'It seems that there is still very much an appetite to return to normal'
The outlook of executives and frontline employees seem to be headed in different directions, and that’s leading to increased stress, according to research from the Future Forum.
Leaders are reporting 40 per cent more work-related stress and work-life balance is 20 per cent worse for executives versus the same time last year.
But for non-executive workers — who work both remotely and in a hybrid fashion — their overall experience scores are getting better: 52 per cent said the corporate culture has improved and the onset of flexible work policies was cited as the top reason for this, finds the survey of 10,766 workers in the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan and U.K. in August by Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack, with founding partners Boston Consulting Group, MillerKnoll and MLT.
Returning to normal?
“Given the challenges that executives have faced, the job of being a leader has changed over the past couple of years [and] what it takes to be a successful leader has really changed,” says Brian Elliott, executive leader at Future Forum and senior vice-president at Slack in San Francisco.
“That’s already creating some degree of stress on executives and the compound on top of that [are] the economic headwinds that everybody’s talking about, which means that executives themselves are under tremendous pressure.”
Many are advocating for a return to the workplace but aren’t consulting frontline employees.
“In fact, 60 per cent of executives tell us that they continue to design their company’s policies with little to no direct input from employees and that’s a real challenge,” says Elliott. “Because what we’re also seeing at the same time is that in order to succeed in this kind of challenging environment, the answer isn’t to go backwards, it’s actually to redesign our way forward.”
These conversations around reverting to the old pre-pandemic ways are putting pressure on HR, according to another senior people leader.
“The number-one question right now that we’re [seeing] as a small community is: ‘How are you as an HR leader addressing the requirements that C-suite executives might be putting on you… to push a mandate to return to office?’” says Andrea Bartlett, director of people operations at Humi in Toronto.
“It seems that there is still very much an appetite to return to normal.”
But bringing back workers the office full time might be counterproductive as hybrid and remote employees report a four-per-cent increase in productivity — and for those workers who have complete flexibility, the productivity has risen by 29 per cent.
“What we’re seeing in our survey results more strongly than ever before are things like the benefits that flexibility brings, not just to people’s work-life balance but actually to their productivity,” says Elliott.
Tension rising
Also a consideration? The mental health of workers. Forty per cent of respondents reported they are exhausted, finds Future Forum.
“Burnout is up eight per cent quarter on quarter — that’s phenomenal,” says Elliott, adding that 43 per cent of frontline managers are burned out.
“That’s higher than individual contributors. It’s higher than execs, it’s higher than senior managers.”
And the answer is not to make plans without consulting them, he says.
“If your workforce is burned out, you need to get in and listen and understand why because telling them to work harder, or to get back in the office, is not going to result in better outcomes.”
These results are genuine, says Bartlett who is also seeing this trend.
“Frontline people managers, I find that that is where the burnout conversation is the most prevalent.”
To address that, it first starts with managers being aware that they have employees that are reaching the point of burnout, she says, “and then working internally with, whether it’s the people an HR department or you might have an internal coach that you may be working with — you need to proactively develop that plan for your team members.”
Having those ongoing conversations is the best way to keep this top of mind, according to Elliott.
“How as executives do we listen to our workforce? How do we engage with them directly to understand their challenges, their needs, and what they face? If you’re not thinking through that set of challenges as an executive team, then you’re going to miss the opportunity to really engage those people.”
What should HR do?
All of this falls largely on the HR team, who ideally want to shift the focus of their mandates, says Bartlett.
“More than ever, the role of HR is to make sure that they have a very clear understanding of their workforce, their employee demographics, their employee morale and engagement, and for them to be the catalyst for educating executives on how decisions and business decisions are going to impact the workforce.
“So really [it’s about] that more grassroots, bottom-up approach: being the spokesperson for employees, whereas historically HR has been very much the spokesperson for the executive team.”
But the work of change management should not only reside within the HR department, it’s a much bigger conversation, according to Elliott.
“It’s unfair to HR to cast it that way. It requires the involvement not just of HR functionally but of your CIO, your workplace team, your comms team. How do you engage your fellow executives in this conversation? Because the future of work and how we actually respond to it and come back is not an HR-only function.”
“The best thing that you can do as an HR leader is help bring information in to help them understand why this is critical, and to try to help people open their eyes to — especially for those that are thinking about going back — are there some other possibilities here at work?” he says.
