The gap between what employers want and what workers need is a common occurrence for most organisations. In fact, it makes up for many watercooler conversations amongst employees at work. Employees want better benefits and fair distribution of workloads, which is often at odds with the business priority of greater throughput and higher margins. Both employers and workers are aware of this disconnect, yet few know how to navigate it successfully.
In the last two years, the disconnect has become more prominent and even taken on new dimensions due to the pandemic. Particularly when it comes to remote or hybrid work, employees and leaders or employers seem to want different things. This divide might widen in the face of future changes (for example, another COVID-19 surge or the risk of a looming recession), causing a rift in the workforce. Many organisations have already felt its effects during the Great Resignation1.
THE STATE OF THE EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE DISCONNECT
- 76% of employees do not want to return to full-time office work. In contrast, senior executives working remotely are three times more likely to want a return to office (RTO)2.
- 66% (two-thirds) of executives believe they are being ‘very transparent’ regarding their ‘post-pandemic’ policies. Only 42% of employees agree3.
- 68% of employers say they have strengthened their well-being value proposition in response to the pandemic. Just 51% of employees feel that organisations are more focused on their well-being4.
- Employees prioritise relational factors in the workplace like trust, flexibility and a sense of belonging more than employers seem to understand5.
Left unaddressed, the negative sentiments that might have propelled the employee to intend to leave in the first place could snowball into disengagement from their work and reduced productivity.
As a result, there is a deterioration of overall workplace satisfaction, which impacts both employees and the organisation. In March 2022, we conducted the National Work-Life Harmony survey in collaboration with National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and garnered more than 3,300 respondents across 10 industries. From the study, we found widespread burnout among the workforce, with only about half satisfied with their work-life balance. A staggering 78% of employees — that is nearly four in five workers — feel burnt out at work, which is made worse when employers fail to address the disconnect and resolve such issues promptly6.
WIDENING GAP DUE TO RECESSION AND JOB UNCERTAINTY
For a while, employees could at least look for alternative employment opportunities when dissatisfied with their current workplace. Research indicates that 64% of employees who have recently quit, had another offer at hand7. However, this may no longer be the case if a recession does come about. An environment of economic turmoil and job uncertainty could rejig employee-employer dynamics and cause a shift in favour of organisations.
Gen Z disconnect
A 2021 Deloitte survey of 8,200 Gen Z workers in 45 countries found that nearly half (49%) make decisions about where to work based on personal ethics. In this environment, Gen Z’s concerns regarding diversity, inclusion and sustainability must also become the concerns of the organisations for which they work. Photo: Edwin Tan / iStock
What this means is that employees may need to reconsider their stance about changing jobs. If the recession does come about, many would potentially need to think about their priorities and choose to stay at their current job — whether or not it is preferred. Left unaddressed, the negative sentiments that might have propelled the employee to intend to leave in the first place could snowball into disengagement from their work and reduced productivity.
As the disconnect ripples further with a possible recession on the horizon, organisations must be proactive about bridging the gap.
CONVERGING BUSINESS NEEDS WITH EMPLOYEE EXPECTATIONS
As a general rule of thumb, the following approaches could serve as good first steps toward better connectedness between employees and employers.
1. Listening to Workers’ Feedback
A main reason why the employer-employee disconnect arises is because organisations do not always collect or listen to employee feedback. For example, a McKinsey report found that employers believe ‘looking for a better job’ to be a top cause of attrition8, while employees overwhelmingly base their decisions on internal factors within their organisation like interpersonal relationships, trust, manager support, or the feeling of being valued. When organisations rely on their instinct or prior assumptions at the time of making decisions, it is unlikely that these will align with employees’ aspirations.
Astonishingly, research suggests that 66% of organisations have designed or are designing post-pandemic workplace policies with little to no direct input from employees9. The ability to make decisions based on experience, instinct and subjective knowledge was a traditionally valued quality among managers — it is now time for this to change. Instead, organisational leaders should aim to listen to employee feedback in a formal, structured manner to be able to collect actionable insights. This will ensure that RTO and other decisions are aligned with employee expectations and do not widen the disconnect.
