Reimagining How Work From Home Is Done and Measured
By Maria Kilina, MBA, MFin, Managing Partner, Trading Post Investments
Work from home (WFH) or remote work is the new reality. A solid amount of research is showing that most employees are not willing to come back to office. What does this mean for employers? What else can we possibly change in the organization and measurement of work considering that WFH may no longer be temporary?
One major concern around remote work is employee engagement which drives productivity. According to the Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2021 report, 81% of employees in Canada were not engaged or actively disengaged at work in 2020 which led to billions of losses in productivity.
Let’s explore what the drivers of employee engagement are, and how we can influence it.
First, we feel more disconnected from the holistic picture. Just reiterating the organizational goals doesn’t always help employees feel what value they are bringing into the whole system, how exactly they are influencing the value that the organization is bringing to the customer and, therefore, the bottom line.
Second, with remote work, we feel more disconnected from each other. Everyday, we are trying to get through a flurry of video conference calls and desk work. Video conferencing works to connect us, but it doesn’t work at the same level of emotional bonding felt at a personal level.
Third, we feel more disconnected from organizational culture. It is not enough to just reiterate values and principles as a basis of connection. Organizational culture has subconscious levels that we are not aware of. We need to get that glue that links everyone together back.
What can we possibly do to reframe that? How can we keep everyone engaged and help them organize their work?
Let’s refer to Michael Porter, management guru and Harvard Professor who introduced the concept of value chain in 1985. We can consider some upgrades to these fundamentals, but the principles remain the same: everything that is happening in an organization is about creating value, at a higher value compared to competitors. Let’s explore why this is gold for solving the WFH disengagement problem.
1. Sequence. When we look at processes in organizations as a sequence, we understand interdependency of steps and, therefore, can go into the details about how the work of each person contributes to the holistic picture of value that the organization brings to customers. For example, I am an analyst writing business plans for company’s R&D projects. In the value chain breakdown, I see myself contributing to the R&D pipeline helping to define which projects will move forward. How does it drive value? Well, the chosen R&D projects are aimed at increasing customer benefits to create a long-term competitive advantage for the company. Metrics and measures that show linkage between business plans and competitive advantage need to be developed and made obvious to an analyst.
2. Weekly/bi-weekly measures. Knowing the sequence that creates the value chain in an organization, we can assign weekly/bi-weekly measures to the steps. Therefore, we will make the system transparent and keep everyone organized around the value chain.
It is not necessary to link the measures to reward system. Some measures will not depend solely on employee’s effort, but will rely on the previous steps in the chain. We should be careful linking the performance to those steps. But it is necessary to make the measures transparent and the contribution of each measure to the holistic system clear for every employee.
For example, for a business analyst of R&D projects, the measures can be the number of business plans completed and with a content checklist that will define the quality. But the number of business plans will depend on management's ideas about the new projects and, therefore, will not solely depend on the business analyst. At the same time, measuring it will help the company see why the number of projects in the pipeline goes down (not many projects are introduced).
It is worth understanding how each employee drives value to the customer and helps the company enhance their competitive advantage and, therefore, create sustainable growth and profits. We can do it by creating a system of weekly/bi-weekly performance measures based on the company’s value chain.
Sources:
1. State of the global workplace 2021 report. Gallup
3. Leger & Canadian Press. Web survey of Canadian and American employees. May 31st, 2021