Tag Archive for: future of work

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Action Step – Maintaining Mentoring & Connection in a Hybrid Environment

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

Many organizations are reimagining their work environment after the pandemic, with flexible work at the heart of the discussion. A number of organizations are planning on instituting a hybrid work environment post-pandemic, based on positive productivity during the pandemic, employee feedback and desire to scale back real estate. A hybrid work environment involves employees working some of the time in the office and some of the time remotely. Organizations considering hybrid work models reap many benefits, but must make sure mentoring and connectivity are embedded in their culture and continuously fostered in order to thrive. To ensure that mentoring and connectivity are preserved within a hybrid workforce, organization should focus on these eight strategies:

 

  1. Training. Organizations should offer trainings on ways to develop mentoring relationships and maintain connections in a hybrid work environment. These skills are not always innate and organizations that provide such trainings will help foster these necessary relationships. Employee trainings should focus on effective ways to proactively build relationships, the need to be prepared and share specific goals, the importance of showing appreciation, and the benefits of developing relationships with many senior professionals. Supervisor trainings should cover the need to be receptive, ways to guide meetings/relationships with junior professionals, guidance on effectively helping with career development, and ways to be creative with mentoring in a hybrid environment.

Members: continue reading this Action Step in the Member Resource Center

 

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To learn more contact Manar Morales.

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Action Step – OVERCOME THE MYTH OF THE LOSS OF 5 Cs BY BUILDING THE RIGHT FLEX INFRASTRUCTURE

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

 

There is little doubt that flex is here to stay post-pandemic, given employees’ strong desire for it to continue, along with the business benefits of flex, including employee productivity/engagement, business continuity and retention/recruiting which became even more apparent during COVID-19. Our Pulse Poll: Future of Work shows that more than two-thirds of respondents plan on creating/updating their remote work policies post-pandemic.

Despite the fact that more organizations will be expanding flexible work, we have heard resistance to flex from a number of leaders through our conversations, insight interviews and focus groups with many organizations. Interestingly, the opposition to flex can be summed up as the fear of the loss of 5 Cs – loss of control, culture, collaboration, contribution and connection. While the loss of the 5 Cs can most certainly occur without proper flex infrastructure and support, organizations can prevent the loss of the 5Cs and also counter arguments against flex by building proper structures and processes. For flex to be successful, we need to gain leadership support, and we can win leaders over by pointing to infrastructure that prevents the loss of the 5 Cs.

Members: continue reading this Action Step in the Member Resource Center

 

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To learn more contact Manar Morales.

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Action Step – LEVERAGE ALLIANCE FLEX RECALIBRATED FRAMEWORK TO REVAMP POST-PANDEMIC FLEX POLICY

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

 

The pandemic has forever changed how we can work, want to work, and will work. At the forefront of this is workplace flexibility. The pandemic inadvertently highlighted many benefits of flex, including productivity boosts, improved satisfaction, and business continuity gains. Now is the time for each organization to think through what type of flex is needed and can successfully be implemented. Use the Alliance’s Flex Recalibrated Framework to revamp your flex policy and lean on us each step of the way:

  1. Reflect. The first step is to Reflect on what worked, what were the challenges and how to structure flex to most effectively drive advancement, retention, diversity, recruitment, profitability, productivity, engagement and innovation. Organizations need to do this to establish a compelling purpose for flex that is unique to your organization. What were some of your successes with flex during the pandemic? What were some of your challenges? What are some ways to mitigate these challenges going forward? How has flex helped talent development, profitability and productivity? Now is the time to collect data to see what worked, what didn’t and why. Conduct employee surveys, check-in interviews and focus groups to gather data in order to build your unique flex business case and establish/communicate a clear purpose for flex….

Members: continue reading this Action Step in the Member Resource Center

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To learn more contact Manar Morales.

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Manar Morales Featured on ASAE Stronger By Association Podcast

Episode Title: The Power of Workplace Flexibility

Don’t miss listening to this recent ASAE: Stronger by Association podcast featuring Alliance President & CEO Manar Morales and Charles Moore, Principal of Thrive Street Advisors.  Learn why Manar and Charles predict that we won’t return to work as we did pre-pandemic and hear how we’ll all need to adjust to new norms and adapt to people’s different situations/abilities to be part of the modern workforce in 2021.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

 

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Action Step – Recommendations for Revising Your Flexible Working Initiative Post-Pandemic

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

 

The pandemic has changed the perception of flexibility from “a nice to have” to a business imperative. Prior to March 2020, some organizational leaders did not buy into workplace flexibility. Fast forward to 2021 and the conversations around flex are very different. Rather than asking why we need flex, more leaders are now focusing on how we can make flex as effective as possible. Organizations across all industries must think strategically about workplace flexibility in order to reap recruiting, retention, and business productivity benefits. To help you reboot your workplace flexibility policy, the Alliance has the following recommendations:

  1. Reflect, Reassess & Reimagine. We urge all organizations to look back and carefully reflect on the past year. How has your mission, values, products/services and/or business operations changed? In what ways can flexibility help with these changes? What were the positive impacts of flexibility in terms of productivity, satisfaction/engagement and recruiting/retention? We recommend that organizations create a task force of diverse leaders on the future of work, and collect data on employee productivity/satisfaction now to understand what worked and what didn’t. This will help revamp your flex policy post-pandemic, implement it effectively and create necessary infrastructure support. See our action step, Paving the Way for Flexible Work After the Pandemic Now, for ideas on how to monitor/measure employee experiences.

