Amaury Houdard, Chief Talent Officer of Euronext shares with us the tips and recommendations from a #remoteworking and #care brainstorming with all employees
Chapter 2 : Delivering together and preparing for tomorrow…
This week we had a virtual lunch discussion around #remoteworking best practices, with HR Leaders across various industries. I was impressed by the quantity and quality of initiatives launched to offer managers and employees concrete support during this very particular period of confinement. Even if we are all going through tough times, this creates positive signals for tomorrow. I’ve listed some of these initiatives (without indicating which company), don’t hesitate to comment with additional ideas!
- Collaborative staff support across departments. Every Monday, an email is sent to senior managers to collect resource needs from overwhelmed departments, and a call for internal volunteers is also sent to all staff. This approach can be applied to companies providing medical equipment or critical goods, in need for more support in their warehouses. But it also applies to all of us: we all have busy teams who can benefit from the help of colleagues in other departments with time available.
- Colleagues helping parents. One of our colleagues launched a very simple excel file, with a list of parents needing help to support their kids on a school subject, and a list of employees with specific skills/interest/knowledge ready to support their colleagues’ kids. Depending on your company culture, this can be a very nice employee-driven initiative!
- Caring for colleagues. Each manager has set-up weekly and daily calls in order to make sure each colleague is connected and not isolated. Each team defines its own routine: morning yoga or meditation sessions, virtual lunch, or just a chat session to replace the coffee machine! And of course, many companies have checked their healthcare benefits to provide online medical consultations and psychological support when needed for all employees.
- Training and collaborating digitally. This period is an incredible opportunity to launch a new era for collaboration online within and across departments with higher adoption of collaboration tools. Last week @Euronext we hosted a series of virtual collaboration workshops for all locations ; close to 50% of our staff were connected, contributing and learning together. Once your collaboration tool is chosen, a daily tip sent to employees is also a good way to support adoption!
- Preparing for tomorrow. Even if we all are struggling with short term actions, reserving 10% of our time for planning for the future will help ensure we are ready to rebound. A small brainstorming with how client needs will change, and how to adapt our own operations and ways of working will help engage and prepare everyone for the return. Available tools online make it possible to organise brainstormings with managers and employees, including virtual break-out rooms to be more efficient!
- Volunteering. Even if some employees are struggling, overwhelmed with new tasks, some others may have more time and be willing to help the community. In each country there are volunteering initiatives, such as the Reserve Civique in France, NLvoorelkaar in the Netherlands, Volunteer.ie in Ireland, SNS in Portugal or NHS volunteers in the UK. Some companies let their employees devote up to 1 day per week to initiatives helping others in the current period, work permitting.
These examples from companies across various industries show that the current period is challenging but also opening new #caremanagement practices and a sense of #solidarity within each company.
Thank you Amaury and all Euronext teams for sharing this experience!