What are you doing to connect with employees remotely?

Culture & ValuesTalent Management & PerformanceEmployee Engagement
826 views5 Comments
Director of IT in Software, 201 - 500 employees
You can’t be very effective as a leader if you don't treat everybody with respect and understand that people can have bad days. Sometimes you need to just stop and ask employees how they are doing in their personal life. Your conversations shouldn’t always be about asking them, "Have you done project A, B and C?" Take five minutes to have a one-on-one chat on a personal level. In remote work, I hear a lot of people saying, "I miss the office. I like the flexibility of working from home but I miss the social aspects, like going to make a coffee and chatting around the coffee machine.” That part is still missing.
1 Reply
Global CIO & CISO in Manufacturing, 201 - 500 employees

It's true, we’re missing the small talk. Before we could just ask, "What show did you watch?" and we could see somebody's stress or hear it in their voice and maybe help them afterwards. We could tell our lead, "By the way, I just heard from so and so. You might want to check in with them." That whole dynamic is lost.

Global CIO & CISO in Manufacturing, 201 - 500 employees
In the last few years people have come to this realization that they actually need to care about the people that work for them. It’s so important but I've been in positions where it felt forced. They’d ask me how I was doing but it just felt like a script.

I make an investment in every team I have and I take a lot of pride in that. I invest my time in understanding where people are coming from. I can't ask somebody to come in on a weekend if they have to take care of their mother or they're going for a procedure. I have to understand what's going on.

I'm still surprised by the lack of genuineness in some leaders. When they’re checking in with someone they’ll say, "How's everything going? Okay, great." Or they’ll have a structured approach like, "How's everything going, everything on track, etc.?" They treat it like a scrum, so they're done in six minutes and there wasn't a real personable piece in that interaction at all. 
CIO in Education, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
It’s hard to check in with employees in a way that’s as casual as small talk in the office. As leaders, when we send somebody a direct message that says, "How are you doing?" the response we often get is, "Is everything okay?" That’s the first thing that comes to your direct report’s mind at that moment: "Did I break something?" Whereas, if I ran into that person at a coffee machine in the office, I could ask the same thing and it would get a different reaction. When I ask that question over Slack, it's as if I'm asking for a status update.
1 Reply
Senior Executive Advisor in Software, 10,001+ employees

I miss gemba walks, where I could manage by walking around those that I used to have in the office. It personalizes you. Employees see you as a person rather than just a role within the organization, and that is very different.

When a boss or a leader checks in with people remotely, they immediately think that they have done something wrong. But in some organizations, that’s a sign that there is not much psychological safety. They don’t think their boss is reaching out to them to have an open conversation. While there are some apps you can use to randomly meet other people for conversation, like Hallway and Donut on Slack, there is still a bit of trepidation for the other person, especially if they are an individual contributor. That will be a hard problem to solve.

Content you might like

If you are a current SAP customer, when do you plan to migrate to SAP S/4HANA?

People & LeadershipStrategy & ArchitectureCloud+73 more

No plans on undergoing a migration yet34%

Currently deploying SAP S/4HANA27%

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA within the next 1-2 years19%

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA within the next 3-6 years10%

Already have SAP S/4HANA in production9%


3998 PARTICIPANTS
31.5k views154 Upvotes32 Comments

Does your org do anything to actively recruit neurodivergent talent?

Talent Management & PerformanceEmployee EngagementCulture & Values

Yes30%

It’s being considered40%

No24%

Don't know5%


177 PARTICIPANTS
1.7k views

Any guidance for an org that’s growing its software engineering team to a distributed, global model? What mistakes are commonly made that should be avoided?

EngineeringTeam & Organizational DesignTalent Management & Performance
31 views

How do you encourage a culture of experimentation and learning within your technical teams?

Culture & ValuesInnovation
634 views1 Comment

What strategies have you found effective for bridging the gap between technical teams and the executive leadership?

Relationship ManagementTalent Management & Performance
569 views1 Comment