Nearly two years after the onset of a worldwide pandemic, which changed the landscape for employees, many employers are still coming to terms with the upset Covid wreaked on the workplace.
Businesses closed temporarily, many moved to remote work, and others changed how they did business. Many of these changes continue in effect and some will become a permanent part of doing business.
Covid Impacted Employee Engagement and Connection
In early 2020, previous to Covid, employee engagement was up. According to Gallup, in March of 2020, engagement was up to 37%. 2020 beat the previous high year of 36% in 2019. But, the rest of 2020 brought about drastic changes to personal and professional lives.
Individually, the well-being of workers dropped. Stress, fear, and depression rose. Employees worked remotely and struggled to balance social distancing, childcare, and create a work/life balance anew. Isolation increased.
Job-related stress rose in April and May as employees went home to work and had to adjust to the technology, communication, scheduling, and other unexpected challenges of working from home without preparation. Employers and managers were faced with providing tools, changing protocols, and alleviating the increased stress of employees.
Covid-related stress and fear affected many employees. Social unrest increased stress. Balancing closed schools, daycare, and closed social resources affected mental health.
Although employee engagement rose with the increased number of remote workers, employee connection dropped. In fact, as employers prepared to bring back some or all of their workers, workplace connection continues to be the biggest reason employees look forward to returning to the office. According to Qualtrics, a study of 2,700 people showed that 75% of workers felt isolated post-Covid.
Now, after lengthy remote work, many employees are still struggling to maintain connections with colleagues. This is a factor for office employees and remote employees.
Build Better Connections At Work
Employees leave their jobs and there are many reasons. But, many of those reasons come down to a lack of connections. Connections include more than just the relationships between employees and their colleagues and managers. It includes the connection they feel for their job, their impact, growth, and personal life. Check out Building Connections in the Workplace to learn how to cultivate connections among your team and individual employees.
Did you know?
Corporations are 12 times more likely to thrive when the employees feel connected (O.C. Tanner Culture Report). Gallup studies support this. Gallup found that employees who receive feedback several times a week are 2-3 times more engaged than employees who receive feedback a few times a year.
The exact percentage of increase in engagement depends on other factors, such as whether or not the employee is remote and the amount of autonomy they enjoy.
In other words, recognition is critical to building a connection. O.C. Tanner (our parent company) uncovered critical findings the 2021 Culture report. Not only does recognition build connections between the employee and the employer, it also builds connections between colleagues and teams.
Three Benefits of Connection To Employers
When employees feel connected, employers benefit. In addition to the increased retention, engagement, and resiliency, there are three powerful benefits of connection.
Check out these findings from the O.C. Tanner Culture report:
Employees who feel connected at work are eight times more likely to produce great work. In contrast, employees who don’t feel a connection with their peers are dramatically likely to feel burnout and to feel misaligned with their workplace goals.
Unconnected employees are three times more likely to leave their employer within three years.
Connected employees are five times more likely to be satisfied with their work and organizational culture. The organization is 11 times more likely to thrive when the employees feel connected.
Recognition Builds Connections
Connection is built in many ways; in conversations, shared experiences, shared challenges and triumphs, and gratitude. O.C. Tanner’s research sheds light on how recognition builds relationships.
And the lack of peer recognition can harm employee connections. When employees don’t feel recognized, the connection they feel is damaged, sometimes irreparably. Check out Build Connection to Increase Employee Happiness, Retention, Productivity for several true stories of how lack of recognition destroyed the connection an employee felt with their manager or colleague.
Employees who go above and beyond to help a coworker, or to complete an assignment, but who are not recognized, feel unappreciated and often resentful. These feelings interfere with other team-building activities and experiences. It can keep employees from building stronger relationships at work.
O.C. Tanner found that recognition provides a powerful tool for building connections. Their studies uncovered one of the reasons that peer recognition is so powerful: it builds connections among team members.
“Recognition helps maintain an energized work environment, allows for more connection between people, and makes the employer experience meaningful.” Karine Clement-Debrosse, Senior Advisor, Human Resources, BDC.
Five Ways Recognition Builds Connection
Mangers can build connections with employees through five types of recognition. These five points of recognition is an important starting point.
