Employee Engagement Trends and Forecasts for 2022

We’re pleased to present our 2022 Inspirus Trends & Forecasts Report. The 2021 report was met with great enthusiasm, and we’d like to send a heartfelt thanks to everyone who reached out to us to express their delight. The 2022 edition builds on that momentum, continuing to deliver fresh insights, unique perspectives, actionable strategies and best practices.

If Q4 was any indication of what we’ll encounter in 2022 and beyond, we’re seeing a marked increase in employee engagement programs specifically tied to employee retention goals. By now you’ve likely heard of the “Great Resignation,” a term coined by Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University. In short, a record number of employees are quitting their jobs — 4.3 million in August 2021 alone. Why? The global pandemic has made workers reevaluate what they are actually getting out of their jobs — or more pointedly — what they aren’t. Most are not feeling valued, not being acknowledged for their hard work, or aren’t sharing a sense of purpose or community with their peers or their employer. The shining light we see is that organizations witnessing this phenomenon are recognizing the need to invest in employee experience and engagement programs to retain their employees and mitigate their attrition rates. Bravo!

This report uses the collective wisdom and thought leadership of our team to reveal what we see as trending now and our vision of how these trends will impact the future of our industry and our clients’ programs. This report covers the nine critical dimensions of rewards and recognition programs found in the Table of Contents below.

For example, in the area of strategy we’re seeing a critical need for organizations to find a balance between their on-site business needs and the needs of their employees (who desire remote flexibility). We offer some ‘back to the office’ strategies to entice workers who must perform business-critical tasks in the workplace. We’ve also found companies are still struggling to weave diversity, equity and inclusion into the fabric of their organization. It’s happening, slowly, but needs to happen as part of a concerted strategy and not simply as an inspirational vision.

Regarding leadership, we see the need to address employee anxiety around returning to work — and to do so with empathy. There’s much talk about the “new normal” and what that means to different organizations. Unfortunately, anything resembling “normal” might not happen for some time. But leadership can reshape how we work, and communicate why we work, to foster a sense of belonging and promote community.

These are just a tiny fraction of our findings — there are many more in the pages that follow. I hope you find this report holds value for you and your organization.

Tatiana Frierson
Chief Executive Officer
Inspirus / Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services, USA
tatiana.frierson@sodexo.com

The forced exodus of many employees to their homes to work during the pandemic has changed the work experience forever. After months of working from their homes, many employees are reluctant to return to their physical workspaces. While some employers are taking a hard line approach and requiring all employees to come back, or else, others are being more practical.

In the face of what is being called the “Great Resignation” or the “turnover tsunami,” how organizations successfully address this challenge will be critical to their sustainability.

Still, while employers certainly need to consider employee needs and preferences, they must also ensure that they are adequately addressing business needs. How can you strike the right balance for your organization and your employees? Here, we look at some strategies for enticing employees back into the workplace, as needed, for business-critical tasks.

Craft a back-to-work strategy

Things have changed during the pandemic. That means that the way you worked before the pandemic isn’t likely to be the way you work after. As you begin bringing employees back to the workplace, it’s important to think strategically about exactly who needs to be on-site, who can work remotely, and how to ensure these decisions are consistent and equitable. Some jobs simply can’t be done off-site — at least for now; manufacturing jobs, for instance. Some people don’t have the competencies to work productively in a remote environment. Your policies and processes for determining who can and who can’t work remotely need to consider both the work that needs to be done, and the competencies required for completing those tasks.

Once you’ve created that strategy, it’s important to communicate it transparently and broadly to all employees. Make the process of transitioning back as clear and straightforward as possible to help employees prepare, and to ensure they understand the business rationale behind your decisions.

Offer a place of community

In a hybrid work environment — where some employees are on-site, and some are working virtually — it’s important to find ways to create and build connections so everyone feels connected and engaged. Without the proverbial water cooler, providing a centralized place to gather will build community by allowing employees to interact with, engage, collaborate and recognize each other. Employee engagement platforms, like Inspirus® Connects, bring people together to share, collaborate, and give feedback wherever they may be physically located.

Motivating using rewards and recognition

Recognition is one of the most powerful drivers of engagement, and it’s the secret to sustainable success. Employees want to be recognized and rewarded for their efforts, and companies are wise to do so. Using rewards and recognition send signals not only to the employees being recognized, but to others as well — it’s a clear way of conveying what the company values and highlighting best practices and top performers. Encouraging the right behaviors at your organization — like diversity and inclusion, leadership, safety, health and well-being, and innovation — encourages them to be repeated, and will elevate performance and increase productivity.

Automating that process can help. Using a technology-enabled platform provides a user-friendly, central repository where all employees, their supervisors and managers, as well as HR leaders, can interact, collaborate, celebrate accomplishments, and share and receive recognition.

While feedback from supervisors and managers is valuable, peer-to-peer feedback is said to be even more powerful!

Communicate consistently, and with transparency

Communication has always been a critical factor in ensuring employee engagement. In a hybrid work world though, it has become even more apparent just how important communication is to ensure both engagement and productivity. The uncertain business and social environment has also heightened the need for communication and transparency to ensure employees are up-to-date and informed about company goals and objectives, health and safety practices, opportunities for employee development, work-life balance and more.

Focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to represent all employees

DEI has become top-of-mind at most organizations these days. Every employee is unique — every employee reflects some element of diversity. Recognizing and celebrating that diversity, and ensuring that all employees have the opportunity to be heard, is critical for ensuring engagement and longevity.

Organizations are doing a variety of things to build DEI. For instance:

• Building a strong pipeline of diverse employees, starting with recruitment. Casting a wide net, using recruitment channels that focus on specific types of candidates, building diverse interview panels, etc., are all effective ways to ensure that diverse candidates are joining the organization.
• Using employee resource groups (ERG) to provide forums for employees with similar characteristics and interests to come together. These can range from groups for employees with various ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Asian American, American Indian, etc.), to groups reflecting shared experiences (e.g., employees with children, veterans, etc.).
• Clearly conveying your philosophy around DEI, and expectations of all employees, by modeling desired behaviors from the top of the organization, rewarding and recognizing these efforts among employees, and communicating openly, transparently, and frequently about the importance of DEI.

DEI efforts are for everyone. Recognizing and celebrating the value of differences can help organizations build a strong culture that supports all employees.

Incorporate change management strategies

Business leaders lamented the rapid pace of change before the pandemic. They had no idea! In today’s volatile business environment, change is a constant that must be effectively managed. That requires planning with the understanding that plans must change as the environment — internal and external — changes. Leaders must demonstrate strong leadership by communicating broadly and transparently, and engaging employees in the change management process.

Focusing on engagement by building a strong community that offers all employees a place to come together to learn, share and collaborate, and recognize each other can help your organization navigate changes of all kinds — together, and with shared purpose

According to the US Census, “Americans identifying as multiracial grew from about 9 million to 33.8 million between 2010 and 2020.” The country is becoming increasingly, and rapidly more diverse. As Business Insider has noted, we are “becoming a more diverse country and will eventually be a majority-minority one.”

