The Big Stay is here. How can HR leaders keep employees motivated and engaged?
By Maggie Mancini
Following a years-long period of high quit rates known as The Great Resignation, employees have embraced a new trend: “The Big Stay” with workers hunkering down with their employers and staying put. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that voluntary quits have steadied in recent months at 3.1 million, but have been down 525,000 over the past year. With fewer employees resigning, HR and people leaders are tasked with keeping their existing workforce engaged and productive.
To keep employees connected, productive, engaged, and motivated to do their best work, it’s important for HR leaders to address and combat the root causes of disengagement: mistrust in leadership, lack of communication, lack of rewards and recognition, and misalignment with organizational goals. “It all starts with the trust component,” Michael Alicea, chief human resources officer at Trellix, says. By maintaining good communication and transparency with employees, HR leaders can help keep workers on track and ensure that they are connected to the overall mission of the organization.
37% of managers and 32% of non-managers admit to faking activity or productivity during the workday.
The Root Causes of Disengagement
Most employees are actively working while on the clock—or are they? Research from Workhuman finds that 37% of managers and 32% of non-managers admit to faking activity or productivity during the workday. Why? Employee burnout and the need for work-life balance. Moreover, 54% of employees say that when they’re not engaged at work, their coping strategy is to do the bare minimum to get through the day.
“A lot of the time, you come in, you do a job, you’re maybe not that challenged, and you just coast,” says Nadia Alaee, senior director of HR business partners at Deel. “Those are the people that we really want to look at. What are we doing with those mid-performers, and how are we keeping them engaged and motivated?”
She says it’s important for HR leaders to manage engagement as a means of helping people be more satisfied with their role. Another factor is the manager-employee relationship. “Your manager plays an important role in your day-to-day engagement at a company, your happiness, how motivated you are in your work, how supported you feel, and whether you feel like your manager is coaching you and mentoring you to help you improve,” Alaee says. “It can be a major source of disengagement when we see mid-level managers who aren’t spending as much time on the growth and development aspect of their work, so they lose that a little bit with those team members.”
Jeri Hawthorne, chief human resources officer at Aflac, says it’s crucial to take a holistic approach in caring for the whole employee, addressing the causes of disengagement to improve the employee experience and boost productivity.
- Combat burnout by offering comprehensive health programs. Aflac’s WorkForces Report reveals that employees want employers to care about their overall well-being, Hawthorne says. The report finds three in five workers feel burnt out due to heavy workloads. “Employers should offer robust health and wellness programs that focus on the well-being of the whole employee,” she says.
- Evaluate workloads and be clear about expectations. Hawthorne explains that it’s important for HR and people leaders to be transparent about goals, priorities, and expectations for employees, and redistribute tasks as needed to help balance work.
- Prioritize recognition. “We offer employee recognition resources known as ‘Aflac Way Honors’, host events and activities that celebrate employee contributions, offer volunteer opportunities, and commemorate employees’ impact to the community,” Hawthorne says.
- Support employee development. Offering a variety of skill development opportunities is crucial, Hawthorne says. At Aflac, employees have access to training and development programs, mentorship, and career counseling to help employees identify development paths.
“To effectively tackle these issues, we need to create an environment where employees feel valued, understood, and heard,” says Kristin Major, executive vice president and chief people officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “By encouraging open communication, giving everyone a chance to voice their opinion, actively seeking employee feedback, and implementing employees’ suggestions, leaders can make a significant difference in the way employees view their individual impact.”
Measuring Productivity and Seeing Results
The ways in which organizations understand and measure employee productivity are shifting, according to research from HSM Advisory. Most HR leaders described the “feeling” of productivity as experiencing a state of flow and feeling focused, energized, and autonomous. At the same time, they said that they “measure” productivity through utilization rates, lines of code, on-time delivery, and revenue per employee. While the feeling of productivity is human, the measurement of productivity is more machinelike.
HR leaders should consider the following factors when measuring employee productivity, Alaee says.
- Measure how employees engage with internal productivity and communication tools. “Slack is our office,” Alaee says. “We don’t have office spaces, so we work in huddles and on calls and on camera.” She explains that it’s important to look at each employee’s interactions with the tools they are given to do their work. If there isn’t strong engagement, it might be an indicator that something else is going on, she says.
