How to Maintain a Productive Workforce in a Post-COVID-19 Workplace

As if keeping employees engaged, energized and productive wasn’t hard enough, along came the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, for the most part, employees really stepped up, at least initially, since everyone was scared about what their future would look like. Employers and employees alike were thrown into a great unknown, and it was sink or swim.

It’s a year later. Businesses have learned a lot of hard-earned lessons about keeping their workforce productive during massive upheaval. Undoubtedly, a lot of employees saw their enthusiasm wane under shutdowns, fear of being infected on the job, forced hybrid work arrangements and just plain exhaustion. We’ve come out on the other side — for the most part — but there may be no “return to normal.”

As a business owner or manager, making sure your employees are engaged and productive might not be on the top of your must-do list right now. You might be more concerned about regaining business, closing new deals and taking care of customers. Do you think you’re going to achieve your business and revenue goals without renewed employee engagement?

Now is the time to step up how you keep your people engaged, connected and optimistic. Prioritizing this will help drive productivity.

The Pros of a Vibrant Culture

Let’s take a step back and look at how engagement is generated. Truly engaged employees are created from a business’s culture. The culture is based on your company’s values and beliefs and how those are put into action.

Engagement is an ongoing, daily, holistic process of employee experiences. Post-pandemic, employees could be more motivated than ever to find meaning at work and put this crisis behind them.

Culture must live and breathe from top to bottom if you want an engaged workforce that helps you hit your business bull’s-eye. Culture is about the importance and value of everyone’s contribution. For all the years I have been running my business, my unwavering belief has been that everyone has to succeed for the company to succeed.

Start from Here

As I said, culture springs from the company’s values and beliefs and how you demonstrate those beliefs. It can’t be lip service; your values and beliefs must be demonstrable beyond a doubt to all employees, and then believed in and lived out by them.

To hit the company culture bull’s-eye and have an engaged and productive workforce, you first have to articulate what you stand for and what you want. It’s important to reinforce what you want with company action; stories that emanate from those actions will live on for years and reinforce your culture.

Step It Up

Fostering engaged employees and keeping them motivated isn’t rocket science. Rather, it’s based on proven, universal truths and simple common sense in most cases. Here’s how you can create a vibrant company culture that helps engage every employee:

• Educate employees on what it means for them to be hitting their targets. Let them know how they should be taking dead aim at their bull’s-eyes.
• When they hit their bull’s-eye, cheer on the individual and the team. Offer recognition in real time. On the flip side, if their aim is poor or their execution is lacking, help them understand how they can zero in on the target the next time.
• Emphasize collaboration and teamwork and how that’s going to be accomplished if you have hybrid work arrangements as you move into the future. Devise ways to effectively communicate and act as a team, even if you’re not together. You don’t want separate subcultures developing.
• If you decide to have hybrid work arrangements, you will need to figure out more effective ways of bringing new employees aboard and initiating them into your culture. It will take effort and creativity.
• Empower employees, perhaps more so than you have in the past. Give them challenging assignments. Encourage autonomy and responsibility for achieving company objectives. Would now be a good time for cross-team collaboration or rotating assignments so you have a team that can do anything when the next crisis hits?
• Involve employees in both discussions and decisions where their input could be valuable.
• Let employees know what is going on in the company. Be honest. Trust them to use it for the benefit of the company.
• Charge employees with ferreting out information on the market, on competitors, on emerging trends and challenges. They will be invested in being part of a response and a solution.
• There are many moving parts to your business. Ask employees to keep their eyes on the bull’s-eyes for all parts and listen to what they learn about hitting their targets.

Pandemic-Induced Challenges to Culture

Engagement today and perhaps long term will be complicated by hybrid work arrangements. Many employees may be on-site all the time, some might split time between working on-site and at home, while others will work from home all the time. These hybrid work environments mean you’ll have to put in more effort to keep the culture intact and foster active engagement. There are many aspects to this, but here are just a few:

• Be flexible about working arrangements and schedules. Forget about how it worked in the past; those days are over. Figure out how new arrangements can work for you.
• Figure out ways for employees to have shared experiences.
• Work on strengthening colleague relationships, especially among supervisors and managers (even if some don’t usually work together).
• Become an extroverted extrovert. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Keep everyone involved, informed and in the loop.

Thoroughly engaged employees are productive employees who are invested in the success of your business. Remember, engaged employees will help you hit your business bull’s-eyes.