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As we enter our third year of the global pandemic, the hope is that it’s finally winding down, and that we can all get back to normal. Nonetheless, employees are still facing significant stressors in the workplace, which are driving the Great Resignation–even as employers scramble to find ways to ameliorate these stressors and retain valued (even if they don’t feel that way) personnel.
Part of the problem, however, is that many efforts by managers to support employees–even while well-intentioned–are ineffective at best, mere lip-service at the worst. Simply urging employees to “practice self-care,” for instance, isn’t useful without significant changes in workplace policy, scheduling, and support infrastructure to facilitate employee well-being. Frequently, people associate self-care with activities such as going to yoga, or taking a hot bath–and these are unhelpful recommendations to employees struggling to balance family obligations, work, and health risks during the pandemic. In the words of psychiatrist and women’s mental health expert Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, “You can’t meditate your way out of a 40-hour work week without childcare.” So what are some things good managers can do for their employees, not only during the pandemic, but in any challenging times? Here are some best practices to meaningfully support your people: 1. Offer on-going flexibility Managers who are eager to bring everyone back to the office once case numbers go down should rethink their haste. Hybrid and work-from-home arrangements are particularly valued in high-paying sectors such as tech and finance, where employees find they are able to be productive so long as they have space and a good internet connection. But across all industries, flexible work arrangements are increasingly desirable, in that they enable employees to avoid health risks, save money on gasoline, and skip lengthy commutes; they also are environmentally friendly, promote better productivity, and reduce absenteeism. Smart managers are realizing that offering flexible work options is a “must” for employee retention, even after the pandemic winds down, and are thus investing not only in the logistics to make this work, but also in the technological platforms these arrangements rely upon. 2. Be family-friendly In the past two years, women–particularly mothers–have been leaving the workplace in disproportionate numbers; according to the US Census Bureau, 1.3 million have quit their jobs since February 2020. The reasons are obvious: The deleterious impact of COVID-19 on childcare arrangements has only exacerbated family unfriendly workplace climates. Faced with a litany of school closures, daycare shut-downs, and elder-care shortages, not to mention on-going concerns about themselves or their families contracting COVID-19, women–who carry the brunt of childcare responsibilities in the United States–have been forced to leave the workforce. Thus, adopting a family-friendly stance is not merely a productive way to do business; it’s also an equitable one. Besides offering flexible work arrangements, companies can offer in-office daycare, childcare subsidies, flexible time off, robust parental leave (to birth and non-birth parents), and sick days to be used for childrens’ illnesses as well as their grownups’. On the individual level, managers can show they are family-friendly by being understanding when small children appear in Zoom meetings, and offering grace and flexibility to parents caught in a balancing act. In this way, companies can help keep valued employees–particularly mothers–in play. 3. Respect people’s personal time Increasingly, employees have less tolerance for bosses who expect them to be on-call 24/7/365. The proliferation of handheld communication devices and free internet everywhere have made it easy to shoot off emails, texts, and even calls on the fly, at any time. Experts have one thing to say about this: Don’t do it. This goes double during the pandemic, when many employees are getting perilously close to burnout at work, balancing on a live-wire with family obligations, and are therefore in even more dire need of personal time. Employees who receive a barrage of emails over the weekend, even with the assurance that they “don’t need to look at them until Monday,” receive a clear message that they’re not really off during their free time; they also dread coming in after the weekend to the avalanche of messages they now have to dig through before turning their attention to anything productive. This intrusion on personal time is a significant contributor to employee burnout. Employees need time to relax and recharge, without intrusion, and without receiving a signal that they’re supposed to be working on their hard-earned time off. 4. Check in with your people Now more than ever, it’s important for good managers to check in with their people on a regular basis. This is particularly relevant when a manager knows an employee is struggling with a family or health issue, or both–but a mindful manager makes it a priority to check on all employees on a regular basis. A 2020 study revealed that 40% of employees globally said that no one even asked, “Are you okay?” during the pandemic; those respondents, in turn, were 38% more likely to say that they were depressed or struggling with mental health. By that same token, it’s important for managers to respect employees’ privacy; an individual may or may not feel comfortable discussing the difficulties they are experiencing, but still may benefit from knowing that they work in an environment where support is available and on offer. Offering mental health support options (and destigmatizing their uptake) is also a great strategy for businesses in a position to do so, and has itself shown a great ROI. 5. Provide training and learning opportunities For better or worse, the pandemic has wrought a lot of changes in the workplace. These include company restructuring initiatives, rebranding, and leadership changes; also included are shifting work arrangements (WFH, hybrid, in-person, rinse, repeat) and increased dependence on new technologies due to rapid advancement of digitization and automation. These changes can be stressful for employees, and good managers realize that their role isn’t just to initiate change by decree, but also to make sure employees are prepared and well-positioned to adopt these changes with a minimal “pain tax.” This starts with offering learning and training in any new skills, modalities, or technologies, so that employees can learn new systems (and not languish in anxiety about obsolescence.) The good news is that employees want training; and, conversely, lack of training opportunities is a significant contributor to employees leaving their positions during the Great Resignation. Evergreen solutions None of these strategies is unique to or only applicable to the pandemic. There is virtually no workplace in the world where employees wouldn’t benefit from more respect for their personal time, check-ins on their stress levels, and more (meaningful) training opportunities. But, even as we start to see our way to a “new normal,” many of the challenges caused by the pandemic are still ever-present–and it’s important to address them proactively. Great managers know that part of their work involves being mindful in an on-going way of their people’s well-being–and these efforts come back to them in the form of greater engagement, motivation, and loyalty on the part of their constituents.
