There Is No Going Back - Make Hybrid Work

Employees are saying “I am worth more”, “I deserve more”, “I can find more.” Priorities have fundamentally shifted.

Employers need to wake up to the fact that employee expectations have changed over the past two years. There is no going back. Employers must build a culture that embraces flexibility, leadership excellence, employee wellbeing, and recognise that if they don’t, they will get left behind.

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The Second Five. 10 Reasons Your Employees Are Leaving You and What To Do About It.

The top ten reasons employees are leaving based on research from McKinsey. The result of the research is based on top three rankings from respondents to the McKinsey survey who left a job between December 2020 and December 2021 without another job offer in hand. These are the employees who had just had enough.

This week I explore number 6 to 10.

This is my take on each of the reasons and what I believe you can do about it.

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The First Five. 10 Reasons Your Employees are Leaving and What to Do About It.

The top ten reasons employees are leaving based on research from McKinsey. The result of the research is based on top three rankings from respondents to the McKinsey survey who left a job between December 2020 and December 2021 without another job offer in hand. These are the employees who had just had enough.

This week I explore the top five. Note that compensation is nowhere to be seen so writing a big cheque will not resolve the problem.

This is my take on each of the reasons and what I believe you can do about it.

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The 5Rs - Conquer Your Hybrid Procrastination

This is potentially the greatest opportunity your organisation will be presented with within your lifetime. This is the chance to reflect, rethink, reimagine, and reinvent, but that must be led with a realisation that there is no going back to how it was before March 2020. The future of work is hybrid. Period.

I believe there is one key reason for the procrastination, and that is it the belief that it is just too hard. There is no doubt that moving to a hybrid operating model is complex with many implications and many stakeholders impacted by the change. But this is not a time for fear and uncertain to drive inaction unless you want your organisation to cease to be relevant. Conquer your procrastination by following the 5Rs.

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Future of Work Redesigned – Wellbeing

The events of 2020 and 2021 raised the stakes due to a greater awareness of the workplace factors that contribute to poor mental health. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to address the issue. Employers must connect what they say to what they do. It is time to get serious about employee mental health. Leaders of hybrid teams must be cognisant of the mental health and wellbeing of all of their team members as well as their own wellbeing.

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Future of Work Redesigned – Technology

When many workers had to work from home for the first time, there was a mad scramble to acquire and utilise technology that would allow everyone to continue to connect, communicate, and collaborate across various locations.

Organisations now need a secure, long-term solution, that can support any number of teams in any location, whilst providing a single source of truth from a unified platform. Leaders should be investing in technology that helps, not hinders. Leaders need to be technology-savvy and enable their hybrid team.

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Future of Work Redesigned – Empowerment

Bosses (note my deliberate avoidance of the term ‘leader’) who want to continue to believe that productivity can be measured by the hours someone sits at a desk and that the best ways to get results is through micromanagement, are on the verge of extinction.

Just like the dinosaurs who did not have the necessary characteristics to survive in a changed environment or adapt to a new one, these bosses will become extinct. The catastrophic event leading to their demise may not be an asteroid or climate change, but a change in the way we work – a hybrid operating model.

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Future of Work Redesigned – Leadership Part 2 - Competencies

Last week we looked at the leadership challenge and the response starting with defining ‘good leadership’ in your organisation. This positions you for hiring and promoting good leaders. I have classified the leadership capabilities into capacities and competencies.

We explored the seven capacities I believe good leaders possess. This week we will explore the seven competencies.

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Future of Work Redesigned - Leadership Part 1 - Capacities

In the third newsletter in the “Future of Work Redesigned” we are exploring the leadership point on the compass.

Most people become leaders in their mid-to late 20s, but most do not receive any formal training until their late 30s and early 40s. This is possibly two decades in which those in leadership roles within organisations have had little support, development, coaching, or training.

The situation is worsened when you think that this pattern has been repeated for generations upon generations of “leaders”, which means that the only role models these new “leaders” have had are the bad bosses that have gone before them. And so, the cycle perpetuates.

The challenge is to break this cycle and prepare leaders now for the future of work. Whatever skills leaders have today will not be enough to lead a highly performing hybrid team. As the saying goes what got you here, won’t get you there.

