Just how loud is this clamour? Well, the Owl Labs State of Remote Work 2019 report found that 34% of employees were willing to take a 5% pay cut if they were only allowed to work remotely. 20% of those surveyed were even willing to accept a pay cut higher than 10%. So why is it a solution that companies are hesitant to adopt? One answer is sensible enough: some jobs simply can’t be done remotely and need to be done in person.

The Challenges of a remote work setup

Some of the other reasons cited by companies are that there is the fear that productivity will drop due to distractions and interruptions. Others cite the difficulty of setting up the technological infrastructure to ensure work flows smoothly. Studies, fortunately, have found that working from home tends to boost productivity when you get rid of the office watercooler chat and additional breaks in work. On the tech side of things, faster and more accessible internet connectivity has done away with most of these concerns.

The biggest challenge that you need to deal with has to do with remote work communications. Because your employees are going to be scattered far afield, it’s more critical that your communication efforts be clear, comprehensive, and adaptive. For one thing, you need to ensure that colleagues know how to work remotely. Owl Labs has found that 38% of employees and 15% of managers don’t get adequate training in preparation for remote work. This can be everything from the systems required to log in, to ensuring work outside the office is done in a safe and secure way.

Remote work by the numbers

That being said, the numbers certainly back the idea that it’s a growing trend that can’t be ignored. For example, a study done by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics has found that—between 2005 and 2017—the number of companies offering remote work has jumped by a staggering 159%. In the United States, 3.4% of the working population of around 165 million people are actively remotely working. Looking at the way the trend is going, those numbers are likely to increase exponentially over the next few years.

Digging deeper, the State of Remote Work 2019 pushed out by Buffer reveals the biggest benefits as seen from an employee’s perspective. 40% cite the flexibility in schedule, which affords them time to spend on activities that matter to them that would otherwise be set aside for the sake of commuting or a rigid work schedule. These include time with their family, catching up with friends and loved ones, and even walking the dog.

Now it isn’t just employees that are better off, studies have shown that employers benefit as well. For example, a 25% lower turnover rate was noted in companies that allowed remote work—supported by findings that 76% of employees are more likely to stay if their employer offered remote work options. The State of Telecommuting study found that employers save upwards of USD 44 billion with remote work setups. Part of that is due to a 24% boost in productivity and overall satisfaction in employees that remote work at least once a month.

To enjoy all those benefits, however, you really need to leverage effective remote work communications.

Effective Remote Work Communications: Five Crucial Elements

Get the Right Channel Mix

One key foundation of remote work communications is technology. The communication options we have available today to connect and collaborate are myriad, but there’s a need to choose the right mix. Now, the “right” channel mix depends entirely on the specific needs of your company. There are, however, several basic needs that need to be taken into consideration. Chat and collaborations apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack and even Workplace from Facebook are the most commonly used and are effective for quick communications among teams.

You also need to have a channel for video conferencing, global broadcasts and even virtual face-to-face conversations. Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Workplace from Facebook are most effective here and even allow screen sharing and virtual whiteboards should it be needed. Cloud sharing and collaboration platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive and Modern SharePoint are also essential for all your company’s documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other files. These allow for the organization and posting of content that is larger in size than email allows.

While not absolutely essential, it helps to have a company social network set up to allow for the posting of company updates, event promotions, media sharing, and other content that doesn’t fall under the remit of other channels. This is where intranets also come in. What these channels offer is a means to build up your company culture, boost morale, and engender a feeling of unity and belongingness across the vast distances.

Create a Clear Remote Work Communications Plan

If there’s one thing that the combination of the COVID-19 outbreak and the current uptick in remote work setups will teach us, it’s that planning is absolutely critical. Unlike in an office setting, you can’t just peek your head out of your office to announce something that’s really important. You’re talking about employees that are miles apart who might be on different time schedules. Others might be focused on their work and unable to review their company chats and social media.

If you want (and you should) angle your remote work communications towards educating them on key policies, driving attendance to online or offline events, or any other key activity, it’s important to plan things ahead of time. Having an effective cloud-based online planning tool like ICPlan allows you to not just create specific plans covering specific functions and audiences, it allows you to lay it out on a calendar to ensure that communications are effectively spread out and not overwhelming to a particular audience.

The collaborative nature of tools like ICPlan also makes it easy to get your team involved in your planning efforts online. This is important if you want to adopt a remote work model that is more or less full-time. Effective planning will allow you to cover the most pertinent needs of your employees when it comes to remote work communications as evenly as possible. With built-in analytics tools, you can also monitor the effectiveness of your efforts.

Be Proactive in Your Remote Work Communications

One of the biggest challenges in remote work is the feeling of disconnectedness. Because employees will often focus on the work that needs to be done, and because they’re physically distant from their co-workers, it’s easy for them to feel isolated and emotionally distant from their workmates. That’s why remote work communications need to be more proactive and vibrant in nature. Given the limitations, it’s important for communicators to get creative.