That same diversity should also be represented in organizations at all levels, but especially in leadership ranks. But diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is about more than simply building a diverse workforce. It requires taking steps to promote inclusion and ensure equity to fuel a strong and positive employee experience.

It’s a trend that can cause fear — or drive innovation. The difference between the two requires making DEI a strategy, not an afterthought.

Making it real

Building a strong culture around diversity and inclusion requires more than just words in a mission statement. According to ICIMS Insights, 2021 Workforce Report,

84% of HR professionals are concerned their organizations’ current recruiting and hiring tools aren’t reaching diverse talent pools.

People are what drive business and change. Those people themselves are changing. According to Pew Research Center, the “post-millennial” generations entering the workforce will be the most diverse in history. McKinsey & Company reports there is $12 trillion in additional GDP on the table if we can find a way to close the gender gap by 2025. And there’s $2 billion in potential revenue if we can expand “financial inclusion efforts” to extend more services to black Americans.

Considering those numbers, incorporating DEI into your 2022 business strategy makes smart business sense.

But the effort must be real. Companies need to make sure that their DEI efforts are real, and not lip service, or employees and potential new hires will quickly lose trust in them. In this competitive hiring environment, no organization can afford to take that risk.

Weaving DEI into your organization’s fabric

In our 2021 Trends Report, we predicted that DEI would need to be woven into the fabric of organizations to reap the rewards of diversity and drive change. That’s happening. But it needs to happen as part of a concerted strategy and not simply as an inspirational vision.

We noted that these efforts would obviously benefit those who have suffered from exclusionary business practices in the past, but also noted that businesses would benefit as well. In fact, studies, including this one from McKinsey, have pointed to the positive potential that DEI can have for organizations, noting that diverse companies are more likely to outperform less diverse companies in terms of profitability.

What’s required?

• Adopting a “no workplace bullies” mindset. Bullying, of any kind, should be part of a zero-tolerance approach to building a respectful business climate.
• Ensuring that diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the fabric of your organization’s culture. This is an ongoing process, not an event or policy. It starts at the top with senior leaders modeling the behaviors they wish to see and ensuring an open, inclusive culture for all.
• Addressing bias by adding it into diversity training — not as a one-time event, but again, part of an ongoing process to ensure that your organization achieves real results. This can include training employees to recognize unconscious bias in themselves and others, and elevating the conversation by being transparent in rooting out incidences of bias of all kinds.
• Incorporating bias assessment into performance reviews. If a strong DEI culture is what your organization really wants, it needs to reward efforts toward making that happen — and constructively address incidents where it’s not.
• Applying metrics. According to a recent study by HR.com, most companies fall short in the area of DEI metrics and training. “Among those that apply metrics, most rely on basic compliance-oriented workforce demographic metrics (50%), while fewer evaluate diversity within the leadership ranks (38%) equal job titles (30%), diversity goals related to succession planning (28%) and recruiting outcomes (28%).” And less than half (42%) offer DEI training of any kind (including the bias training noted above) to all employees. So making DEI a conscious part of your strategy can only improve these numbers.

Elevating the discussions and actions in your organization around DEI to a strategic level can help ensure that real change takes place. And, in the process, you can turn DEI into a competitive advantage. Changing corporate culture is not an easy thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do.

DEI as a competitive advantage

Companies are widely realizing that a sincere and strategic focus on DEI has competitive advantages both from a talent, and customer recruitment and retention standpoint. Companies with a strong DEI culture attract top talent — people want to work in a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment with companies that have eliminated bias.

Diverse environments are also ripe for innovation, as companies actively and proactively seek input from employees at all levels, of all tenure, and from all types of diverse backgrounds. Diverse teams have consistently been shown to be more creative, more adaptable, and more innovative. For example, according to a report from BCG, companies with more diverse leadership teams have 45% higher innovation revenue than those that don’t.

Effective DEI efforts can reap many rewards. The lack of these efforts can also reap heavy sanctions. Workplace discrimination has both moral and ethical consequences and can be costly. Today’s progressive organizations recognize the real value of DEI. They also know that doing so requires commitment to ongoing effort.

In an article from Forbes, leadership strategist Esther Choy offers three simple, but insightful ways to “increase empathy and embrace diversity in the workplace”:

• Assume the best of others
• Ask good questions
• Listen aggressively

The increasing diversity in our country and in our workplaces, says Choy, offers “an exciting opportunity for those prepared with an empathetic imagination.”

Maintaining a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace is an ongoing effort. It involves supporting initiatives, rewarding behavior, celebrating achievements, and embracing cultural differences. These efforts can be made efficient and sustainable through employee engagement platforms like Inspirus® Connects — a technologyenabled platform that offers a central location for employees to interact, celebrate accomplishments, share and receive recognition, collaborate with each other, and discover more about their company and initiatives — including DEI initiatives.

According to McKinsey: “Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, one in four Americans over the age of 12 had a mental or substance-use disorder.” That’s a startling statistic that has likely gotten worse after several months of uncertainty, health risks, and unsettling changes impacting both work and home lives.

The pandemic has created unprecedented anxiety and stress in the workplace. Going back into an office is amplifying that. In our 2021 Trends Report, we noted that: “While mental health awareness has been on the rise in the workplace, and in society as a whole, for several years now, the total upheaval of everyday life brought about by the pandemic has made it an even more pressing matter.” Now, a year later, it is more critical than ever for mental health considerations to be incorporated into organizations’ wellness strategies in 2022 and beyond.

Doing so will go a long way towards contributing to a positive team culture, driving engagement, productivity, and loyalty — critical in today’s tight and competitive employment market. According to Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human Capital Trends report, organizations that integrate well-being into the workplace, by giving employees the tools they need to perform at their best, are more sustainable and position themselves for future success.

Incorporate mental health benefits into your total benefit package

A good starting place for ensuring the right focus on mental health is forging a path where mental health benefits are part of the total benefit package, and not an “add-on.” Wellness initiatives should, naturally, include taking care of mental, just as much as physical, health.

Foundationally, incorporating mental health benefits into the total benefit package will set the stage for elevating mental health conversations to the same plane as conversations around physical health.

As we noted in our 2021 Trends Report: “Improving the way your organization approaches employee mental health can be done on a personal level, through regular check-ins and an overall increased sensitivity to mental health issues, or at the organizational level, by providing greater mental health resources and mental health benefits to all employees.”

What constitutes these benefits will be both broader and more specific than ever before and will include such things as mental health days; greater flexibility for employees including flexibility in when, how long, and where they work; and fitness benefits in recognition of the critical connection between physical and mental health.

