As a business leader, are you wondering how to lead, grow, and change with the times? If so, give a listen to this Transform Your Workplace podcast episode which features Lilith Christiansen, Senior Vice President of SilkRoad Technology. Host Brandon Laws and his guest reflect on the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on unsuspecting businesses concerning strategy, growth, and transformation. More importantly, the two dive deep into the learning potential inherent in such a significant workplace shift. It’s all in the name of growth, and sometimes the only way to grow is to challenge your status quo.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Lilith Christiansen is the Chief Strategy and Product Officer of SilkRoad Technology and an industry expert, author, and speaker. With an extensive background in talent strategy and business management, Lilith is passionate about helping her clients realize their potential, implement relevant strategies, and grow their businesses.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, Sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
TOP TAKEAWAY FROM THIS EPISODE
“I think it’s safe to say that a majority of organizations were absolutely not ready for the pandemic.”
In a recently published whitepaper entitled, “How can organizations adopt new business models and support employees?,” SilkRoad Technology explored not only the disruption that the global pandemic caused but also the ways that business leaders could learn from and adapt to the new normal.
Looking back a year or two, there was significant buzz around an anticipated digital transformation that would change business as we knew it. Lilith added, “At that time, we all believed AI and other changes in technology would drive that workforce change.” However, come March 2020, it was the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic that was the catalyst for that transformation. Organizations that “had ‘continuity of operations’ plans in place — those driven by natural disasters — were the ones that fared a bit better and were able to respond quickly because they had already identified the right processes to have in place,” Lilith explained.
Organizations without those emergency plans had to “figure it out” as they went along. Either way, the pandemic certainly shone a light on areas that needed improvement, and smart leaders will address these areas for the betterment of their businesses and their employees.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Learning from the past
“From the survey, we saw that a majority of those participating really didn’t feel like their organizations did a great job of responding to, or they at least wished they had done more to support, their employees. When we look at where we are now, I’d say, it’s not too late to improve that. Now, leaders have an opportunity to take a step back and figure out, what can we do better now? How can we continue to enhance the employee experience and what’s needed in terms of tools and resources to enable organizations to thrive?”
Adapting in a snap
“Organizations really did have to recognize how to support their people. Everybody needs to be safe. We have to send them home because that’s the right thing to do. And I think when organizations started with that, then they could look to technologies in other programs that could help enable a more successful work-from-home transition. […] Most people expected change to come, but it came at a pace that was not predicted. It’s like five years’ worth of transformation happened in five months.”
Opportunity for improvement
“Businesses are looking for ways to enhance communication, to be better going forward, even coming down to things like more regularly scheduled one-on-one conversations between a manager and their employees. I think we used to rely on walking by someone’s desk or bumping into someone at the water cooler or in the lunchroom. And that just simply went away overnight.”
“So I think the most successful organizations were ones that helped to replace those organic connections with more formal ones. So is it the ‘funnest thing’ to plan a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting every single week? No, but doing that really helped the more successful organizations to begin to thrive more quickly because they were formalizing these communication opportunities that used to happen on their own.”
New responsibilities
“That was another element that came out in the survey was the number of people that took on new responsibilities. Over the course of the pandemic, I think it was 83% took on some type of new responsibility. So it was 80% of executives and 63% of workers who took on new roles or responsibilities. And when you think about the number of those who were probably first-time managers, there was a big opportunity to train them and help them understand what’s the best way to provide feedback.”
Support for your people
“We did find, in the survey, that 25% of the folks who participated both at the leadership level and the worker level had little to no support or training whatsoever. And about another quarter were able to find some resources themselves, whether online training or things like that, to help them in their role. But that really shows you what an opportunity there still is to improve that. And one of the things that we saw was that over 50% of the folks didn’t get enough training. They said they still had unanswered questions about their role and struggled to make personal relationships with their new coworkers.”
Remote onboarding
“When you think about onboarding someone into a new role, whether it’s a brand new job, new company, or even just a new role within the same company, you have to […] help them understand the strategy. You want to provide career support for them, help them get networked, connect them with other stakeholders in the organization, and provide training. It’s never too late, I think, to come back in and provide that kind of support now. And if organizations are ready to move towards hybrid work models, then all the better to start paying attention to this now.”
Measuring productivity
“We did see in our survey that employees and leaders both felt like productivity was up. And because of that, leaders are willing to entertain more remote work once we move into a post-pandemic world. So I think that’s a real positive to come out of this, that it really did help to overcome some of those biases that managers had where they thought they had to see someone in order to know that they were productive.”
LEARN MORE
For more information about the topics discussed in this podcast, go to silkroadtechnology.com. There you can read about their onboarding solutions, check out their blog full of helpful info for business leaders, or connect directly with Lilith.