roles that you understand the most about?
They are likely to be those that you spend the most time with. Whether that’s in person or via tech, it’s likely that you feel most connected to the people you interact with the most.
This is the crux of the challenge with remote and hybrid working.
We can often fool ourselves that we understand what is happening in teams across the whole organisation, but we’ve only actually listened fully to those closest to us.
Franklin Covey has a model called “The Circles of Control, Influence and Concern” - we can apply this to the workplace in a different way to help us demonstrate this point.
It shows us that those who are physically and metaphorically further away from us have the least influence on us. We may still be concerned about them, but it’s likely that we understand the least about their day-to-day experiences.
If we don’t understand their experiences, how can we know how engaged they are in the workplace?
Here’s the model in action:
This presents a challenge when it comes to employee engagement and the experiences of remote and hybrid workers. How do we ensure that we understand their engagement and experience, so that we can enhance it?
How do we make them feel close to the organisation and engaged in our journey, without physical closeness?
The reality is that 1/3 of frontline workers feel disconnected from their colleagues in HQ and 4 in 10 employees feel their management is out of touch.
These ways of working may cause physical barriers to engagement. We need to work extra hard with these teams to overcome the barriers.
Unifying Your Teams
This is where technology and anonymous employee feedback surveys can play a role. Using a survey that is accessible to all can provide a key part of a layered feedback strategy. It creates a clear employee voice for remote and hybrid teams.
When developing your survey, tell your team that you value their input and that you are asking about the things that would be most helpful to them.
Running regular surveys, with targeted questions, means that you will have a consistent flow of insight and feedback from those that you are least likely to see. All employees can share their voice in the organisation no matter how or where they work.
For bonus points, you can really target the remote and hybrid employee experience.
Focus on what it means to work in this way in your organisation. A recent study proved a 150% ROI on additional investment in employee experience - so the numbers stack up.
We use email, SMS & WhatsApp in our surveys. This makes them accessible to remote & hybrid working teams, not just those on email - who are most likely to be in your circle of influence.
We'd love to talk with you about how we might help if some of this applies to your current remote or hybrid model of operation or if you are switching to a new method of working.