Destigmatize mental health issues

Mental health considerations and conversations have long been marked by stigma, making employees hesitant to raise concerns or ask for the help they need. Employers have an opportunity to address the stigma of mental illness. Unfortunately, many don’t recognize that opportunity according to McKinsey research. They indicate that although 80% of the full-time employees they surveyed “believed that an anti-stigma or awareness campaign would be useful, only 23% of employers reported having implemented such a program.” Strikingly, when asked to prioritize their top mental-health initiatives, reducing stigma came in last, with only 17% citing it as a priority.

Their top concern — improving employee productivity and engagement (35%). Interestingly, reducing stigma would certainly have an impact on that top priority!

Shifting perceptions of mental illness and addiction will help employees be more open about their own experiences and concerns — and more empathic about others’ needs.

An employee engagement platform can offer a safe place to start these conversations and share stories.

Remove discrimination

Why is it that employees with physical illnesses — like diabetes, for instance — feel more open to talk about their health concerns than employees with mental illnesses? It’s part of the stigma of mental health conversations, but also strays into areas of discrimination. Organizations will need to create a culture of openness and transparency around conversations about all aspects of employee health and wellness — including mental health. Removing this discrimination is healthy, both for your employees and for the organization.

A “healthy balance” between mental and physical health benefit offerings

When you look at your benefit offerings, how many offerings do you have related to physical health versus mental health? It will be important to achieve balance here. Your benefit offerings convey a strong signal about what you believe is important in terms of employee support. If you have few offerings related to mental health, it signals that you don’t believe mental health concerns are prevalent — or important.

Promote a psychologically safe culture

We’ve noted that encouraging and amplifying conversations around mental health is important, but it bears repeating. Promoting a psychologically safe culture can be a great way to proactively bring issues out into the open — and ensure that employees receive the resources and support they need.

This starts at the top. When senior leaders freely share their own personal concerns — e.g., the stress and anxiety they may be feeling during the pandemic, and how they deal with that stress in healthy ways — they pave the way for employees to join in those conversations and start their own.

Using a recognition platform like Inspirus® Connects can start and even foster those conversations and share them broadly — leaders’ responses to employee comments will provide strong models for others to emulate, and prompt employees to start and engage in their own conversations related to mental health concerns and issues.

A healthy workforce is a motivated workforce. Incorporating wellness, and including mental health wellness into your engagement platform can be a terrific way to keep it top-of-mind and to provide employees with at-the-touch-of-a-fingertip access to information and resources.

It’s no secret that attracting and keeping great employees has become a major post-pandemic challenge for many organizations. Just turn on the evening news or open your local newspaper. You’re bound to see story after story about the “Great Resignation” and how people are quitting or changing their jobs in droves. For employers, demonstrating a high level of employee appreciation has become incredibly important in retaining talent.

One of the keys to keeping a talented and loyal workforce is making sure that employee communication and engagement is a priority from the top down. A trend we’ve been seeing recently is a push to re-train management in the simple, yet transformational, art of listening.

But what is listening really, or what is really listening? How is listening different from hearing? And how can changing your communication style to active listening help you nurture and retain your best employees?

Hearing vs. listening

Aren’t hearing and listening the same thing? No, not even close.

Merriam-Webster defines hearing as “the process, function, or power of perceiving sound; specifically, the special sense by which noises and tones are received as stimuli.” Listening, on the other hand, means “to pay attention to sound; to hear what someone has said and understand that it is serious, important or true; to hear something with thoughtful attention and to give consideration.” The key phrase in this definition is “thoughtful attention.”

Hearing is passive. You hear people all the time, but you’re usually focused on yourself and are thinking about how you’re going to respond or even talking over them before they’ve finished. You don’t really hear what they say because you’re not truly listening. Listening requires giving complete focus and your full attention to another person.

Hearing involves only the ears, whereas listening involves the whole person. When you are actively listening, you’re making eye contact, you’re nodding, you might even be taking notes. You’re not only trying to hear what the other person is saying, you’re actually trying to understand why they are saying it. You’re holding your response until you have all of the information, have processed the information, and then after listening and processing, you are able to form a thoughtful response and seek even further clarification.

Actively listening is key to hearing

Listening fully to another person demonstrates the highest level of respect towards them. It makes that person feel validated, important, and understood. Understanding is the whole entire point of listening. By letting go of your need to control or dominate the conversation, you establish a bond of trust, which increases your capacity for real communication and leads to higher levels of respect among your employees and teammates.

Empathetic listening is the holy grail of communication. A study conducted by Development Dimension International (DDI) determined that empathy is the greatest single leadership skill a manager can possess. Listening with empathy and compassion is more important than ever, especially after everyone has collectively gone through the isolation and trauma of a global pandemic.

When people are really being listened to, they not only feel heard, they also feel seen. This makes them feel appreciated and more like a true part of the company.

As a result, this makes them more inspired and motivated. According to the EY Belonging Barometer Report, employees who feel a strong sense of belonging are 3.5 times more productive and motivated to contribute to their full potential.

How to be a better listener

If you want to become a better listener and provide a better employee experience, you’re going to have to learn to be quiet. The goal is to make people feel safe enough to communicate honestly with you. You do that by showing respect, empathy and patience. Here are a few tips...

• Don’t multitask - Give the person you’re listening to your full attention and make eye contact. Don’t be glancing at your phone or computer
• Don’t interrupt - Don’t talk over the person while they are speaking. Hold your thoughts and response until it’s clear that the other person is finished and waiting for you to speak.
• Listen for the “why” - Try to understand the actual meaning of what the person is trying to convey. Pay attention to non-verbal cues, such as body language and tone of voice.
• Ask thoughtful questions - Take the conversation to the next level by asking insightful, open-ended questions that give the person an opportunity to explain their feelings even more clearly.
• Avoid using the word “but” - When people hear the word “but,” they feel negated. Try replacing it with the word “and” instead when presenting another point of view.

Employees are nervous about being back in the office. Business leaders must address this anxiety or face losing staff to the “Great Resignation,” a term coined by Texas A&M psychologist Anthony Klotz describing droves of employees who left or changed jobs during the pandemic.

In a recent study from UpCity, 53% of employees said they would feel some or a high level of stress about going back to work in an office. Some reasons for this anxiety include continued concern about the COVID-19 virus and its variants, unvaccinated co-workers, and a reluctance to change after finally settling into a new normal of working remotely.

Given the fact that it’s much easier and cost-effective to keep employees than hire new ones (especially now),

it’s important that management understand the anxiety their staff is feeling and do everything they can to make them feel comfortable returning to the workplace.

Here are a few suggestions.

1. Create a safe space for discussion

Start by opening up the lines of communication and talking to your employees. Tell them you really want to know how they’re feeling about coming back to the office and their major concerns. This could be done through a corporate-wide confidential survey, individual department meetings, or one-on-one meetings between a manager and direct reports.

The key is to create a safe way for employees to communicate their feelings honestly, without fear of retribution from their managers or co-workers.

