As organisations within our community plan for future operations, some common issues have emerged. 2020 has been a hugely challenging year for all our clients and 2021 is shaping up similarly. But prospects are opening up and organisational focus and where to invest leadership and management energy is what they are all thinking about.
Using our insights from our work with our community we have identified here some key questions which you might find useful in refreshing your people strategy and action plans.
1. Do you need to continue to support the mental health and wellbeing of your people as you ramp up your work in 2021? Is there an unmet training need? Do people have easy access to MH&WB resources? Do you need to review practice with your Mental Heath First Aiders if you have them? Are you making the best use of any resources tailored to your industry?
2. How do you know how your people are feeling? Are they anxious about the future? Are your people managers checking in regularly with their team members? Is this yielding useful feedback or should you consider a pulse survey?
3. In regard to leadership and management capabilities do you need to increase your emphasis on resilience – something the importance of which the pandemic has highlighted for everyone?
4. Do you need to refresh your team communications and your messaging regarding business ambition, objectives and current priorities? Do you share this sort of information well? Do your people understand your rationale for the current direction of travel?
Is there more you can share with your people regarding your future work which will help build confidence if that’s needed? Do you need to refresh stakeholder comms?
5. Are there opportunities to involve the team in strategic and business planning in 2021? Are there work winning roles people could take on to help build the pipeline? Do they need training/mentoring/shadowing to support this?
6. Do you need to bring your people managers together to reflect on what the organisation has learnt over the last year?
Have your organisational values helped you over the last year? What has hindered you? How can you put this learning to best use? Could you engage people from across your teams in a lessons learned?
7. Can you make a step change on performance management in 2021 – maybe adopt some common SMART objectives around which team effort can be built as a way of giving everyone a sense of momentum if that’s needed?
8. Have you made progress in clarifying your approach to remote/flexible working? Do you need a hybrid approach – one which can offer some flexibility for those staff who can work remotely whilst at the same time expecting a commitment to coming together regularly to support team working and interaction with colleagues? Do people managers need guidelines and briefing to ensure a consistent approach?
9. Does your approach to reward need a refresh? Are there cost effective opportunities to extend benefits?
10. Do you need to increase recognition of effort and achievement? Celebrate milestones? Does this need a strong leadership presence? Could your people managers be better at informal, day to day recognition?