1. Appreciate your employees and share their accomplishments with others.
When managers share the spotlight that comes from workplace success, it builds their team and enhances connection. Even when the spotlight is shared privately, such as in a manager or corporate meeting, the recognition usually makes its way to the employee’s ears and builds trust and connection with the manager.
Employees whose leaders recognize their employees are 20 times more likely to feel a connection to the leader.
2. Advocates for Employee Development
Employee development is a form of recognition. Managers who become advocates for employee development are 11 times more likely to build connections with their employees. This can be done many ways. Lunch and Learn events, employee clubs, cross job training, and employee classes are all ways employers can help employees advance. Check out this article for more ideas.
While some employee development opportunities, such as tuition reimbursement, may require corporate approval, others create little cost. Job swapping, workplace clubs, and increased leadership opportunities are ways that managers can help build employees without breaking the budget.
3. Connect Employee Values with the Purpose of Work
Managers can help employees to connect their personal values with the corporate mission and their personal job responsibilities. This looks different for each employee and it requires managers to understand the individual drivers of each employee. This form of recognition, connecting employee efforts to organizational success, builds connection to work and job position.
Service-oriented employees can be shown how their position enhances the life of those the company serves. This could be helping families purchase a home and fulfill a dream. Or, it could be how their laptops allow parents to be mobile and spend more time with their kids. It would include highlighting however the product improves the life of it’s users.
For a driven and competitive employee, managers might focus more on the employee’s personal growth and increased performance each quarter. Managers of those employees might focus on how the employee impacts the growth of the company over their competitors. Or, how the employer makes a difference the competitors miss.
Challenge-focused employees love to solve problems. Managers of these employees might help employees see how their position solves corporate problems or solves problems their consumers face.
There are many ways to align individual values to individual work purposes. Managers who do this are nine times more likely to build connections between employees and leaders.
4. Clearly Communicate Success
Sometimes the rapid advancement of the workplace and ongoing drive for success can push employees from one project to another. But, managers who take the time to communicate success after a project’s completion build connections nine times more than those who don’t.
It may be tempting to jump right into the next project, promotion, or set of goals. But, taking the time to recognize celebrate with your team builds connections with them, the workplace, and yourself as the leader.
5. Introduces Employees to Potential Mentors
When a leader introduces an employee to a potential mentor, it increases trust with the employee and builds greater connections. In essence, the leader is recommending the employee to the mentor through the introduction.
They are also providing a valuable relationship that can enhance the employee’s growth and challenge them in new ways.
This is essentially critical today. Post-Covid, 26% of employees are considering leaving their jobs (CNBC). 80% of them cite concerns over career advancement. Employees want mentors. It’s one of the top 10 benefits millennials are looking for. 83% of millennials with mentors are satisfied with their employment. Yet, 2 out of 3 millennials are looking to move on from their current job in the next 4 years. Change the tide by providing mentor opportunities.
But, managers who build connections also recognize the power of peer recognition.
Extra Connection: Why Peer Recognition is More Powerful than Corporate Recognition
Today’s workplace is ever-changing. Whereas corporate recognition used to be the driving form of recognition, organizations are realizing that direct-manager and peer recognition is more powerful.
That’s because recognition done by peers, or direct supervisors, builds on a personal relationship. Employees may never meet the CEO and so a letter or email of recognition builds less connection.
But, when a peer recognizes another employee, their bond is strengthened. Recognition is usually (at least partially) done very personally. Most forms of peer recognition aren’t large, grandiose, productions.
As a result, they feel more genuine and more personal. Peer recognition demonstrates how the employee makes a difference to their colleagues. It quantifies how the employee impacted their peer. This helps build a greater connection to workplace goals as well.
Peer recognition naturally provides clearer feedback. Instead of a manager saying “great job,” peers usually recognize by saying “thanks for staying late to show me how to turn in that report!” Peers recognize specific instances and behavior.
The act of feeling grateful for a peer’s efforts increases the relationship on the side of the recognizer as well as the recognizee. It makes the recognized colleague feel appreciated. On both sides of recognition, a connection is built, loyalty is enhanced, and engagement is increased.
Conclusion
Building connections at work is critical as many employees return to work. Remote employees also need workplace connections. For more information on building connections at work, check out 5 Steps for Building a Sense of Team Among Remote Workers. Don’t miss our next article on balancing the conflict between office connection and remote autonomy.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.