Never before has technology been such an enabler for people and teams as it has since the COVID-19 crisis. While remote working is not new for many organisations, the extent and time is, which businesses are anticipating workforces to be completely virtual. How people engage virtually with each other sits at the heart of business recovery and future business continuity planning.
What you might not know is that at Ogilvy we have a specialist practice dedicated to employee engagement, experience and supporting businesses to get the most out of their people, systems and processes. In this week's webinar, our team draw on their experience delivering programmes through business crisis (shut down and restart), and offer support in how to navigate shocks, high impact events and business change in a sure-footed manner.
2. Emma Nicol
Head of Employee
Experience
Practice
Dan Hocking
Head of Programme
Management and Delivery
Welcome
Dayoán Daumont
Consulting Partner, EMEA
Ogilvy Consulting
4. Do you want
this deck?
It will be available for download
shortly after the webinar on:
slideshare.net/socialogilvy
And the recording up on
facebook.com/OgilvyConsulting
5. Today’s
session will
cover
• How do we foster the behaviours of collaboration,
creativity and sharing to continue to drive productivity
in a virtual environment?
• How do we encourage positive behaviours to thrive in
spite of technology restrictions?
• When there are technology limitations, what
pragmatic solutions can we put in place in the
moment to support teams?
6. 22%
Of leaders feel prepared to
operate in a highly digital
environment
53%
Of employees
believe a company pays
attention to people’s needs
when introducing new
technology
93%
Of our communication is
non-verbal
Communicating and collaborating in a virtual
world is going to be challenging
8. 1. Virtual leadership
2. Building trust
3. Team cohesion and inclusion
4. Performance management
8
How we build connected
and collaborative virtual
workforces.
9. Clarity:
• Prioritise development of clear boundaries and guidelines
• Consider sharing new metrics of success
• Clarify and re-clarify roles
Communication:
• Provide support to adjust and respond to new psychological
pressure
• Encourage team members’ responsibility
• Recognise own cognitive biases
Connection
• Avoid being exclusively task-focused
• Maintain regular cadence of meetings; embrace video
• Build a virtual office
1. Virtual leadership
Immediate steps
10. As your team’s digital maturity evolves, leadership will
start to take on these characteristics:
• ‘Network leadership’ to nurture strong connections,
robust flows and shared value with shallower
hierarchy
• Integrating technology deeply into ways of working
• Rethinking learning cultures – beyond ‘doing virtual’
to ‘being virtual’
• Managing of psychological pressure
1. Virtual leadership
Future state
11. • Dependability and reliability
o Construct teams with careful thought based on skill sets, personality
traits, and communication styles
• Consistency
o Sign off for approvals are documented and implemented [especially
helpful if attrition becomes an issue]
• Confidence
o Praise and reward individual achievements with a focus on how these
contribute to critical group success
• Accountability
o Share demonstrable progress from members and give under-
performing members individual coaching to help them get back on
track
• Transparency
o Share information openly with the team. Work schedules, project
progress, and task status should be available to all members anytime
2. Building trust
Immediate steps
12. • Authenticity is a default for leaders
• Employees are trusted and respected
to manage themselves to deliver
• Value is placed on outcomes not time spent.
Workplace is fundamentally fair
• Technology not just for transactional use but to
build culture
Build on values of:
• Independence
• Mastery and autonomy
• Communication
• Balance
• Impact
2. Building trust
Future state
13. • Remind team members of shared purpose
• Empathy helps reduce social distance
• Provide feedback on everyday behaviour
• Have frequent, short interactions , embrace ‘small
talk’ and establish rituals
• Ensure consistent information sharing
• Embrace conflict instead of letting it go
• Actively mentor and coach
• Reassess how unconscious bias manifests in a
remote environment
3. Team cohesion & inclusion
Immediate steps
14. • Design inclusive virtual workplaces (consider
technology and participation) with remote
employee experience as a priority
• Continually assess how unconscious bias
manifests in a remote environment
• Adapt to new cultural norms through increased
learning
3. Team cohesion & inclusion
Future state
15. • Adjust performance metrics to reflect remote
working circumstances
• Benchmark performance objectively across people
performing similar roles
o Competency-based rather than practice-based
• Gather behaviour-based feedback
• Ask for self-evaluation
• Create a feedback rhythm
4. Performance management
Immediate steps
16. • Build and optimise teams aligned with employee
strengths
• Workforce creation and candidate selection based
on suitability for mobile and remote working
• Develop a standardised yet flexible system of goal-
setting
o Broad terms of evaluation aligned to expected behaviours
• Increase observed behavioural assessments
• Introduce seamless online HR systems
o Single sign on, fully integrated self-service platform
4. Performance management
Future state
18. Select tech that solves real world problems for employees
and teams, and consider some key questions about how you
operate:
• How do your people need to get their jobs done?
• What is your working rhythm?
• How complicated is it for you to access your
infrastructure?
• What are you or your teams using already? Does it work?
Finding the
appropriate types
of collaborative
technology for
your teams
19. 19
Asynchronous comms Synchronous comms
What When you send a message without expecting an
immediate response
When you send a message and the recipient
processes the information and responds immediately
Example You send an email. I open and respond to the email
several hours later
Meetings, phone calls, video conferences
Benefits • Gives recipient greater control over scheduling
• Enables more considered responses
• Enables deep work as default
• Provides automatic documentation and greater
transparency
• Drives a more inclusive workplace
• Builds rapport
• Provides prompt and/or critical feedback
• Enables brainstorming of unknowns or evaluation of
different ideas and solutions
• Brings everyone together quickly
• Enables crisis management
Pitfalls • Communication is slower
• Those constantly responding may wrestle control
over the narrative
• Relies on technology integration and management
• Does not provide the human touch
• Leads to constant interruptions
• Prioritises being connected over being productive
• Can create unnecessary stress
• Can lead to lower quality discussions and
suboptimal solutions
Example
providers
Types of tech communication
Asynchronous and Synchronous comms
20. 20
Category Example Tool
In case of emergency
All hands meeting, employee
ideation, crowdsourcing in
real time
Regular 1:1, ad hoc meetings
to discuss complex issues
In context comments on
projects
Central Hub (intranet),
announcements, ideas,
feedback, updates,
watercooler
Assess your requirements
Synchronous
Asynchronous
Immediate need
Infrequent need
23. 23
So what do we use?
Category Tool
Emergency comms and
immediate response
All hands meeting, external
meetings and heavyweight
video conferencing
1:1, internal meetings, and
team/project work discussion
Project Management and
Project Tracking
Central Hub (intranet),
announcements, ideas,
documents
24. In order to ensure alignment between your
remote working strategy and your technology
landscape, we recommend that you:
• Focus on the problem you are solving, not the
tech
• Partner with technology team to ensure
understanding of business need
• Identify and prioritise the most important features
to the users per requirement
• Avoid jumping on the latest tool – is there
‘consumer’ tech to implement in interim e.g.
WhatsApp
• Work with IT security to assess suitability
• Ensure interoperability and compatibility with
other software set (if possible)
• Be flexible
Introducing pragmatic
solutions
25. When you introduce
new technology, you
are really asking
employees to change
their behaviour
26. This is your chance to turn disruption into opportunity
1 2 3
4 5 6
Assess
the changing relationship
your employees have
with technology and with
each other
Observe
how your team’s
behaviours are changing
as a result of technology
Define
your future state. Be clear
about the ideal experience
you want for your business
and people
Implement
appropriate ‘immediate
steps’ initiatives for your
organisation
Identify
gaps between current
behaviours and your
desired future state
Model
and implement future
initiatives