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When Eric suggested I take a DiSC assessment, I was skeptical, to say the least. As a disbeliever in the validity of matrices such as Myers-Briggs (wherein I get a different result on every assay) and Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Inventory (for which, coincidentally, all the proponents seem to self-identify as “innovators”), I had a lot of questions: What would another personality test possibly tell me that the others didn’t? Was there any way the results would be accurate? Would they be actionable, or useful? Wasn’t all this personality-typing kind of like a poshed-up astrological reading?
DiSC, for the uninitiated, is a work-styles preferences inventory; though it is personality-based, the goal is to identify a more discrete set of traits than a general personality test–specifically, a person’s tendencies and preferences for optimum function in a workplace setting. The name “DiSC” is an acronym for the four workplace styles, or “personality profiles” (as the company itself explains), that make up their proprietary matrix: (D)ominance, (i)nfluence, (S)teadiness and (C)onscientiousness. Taking the DiSC assessment was only about a 15- to 20-minute process, and one that was perfectly pleasant and could be completed while sitting by the fire in sweatpants. The assessment entailed responding to a series of statements on a five-part scale of agreement: Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree. (At a certain point, some of the statements seemed to be repeating, though I wasn’t 100% positive about that.) The statements focused on issues having to do with work process, team-work, time-sensitivity, and challenge; when statements were more classically personality-based, they trended more towards how one reacts to displays of emotion, or what role one perceives they embody when engaging with a dynamic group of people. After I completed the assessment, DiSC immediately sent me a report in PDF form that explained my personality and workplace style based on my responses to the statements. This information was presented in graphic form: as a circle, with the location of my “dot” in a certain quadrant representing both my preferred workplace style and the strength of that preference in relation to the other styles. My style was a strong “C”--conscientious. According to the DiSC paradigm, this indicates that in the workplace I am logical, extremely systematic, and focused on accuracy. DiSC says that I prefer working alone to within a group, like challenge, pride myself in producing high-quality work, strive to be perceived as “expert” and “well-prepared,” and take instances where I am “wrong” to heart, sometimes dwelling on my own mistakes. I find chaos or conflicts in the workplace stressful and distracting, and feel uneasy when tasks are rushed, or are not being completed in a methodical way. All of this is very true of my workstyle, and I admit I was impressed that DiSC “nailed” me so correctly. (When I told Eric my results, and asked if this was what he predicted, he said, “Absolutely.”) Moreover, seeing this evaluation helped me contextualize various things I’ve found stressful in different, past workplaces: Feeling that I had to do the group-work myself or I wouldn’t be satisfied with results; concerns about the level of quality, accuracy, or precision in materials with which I had to work or was tasked with developing in collaboration with other stake-holders; becoming anxious when not enough time has been allotted to complete tasks. (Full disclosure: Eric has historically seen me panic when something “isn’t in the calendar.” And by “historically,” I mean last week.) Realizing that my finding these situations flustering was not simply an odd personality quirk, but actually a distinct workplace style, was oddly fortifying; it gave me a better understanding of how I work best, and made me reflect on some systems and checks that I need in place in order to do so. Fortunately, DiSC is optimized to support this kind of reflection. In addition to explaining the test-takers “motivators and stressors,” among other aspects of that style, DiSC also offers an overview of the test-taker’s chemistry with the other styles–“The ____ style and you”–which anticipates both conflict and synergy between these different personality types. The report explains how these alternate styles may “seem” to the test-taker, and what motivates them, to promote better workplace interactions between these different individuals. DiSC even offers solutions for “when problems need to be solved” and “when things get tense” for the test-takers’ interactions with the other workstyles, providing a common language for discussing and resolving conflicts. So, for whom would DiSC be useful? A lot of people, as it turns out. Trainers, looking to maximize participant buy-in, engagement, and positive outcome, would do well to gain fluency in DiSC styles and language. Doing so would enable them to better meet the needs of a wide variety of learners, by creating modules that can appeal to many different types of personalities and styles of learning. Managers in all industries would also benefit not only from understanding the workstyles of people who work under them–enabling them to better engage, motivate, and support their team-members–but also from a better awareness of their own work and communication styles, and a sense of how they “come off” to people. Gaining this self-awareness would likely make for smoother, more productive, less conflict-ridden workday situations, and an increased sense of bonhomie amongst all team members. Overall, I enjoyed taking the DiSC assessment more than I thought I would, and found it useful not only in understanding myself and my interactions with others, but in providing fodder for thoughts and conversations about what systems I would need in place to work most productively in the future. My only question? While I am definitely a “strong C,” I don’t find other people’s emotions nearly as stressful as the DiSC guide asserts that I do, and I also do see aspects of the other three styles in myself. As Eric pointed out, when I was (again) worrying about scheduling tasks: “I think you have some S in you.” (S-types prioritize a stable work environment.) He’s probably right, and I imagine knowing this will be helpful somewhere down the line. |
AuthorThe Girard Training Solutions team includes experts in Learning and Development, Management Development, Facilitation, Learning Experience Design, Project Management, and Graphic Design. Archives
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