Actualizing Feedback from your team and clients

The past year has been a turbulent ride for most organizations. As a company, the shift to Work from Home was seamless. Our initial approach was focused on the technology we already leveraged that allowed us to shift to WFH without much thought. We continued to make adjustments, used new technology when it made sense and implemented policies to address the evolving work environment.

During that time, we made considerable efforts to stay connected with our team. That was done through weekly all-company Zooms, ranging from just saying “Hey” to invited speakers. We had Zoom Happy Hours and socially distanced outdoor events when possible. It was all focused on finding the balance between our culture and the impact of the pandemic.

Over the last few months, as vaccines have rolled out and glimpses of normalcy were in view, our focus began shifting to what the long-term normal would be. How do we retain our culture, the efficiencies we learned through the WFH period, and what was established as best practices all along? While we long settled on shifting to a hybrid structure — we still needed to figure out what was best for us and what other changes required to get there.

Finding answers to those questions meant focused attention on listening to our team. We spent time talking with our teams about their experiences over the last year and even before WFH. We did this in focus group formats, all staff meetings, one-on-one, and even surveys. On our minds throughout the process was that we are doing this for and without staff. They are spending a considerable portion of their lives with us, and as part of our company — we need to dive into what will make them most productive and happy during their work.

As we approach our return to the office and a new hybrid schedule, we have implemented several new policies built around that feedback. While that was a milestone in our books, we realized that the process was not over. Even with that feedback, we quickly realized that we needed adjustments after some of the policies were put in place and applied to real-world conditions. Just because we had sought input from our team during the drafting of the policies did not mean we got it right. We also had a chance to hear directly from our client partners on the impact on them.

Having that feedback or even the trust of our staff and clients to share open and honest feedback was essential. It gave us a chance to make adjustments and improve the policies we had put in place. That showed our team and clients our focus on doing the right thing and making positive adjustments. Those adjustments made a real difference to our team’s work-life balance and reinforced our desire to find collaborative solutions to common problems.

Hearing the feedback from our team about our willingness to continue listening and adjusting to policies that impact them was remarkable. To me, it showed that we are doing something right in the middle of what has been such a turbulent period.