Don’t stop talking
By: Eamon Tuhami
Tags: Talking, Employee Engagement, Honesty, Answers, Employees

Work life on Zoom in 2020, it’s always good to talk!

I can’t wait to wave goodbye to 2020!

But however much I’d like to move on, I’m making myself look back at this annus horribilis to see what I can learn.

Looking back at Motivii’s engagement data for the year, and reflecting on conversations I’ve had with clients, investors, and friends, I’ve realised exactly how powerful communication can be.

Some of the best businesses I’ve worked with this year have really upped their communications game. It’s been really great to see how this has made a tangible difference to how employees feel.

I’m lucky. As the founder of Motivii I get a bird’s eye view of employee engagement across a range of businesses, but I also get the inside track on what these businesses are doing to improve things for their employees.

When you look back to the start of the pandemic we saw a massive downturn in how employees worried about their jobs. Job security scores from our engagement questions dropped by 17% on average. That doesn’t sound much but when you realise the biggest historical dip to this score over the past five years has been 0.8%, the change is HUGE!

At the start of the pandemic many businesses weren’t getting information from their governments about what to expect. Would they be made to close? Would they get financial help? Most businesses still aren’t sure what to expect moving into next year.

Meanwhile employees were worried. They started to work from home for the first time and knew even less about the future of the business they worked for, or whether they should expect to be a part of it. Essentially we had way more questions than answers!

That’s when many clients I talked to decided to up their communication with employees. Their company updates became weekly — instead of quarterly — and they collected feedback from their employees more regularly.

At the same time managers started to run weekly meetings or start with daily stand-ups for the first time. Although these meetings didn’t always answer questions about the future of the company, being part of the conversation reassured employees.

This proactive response was reflected in the data we saw. Although engagement and wellbeing scores dipped in Q2, communication scores reached an all-time high. This improvement continued into Q3, and in turn wellbeing, engagement, and job security returned to normal levels. Some organisations even recorded their highest ever happiness levels! (nothing like a bit of a scare to remind you how good something may be).

As things have got better towards the end of Q4 we’ve seen a worrying dip in these communication scores; and that’s affecting how employees feel at work.

My biggest takeaway from 2020 is that it’s always good to talk, even if you don’t have the answer! Looking forward to 2021 and beyond, don’t take your foot off the gas with your communication levels, be open, transparent and honest where you’re at.

We are not out of the woods yet, and when we are, the new ways you communicate will be a step above how you communicated in the past and will help you no end!

Talking through challenges openly makes a positive difference to how we all feel. We should all do more of it pandemic or not!