Several key initiatives include checkups among teams at the start and end of the workweek. It’s an effective way to track the status of work, giving everyone the opportunity share their experiences. While these should ideally not run for too long, sufficient time should be given for employees to open up, have a laugh, and interact with their colleagues. This is the perfect venue for sharing company updates. An additional mid-week check also works well.

Other companies even incorporate online video chat activities just to break the seriousness of work. Game nights with online games are popular options, as are online “happy hours” where employees can let loose, bond, and enjoy themselves. These can serve as good forums to place a greater emphasis on CEO and leadership communications. Their visibility in these types of setup will enhance remote work communications significantly while helping reinforce company values and culture.

Open Lines of Communication and Get Feedback

Two-way communication is always valuable in any company, but it becomes even more critical when you’re talking about a work from home setup. If before it was relatively easy enough for an employee to approach managers and human resources with any grievances, problems, or even suggestions, for employees that work remotely, those avenues might seem distant or even closed off. When this happens, you can have your employees sharing amongst themselves—never “letting you in” when it comes to crucial temp checks for employees.

The first thing you need to do is set up avenues for feedback. While email might seem appealing, you’re better off with channels that allow you to respond just as quickly. Slack, Skype, Messenger, and any number of chat apps allow you to create dedicated, private channels that you can use for feedback. When your employees see that their feedback is being read and—more importantly—responded to, it starts to build a culture of feedback that will help you improve your remote work engagement.

That’s the second thing that you need to do, actually: create a culture where your employees will feel that their feedback is valuable. This is especially critical if you want to find out what’s working and what isn’t with your remote work setup. The way to get this done is to respond to their feedback in a real and tangible way. Veer away from the positively scripted corporate-speak and talk to them like people—be honest and realistic in your responses.

Track Engagement Religiously

Companies that don’t take heed of the engagement on their remote work communications efforts can be surprised down the line when things collapse around them. With everyone so distant, it’s harder to see the tangible effects any of your communications has on your employees and their work. It’s easier to become complacent when everyone is so far apart. The problem with this is that issues that might be otherwise easier to address have room to balloon out of control.

When it comes to remote work communications, engagement surveys take on a new level of usefulness. These should be specifically and purposefully tailored to track the effectiveness of a particular campaign in terms of the metrics that are considered most important: comprehension, productivity, satisfaction, and similar. In remote work setups where it’s easy for employees to delay all but their work for the sake of time, it’s a good idea to take time for these surveys to be answered and submitted as quickly and easily as possible for colleagues.

It’s a good idea to also schedule one-on-ones with your employees to get their thoughts and opinions straight from the source. One benefit of the remote work setup is that anonymity is all but assured—no one else is going to know you’re talking to your employees. Emphasize this, put them at ease, listen—this way you will encourage them to open up. This, in turn, will help you spot problems and identify their causes so you can act upon them.

Good Comms is Always a Good Idea

The simple fact is that remote work is fast becoming the new norm in the workplace landscape. That’s why businesses need to pay more attention to doing what is necessary to keep things flowing smoothly in the brave new world. With the right mindsets when it comes to crafting your remote work communication plans, you can be sure that you’re ready to effectively communicate and engage your employee’s no matter how far-flung they might be.

The post Remote Work Communications: An Essential Guide appeared first on ICPlan.

The State of Wellbeing Internal Communications

The idea of wellbeing in the workplace is something that has risen in prominence in recent years. Many companies have implemented programs under the work-life balance banner. Some offer subsidised gym memberships or even have gyms in their building, others offer yoga classes—all focused on helping employees be fit and healthy.

What is often left in the backburner is mental health. In fact, a report by the PRCA found that over 57% of comms professionals are hesitant when it comes to mental health issues when crafting wellbeing internal communication plans and communications. It’s a troubling statistic when you consider a study by Bustle revealed that one out of every four Americans suffers from anxiety at work.

The Situation Today

While COVID-19 is a disease that affects physical health, the crisis surrounding it has uncovered a whole spate of mental health issues. Many are affected by what is being called the trauma response that COVID-19 has brought out. That is not even considering those who have pre-existing conditions. Apart from deep feelings of depression and anxiety, many have started to report what is essentially a trauma response that can be likened to PTSD, more commonly associated with wars or natural catastrophes.

A lot of this is due to the rapid shift that people have had to make in order to comply with government-mandated lockdowns and home quarantine measures. The isolation, need to be distant from other people, and inability to go beyond the confines of one’s home has been taking its toll. Many companies scrambled to set themselves up remotely, and now – many weeks and months into the crisis – some are now starting to roll out initiatives meant to address the mental health needs of their employees.

Cisco has been leading the way in this regard with a lot of its wellbeing internal communications efforts starting to recognise the mental health issues that COVID-19 is causing. Thus far, much of their work has revolved around improving the quality of the work from home experience—which can be anxiety-inducing given the variances in reliability when it comes to home connections, family situations and even available technologies.

Wellbeing Internal Communications and the Role of Human Resources

There used to be a clear distinction when it came to who led on employee mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Human Resource departments would design and implement the programs and initiatives, and comms would handle the internal communications.