2. Listen to your employees

There is a big difference between hearing your employees and actually listening to them (see previous Leadership trend, “Listening to Employees vs. Hearing Them: What’s the Difference?” on page 11). Truly listening to people in an attempt to understand, rather than just respond, makes them feel validated.

Some people may be concerned about being exposed to the virus if they live with an elderly or vulnerable person. Others may have lost loved ones to the virus and are now the primary caregiver for their children. Listening to their specific concerns not only makes them feel better as employees, but it gives you a roadmap to address the issues that are holding them back and perhaps even causing them to consider seeking employment elsewhere.

3. Practice empathy

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes in order to really understand where they’re coming from. Listening is just the first step. Now you need to understand.

In a recent report from Businessolver, 1/3 of employees said they would switch companies for more empathy. 40% would work longer hours and 56% said they would stay with a company if they felt valued. What this tells us is that making empathy a part of your overall corporate mission statement could be one of the biggest factors in employee motivation and retention going forward.

4. Address safety issues

For those employees with continuing concerns about COVID-19, you need to clearly communicate all the steps you’re taking as a company to protect them and their families. Perhaps you have a dedicated email address where staff can ask questions, or a special page on your corporate website or employee engagement platform that contains information about your health and safety protocols. This site needs to be updated on a regular basis and employees should be notified through email or instant messaging alerts.

5. Be transparent

Explain why your company feels it’s important to have employees back in the office and be completely transparent with your messaging.

Roll out your return-to-work strategy slowly, or even in phases, in order to get staff used to the idea of coming back. Don’t just pick an arbitrary date and tell everyone that’s the day they have to be back in the office, especially if you’re concerned about reducing employee turnover. Transparency, flexibility and communication can go a long way in motivating your staff to stay.

6. Create a routine

Asking your employees to come back into the office after almost two years of working from home is asking them to step outside of their comfort zone. They just got used to their remote routine. We all know how difficult it is to embrace change, especially with all the added emotional anxiety caused by the pandemic. The best thing you can do as a leader to help your employees feel comfortable coming back is to create a strong team culture through a new office routine. Host catered “welcome back” breakfast meetings every Monday or trivia-happy-hours every Friday. Perhaps you can offer staggered work hours for employees who like the increased work-life balance they experienced working remotely. Capitalize on the camaraderie that so many people enjoy about being in the office by implementing an employee recognition program. The key is to create a positive and rewarding routine that makes your staff look forward to coming into the office every day.

7. Prioritize employee appreciation

Given the “Great Resignation” and current state of the job market, it is now more important than ever that your employees feel appreciated and rewarded for a job well done. Most companies have a history of focusing on penalizing negative behavior rather than rewarding the positive – that must change. Having an effective employee recognition communication strategy along with a robust employee recognition program is imperative if you want to keep your employees happy or keep them at all.

8. Be flexible

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s to be flexible. Nothing is set in stone and, as we all now know, anything can happen at any time. Be flexible with your employees, your protocols, and your overall business plan. Demonstrating flexibility as a leader and as an organization can have a huge impact on employee morale and employee willingness to return to the office.

Employees are a top priority

There are many ways to support your employees returning to work, but it all starts with understanding their anxiety about returning in the first place. Listen to them, practice empathy, and do everything you can to let them know their health and well-being are your top priority.

Genuine concern for another human being is the most powerful form of motivation.

A new normal.

That’s the phrase everyone uses when discussing post-pandemic life. But do you even know what a new normal looks like for your company? If you don’t have a clear vision of how your organization should be functioning now, how can you expect your employees to perform at their highest levels?

The truth is, anything resembling “normal” in the workplace might not happen for quite some time. In a recent survey conducted by Deloitte and Fortune, only 1 in 10 CEOs (11%) are confident that the effects of the pandemic will be over by mid2022. More than 1 in 3 (35%) believe that won’t happen until the end of 2023. So, what do you do in the meantime?

Now is the time for leaders to re-imagine everything.

The pandemic has forced us to think differently about how we work, and even why we work. In order to survive in a post-COVID world and excel as a leader, your new normal will need to be all about engagement, empathy, and fully embracing the hybrid work model. Here’s why.

A clear purpose will re-engage talent

In case you haven’t been paying attention, finding and retaining quality talent is a big challenge these days. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) reported that recruiting is the number one challenge companies are currently facing. In order to hire and keep the best workers in 2022 and beyond, you will need to focus on employee engagement strategies.

Engagement starts with purpose, and after going through almost two years of a global pandemic, everyone is craving meaningful purpose in all aspects of their lives. It’s your job as a leader to define what that looks like at work. You not only will need to have a clear and meaningful corporate purpose and mission, but you will also need to ensure that a sense of purpose permeates throughout the entire organization.

Engagement is also about recognition and rewards. Part of building a team culture is communicating to your employees how much they matter. It’s a good idea to have an employee recognition program that rewards them for outstanding performance. Recognize your employees. Promote them. Re-skill them. Do whatever it takes to keep them happy and productive as part of your overall purpose. If you don’t, rest assured another company will.

Leading with empathy will be required

Another important key to post-pandemic leadership is empathy. According to a recent study by Catalyst, 76% of employees reported a higher level of engagement when they experienced empathy from their leaders, and 61% said they were able to be more innovative. Also, a majority of women surveyed said they would be less likely to leave an organization if they felt respected and valued.

In their “2021 EY Empathy in Business Survey,” Ernst & Young (EY) found that 88% of respondents felt that empathetic leadership created loyalty among employees. Ginnie Carlier, Vice Chair of Talent at EY, made it her mission to improve the mental health and well-being of her employees through empathy. In an interview with Forbes, Carlier stressed the need for “managers to actively listen to their employees and hear what they are saying. Based on the feedback, the leaders should then take appropriate actions.”

Leading with empathy requires you to put yourself in your employees’ shoes. That’s where the real change begins. Cultivating community and inspiring loyalty through empathy means your employees are heard and understood. Once you get where your employees are coming from, you will then be able to lead by example and embody the behavior they want to see in the office.

Embrace hybrid work or lose talent

Another way Ginnie Carlier of EY is putting empathy into practice is by being open to the different ways her employees want to work. The company has implemented a flexible work arrangement that allows people to work remotely, in the office, or a combination of both. “The employees are treated like adults who can make their own informed decisions on what type of schedules work best for them,” she said.

If you don’t allow remote or hybrid options, you will risk losing your best talent.

A recent McKinsey report found that almost 90% of employees who took new jobs did not have to relocate because more companies are now “location agnostic.” People got used to being able to do their jobs from home and enjoyed the worklife balance that it provided them. If you try to force them to come back into the office after they’ve proven they can be productive remotely, you’re going to lose them to another company who can and will accommodate their wishes.

Once you embrace the hybrid model, you’ll need to fully support it by investing in the latest technology to keep your workforce connected. Everything is moving at warp speed and your network connection and technology should do the same.

