Lose the office, keep the culture: 5 trends that will shape your employee experience in 2021

If there’s one thing we learned in 2020, it’s that predicting the year ahead in February is risky business! No doubt this year will bring its fair share of surprises too, but we’re willing to put our chips on a few trends leaders are going to need to be mindful of. Not because our crystal ball is any clearer than yours, but mostly because we’ve been on the road to these shifts for some years now. 2020 didn’t reinvent these things, it pressed fast-forward on them.

1. Promises over perks: Swapping out snacks for sincerity

This trend has been a long time in the making. What’s been getting clearer for a while is now unavoidably obvious: people may come for the perks, but they won’t stay for them. Facebook’s median tenure fell to 2.3 years in 2020, despite offering a cornucopia of goodies from mega salaries to dieticians, childcare and even dry-cleaning. We also know that 9 out of 10 millennials would take pay cut for work with purpose. And that employees who feel a sense of belonging are 5.3x more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work than employees at workplaces that do not focus on inclusion. Now that most companies can’t offer up the snazzy office with free breakfast, the reason for coming and staying has to live in meaningful work, and evidenced promises around growth, inclusion, flexibility and connection.

Leaders need to ask what promises they are making about what it means to work here.

2. Extra-flex: WFH is a conversation about freedom, not just flexibility

Flexible working was a welcome perk. Then last year it became a necessity. This year it’s become a promise that helps set a foundation for how we create more inclusive workplaces where everyone can thrive. What’s clear is that most people don’t want what they had: only 9% of employees said they want to work in an office all the time. Employers are seeing the upside: 53% of people say that their productivity is better working from home. Yet working from home is taking its toll — chiefly due to boundaries vanishing and mental health needs being neglected.

The challenge for leaders is that this discussion is evolving from over-time/flexi-time/WFH perks into a more holistic look at how people work best and what freedoms, responsibilities and supports need to be extended to help them do that. The pioneers are jumping in, like Spotify, who recently launched their ‘work from anywhere’ policy, which doesn’t compromise on pay or promise wherever you choose to be. Others will be more trepidatious, like Facebook who are letting “experienced” staff work from home - if their manager allows it (and docking their pay if that home is somewhere less expensive than Menlo Park). You can almost taste the reluctance.

Getting this right requires more than a rework of your HR systems. It’s a reimagination of how people are trusted to create and receive value. George Penn, VP Gartner puts it well: “Companies that track time-spend, activity-logs and face-time as productivity metrics must shift their focus to outcome metrics that reflect high-performing organizations.”

Leaders need to start thinking seriously about how they enable and empower their people to manage their own time and responsibilities.

3. EX got personal: Responding to every employee’s unique experience

Flexibility and freedom won’t hack it on their own. Mostly because they mean very different things to different people. 2020 shone an overdue spotlight onto diversity, equity and inclusion. The pandemic surfaced conversations around equity at all levels of our society and leaders have been called to examine the structures and practices of their org design — including the kind of physical and mental conditions working from home inflicts on different people. Whether you have a space to work in, how many kids you’re also home-schooling, how your inner extrovert is coping with isolation…and so on. Without the unifying facade an office creates, never have companies revealed themselves so much as a collection of individuals with individual needs — and never has seeing the employee as a whole person been so essential.

Leaders are recognizing that a single ‘EX’ is never going to work again. How are you listening to what your people need now?

4. Welcome abroad: Establishing cultural connection

As the pandemic continues, all companies have been faced with the challenge of hiring and onboarding new staff virtually. While 97% of people in a survey of remote work were open to virtual onboarding, only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.

Those new employees need to quickly understand the culture — or in simpler terms, “how we do things around here”. Despite that, 58% of organizations say their onboarding process focuses on “processes and paperwork”. At the other end of the spectrum companies have been (over)compensating by drowning newbies in mailed-over swag. How many branded hoodies does it take to feel part of the team? The real shift here will be making virtual onboarding a lived experience of the company’s values and culture, not just a series of lessons about it.

Leaders know onboarding is critical to setting a valued new team member up for success. How does yours reinforce real connection?

5. Don’t force the fun: Helping social rituals surface

Virtual life started out exciting. But the novelty experiences of dining, playing and hanging out online soon gave way to a deep fatigue with living life through a zoom window. As workforces dispersed last year, the challenge of maintaining social relationships and rituals that underpin culture got more and more real. The general reaction was ‘move the office online’. But Friday drinks in your bedroom with the cat isn’t quite the same experience.

This year leaders will do two things. First: stop forcing the fun, and instead help their people find ways to surface it for themselves. Encouraging pods and employee resource groups to create their own rituals based around shared interests will drive engagement more than a Zoom disco. And second: realize that what most remote staff need is not simply fun, but also recognition and support. As David Graham, CEO of Code Ninjas points out: “When we couldn’t share a meal or be around each other, we found ways to build that camaraderie, by playing virtual games together, made a point to recognize great work, and made sure we were checking in on one another. Maintaining and growing our culture during this time allowed our employees to not get burned out and stay productive.”

Leaders need to encourage their teams to look critically at their cultural rituals and choose which to revise, and which to retire.

Wherever you might find yourself in relation to these trends, this year is going to be about redesign for most leaders looking at their employee experience. If want some inspiration for your journey, or better yet some practical guidance, have a read of our free eBook: Emerging Stronger. We’ve assumed the change is happening, and focused on practical steps and frameworks you can put into practice right away to get started.

And if you want to deep dive into the trends some more, or find out how we can help you chart your path through them, please give us a call.