1.     Turnover Tsunami

Johnny Taylor, CEO of Society for Human Resource Managers says that 30% annual turnover could be the new normal. Let’s help you have the lowest number possible via 3 top tips:

• Stay interviews – Check in 90-120 days to see how each employee is doing, and what it would take to make them stay. See my blog with exactly how to do this, and to trigger a release of oxytocin (for a sense of belonging and connection in the employee’s beautiful brain.
• Provide personal and professional development plans – this will show an employee the potential glorious future at your firm – See the linked example of a simple Individual Development Plan and ensure dopamine (anticipation of reward) is released.
• Creative engagement strategies – Keep everyone emotionally engaged with the ideas on this infographic and help everyone’s nucleus accumbens (pleasure and motivation centers in both hemispheres) are lit up!

The net-net is by creating a culture of growth, appreciation, measurement (so we know how to succeed), engagement, transparency, equality plus a little adventure you’ll be able to keep your rock stars. But you’ll have to work at it…

2.     Mental Health Struggles

It’s tough out there in the world. And the massive fear, uncertainty and doubt around Covid-19 isn’t going to end anytime soon. So let’s uplevel our awareness and acceptance of mental health struggles. Thanks to Simone Biles for recently helping us remember this.

• Navigate neurodiversity – we are all works in progress. Some of us struggle with anxiety or depression. Some of us struggle with ADHD, bipolar, OCD, and other more continuous neurological challenges. That doesn’t mean we aren’t great workers that can perform and care. Read this blog to create or update your neurodiversity policy. You need one.
• Uplevel your compassion – As leaders, it’s our job to bring more compassion into the workplace. Our team is full of humans, and at different times we’ll have different needs for a little leeway with childcare challenges, sick loved ones, burnout, and more. Develop your compassion here.
• Work through hardships – When an employee or team is navigating a personal or professional hardship it’s essential to interact with them appropriately. This infographic will show you exactly how.

The net-net: Think of the 5 stages of grief: depression, anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance. Most of us are going through these as a result of our own unique experience of the pandemic. When a person is in the thick of trauma, they’re just trying to keep it together (aka 2020). Once the most challenging part is behind them, existential grieving, stress, anger can well up. Have you noticed more aggressive drivers on the road lately? I’ll wager this is why.

3.     Communication and Collaboration Challenges

With work from home. Hybrid work, in-office workers, my clients are noticing more communication breakdowns than usual. These often result in reduced collaboration, which can generate more stress.

The new most prevalent communication disconnects we’re seeing – let’s look at the positive here. Note how many of these are true for your core team (if they’re not true, therein lies the problem!):

• Asks for what they need so they can do their best work
•  Provides clear and complete communication and checks to ensure their message was accurately received, and if they are the communication recipient, they check to ensure they fully understood the message
• Carefully reads communications and provides a complete response (without requiring back and forth due to incomplete responses)
• Manages their emotional state in communications and carefully words emails to be considerate of others even when they are upset
• Proactively provides timely clear communication on outstanding items and status so team members can do their best work
• Proactively provides ideas and well-formed strategies to grow the team and business

Communication in tricky times – In tricky times when people are in either high threat perception or super sensitive (like now, and the since March 2020!) we need to be more gentle and other-aware in our communication. This infographic explains it all!

Distorted thinking on the rise with WFH – Another phenomena I’m seeing is distortions in thinking and assumptions. Check out this table and note what’s showing up in your team.

The net-net is communication and collaboration will break down if we aren’t explicit in our communication. don’t carefully navigate tricky topics, emotional sensitivity, people that are different from us, as these and many more land mines await us!

4.     Bias Toward In-Office Employees 

I hate to say it, but it’s here. There is bias that benefits in-office employees. No one can mitigate bias alone. It takes an entire group using a common language around bias to help individuals make smarter decisions.

• The Distance Bias – How it shows up: we perceive that which is closer as more valuable, relevant, important and diminish that which is farther away. This is extremely damaging to remote workers, who are often perceived as not a “promotable” or valuable. You’ll also note in my Future of Work blog that some managers actually perceive in-office workers as more productive, when much research shows this is not the case.
• How to remedy – see our infographic entitled Your Brain on Exclusion [from stp 4.5] to understand the true damage caused from excluding others. Then follow the steps to remedy this.
• Focus on HX, social, ecological stances – in the past we used to talk about employee experience and customer experience. Today, we focus on the Human Experience that our firm is providing to all our constituents. Are you? How solid of a corporate citizen are you and your firm? Do you have clear social and ecological stances? Your employees want to know what you stand for and see proof of it.

The net-net is that workers are going to be distributed for the long term. While some may be called into the office sometimes, or even required to be there full time, remote work is here to stay. So all leaders must adapt!

Take this assessment to learn about your emotional resilience.