Business transformation

A post-pandemic new normal will mean different things to different organizations. It’s up to each leader to take everything they’ve learned over the last two years and use that knowledge to transform the future of their business.

Transformation begins and ends with your employees. Leadership must find new ways to engage their staff, lead with empathy, and give people the freedom to work the way they want.

It’s the only way companies will be able to survive this and any future pandemics.

One of the many things we learned from COVID-19 was just how truly unprepared most companies were for a pandemic and the overall effect it would have on employees, office culture, and the bottom line.

Now, leaders are tasked with how to make the workplace itself more resilient. Prior to the pandemic, the corporate world wasn’t really concerned with the idea of resilience, meaning the ability to recover quickly from a disaster. In a 2019 McKinsey report, less than half of board members surveyed said that corporate resilience or the ability to manage a downturn was on their current agenda, and only one-fifth believed a lack of resilience was a significant challenge. Boy were they in for a rude awakening.

Going forward, resilience will need to be ingrained in the overall culture of an organization if it wants to survive another pandemic or natural disaster. Here are a few suggestions as to how leaders can create a more resilient workplace.

Make resilience a part of your mission

Shared experiences spur process innovation.

Organizations will need to capitalize on the shared experiences of their employees after the last two years of a global pandemic.

Nothing strengthens culture more than diversity and the experiences that people of different backgrounds bring to the table. Ask all of your employees to share what they learned during the pandemic. Find out how they themselves practiced resilience as they adjusted to working from home and dealing with loss and anxiety. Everyone was forced out of their comfort zones. How can these shared experiences and lessons be incorporated into your business plan going forward?

Not only will the act of involving your workforce as a whole in crafting your new mission statement yield powerful insights for your business, it will also motivate and inspire your employees as they will feel part of something greater than just collecting a paycheck.

Give your employees the technology they need

Technology is the new water cooler. It’s changed the way we communicate. It doesn’t matter if your staff is back in the office, working remotely, or in some sort of hybrid arrangement. Technology is the glue holding it all together.

Providing new ways for your staff to interact, collaborate, and share wins with each other is vital to overall morale and productivity. It’s also important to have employee recognition programs, given the need to turn up the volume on employee appreciation in order to prevent staff from leaving.

It will be critical in 2022 and beyond to embrace technology as part of the new office culture. Some of your employees will want to keep their flexible work arrangements, and if you want to keep them, you’ll need to oblige. Investing in technology that’s faster, more secure, and that helps keep your employees engaged will be an important part of any resilience plan going forward.

Build a resilient community

Creating an inclusive culture and community is not about a location, it’s about people. The typical nine-to-five office environment is no more, and it’s time to celebrate all the different ways people like to work in order to create a more inclusive workplace.

Some people have felt major isolation during the pandemic and can’t wait to get back into the office. Others have enjoyed an increase in work-life balance and prefer to remain at home. If these workers have proven they can do their job remotely for the last two years, it will be hard to convince them to come back into the office. It is much better to embrace the new normal of remote and hybrid work arrangements and keep your employees rather than lose them to another company. Again, community is about people, not location.

Figure out how your employees work best and use that to your advantage. Make sure to include remote workers as part of in-office meetings and celebrations. Use employee engagement technology to keep everyone connected. Don’t be afraid to reshape what “community” and “culture” looks like in your organization.

Ask for regular feedback

Another important lesson the pandemic taught us is how quickly things can change.

Don’t forget to check in with your employees on a regular basis to see how things are going with them, and what might have changed in their world.

Employees may change their minds about where and how they work. Some may want to come into the office a few days a week and some office workers might want to start working remotely again. They may also have new ideas on how to improve the company culture as a whole. Organizations that encourage employees to share their opinions and ideas, and then incorporate that feedback into their engagement strategy will create a comfortable environment where everyone feels heard.

A culture of resilience

Creating a new office culture doesn’t happen overnight. It will take time, commitment from leadership, and a continuous feedback loop in order to fine tune a new normal.

By leveraging what we learned from the pandemic, organizations will create a much more resilient and inclusive workplace in which employees are empowered to do their best work, regardless of where they work.

What do employees want from their employer and their workplace? The question isn’t new, but the answers are changing. What it takes to attract new talent, and keep your current workforce engaged and satisfied, is rapidly evolving. Employers must adapt in order to remain competitive. It’s time to evaluate, update, and, in some cases, replace traditional strategies for employee engagement with fresh ideas that meet the needs of workers today, tomorrow, and beyond.

This year brought enormous upheaval in the workforce, and recent research predicts the “Great Resignation” will continue into 2022 and may even worsen.

A Bankrate survey in August 2021 reports that 55% of people in the workforce are likely to look for a new job within the next 12 months.

That’s up a bit from the 52% reportedly seeking new jobs in 2021. A whopping 56% of people, including the lowest paid workers, named flexibility as their primary reason for looking to jump ship.

What employers need now are comprehensive employee engagement strategies that help reduce employee turnover, and that take into account the differing needs and priorities of a multigenerational workforce. What works for Millennials may not satisfy Gen X employees, and what matters most to Baby Boomers may not be important to Gen Z. As we outlined in our 2021 Trends Report, a one-size-fits-all approach no longer works, and employers need to consider the unique needs of each segment of their employee population in order to successfully build a culture that keeps employees engaged.

What do employees want in 2022 and beyond?

Overall, we know employees want flexibility — they want more control over their work schedules, options for remote and hybrid work, relevant benefits for their stage of life, and, according to the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), 32% of workers want more frequent and transparent communication from their employers. There are generational differences in day-to-day work as well. Millennials and Gen Z, for instance, expect a more transparent and collaborative manager, whereas Baby Boomers like the structure of the traditional hierarchical management model. Another example: going into this pandemic, people believed — and continue to believe — that young people would be the most resilient and older groups would be the most fearful, but the opposite is true.

It’s crucial to understand the generational differences as we think about employee engagement. As you consider which employee engagement ideas to add to your retention strategy, you’ll need to learn how to customize each tactic for each generation represented in your workforce. And, across the board, if you’re unsure about what your employees want, it’s best to ask rather than assume.

Best ways to reduce employee turnover

Here are some employee retention ideas to help you keep your multigenerational workforce engaged and satisfied.