This shift to data-driven decision-making starts with a robust employee feedback programme that can gauge worker sentiment at key moments of the workplace experience. It can reveal how the employee is feeling, the organisation’s strengths, and where it is falling short at specific milestones — such as onboarding or right after a major policy change. Managers can also collect regular feedback through short surveys to better align team-specific decisions. Over a period of time, feedback data aggregation will begin to reveal the trends and even power generally accurate predictions on employee needs.
Making decisions based on a culture of prioritising employees can go a long way. By investing in factors like work-life harmony and flexible workplace arrangements, employers can expect an uplift in engagement.
Customers of EngageRocket are well aware of the importance of collecting employee feedback. Some of our employee-minded customers conduct annual engagement surveys, periodical pulse surveys, and also surveys for critical moments in an employee journey — such as onboarding, promotion and exit. This way, the employers have a robust view of what employees are going through according to their life stage and the recent situation.
2. Employees as ‘Internal Customers’
Over the last decade, employee-centric workplaces have started to prioritise their workforce using similar principles as a customer-centric organisation. Employee experiences (EX) can be designed in a manner parallel to customer experiences (CX). Metrics like net promoter scores (NPS), that were previously reserved for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty are now equally applicable for employee sentiment. Measuring and improving on the right aspects of EX is a key factor in bridging the employer-employee disconnect, since it demonstrates that the organisation values its workforce.
By treating employees as internal customers, organisations ensure that they invest in their well-being and do not cause scenarios that could become an attrition risk. For example, if location and scheduling flexibility are top priorities for the workforce, the company gathers and assimilates this knowledge through feedback programmes. It then rolls out policy changes in line with demands for flexibility and also ensures that the culture encourages flexibility in the workplace.
Making decisions based on a culture of prioritising employees can go a long way. By investing in factors like work-life harmony and flexible workplace arrangements, employers can expect an uplift in engagement. This has outsized benefits for the business. According to the top human resources consulting company Gallup, businesses with highly engaged employees experience up to an 18% rise in productivity. Highly engaged teams also see a 43% decrease in employee resignations10.
Flexible work arrangements
In April 2022, the tripartite partners — Ministry of Manpower, Singapore National Employers Federation and National Trades Union Congress called for practices such as working from home and staggered hours at the workplace to be made permanent, even though the government has relaxed its COVID-19 measures and allows all employees to return to the workplace. Photo: enviromantic / iStock
It is also important to keep in mind that employees’ experience has a direct correlation with business metrics. In 2017, Jacob Morgan, founder of The Future of Work University, spoke with leading psychologists, economists and business leaders from around the world. From his study of 150 or more participants, he found that highly experiential organisations earn four times the average profit and two times the average revenue compared to those who do not invest in the employee experience.
For one of our customers, they used the employee feedback they collected to determine the best working arrangements that would accommodate employees’ needs. Initially, the employers were keen on implementing a fully remote work arrangement as they assumed this is what their employees would want. However, upon conducting the feedback programme, they found that many prefer a hybrid arrangement — where employees get to choose the days to go to the office. The employees enjoyed the collaboration and socialisation that comes with the office environment, but do not want to feel ‘forced’ to come in every day.
3. Empowering Managers
Managers, team leaders and departmental or business unit heads tend to be the last-mile connection between an organisation and its workforce. They are in charge of communicating and executing policy changes. They are the ones interacting with employees every day, reaching out to offer support, and often the ones making day-to-day decisions that shape employee lives and work experiences.
From EngageRocket’s own findings, managerial trust and support have a clear impact on employee engagement, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Our research has found that an employee’s ability to openly discuss their issues with managers is the most significant predictor of engagement11.
Since EX differs from one team to another, managers need to be able to nurture their team members and make decisions tailored to their own team dynamics. However, not all managers are equipped with the innate managerial or leadership skills necessary for them to do so. The complexities in a modern workplace can make it difficult for managers to navigate their team dynamics and take the right actions.
