Building agility through workforce engagement in a post-pandemic world

Heads of businesses everywhere have taken notice of the positive impact of work-from-home. An employer survey conducted by PwC found that 72 per cent of remote workers want to continue working remotely at least two days a week post-pandemic. This comes close on the heels of many large technology companies, such as Twitter and Google providing their workers with the option to permanently work remotely. Given the move to a more distributed workforce, businesses need to proactively prepare themselves from a technological and cultural standpoint in order to accommodate greater remote working flexibility and ensure optimal workforce productivity.

Embed a “video first” policy into your culture

Over the past year, communications and collaborations tools have proven essential in keeping remote workers engaged and connected. More specifically, video conferencing has become a “must have” tool to drive workforce engagement. At Fuze, our cloud communications and collaboration software platform enabled us to experience this benefit first-hand. In fact, we saw a 596% increase in video meetings usage across the Fuze Platform in the weeks following the initial outbreak of COVID-19.

Prior to the pandemic, video conferencing was typically reserved for full-time remote employees. However, at Fuze, we have always embraced a “video first” policy for all employees. One of the reasons we adopted this policy is due to our proven and time - honoured “work from anywhere” culture, which provides Fuze employees with the flexibility to work from wherever they are the most productive. I recently had the pleasure of recruiting and onboarding a new hire for my team who lives in another country. We have never met in-person and I still don’t know when we will get the chance to do some. Yet, thanks to our frequent video 1:1 meetings, we are able to feel like we actually know each other.

At Fuze, we’ve witnessed a dramatic increase in employee engagement during video meetings. In fact, our workplace communications and collaboration report found that video meeting attendees stayed connected for 87% of the meeting when a visual element like a screen share was used. Without a visual element, attendees only remained connected and engaged for three quarters of the meeting.

Although numerous companies have incorporated video meetings since the start of the pandemic, it’s important that they maintain a “video first” policy post-pandemic. Since it’s expected that a growing number of businesses will follow in the footsteps of Twitter and Google and embrace a hybrid working model – where a portion of employees work from the office and others work remotely – video conferencing will prove to become even more essential in post-

pandemic work environments. Video conferencing is quickly becoming an indispensable tool to ensure that remote workers not only get the same collaborative experience as in-person workers, but that they feel connected to the larger company culture. That said, video conferencing fatigue can and does happen. To help remote workers avoid it, it’s important that business leaders remind their remote staff of when video conferencing isn’t necessary, such as in large group meetings, webinars, or when they are just a passive attendee.

Keep the inclusivity and empathy momentum going

One of the key benefits of the rapid shift to remote work was that it made business leaders and workers more empathetic towards each other. Whether an employee was working remotely for the very first time or they were a remote work veteran who required flexible working hours to accommodate family requirements during the pandemic, businesses were forced to become more flexible with a greater understanding of their workers’ schedules. This collective sense of empathy was reinforced by the fact that everyone – managers and non-management workers – were in it together.

The inclusivity and empathy borne from the change in work environments provided a valuable experience for business leaders and managers, one that they should continue displaying even after the threat of COVID-19 subsides. One way to keep the momentum is by being more inclusive to remote workers at every interactive moment during the workday. The team I manage at Fuze is distributed across multiple continents and time zones, so I’ve always prioritised thinking about the remote experience. To keep meetings engaged and efficient, I challenge my team to prioritise asynchronous communications first to protect quality time for video meetings. Async work is a key to reduce meeting fatigue and streamline access to shared knowledge. Some meetings can be replaced by proper documentation, well-written emails, or messages; keep meetings for what can't be done better another way such as performance reviews, discussions on strategy, interviews, 1-1s, etc.

One outcome of the pandemic is that business leaders have realised that flexibility makes workers more productive, boosts morale, and ultimately improves talent retention. While COVID-19 made business leaders more accepting of remote work and gave them insight into its many benefits, it is now up to them to keep the culture of empathy and inclusivity alive.