1. Conduct regular employee surveys. Don’t guess or make assumptions about what your employees want. The most effective way to learn is to ask them. Survey employees about their current employee experience, as well as what they would like to see change. Ideally, these surveys would be anonymous so that employees feel free to be completely honest without fear of repercussions.
2. Frequent informal check-ins between employees and their direct supervisors. When employees feel that their managers care about them, they’re more likely to stick around. Tailor the types of check-ins to each employee group and if you’re not sure what they prefer, ask them. Even better, offer employees a menu of options — video meeting, phone/audio call, email or chat — so they can choose what works best for them from week to week.
3. Offer formal mentoring and career path coaching to employees who want it. According to Indeed, Generation X workers value building new skills, while Baby Boomer employees may prefer to act as mentors and coaches to younger employees and pass on their wisdom to the next generation of leaders. Helping younger employees see a future within your organization, and showing them a clear path forward, can result in higher employee motivation and better retention.
4. Revamp your employee recognition program. It’s no longer effective to wait for five or 10 years to recognize employees for their service, especially as many employees are leaving well before their fifth anniversary. Consider adding a one-year or three-year acknowledgment — or go all out and celebrate every single anniversary of an employee’s hire date. Acknowledging “firsts” (first day, first training completed, first performance review, etc.) is another way to show employees they matter. It’s also important to make these recognitions meaningful. Few employees want an engraved clock or a logo coffee mug to commemorate these milestones — most want the flexibility to choose a gift of their choice, such as name brand, popular merchandise or a gift card to spend when and where they choose. (Again, if you’re not sure what your employees would appreciate, ask them!)
5. Reward employees for career accomplishments and embodying organizational values. Offering rewards and recognition can help employees feel valued – especially if they are praised for living the companies’ values – and reinforce the organization’s commitment to its mission, values, training, promotions, and team wins. The types of rewards you offer may differ among generations of workers and across individual personalities, and so might the way you disperse the rewards. Some people crave public attention and would like to be recognized in front of their peers, while others prefer to stay out of the spotlight. Managers should know employees well enough to make these judgments, but it never hurts to ask.
6. Tailor your communication methods. Whether this is for manager-to-employee communication or organization-wide messaging, you need a mix of verbal, written, and digital communication to effectively reach everyone in your multigenerational workforce. For example, Baby Boomers tend to prefer verbal updates so video and audio meetings might work best for them, while Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z workers may prefer email or chat messages.
7. Promote and foster community. Organizations where employees feel a sense of inclusion and belonging have lower turnover, higher productivity, and higher rates of employee satisfaction. According to Gallup research, highly engaged teams have 43% lower turnover, 18% higher productivity, and 66% higher employee wellbeing. Host virtual events that bring everyone together, and offer a mix of sessions that allow employees to learn something new, share ideas about a problem, play games (prizes are a bonus!), and network with employees from other departments.
8. Prioritize employee mental health. The topic of mental health became a national conversation amid the pandemic and continues to be an essential concern for employees as we move forward. Employees want to feel that their employer supports their mental health and well-being in authentic ways — beyond an annual Mental Health Awareness Week and an Employee Assistance program. Learn about the new strategies you can use to support employee mental health, such as more frequent conversations that destigmatize mental health, more flexible time off, and leading by example.

Delivering an employee experience that matters

Creating a workplace, and a work culture, that helps employees feel valued and seen is a tall order. But in today’s high-traffic talent market, employers need to make employee engagement a top priority in 2022. Employees want flexibility, and this means employers must be ready and willing to remain flexible and continue to adapt as our world, and the needs of workers of all ages, continue to evolve.

Employers have indicated that the new graduates they’re hiring today are not prepared with the right, and most up-to-date skills and competencies needed to perform successfully. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), there is a distinct gap between the employers who feel their recent hires have required proficiencies, and what the students themselves feel.

Three examples of that great divide

• Upskilling is the process of learning new skills or of teaching workers new skills.
• Reskilling is the process of learning new skills required to do a different job, or training employees to do a different job.

The COVID-19 effect

While change was already prompting an increased need for upskilling and reskilling prior to the pandemic, the pandemic’s impact has been significant across all industries and geographies globally.

In fact, 51% of learning and development professionals are now prioritizing learning more than they were pre-COVID. It’s clear that 2022 will be the year of learning. Employers are focused on:

• Making training and development available for all employees
• Encouraging career development
• Using a multigenerational approach for training styles — online vs. face-to-face, and hybrid
• Rewarding and recognizing training and development accomplishments

• Employers need to ensure that employees have the skills they need to meet demands today and in the future.
• Employers also know that employees value talent development; those known for providing these opportunities are likely to be the employers candidates flock to when looking for jobs.

• The soft skills required of managers and supervisors now required to lead employees in remote or hybrid environments.
• The soft skills required to build and maintain strong diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) cultures to attract and retain today’s increasingly diverse candidates.

Focused feedback

It’s important for any reskilling or upskilling efforts to place strong emphasis at providing employees with focused feedback to help them understand what they’re doing well, and where they may have opportunities for improvement. Feedback can, and should, come from a variety of sources — not just employees’ immediate supervisors or managers. Having an employee recognition platform that is accessible to all employees can be foundational in building a strong climate of reinforcement and support; peer-to-peer feedback is as important as feedback from managers. 

What organizations have been doing to fill their leadership pipelines hasn’t been working. And now, faced with a potential exodus of core talent and existing leaders, they must consider a different approach. Those that can do this effectively will position themselves to be organizations that can successfully attract top talent and keep the leadership pipeline filled.

What to look for in potential leaders
With employees indicating they place a high value on leadership development, and employers facing a leadership gap, part of the solution to close this gap seems obvious — train future leaders for promotion from within. Be the organization that grooms its employees to take over the leadership reins. Give employees the opportunity to take on new challenges, and welcome the innovation that empowers change.

Not all employees, of course, will have leadership potential. And not all will be interested in moving into leadership roles or have the potential to nurture a strong team culture. Those that have both the potential and the interest, though, are likely to share some key traits according to Korn Ferry. They point to these four key skills:

• Adaptability — the ability to adjust quickly to the changing landscape
• Curiosity — the ability to approach problems in new ways
• Detail-oriented — the ability to understand what needs to be done and do it
  with accuracy
• Tolerance of ambiguity — being comfortable with uncertainty and able to make decisions even when information is incomplete

The Center for Creative Leadership has identified nine weak or missing leadership competencies that organizations should be aware of — and be prepared
to address. Their list can provide useful insights into the type of training and preparation employees need to move into leadership positions effectively:

• Managing change
• Inspiring commitment
• Leading employees
• Taking initiative
• Building collaborative relationships
• Having a strategic perspective
• Knowing strategic planning
• Embracing participative management
• Being a quick learner

Today’s leaders, above all, must be flexible to change and able to overcome adversity. We’ve certainly learned that over the past several months. The companies — and leaders — that have excelled during the pandemic have these competencies. These will be the competencies to look for as you consider which of your current employees are poised to move into leadership roles.

Ongoing recognition and reinforcement
One of the big benefits of grooming existing employees to step into leadership roles is that they are already familiar with the company’s culture and acclimated to its processes and procedures. Organizations have the opportunity to provide existing employees with leadership experiences, observe their strengths and opportunities for improvement, and coach them into becoming the type of leader the company values.

In addition, organizations will need to keep diversity, equity, and inclusion top-of-mind when identifying potential leaders — make sure your leadership pipeline is an inclusive pipeline.