Members: continue reading this Action Step in the Member Resource Center

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To learn more contact Manar Morales.

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Action Step – Future of Work: Post-Pandemic Flexible Work Policies

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

The pandemic has forever broadened the scope of flexible work. Many employees have learned to effectively work flexibly and/or remotely during the COVID-19 crisis and have experienced the benefits of flexible work. Organizational leaders are now considering how/what types of flexible work to offer after the pandemic. The Alliance has a number of recommendations for flexible work policies post-pandemic, so these initiatives can reap the greatest benefits in terms of work productivity, and recruitment/retention of top talent:

  1. Holistic Flexible Work – We strongly recommend implementing holistic flexible work policies, including reduced hours, telecommuting, flextime, compressed work week, asynchronous hours and job sharing options, as employees have individual flex needs. Additionally, by providing holistic flexible work options, employees who may not be able to utilize certain forms of flex due to their job function can still use other types of flex (i.e. a receptionist may not be able to telecommute due to his/her function but may be able to work reduced hours, flextime or compressed work week).

Members: continue reading this Action Step in the Member Resource Center

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To learn more contact Manar Morales.

Manar Morales Shares “What Needs to Come Next” in Flexible Work on Breadwinners Podcast

On February 11, Alliance President & CEO, Manar Morales shared her expert insights on the future of flexible working and lessons learned from the pandemic on the Breadwinners Podcast.  This interview is truly worth your time. You’ll be amazed how much you’ll learn about the future of work in just 26 minutes!

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about Flexible Work: What Needs to Come Next.

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Highlights from our Recent Pulse Poll: Future of Work

As a think tank dedicated to creating work environments centered on inclusion and innovative thought leadership, the Alliance is committed to providing our members with original research on trends and data focused on workplace flexibility, diversity and inclusion.

To this end, we launched two pulse polls during the pandemic to understand trends, successes and challenges related to workplace flexibility during the crisis. Our first poll, Pulse Poll: COVID-19 & Reentry, was released in July 2020 and remains available to our members. Our second poll, Pulse Poll: Future of Work, will be released soon and will provide our members with valuable trends regarding policies, practices and infrastructure organizations plan to offer to support workplace flexibility post-pandemic.

As a sneak peak to the soon-to-be released Pulse Poll: Future of Work, we found that organizations remain committed to making remote work available after the pandemic. Specifically, over 70% plan on creating/updating their remote work policies post-pandemic. Notably, every participant without a remote work policy currently in place plans to create one. Further, we also found that nearly two-thirds of participants plan to make their remote work policies more inclusive by including all employees.

These trends demonstrate the need for all organizations to revisit their flexible work policies post-pandemic and include all employees in these policies. Organizations who do create/update their flexible work policies will fall behind the curve in terms of workplace flexibility which will affect their talent recruitment and retention. Additionally, organizations who just choose to include certain employees in their flexible work policies will face retention/satisfaction issues with employees not offered flexible work, especially considering that many other organizations will be making their flexible work policies more inclusive. In order to include all employees and serve as many employee needs as possible, we strongly suggest adopting holistic flexible work policies (i.e. reduced hours/part-time; telecommuting; flexible start-end times; compressed work week; job sharing; sabbatical offerings) as opposed to just remote work policies. This way, organizations can offer flexibility to all employees, even those who need to be in the office due to their function.

For more information on our research initiatives, please contact Sejal Shah at sejal@dfalliance.com.

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Action Step – Incorporating the 4 Es As Part of the Future of Work

The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center. 

One long-lasting effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the future of work will be different. Organizations needed to adjust overnight and offer flexible work to all employees, and many saw employee productivity and satisfaction go up during this time. Organizational leaders are now thinking through how to continue offering flexible work post pandemic and create a successful flexible work environment. What additional skills, experiences, and resources do employees need? What types of flexible work should we consider?

Flexible work is clearly now a business need to retain and acquire top talent, as well as an important way to foster employee productivity and satisfaction. However, organizations need to be intentional in how they lay the groundwork for flexibility in order to reap the full benefits. We recommend your organization’s pandemic task force use our 4Es Discussion Framework to discuss building or revamping your flexible work initiatives post-pandemic.

Continue Reading in the Member Resource Center

To read this entire Action Step become a member of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance. To further discuss your flexible working initiative during and after the pandemic, contact Manar Morales.

Share Your Unique Insights & Opinions on the Future of Work

Please Take our 5-Minute Pulse Poll Today!

At the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance we author our own research and provide comprehensive advice and cutting-edge solutions based on facts, market trends, and data analytics. We know what works and what doesn’t because we’ve done the research and analyzed the trends and results.

We’re looking for unique insights and opinions on the future of work and how flexibility will be reimagined during and after the pandemic.  We invite you to participate in a quick 5 minute pulse poll regarding the future of work.
The poll addresses remote work policies, practices and strategies organizations are implementing and/or plan to implement after the pandemic. All participants will receive aggregated data, insights and trends (individual responses will be confidential).

 

Please complete this pulse poll by Friday, December 4th. We hope you will participate, as your participation will greatly help us gather robust data and uncover insights and trends.

Here is the link to the pulse poll:

5-Minute Pulse Poll – The Future of Work

Contact Sejal Shah at sejal@dfalliance.com for more information.