This is for you if you’re a business leader looking at bringing your people back to work in an office…

Recently, I’ve read several reports on research that shows a drop in employee engagement over the past twelve months. It’s not really surprising that employees who have been working at home for over a year feel less connected and less involved and perhaps care a bit less about the organisation than they did when they reported for work in an office five days a week.

Their only contact with colleagues may have been at pre-arranged video meetings and the challenges of lockdown life may have made them less inclined to chat anyway. With informal and social interaction lacking, what is there to engage with except the screen of your laptop?

Of course, a lot depends on how they have been treated in the time they have been working at home. One of my contacts told me that his company had given every employee who was required to work at home a – quite generous – sum of money with which to equip their home office: a decent desk, comfortable chair and whatever else was needed. They had provided a further sum for ‘wellness activities’. So that even though my contact had joined the company during the pandemic and hadn’t yet met anyone in person, he was already feeling that his employer cared and that his wellbeing was important.

I’ve had conversations with hundreds of people during the periods of lockdown and none of my other contacts reported this level of care from their employers.

Now, most of my contacts are senior people. Their contribution is valuable and at a time when everyone is making up everything as they go along, looking after the brains is important. One would think.

If the leaders of a business are not looking after their own wellbeing in a time of crisis, what can we conclude about the level of care for their people? Not much, I think. Some leaders care a lot about their people and neglect their own wellbeing. Some think ‘all that stuff’ is for softies and that everyone should just ‘keep calm and carry on’. What have you been thinking?

I have written elsewhere (links below) about the SCARF model and the importance of keeping your brain – and the brains of those around you – in Reward mode as opposed to Threat mode. In our current situation Threat mode can be triggered easily. Here are some common current triggers:

• Not knowing what is going on
• Not knowing what’s going to happen next
• Feeling you’re not important
• Fear of catching COVID-19
• Fear of your loved ones catching COVID-19
• Fear of losing your job
• Feeling unsafe around other people
• Being unable to do what you want to do
• Isolation and loneliness

In Threat mode, the brain finds it hard to see the bigger picture, can’t see others’ points of view and doesn’t retain information easily. Anyone in Threat mode is also going to feel a generalised pessimism. Not conducive to engagement with anyone or anything – including their employer. This, of course, is why you may not have heard anyone saying how much they’re struggling with working at home. In Threat mode, they can’t see any point in telling you because you probably won’t listen/care/do anything about it. And you might hold it against them. Safer to keep quiet.

A leader whose brain is in Threat mode will find it hard to provide good leadership (which can be summed up as keeping others’ brains in Reward mode).

Therefore, I think I’m justified in assuming that in many cases, the quality of leadership behaviour over the past 14-15 months has been poorer than before. There are exceptions, of course, but as a general trend, it would seem that most employees have had less meaningful contact with their boss and peers. Which accounts for a drop in engagement.

In light of that, when you announce that it’s time for everyone to return to the office, what kind of reaction do you expect? Enthusiasm? Apathy? Hostility? No idea?

If you have no idea, it’s time to get to work finding out. Find a way to get yourself in Reward mode and then invoke Dianne’s First Rule of Engagement:

If you want people to be engaged you have to engage with them

People may engage with the company through corporate PR, internal communications and the general popular perception of the organisation and its products. However, when an individual becomes disengaged, these messages cannot be changed to suit the needs of one individual.

If you, as a line manager want your people to be more engaged, you have to engage with them. No excuses.

In this context, here’s what that might mean:

• One-to-one conversations with each member of your team to find out how they feel about returning to the office. How they really feel – not what they think you want to hear.
• Being flexible about how many days per week each person spends in the office.
• Ensuring that your people have the opportunity to interact socially and informally.
• Re-visiting the policies on working hours. If some of your people have discovered during lockdown that they enjoy eating dinner as a family, make it possible for them to carry on doing it.
• Making it safe for people to discuss the changes and easy for them to change their opinions as the situation changes.

We’ve never done this before, so no-one has all the answers. What works on the initial return to the office might become obsolete after a few weeks or months. People may have learned things about themselves in lockdown that have shifted their attitudes irrevocably. Some may have fears and doubts that will dissipate as the world gradually resumes former activities. Some have lost loved ones and their lives will never be the same again.

Your job as a leader at this critical time is to listen. It’s to pay attention. It’s to engage with your people.

Your job has probably never been as important as it is right now. And if leadership is largely about ensuring your people have their brains in Reward mode, here are some easy ways to achieve that:

• Ask how they are – and listen to the answer
• Ask their opinion – and listen some more
• Tell them what you know about plans for the future
• Answer questions
• Give good quality feedback on their work and tell them why you appreciate them
• Make your people your priority, nothing is more important than they are
• Invite feedback – and listen to it
• Recognise that engagement is an individual issue

Every person in your organisation or team has their own reasons for being there. Their individual values guide their choice of job, their choice of employer and their choice of how much to engage with the company, the people and the wider opportunities of belonging to an organisation.

What engages one person will leave another cold. What disappoints one person will be ignored by another. What rewards one person will be irrelevant to another.

The person most likely to be able to make a difference to a person’s level of engagement is their line manager. The line manager is the person most likely to have some knowledge of what engages an individual. To know why they do the work they do. Why they work for this organisation and not a different one. To know what will keep them interested even in difficult times.

Like I said, if you’re a leader in business your job has probably never been as important as it is right now.

To read other articles I’ve written about the SCARF Model, here are the links:
The SCARF Model
Why leaders need to work in teams
The rules of engagement

I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. My older sister says she taught me to read as soon as she learned, which would mean I was not yet three years old when the mysteries of the written word began to be revealed to me.

Whether or not that’s true – and you and I know that early memories are far from reliable – I do remember reading aloud fluently to the teacher in my first week at school, and wondering at the others around me who stumbled and mumbled and made no sense of the words on the page.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a compulsive reader.

I read everything. Books, newspapers, junk mail, the back of the cereal packet, billboards, road signs, public notices, planning notices and menus. Very little passes under my eyes without being read.

And novels. Everything from Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy through JRR Tolkein and George RR Martin to Bernard Cornwell, Iris Murdoch and Margaret Attwood.

For me, there isn’t much that beats the pleasure of a good book. I love to lose myself completely in a story. As a child, I used to read under the bedcovers at night. As a student, I would reward myself for ploughing through academic papers and text books by stealing an hour to read fiction.

An unhealthy obsession? A waste of time? A distraction?

Actually, I think not. (Well, I wouldn’t be writing about it if I thought it was a problem, would I?)

A large part of the learning we do as human beings is learning to live in social groups. We live in interdependent societies and unless, as individuals, we are able to cope with other people we are at a disadvantage.

Stories are part of the fabric of human history. Every culture and civilisation has its myths, legends and stories of everyday folk. These metaphors of everyday life teach us about others and – less obviously – about ourselves.

In NLP the power of metaphor has been demonstrated over and over again. A great story slides under psychological defences and engages directly with the deeper levels of the mind. What seems to the conscious awareness to be ‘just a story’ is taken much more personally at the below conscious levels.

Metaphor delivers subtle learning and intuitive insight. Reading offers a glimpse into the world of the writer – not just in the invention of the story, but in the use of words. Every writer puts together the language in their own unique style, giving the reader a privileged insight into the workings of the writer’s mind.

This is my justification – if I needed  one – for a lifetime of reading fiction and a dining room full of books:

Reading a novel gives the reader an alternative view of life. However divorced from current reality the story may appear to be, it speaks to our essential nature and leads the reader to explore new possibilities and different perceptions. It fills out our understanding of what it means to be human.

So, what have you been reading during lockdown?