Along the way it’s important to provide ongoing employee recognition and reinforcement. Employee appreciation drives employee engagement. For instance, recognition for training completed, the awarding of certificates for achievements, peer-to-peer recognition, etc. Providing this type of recognition motivates the employees being recognized and inspires others to also take on more challenges and prepare for advancement into leadership roles.

Employees also need to receive employee recognition regularly — their growth and development is a process, not an event. Technology can help with this, providing an opportunity for both managers and others to recognize employees for their contributions.

Companies don’t have to be subject to the risk of leadership attrition related to the “Great Resignation”. They can take steps now to create a culture of continuous learning with an eye toward developing tomorrow’s leaders. 

• Distribute company information, such as business development announcements, HR updates, information on training programs, and more
• Foster community by providing a vehicle for employees to provide feedback and access resources
• Encourage connections, both within teams and throughout the organization, by enabling remote collaboration among dispersed teams, facilitating networking events, and supporting mentoring programs
• Solicit employee feedback and actually listen to it by putting their insights into action (See Data & Reporting forecast “Employee Listening Will Turn Intent Into Action” on page 45)
• Acknowledge contributions with tools that empower employees to recognize and be recognized themselves
• Celebrate accomplishments of employees and teams, as well as employment milestones, promotions, and other important events
• Reward achievements, such as hitting productivity or performance goals and completing projects

• For deskless workers, provide a kiosk or shared computer station in a community area with the sole function of accessing your organization’s tech platform, including the company intranet and connected tools
• For all workers, create a mobile-friendly version of your organization’s tech platform to use whenever they choose
• Use video meetings or Facetime if face-to-face interaction with managers isn’t practical
• Text messaging (when opted in) for those without internet access
• Digital displays in community areas with looping messages (like in doctors’ offices and retail settings)
• Leveraging offline materials

• attracting new talent
• developing employees’ peak potential
• improving the work experience through automation

We expect HR technology spending to rise further in 2022 as employers continue to diversify the tools they use to support a unique multigenerational workforce.

Leveraging HR technology to deliver an ideal employee experience across roles, generations, and time zones is a hefty challenge — and one that today’s HR leaders should be primed to tackle.

Look for flexible tech that fulfills your specific needs today, and tomorrow

Business leaders want to feel confident that they’ll get a good ROI from HR technology spending, and the best way to ensure that is to implement tech solutions that speak to your biggest people goals — and that are scalable so they can grow with you. As part of your broader business agility strategy, it’s especially important to adopt flexible tools that allow you to adapt and evolve as economic conditions and talent market dynamics change.

Opportunities: Employee engagement platform reports can reveal opportunities for improvement, particularly through the diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. Organizations that measure diversity on a departmental level can compare their data with national averages and local populations to determine how they’re really doing, and set benchmarks for progress.

Benefits of leveraging data

• Data reveals patterns and illuminates insights we wouldn’t see otherwise. Collecting, comparing, and critically assessing data can help us develop a kind of x-ray vision into the reality of the employee experience, and how the organization can influence it. 
• Data influences people and garners buy-in. A story well-illustrated with strong data helps you build a case and win support for your program, while inspiring enthusiasm for change.
• Data punctuates key observations. Reporting can back up trends you’ve identified, help you investigate causes, and measure the impact of new processes or procedures.
• Data helps us make better decisions. Business leaders should refrain from relying on subjective assessments and instead use data to inform decisions about strategy, new initiatives, and other efforts to move the needle on employee engagement, such as enhancing your employee recognition program.

Leave the guesswork out of business decisions and leverage what you already have at your fingertips.

This approach will give you a real-time opportunity to adjust and improve your rewards and recognition program to drive business results and improve workforce management. People analytics help you dive into the obstacles you currently face and reveal problems before they become unmanageable — and data can often point to possible solutions as well. Learning to use the data you currently have in your employee engagement platform helps you better serve and support your employees, make key strategic decisions about the future of your business, and help you shape your path forward. 

Organizations have the opportunity — or dare we say an obligation — to shape the way people work and live, from productivity to wellbeing and everything in between. This is how we must define employee experience going forward. We spend a third of our lives at work and the pandemic has increased that amount for many people, with 68% of remote professionals now working on the weekend and 45% reporting regularly working more than eight hours a day, according to a survey by global staffing firm Robert Half.

Employees have long been lectured about maintaining work-life balance and finding creative ways to fit life into the space around work, but that’s finally shifting. Work-life balance, or work-life integration as some are more accurately describing it, has become a component of team culture. Business leaders are embracing the need to focus on the WHOLE life of an employee and not just their work-life, and the business case for fostering employees’ sense of belonging has been proven many times over.

Harvard Business Review reports a high sense of belonging in the workplace increases employee performance 56%, reduces turnover risk 50%, and decreases sick days 75%.

Why employers must prioritize the employee experience

This year has seen record high quit numbers month after month, and the “Great Resignation” is likely to continue — or even worsen — as studies report up to 55% of workers plan to quit their jobs within the next year. The reasons people are changing jobs vary widely but many have to do with a poor employee experience and simply being unhappy at work — being micromanaged, disrespected, underpaid, and so on.

Employee experience repeatedly appears on lists of 2022 HR trends. Organizations that fail to prioritize and improve the employee experience will struggle to retain the employees they have now, and will continue to face challenges in hiring to fill open positions. Developers of HR technology are already on board with the notion of centering the employee experience and creating solutions that help integrate work, life, and organizational goals. “The number one issue in HR is engaging, supporting, and caring for people,” said Josh Bersin, global research analyst. “And the new dimensions of remote work, hybrid work, and contingent work are on everyone’s plate.” Organizational leaders need to commit to this mindset in order to remain competitive — not just in the labor market, but within their industry as well.

How data can enhance the employee experience

Using data to understand, and then improve, the employee experience extends to the entire employee journey. Some forward-thinking organizations are tying employee data to organizational values, and leveraging that data to gain insights into how to motivate employees into replicating behaviors that align with the organization’s values. Making data-informed decisions about how best to support employees at work and at home, while also fostering a more engaged and productive work culture, means organizations can enjoy many different benefits stemming from a single effort.

Employee listening was the #1 tech driver of employee engagement during the pandemic, according to research by Josh Bersin, published in the Definitive Guide to Employee Experience. Based on this finding — along with the uptick in focus on employee experience stemming from the “Great Resignation” — we anticipate the use of employee listening will explode in 2022.

Many organizations have historically used employee engagement platforms as a top-down tool to communicate messages and information to employees, and leaders commonly overlook the feedback that flows in the opposite direction. Indeed, your employee engagement platform can become a powerful tool for tuning in and listening to employee sentiment — if you proactively tap into it.

which creates a foundation for action, spurs creativity, and guides innovation. Large multinational organizations already use employee listening to glean insights that help them better serve their workforce. These examples set the stage for what’s to come, and will continue to shape employee expectations of the role business leaders play in cultivating a positive employee experience.