- Utilize the probation period to understand whether employees are a good fit for the organization. Alaee explains: “If someone has a 180-day probation period, how are we making sure that this role is a fit for them, and that they are a fit for the role?”
- Work with managers to find ways to keep employees engaged and productive. “I think this gets lost in a lot of really fast-paced, fast-growing environments,” Alaee says. “We really put an emphasis on connecting with people managers and helping them understand that it’s on them to make sure people are engaged and motivated.” The HR team can help managers solve these issues by looking at data and building initiatives around it. If employees need guidance to understand their KPIs, managers can work prescriptively with HR to get them back on track.
- Conduct quarterly performance and talent reviews. “We push on managers to be doing this work all the time,” Alaee says. “Because your team’s success is going to contribute to business success, so making sure you have the right people on your team, and that those people are engaged in the work they’re doing, is incredibly important.” If they aren’t engaged, it’s important for leaders to understand what that means for their performance and find solutions.
Trellix conducts surveys in between employee town halls to determine what workers want to talk about and then uses the results to guide further discussions. This way, employees see there’s two-way transparency and employers understand what’s most valuable to their workforce.
Hawthorne explains that Aflac uses several approaches to help boost employee productivity:
- objectives to measure performance and align with business goals;
- performance feedback and reviews to provide guidance on key development areas;
- benchmarking to compare performance against industry standards; and
- engagement surveys to assess which programs resonate with employees, what adjustments are needed, and ways to enhance employee motivation.
Addressing Productivity Among Remote Employees
Even as organizations push for return-to-office mandates, the debate surrounding the impact of remote work on productivity has not gone away. While researchers at the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago link remote work with productivity declines between 8% and 19%, the National Bureau of Economic Research has seen a 13% gain. Others believe that hybrid work, rather than fully remote work, has a positive impact on productivity.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s more common to see dispersed, fully remote, or hybrid teams, requiring HR leaders to rethink employee engagement and take a multifaceted approach, Major says.
“Wherever or however teams meet, what’s important is that they have those regularly scheduled connections to collaborate, ideate, and celebrate with one another,” Major says.
In HPE’s hybrid environment, she explains, regular team check-ins are hosted virtually and in-person, and HR focuses on ensuring that employees agree on which collaboration and communication tool work best for them.
For Deel, building a strong culture helps guide their fully remote approach. “We want to make sure that candidates and new hires are clear that we’re fully remote,” Alaee says. “We have no plans to ever return to an office space. It’s important to know whether someone is comfortable in that work environment. We’ve seen situations where people have left a few months in and thought they could fit into that environment, and just wanted to try it. We really lean on a culture of autonomy and self-sufficiency and giving people flexibility, which truly leads to better productivity.”
As work models have changed to include remote, hybrid and distributed workforces, Hawthorne says there are several elements HR leaders should consider in this new world of work:
- foster an inclusive work environment for both on-site and off-site employees;
- offer varying platform options for meetings and events that employees can access wherever they are;
- encourage regular one-on-one meetings, whether in-person or virtual;
- provide open, honest, and transparent communication;
- request feedback and act on areas of concern;
- ask team members to be on camera during virtual meetings; and
- schedule informal check-ins with off-site employees to catch up throughout the year.
“It all comes down to valuing team members and their work and recognizing people,” Alaee says. “Engagement, especially in the remote workplace, is about understanding how we can foster a culture where our team members know what they’re here to do, feel valued, and are connected to the work.”
Being able to hire anyone across the globe means being able to open the talent pool and provide opportunities for people who maybe have never had a similar opportunity before. Bringing in team members who care about the work and are really connected to it will also ensure that they’re engaged in their day-to-day responsibilities and can contribute to the company culture.
“Fulfilling work cannot be overstated,” Major says. “When work is meaningful and aligns with an individual’s strengths and interests, employees are naturally more engaged. So, make sure you’re having open, transparent, and consistent conversations with your employees about what excites them and commit to taking the steps needed to ensure they can explore these spaces.”
