23 October 2020 - How we have adapted to change during the crisis

Since late March 2020, we in the UK have been learning to live with a new normal. Our lives, along with everyone else's in the world, had to adapt rather dramatically to a different set of social, economic, environmental and political rules. 

For those in business, sweeping changes had to be implemented almost overnight to accommodate these new rules. Suddenly, those who could were asked to work from home so to avoid using any public transport or risk infecting other colleagues with the virus. For many, the action to work from home also lead to other aspects being affected too, and for the positive.

Companies quickly reviewed and adapted their existing processes so that a remote workforce could continue to be productive. What was once considered a 'must-do' step was conceded. Digital work arounds were embraced. Departments were given tools to collaborate and from that came a 'can do' attitude from employees to make do with what they had, and with a dose of patience and compassion, continued to get the job done with best endeavours.

Taking a step back quite early on into the lockdown period of the pandemic, businesses saw that the most affected elements from the rapid change were the employees physical location, their processes, the systems used and most significantly, their employees mindset attitudes and beliefs.

Early on, most people felt that this change was only temporary. It was almost seen as a fun experiment. It was also fortunate that the weather was good too.

What businesses hadn't fully appreciated from the change was the need to focus on specifically tools for home working, how some job roles were particularly impacted from the change and what was possible to action and where. On a deeper scale, it was also the critical behaviours that employees and leadership needed to embrace and how everyone's mindset was being affected.

Unexpected features from businesses were the elements that working from home could be, in the main, successful. Businesses opened up to the notion of failing fast, allowing departments to experiment with ideas to maintain their productivity but allowing to shift fast if things didn't quite go as desired.

Looking longer term, while most businesses now have a practice in place for their workforce to be productive within a home environment there still needs to be ongoing attention given to people's mental health.  People were getting overwhelmed by the amount of communications and information - screen burn. They also recognise there are some who miss the office, their commute with the ability to disconnect from work but most importantly the physical presence of other people and meaningful human connections.

There are some who have enjoyed the ability to work from home. It has given them the option to spend less time commuting and more quality time with their families. There are many who would like to see a permanent change to their routine where they can have more flexibility in the work environment, with a mix of home/office working on offer.

The pandemic has challenged all our existing lifestyle traits and we are experimenting with 'new normals'.

As Change Makers in business the actions we can take to help people navigate to their new normal is to show empathy, to maintain regular and concise communication, show consistency with behaviours and share gratitude. 

Leaders should be building their vision of the future, defining their new normal and using this crisis as an opportunity to create better ways to change to better engage with their customers and maintain a happy and healthy workforce. Now is the time to be proactive.

Blog inspired by a Prosci Adkar webinar.