How Microsoft and IBM use employee listening

Practices that are successful at large organizations often influence what other businesses do, not just because they’re trying to emulate the giants but because those large companies act as powerful case studies for what really works. At Microsoft and IBM, employee listening is an integral component of growth, and both organizations use strategic, consistent methods to gather insights on the employee experience. Companies of all sizes can benefit from adopting similar strategies.

At Microsoft, employee listening focuses on different subsets of employees every day, in rotation, so that every employee has a chance to share their point of view several times a year. Through regular pulse surveys, Microsoft collects quantitative data through closed questions and qualitative data through open-ended questions. These insights equip leaders to invest time, attention, and resources into the biggest concerns of their workforce. “We want our leaders to come into the room with the intention to get it right, not to be right, and therefore to listen and learn from others,” said Kate Johnson, Microsoft U.S. president, as quoted in the Bersin report above.

Employee listening at IBM also blends quantitative data from surveys and polls (including Net Promoter Scores) with qualitative feedback, which IBM culls from employee opinions obtained through internal technology platforms and blog post comments. IBM leaders take employee listening a step further and demonstrate transparency with regular “Ask Me Anything” sessions with senior leaders. Topics broached in these conversations help IBM leadership identify key projects and set priorities with consideration for employees’ perspectives.

Communication is a critical part of the employee experience (EX). Business expert Josh Bersin recently embarked on a research study commissioned by Microsoft to look at the employee experience (EX) and to determine what leaders need to know about EX and how to effectively manage it in productive ways. The research revealed six key findings of practices common among organizations that have a superior EX. The first: a “focus on trust, transparency, inclusion, and care.” A focus on those four aspects of communication can help to build and support a culture where employees feel valued, engaged, and empowered.

During challenging times, it’s especially important that leaders communicate using change management strategies to help employees deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. Management will have very little chance to get it right -- if communications are inconsistent and fail to inform employees what is going on and what actions are being taken, they’re at risk of leaving.

Develop a Digital Strategy

The pandemic has accelerated the speed of transformation when it comes to the adoption of digital technology. How many Zoom meetings do we have now versus two years ago? How many remote workers use online channels to communicate and collaborate? How often do we choose to use digital channels to reach our customers versus picking up the phone and talking?

But the uptick in the use of digital tools for interaction and communication can’t, or shouldn’t, simply take place organically.

Employees need direction, support, guidance, and training to ensure that they’re using digital tools appropriately and efficiently.

Organizations will need to develop — or update — their digital strategies to ensure employees are maximizing the value of digital technology and not falling prey to its potential risks.

While some companies embarked on this journey even before the pandemic and the rise in remote and hybrid work occurred, others are still stumbling through the process and attempting to figure out how to create a strategy that meets organizational, employee, customer, and other key stakeholder needs.

• Assess the strategic impact of digital New technologies impact businesses in different ways, so think about what implementing digital technologies can do for your business, how much they will cost, and assess their associated risks.
• Set your digital ambition high Consider if the use of new digital technologies will strengthen existing advantages, or introduce you to knew ones — or both. Make the most of every opportunity!
• Place big bets Focusing on the top three areas where digital technologies will bring the greatest value and you’ll likely see optimal results. Prioritizing will bring clarity and demonstrate progress sooner.
• Build new strategic muscles Once you dive into digital and recognize that it complements traditional methods of communication, you’ll be confident to explore it in even more ways. A digital culture will attract talent, particularly Millennials, who are drawn to opportunities for autonomy and creativity.
• Manage transformation actively Developing a digital strategy is not a “set it and forget it” act, but needs continuous monitoring and refreshment to keep it relevant and successful.

It’s common for there to be a disconnect in organizations between employee needs and business mandates.

Employees want to be in jobs that are fulfilling and to feel satisfied and appreciated for their work.

Employers want a strong bottom line and measurable business success.

Those two often very different perspectives can lead to very real gaps in many business areas.

When the gaps can’t be bridged, employees leave. The employee exodus trend was in the news for much of 2021 — more of the same may lie ahead for 2022. Employers need to make sure that they’re laying a solid foundation to keep employees engaged by meeting their needs in ways that also further business needs.

It can be done. But first, employers need to understand what many employees are running from — and what they’re running toward.

What employees are running from

Mental health will continue to be a significant concern and area of focus in 2022 as the pandemic continues and employees grow increasingly burdened with both work and family needs. According to McKinsey, mental health needs and substance abuse have been major areas of concern for employers during the pandemic. They point to some significant disconnects or gaps between employers and employees when it comes to successfully addressing employee mental health needs.

• While 65% of employers say that “employee mental health is supported well or very well,” only 51% of employees agree.
• The situation is even more dire on the front lines where 71% of employers say they’re doing well supporting employee mental health and only 27% of frontline workers feel the same.
• While 84% of employees with substance use disorders say that they are challenged to access care, only 20% of employers are reporting providing this access as a priority.
• Finally, although more than one-fifth (23%) of employers say they’ve implemented anti-stigma awareness campaigns over the past year, 79% of employees feel such a campaign would be valuable to them.

• Not feeling valued by their managers or organizations
• No sense of belonging or community
• Lack of caring and trusting teammates
• Little to no training
• No potential for advancement
• Rigid on-site mandates

Moving forward into 2022, it’s clear that employers have a lot of room for improvement. Many, unfortunately, are lagging behind in terms of allocating budget to help alleviate the problem. While they freely and generously allocate funds for customer data, they don’t apply the same mindset — or sense of importance — to their internal programs.

That, fortunately, is starting to change and we predict it will continue to trend upward as more and more organizations achieve success by mining their employee engagement data effectively.

Yes, there are still some pitfalls to be alert to when using this software — it struggles with things like sarcasm, industry jargon, and cultural slang, for instance. But the more it’s used, the more it learns — and the smarter it gets. That sounds promising for the future of more effectively and more precisely measuring employee sentiment.

• Intellica.ai — using “natural language processing, data visualization, predictive analytics, conversational artificial intelligence (AI), and recommendation engines,” this tool offers the flexibility to add custom applications to its core architecture.
• Jive Interactive Intranet includes an advanced analytics module to track workplace trends including project progress, the things employees are talking about — and sentiment analysis.
• KeenCorp offers two dashboards for sentiment analysis: MoodMetrix to map sentiment trends, and Attitude Heatmap to help prioritize actions.
• Lattice also offers two tools focused on performance management and employee engagement. It’s AI-powered sentiment analysis tool continuously scans qualitative, open-ended comments, scoring them on a scale of 1-10.
• MeaningCloud offers a free API that can be integrated into other applications, including your own internally developed HR systems. It uses “multilingual sentiment analysis to understand positive, neutral, or negative sentiment.”
• Repustate is a sentiment analysis tool that is used in both customer and employee settings. It’s an advanced tool with powerful features and can be customized to your own lexicon and work requirements.
• UltiPro Perception can be embedded into employee engagement surveys to aid organizations in gaining greater insights into employee sentiment and motivations.