Managing staff wellbeing in a hybrid workplace

It’s clear that choice and flexibility are key priorities as businesses move towards hybrid work models.

Technology has played — and will continue to play — a driving role in this transformation. But how can employers ensure that wellbeing isn’t neglected during this technical revolution?

Research from Deloitte shows that integrating wellbeing into the design of work itself is a good place to start, strengthening the link between worker wellbeing and an organisation’s performance. And businesses are aware of the issue: the Deloitte research finds 80 per cent of organisations believe worker wellbeing is important or very important to their success over the next 12 to 18 months. But with just 12 per cent of those surveyed ready to actually address the issue, it’s clear that much work needs to be done.

Individual employees also need help so that they can better manage their own wellbeing. Sally Sourbron, Senior HR Director EMEA at ServiceNow, says she is concerned that the liberation of working from home has, unintentionally, created some bad habits. “In lockdown, you had no constants — apart from, maybe, work — and we had this reliance on work for social reasons.” This means, she says, that work and life merged. “There was no natural start or end to the day.”

The danger, according to Sourbron, is that these bad habits will continue when people start to head back into the office, or move more permanently to hybrid ways of working.

It’s a huge shift in mindset for employers and employees. So how can businesses make it work?

Communication is key

First and foremost, it comes down to communication, says Sourbron.

We want the manager and employee to come together to agree on how many days they might want to come into the office, or when the critical moments for face-to-face interaction versus video or special moments for collaboration might be.”

ServiceNow is trialling something called Own Your Day, a way of adding structure to digital ways of working. Sourbron explains: “It’s all about thinking how you plan your day: how much time should you have on video? How much time should you set aside for strategy work, or for collaboration? Should a meeting last 15 minutes? If it’s any longer, will you have time to get up, walk around and grab a coffee or food to keep your energy levels up? It’s little things like that which can make a huge impact.”

Maintain engagement

During lockdowns ServiceNow has supported employee wellbeing by “trying to wrap our arms around our employees”, says Sourbron.

This has taken the form of the familiar — and some less familiar — online social engagements, from quizzes to wellbeing sessions and afternoon magic shows for families to enjoy together. But now that the online and offline worlds are merging, the real challenge will be to keep up this engagement.

“We now have to account for virtual employees as well as employees in the office, and that means engagement strategies need to shift,” says Sourbron.

“Admittedly, with such a distributed workforce, some of this is happening naturally in our case,” she adds. Some 30 per cent of ServiceNow’s current EMEA workforce joined during the pandemic, and they have all been hired and onboarded virtually — so continuing to socialise virtually is not a great issue.

The results of a successful engagement strategy are clear; ServiceNow hasn’t seen a drop in productivity during the pandemic. In Sourbron’s words, “That’s a testament to our employees’ passion, and having a purpose alignment [prioritising businesses decisions around purpose] to the organisation.”

Listen to workers

There’s no better way to get a sense of how employees are coping — and what they need beyond the pandemic — than to ask them.

ServiceNow surveyed more than 2,700 full-time, part-time or furloughed employees in the UK, France and Germany for its 2021 Employee Experience Imperative Report. The results showed that 64 per cent of respondents had a preference for some sort of remote work. Some 70 per cent also said their organisation’s digital collaboration and communication tools have allowed them to stay productive. These results have formed the basis of the company’s strategy for the future.

Of course, any business engaging in this kind of large-scale litmus testing should be open to surprises. “We’ve been talking to a number of the companies we work with, and some hadn't thought to survey their employees initially. But when they did they got quite a shock,” says Rosemary Smart, ServiceNow’s UK Employee Experience Solution Sales Manager. “People were in a broad variety of places with different challenges and, actually, many were not coming back quickly.”

It’s a sentiment echoed in Europe, according to new research from IDC. Its survey Finding the Next “Steady State” of Hybrid Work, found that organisations in EMEA showed greater support than companies in other regions for a variety of work locations including office and remote locations.
But whatever the combined results show, Smart is clear that listening closely to workers is vital, especially, she says, “on issues such as prioritising breaks, reducing screen time and flexible hours, as well as scrutinising the demands on their time.”

Ultimately, says Smart, it comes down to recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the new workplace.

“Perks differ from employee to employee,” she says. “For example, our team has a virtual coffee engagement every fortnight. The idea is you go to a coffee shop, grab a drink, walk, talk and connect. Half our team think it’s an amazing chance to catch up with colleagues, and the other half just don’t think it’s a priority in their day-to-day work lives. It’s about understanding that you need to be people-centric — and that everyone has different needs.”