When talking about New Work, often the effects of digitization, the need for new tools and skill sets, as well as the increasing demand for more flexibility are discussed. At least as important are aspects like purpose, organizational structures and collaboration. Together with leaders from different industries we have discussed insights and put together 5 tips you can get inspired by as a leader to fully embrace New Work.
What is so new about New Work? While New Work has been around for some time now, the situation has intensified in the eye of labour shortage. Shortage of skilled professionals leads to changes in the power balance between employee and employer.
While some years back, employers had a pool of many fitting applications they could choose top candidates from, it is now the employees that are the ones to decide between various job offers.
This leads to changed expectations on employee’s side, which organizations are increasingly confronted with, on the one hand. In order to be successful as an organization you can have an advantage in gaining and retaining top talent once New Work is fully understood and embodied in your ways of working.
On the other hand, this also leads to changes in how teams work together and the expectations towards a leader’s role. With increasing decentralization and agile, remote working it becomes more and more important to adapt your leadership style to the new circumstances.
So, what can you do as a leader to fully embrace new work with your team?
While there are some common mistakes leaders can make, we give you some tips you can get inspired.
1. Provide your employees with the right tools & skills
New Leadership is about enablement. Motivate your people to stay up to date with new tools, upskill themselves and fulfil their potential.
Digitization brought a whole new set of required skills to us. And while (basic) digital know-how is a must in many positions nowadays, soft skills like communication, self-management, conceptional thinking, etc. have become more and more important. While some employees might already bring a lot to the table, constant change requires continuous learning and to do so, a lot of self-motivation.
Make the hurdle for learning and development as low as possible. Support self-directed and social learning (next to “formal” ways of learning) by ensuring employees have easy access to the information they need and to what is relevant for them.
2. Nurture a culture of trust
Trust is key to an organization’s success!
Only if there is mutual trust on an individual level (I am trusted by colleagues and managers and I trust my colleagues and managers), a trust-based culture within whole teams, divisions and departments can be achieved.
And this becomes even more trivial for collaboration with greater asynchrony (e.g different working days, flexible working hours, work from anywhere, …). While there are many tools to facilitate communication and collaboration, we have to remember that flexibility means different things for different people and requires a lot of self-management.
Given you trust your people and your people trust you and each other, this generally leads to more respect and understanding for individual obligations and situations and better self-management and -organization within the team. Giving you as a leader more resources to focus and helping your employees to unlock their full potential.
3. Encourage an active feedback culture
Change needs an open communication and feedback culture with(in) your team(s). Be in consistent dialogue with the team, ask and listen to what is working and what needs to be improved.
Encourage an open feedback culture, where people feel they can share their thoughts and give inputs. Maybe this is in form of a dedicated, recurring meeting, a channel (i.e. Teams, Slack) or a one to one feedback – talk about it as a team and find what works best for you. Also, discuss how to properly give, receive, and accept feedback.
Keep in mind: Everyone is different and has individual needs and preferences. And not everyone equally acclimates to change. Sudden increase in flexibility and freedom can lead to some people wishing for more guidance. Let them know they are not left alone, and you will continue to support them as well as the team will support each other.
4. Mistakes can happen
Mistakes can happen. Learn from them and take the best out of it!
Leaders must create a trust-based environment where mistakes are allowed to be made. Rather than blaming and punishing somebody when a mistake happens, it is important that it can be talked about what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent this mistake to happen again.
5. Practice what you preach
As a leader you are responsible for voicing and transporting values and purpose, making sure everyone knows the Why; the north star.
Make sure you are not stuck in “old” patterns, asking for check-ins at the beginning of the day and check-outs at the end of the day. Instead, embrace trust, maybe work remote from time to time, be a role model and encourage your people to be the best version of themselves.
Often, one leader’s mindset of trust alone does not suffice if employees do not trust each other and for example question working hours when a colleague is working from home. By acting as a role model, your employees can become the best ambassadors for transporting your organization’s values and purpose.
Incorporate these tips to create a of work environment, where employees are more motivated, more committed, and autonomous. When given trust, employees are generally also taking on more responsibility for their work and feeling more invested in it. This has a positive impact on employee retention and leads to more employee engagement.
Changing the ways of working takes time and consistency, the right mindset, feedback loops, motivation and first and foremost: trust!
Do you know if your organization has a trust-based workplace culture? And are you sure that this applies to all employees? An employee survey helps you make the culture measurable and tangible. With the results, you can then derive evidence-based effective measures.
New Work requires New Leadership
On December 1st, we discussed aspects of New Work and New Leadership together with leaders from a wide range of industries, arching from health care, to productions, aviation, entertainment, finance, etc.
It was interesting to see how every industry is affected differently and in different ways. And in the end we found a common conclusion that with the right mindset, trust and a clear Why it is possible to fully embrace New Work everywhere and create a Great Place To Work For All!
We are proud to be able to provide a platform where people can learn from each other and actively promote this exchange.
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