With many now thrust in a remote setting, HR is now one step removed from employees. With the deeper experience and expertise of the technologies that enable communication and collaboration remotely, HR practitioners now – more than ever – need to work closely with comms to be effective.

The Challenges of Crisis and Wellbeing Internal Communications Response

It isn’t just the physical distance that’s a problem. Equally difficult is the lack of precedent given the scale and scope of the global reaction to the COVID-19 threat. All of the policies that previously supported a strong human resources culture within a company are being turned on its head. While most employees can apply for leave, receive benefits and support with a now-fully online system, how will they be able to effectively operate in the new world we are entering? This is why companies like Salesforce are launching new services to help companies safely open their doors and reinvent their day-to-day operational models as the workplace continues to react to the spread and containment of coronavirus.

Policies and Procedures Need Reimagining and Communicating

It isn’t just a lack of accessibility to physical forms and locations that is the problem. In fact, it’s merely a signal that policies need to change at a fundamental level—and the associated procedures along with it. For one thing, HR practitioners now need to take advantage of online collaboration platforms like Microsoft SharePoint for things like contact tracing that they may need to implement as a result of their company’s crisis response plan.

This is also where internal communications efforts around wellbeing come in. It is a given that everything affected employees receive needs to be comprehensive and clear in terms of directions. This should be transmitted across as many channels as required to ensure all employees the communication is targeted towards actually receive it.

Internal Communications Channels for Wellbeing

Assessment of viable channels is already a critical component of effective communication planning. When it comes to wellbeing internal communications, it takes on a whole new level of importance. The first consideration you must make is in regard to understanding the accessibility of channels for your employees.

While you should have a primary channel of communication that’s feature-packed to cover collaboration, conferencing, and rich communication, it’s also equally critical to have a lower tech backup just in case. An example of this is how some companies have gone back to SMS notifications for truly critical comms from particular key departments like HR.

Identify Key Issues Requiring Wellbeing Internal Communications

The World Economic Forum has rightly tagged the current COVID-19 crisis as ‘the world’s biggest psychological experiment’. Although this has mainly manifested in often humorous social media posts as the weeks of isolation set in, there are deeper issues that need to be uncovered. Anxiety and depression are two of the biggest mental health concerns here. The symptoms of those two conditions are heavily exacerbated by the necessary strictures of global lockdowns.

On top of that, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have also identified several stress responses that employees potentially face. These include difficulty in sleeping or focusing, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, excessive worrying, and even insecurity when it comes to work and life. Knowing which ones effect your people over time is key to coming up with an effective, coordinated response.

In the 1990s, France led the way in providing for accessible psychological care in crisis situations by fielding the Cellule d’Urgence Médico-Psychologique (CUMPS) to provide counselling in high-stress situations. This is something that many companies should consider setting up on a smaller scale. Such a team within a company can then send out regular pulse surveys through wellbeing internal communications channels to get a gauge of specific conditions afflicting workers. 

Consider a Mental Health Response Plan

There are several things that a company can do to aid their employees during the course of the COVID-19 crisis when it comes to mental health. Perhaps one of the simplest is to provide guidance on the direction and measures the company is taking. As much as possible colleagues are looking for companies to be honest and upfront about what is being discussed and decided at a company level.

Another equally effective measure is to provide counselling—or at least connections to reputable counsellors—that your employees can actively reach out to. This can then be complemented by regular ‘check-ups’ via your comms channels. Some companies planning for the return to work post COVID-19 are restructuring work schedules to allow for more mental health breaks to avoid burnout. Whatever the response plan is, wellbeing internal communications will play a key factor in its effectiveness within the enterprise.

Carefully Plan and Execute Wellbeing Internal Communications

This is where comms really comes into its own. Provided a well designed HR plan, the responsibility next falls on IC to come up with the strategy of how to effectively communicate the plan. A platform like ICPlan is extremely useful in this regard because it is specifically built to do just that. The calendar is central to ICPlan and allows you to carefully plot out wellbeing internal communications with heatmap functionality giving you insights into what days you may have too many communications going to a particular audience.

It’s always important to make sure you are not over-communicating and helping give people the ability to absorb information in a useful and meaningful way.

Ensure you have regular check ins with human resources scheduled to ensure that you are both on the same page. More than ever, it’s equally important to track readership and understanding. Given how important mental health considerations are in the current crisis, it also helps to cycle out the same information—including any updates—as the weeks progress.

A Duty of Care

There isn’t one thing that makes for a perfect wellbeing internal communications plan—or a crisis response plan for that matter. There are many factors to consider that include how both your business and each individual employee is affected. What can be considered ‘best’ are those responses that come from a place of empathy and duty of care.

When it comes to internal communications for wellbeing, this is complemented by a clear plan for informing and ensuring that the communications are understood and actioned. With the remote set up many companies are having to implement, it’s critical that departments work more closely together for the common good given their specific remits and relevant expertise.

The post Wellbeing Internal Communications: The Vital Connection between HR and Employees appeared first on ICPlan.