Recapping 2021 & Gearing up for 2022
Recapping 2021 and Gearing up for 2022: an HR Perspective
As we move into a new year, it’s a great time to reflect back on 2021 and take our learnings and experiences with us into 2022. For many of us, 2021 was the year that we began to rebuild and also learned to work sustainably amidst a global pandemic.
For starters, we are still living through the “Great Resignation”. 2021 gave employees the chance to rethink and reprioritize their lives, including the balance of work and life. According to a Gallup poll conducted during the year, 48% of the American working population is actively searching for a new job and open to new opportunities. This has left companies with a record high number of unfilled positions across industries and job categories. Interestingly, according to the survey, it’s not an industry, role or pay issue … it’s a workplace issue. Many employees are not engaged, which in turn, will affect new hires coming onto a disengaged team as well. New hires who come onto a team who is not engaged will be more likely to leave the organization shortly after joining … at a huge cost to the company. More than ever, we need to look at the leadership skills of our managers to motivate, coach, and engage their teams. They need to set clear expectations at work and provide opportunities to learn and grow.
The wellbeing of employees, or what is being referred to as the “Wellbeing-Engagement Paradox”, has also surfaced as a top concern for companies. Companies have found that their teams suffered from burnout and struggled with mental health issues this past year. When employee’s wellbeing suffers, so does your bottom line … employees whose wellbeing is thriving, have higher performance levels and companies see lower rates of burnout and turnover. Studies have shown that stress and worry has been worse for remote workers than on-site workers during the pandemic. And with 40-60% of the US workforce having moved to a remote environment since 2020, companies need to contemplate whether offering remote work is sustainable. They also need to rethink how remote work has affected the productivity of their teams. Supporting the wellbeing of our teams is a concern that will definitely follow us into 2022.
And, with so many organizations moving to a remote work environment, maintaining company culture and employee interaction had also surfaced as a challenge. We know that company culture plays a significant role in bonding current employees and leaders, and in attracting potential new employees. Many of us had to reimagine routines and systems that were previously established in the office so that they work for both employees in the office as well as those working remotely. We relied on our leaders to keep the company culture at the forefront for our employees and to continue to model and reinforce behaviors and values to employees (which is easier to do when physically together and harder to do remotely.) Research shows that not having face-to-face interactions creates a gap in meaningful connections, so leaders became creative in order to provide on-going touch points, reached out to employees more often, and created collaborative activities. For those of us who will remain remote in 2022, company culture will continue as a focus.
And, let’s not forget how we had to reimage our work structures and have/will now ask employees to return to the workplace. Many employees are not comfortable coming back into an office environment, and companies need to consider how to bring their employees back safely (having established procedures, quarantine guidelines, sick leave programs), amidst ever changing federal and state guidelines (which are frequently in conflict with each other). If companies choose a hybrid strategy, how do you determine who will stay remote and who needs to come back on-site, and how do you entice people to come back on-site? Many employees had just adjusted to switching to a remote environment, where they needed to homeschool kids, or care for parents while working, or slept and worked in the same room. How do you get them to readjust again, coming back into the office?
So, let’s look proudly at the resilience, the creativity, and the bravery that we found in 2021, and know that, while in 2022 we will still be facing some of the same challenges from the past year (and will surely come across new ones such as new OSHA and state regulations), we bring with us into the new year skills and experience that will allow us to thrive.
Wishing you all a wonderful New Year!
Sheri & Corey