This makes it crucial to empower managers through appropriate training, the right set of tools, and a degree of autonomy. However, there is still a considerable challenge. EngageRocket’s research reveals that as many as 42% of HR professionals find it difficult to involve managers in the process of taking action. This is not due to the lack of intention or will, but simply because managers are often not properly equipped to bridge the divide.
One way to empower managers is by providing them with data about their team members’ sentiments and performance. Following that, leadership teams or HR can provide them with recommendations of actions they can take to improve their team’s well-being and engagement. This will give managers a solid starting point to begin making changes for the better of the organisation, starting from their team.
LEADING THE WAY WITH EMPATHY
The problem of the business-human divide is not new, and with the looming fear of recession and slower growth for companies, the disconnect may worsen. Employers may start to consider a more aggressive work-from-office plan as markets shift in their favour. This could be counterproductive as employees show up in the office but actually get less done.
As a way forward, the keyword for employers, leaders and managers is empathy. In the context of the workspace, it is about making workers feel cared for in a sincere way. Empathy starts with listening to what workers need and goes all the way to taking action that will improve their well-being and engagement.
How the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) streamlined onboarding and ensured employee engagement in tumultuous times?
At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) faced challenges adapting to the new norms of working from home (WFH) and transitioning from a ‘partially digital’ organisation to a digital-ready one almost overnight. In standing up to the challenge, the HR team leveraged the EngageRocket platform to conduct surveys and obtain real-time insights at crucial points of the employee journey. This included the onboarding process for new joiners, as well as during COVID-19 and post-circuit breaker period to understand the change in employee expectations and any new requirements that might be emerging.
The surveys found that the employees felt stressed out and less productive when WFH, and appreciated communications during the crisis. Based on these insights, SLA took three immediate actions:
1. Investing in enhancing mental health of employees
SLA procured a dedicated counselling service whereby employees can call, email or meet with a counsellor face-to-face to ease the transition during the WFH period. Supervisors are also encouraged to go through a Health Promotion Board (HPB) supported training programme to learn how to support mental well-being at the workplace.
2. Starting a productivity fund
Besides equipping employees with personal laptops and other essential work equipment, SLA also introduced a productivity fund of SGD 150 per employee to cover the additional expenses that employees may incur when working remotely.
3. Launching a mental well-being campaign series
SLA conducted an active ongoing electronic direct mail campaign to disseminate useful information like how to cope during the circuit breaker. Townhalls and meetings hosted by the senior management team were also conducted to keep staff updated on the pandemic situation, how it has impacted the work of the organisation as well as HR and well-being initiatives rolled out to help employees.
STREAMLINING THE ONBOARDING PROCESS FOR 60 NEW HIRES IN 2020
SLA implemented EngageRocket’s structured onboarding solution designed to improve employee experience and drive engagement. Survey delivery and analysis across different onboarding milestones are automated so that organisations receive ready insights that they can act on. 60 new hires were onboarded via this process, and SLA encouraged them to provide feedback and respond to surveys in order to fine-tune the onboarding experience.
Source: https://www.engagerocket.co/case-studies/sla
NAUVEED SALIM
Nauveed Salim is the Regional Director of Sales at EngageRocket. He is an accomplished human resource strategist who has been helping companies of all sizes succeed in their technological transformation and organisational growth.
With more than 10 years of experience in Southeast Asia and Australia, Nauveed is passionate about employee experience. He strives to enable human connections at scale through the use of enhanced technology and advanced analytics.
SEPTEMBER 2022 | ISSUE 10
Reorganising the Future of Work
- https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation
- https://futureforum.com/pulse-survey/
- Ibid
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hr-survey-finds-significant-disconnect-between-employer-and-employee-perceptions-of-wellbeing-301484650.html
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours
- https://www.engagerocket.co/work-life-harmony-report
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours
- https://futureforum.com/pulse-survey/
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/321725/gallup-q12-meta-analysis-report.aspx
- https://www.engagerocket.co/report-state-of-the-employee-experience