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Future of Work Redesigned - Strategy

The challenge is that there is a lack of strategy regarding the future of work in many organisations. There is no clear direction. Many leaders seem hesitant to take bold steps and are waiting for the dust to settle so they can see what a post-pandemic “normal” looks like. The issue is, we are nearly 2 years in from the onset of the pandemic with no clear idea of what a post-pandemic “normal” will look like and that cannot be a reason not to formulate a strategy.

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Future of Work Redesigned - Culture

There are six points on my Future of Work Redesigned compass. These are the six directions in which you must head if you are going to redesign the future of work in your organisation.

Without a good culture in the organisation, the benefits of hybrid working will not be realised. Culture is critical to company success and has direct impact on effectiveness, revenue growth, talent retention and attraction.

The future of work is hybrid. Period. This is an operating model that has employees working from an office and remotely that makes business sense. There are many variations of the model and no one-size-fits-all approach.

This will mean a reconstruction of the company culture. The culture must embrace employees working in many different locations. Whilst this could be one of the biggest opportunities afforded to leaders to reconstruct the company culture but could also be one of the biggest challenges.

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10 Inspirational Examples of Great Leadership. Part 2.

As we move into 2022, I thought a little inspiration might be called for. Over the years as I have written about leadership, I have uncovered some inspirational stories that depict leadership as it should be. Often, it emerges from the most surprising places and circumstances. Some of these names you will know and some you will not.

In this article I share the second five of 10 inspirational stories.

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10 Inspirational Examples of Great Leadership. Part 1.

As we move into 2022, I thought a little inspiration might be called for. Over the years as I have written about leadership, I have uncovered some inspirational stories that depict leadership as it should be. Often, it emerges from the most surprising places and circumstances. Some of these names you will know and some you will not.

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Karen FerrisComment
No Trust. No Future. Part 2.

Last week my article explored the impact of mistrust in the workplace and the damage the pandemic has done to leader and employee trust.

Failure to intentionally build and improve trust in the workplace will not only impact your organisations culture but you will actively sabotage your brand and reputation, productivity, motivation, engagement, and talent retention.

The choice is yours. Here are 10 actions you can start to take today.

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No Trust. No Future. Part 1.

Welcome to 2022. During 2021 I wrote and spoke about leadership, workforce resilience, and change.

Subtopics included leadership capability uplift to lead high performing hybrid teams, psychological safety, employee mental health and wellbeing, employee value proposition, empathetic leaders, employee empowerment and autonomy, equity and inclusion, employee attraction and retention, and organisations becoming more humanistic.

At the foundation of all these subjects and the bedrock on which they all reside is TRUST.

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Atlassian Team 2021

In 2021 I was honoured to be invited to speak at Atlassian Team 2021.

The recording of my 25 minute session entitled “The Future of Service Management - Realised With Resilience” is now available.

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My Top 5 Articles of 2021

As we start 2022, none the wiser of what it will look like as we did at the start of 2021, I thought I would take a look at the top 5 articles I wrote during last year which grabbed people’s attention.

I have listed the top 5 based on the number of reactions the articles received on Linkedin rather than the number of views. That is, I have counted the ones readers took the time out to like, celebrate, support, love, found insightful or made readers curious.

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Hybrid Leadership - Employee Mental Wellbeing

All leaders should have employee mental wellbeing as the priority. Not one of many priorities but the priority. Mind Share Partners say that in 2019 employers were just grasping the prevalence of the health challenges in the workplace. In 2020, mental health went from a nice-to-have to a true business imperative. In 2021, the stakes were raised even higher thanks to a greater awareness of the workplace factors that contribute to poor mental health. Unfortunately, employers have not done enough to address the issue. 2022 is the time to connect what they say to what they do.

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Hybrid Leaders - Effective Hybrid Meetings

As a leader of a hybrid team your ability to run effective hybrid meetings where some of your participants are physically co-located whilst others are remote will be paramount to employee engagement and team performance.

Truly effective hybrid meetings are not just the result of running a meeting where participants are distributed across many locations in the same way you did when everyone was physically present in the same room.

There is added complexity. When all the participants are in-person, or all of the participants are virtual, there is a level playing field. When there is a mix of both, the remote participants quickly become the second-class citizen unless the meeting facilitator knows how to run an effective hybrid meeting,

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