What should IT leaders consider when trying to increase retention of their remote workforce?
Director Business Technology in Software, 10,001+ employees
One thing that will be different about remote/hybrid working in the future is that hopefully we won’t be in a pandemic. Right now we speak about remote working as if we'll never see each other in person. But the truth is that's not 100% true, even if you are a remote employee. I plan on meeting my team periodically. It will be interesting to have these conversations in a year when things are back to normal or almost back to normal.SVP in Finance (non-banking), 1,001 - 5,000 employees
There's no right or wrong answer here. I go back to the principle of treating everyone like a fully formed adult. I’ve built a culture where that is our North Star. If you leverage that, all the other noise works itself out eventually as long as you have the right leadership and the right people driving those cultural values. Remote working has been around—we’ve already had people working in different geographies, it's not a new concept. It's publicized a lot more now, but it's been working. People will find new ways to do it better over time, but it's here to stay.Advisor | Investor | Former CIO in Services (non-Government), Self-employed
There are two important things to consider. One is, recognize where an individual is along their career journey. And the second thing is, recognize that we're not all extroverts and we're not all introverts. We're all unique in our own special way and we as leaders need to recognize that at the individual level.It’s the nature of human behavior: we'll always have extroverts, introverts and in-betweeners. The introverts are loving it right now but for the extroverts, it's taking a toll. There's an individual that I was talking to recently who's had a very tough time dealing with this emotionally because she's an extrovert by nature. Being told to hole up has been hard.
Senior Executive Advisor in Software, 10,001+ employees
As an Executive Advisor at VMware, I partner with their customers and the executives on their business transformation journey. One of the things that I emphasize is to focus more on the culture, people and processes first rather than the technology. Because we tend to think that technology is cooler and easier to work with but that doesn't really give us transformation.I'm all about empathic leadership and try to bring empathy to every aspect of what we do. I'm excited that we as humans are now evolving into something very different—a different stage of maturity as a species. Especially with technology augmenting all of this, I'm happy that empathic leadership is something that we're starting to really consider as a core tenant of our enterprises. And we're trying to look at the workforce as humans—individual humans that really have to work together, and who need us to take care of them.
Director of IT in Construction, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
2 techniques have worked great for us so far and helped keeping retention extremely high through the pandemic :Weekly huddles : all team member gathers virtually every week for a 30 minutes chat. As IT Director, I lead it by announcing any important news related to the team or the business, but we leave plenty of room for peer recognition, personal news and unplanned subjects that anyone can bring. The goal is to strengthen the bonds between members and help making everyone feel like they are part of a small family.
Wellbeing surveys : every 2 months, a non-anonymous 10 question survey is sent to the entire team and assesses their happiness and professional situation. It is extremely useful to myself and the leadership team since it allows us to improve and correct an employee's situation before it is too late. Answer rate is usually around 80%.
A lot of other factors have played into our retention success, like a culture of openness and trust, but I believe these 2 tools have helped significantly.
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Community User in Software, 11 - 50 employees
organized a virtual escape room via https://www.puzzlebreak.us/ - even though his team lost it was a fun subtitue for just a "virtual happy hour"
Founder, Self-employed
Work travel is a privilege. Embracing your experience to meet new people, and see the beauty of nature and culture wherever you go.