Boosting Morale Amid Budget Cuts (6 Resilience Strategies)
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Ali Khan
Co-founder
Work is changing. Take the hybrid work revolution, which came about due to employees' desire for a better work-life balance. A Future Form Pulse survey reveals that almost 50% of companies have implemented hybrid work models because of this. Another change is the rapid digital transformation of work. Many businesses use the cloud to store data and artificial intelligence to automate tasks, increasing productivity and efficiency.
Whether you want your employees to adjust to hybrid work, learn to use digital tools, or something else, you must take calculated actions to implement these changes effectively. After all, you’re making big changes involving your entire workforce. With that said, here are some tips for successful workforce transformation.
Implementing company changes requires a leader to ensure that goals are met. This is even more crucial for workforce transformation since it involves every employee. As such, you must put HR in the driver’s seat. Over 55% of organizations successful at workforce transformation have one thing in common: they ensure that HR plays a major role in changes in the employee base. As this department is in charge of employees in the first place, it best understands the most suitable practices to implement.
Your company's HR professionals can effectively communicate workforce transformation plans to employees and explain how they may impact their roles. They will also help company leaders devise effective practices for successful workforce transformation, such as holding employee training sessions. As such, deferring to HR on significant workforce transformation strategies is a must.
You may want to implement changes across your workforce immediately. Yet if you hurriedly impose new practices on your whole employee base, you may face several problems. For instance, if an approach is less effective than you thought it would be, all workers will suffer negative consequences. Instead, it's best to start with a small testing group first. Transforming your business by encouraging experimentation allows you to observe your strategies in a controlled environment and study their effects.
To start, gather a small group of willing employees—around 5-10% of your workforce—and have your HR professionals observe how your potential workforce transformation efforts affect them. For example, if your transformation involves digital skills training, they can check the group's proficiency in said skills after a certain period of time to determine how effective your educational strategies are.
After the testing process, gather feedback from the employees in your test group. However, employees are likely to become anxious about getting reprimanded if their feedback can be traced back to them. That's why it's best to collect anonymous feedback.
Our anonymous feedback bot ‘Wrenly’ makes it easier to collect said thoughts. It automatically connects to the work messaging app Slack and turns messages anonymous, so neither fellow employees nor you will know who sent the feedback. This setup's convenience, simplicity, and effectiveness can encourage employees to give honest and constructive comments.
Your feedback will help you and your HR department make the necessary changes to your existing strategies. From here, you can implement them on a larger scale. However, your work doesn't stop there. You need to measure your success to determine the success of workforce transformation.
To do so, see if a strategy meets your goals. Say your objective is to upskill your employees and improve business agility. To measure success, see if your upskilling efforts improve business outcomes after a certain period of time. For example, sales teams can check if their sales increase by a certain percentage within a quarter. Measuring success ensures that your hard work won't go to waste.
Successful workforce transformation can be challenging. With these tips, you can successfully pull it off in your own enterprise.
