How do we stay engaged during WFH and increase our eNPS score?
Research conducted by the Question & Retain UK in May 2020 shows that 66% of WFH employees aged 25 or under are suffering one or more signs of mental illness. Employees have revealed that one of the most pressing issues relating to Work From Home is a disconnect from colleagues.
The pandemic hit us at the end of February 2020. Our company, Tokopedia decided to prioritize the health of employees by issuing the Work From Home regulation even before the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) were implemented by the local government.
At that time, I was still on my maternity leave and felt so relieved, as I could focus on my newborn and I didn’t have to go back to the office. But as an extrovert, this Work From Home makes me feel isolated. One of the ways I recharge myself is by meeting people. I always look forward to having lunch with my team or attending employee engagement events where my team and I are actually the people behind the scene.
The Honeymoon & Frustration Phase
Just like the four phases of culture shock theory (or I called it WFH shock), we entered the Honeymoon phase where everyone was excited about work from home. It had been our wish to be able to work without getting up early in the morning to take a bath and face the regular traffic jam on our way to the office. Everyone seemed to enjoy the Work From Home until Tokopedia announced that the Work From Home period extended and the number of COVID-19 cases increased.
Many Nakama (that is what we call employees in Tokopedia) started to feel worried, demotivated, and burned-out. This was a sign that we were entering the Frustration Phase. My team also had issues with the employee engagement activities which had been planned, as most of them were to be held offline. Some of the events were canceled or postponed until Work From Office was reinstated, which in turn impacted our eNPS score to drop by 7% in Q2 2020.
To maintain our engagement with Nakama, we signed up for some webinars, read articles, researches, and other supporting materials. Then, it dawned on my team that we needed to change our mindset (hoping to execute our activities once we were working from the office) and forget our initial plan. We created a new plan which fully consists of online activities. We started to create a new plan based on feedback from Nakama, created a new budget, and did lots of trial-errors.
The Adjustment and Adaptation Stage
Conducting trials, receiving feedback, and then improving upon them helped us to get a better understanding of what worked best for Nakama, as we were responsible for take care of the Jakarta site, but also Semarang and Yogyakarta sites. Strong relations and constant communication with Nakawan (our team representative in each site) helped us to provide a more personalized engagement strategy for every site. In the end, we were very surprised with the result, and seeing that our eNPS score increased by 10% on Q3 2020 which showed that we were on The Adjustment Phase.
We reviewed the engagement plan every month as part of our #MakeItHappen and #MakeItBetter DNA. We used the top two box satisfaction survey to evaluate every activity and gathered verbal feedback from participants and non-participants.
By relying on those metrics, we increased our eNPS score by 8% in Q4 2020, which reached a higher level compared to our pre-pandemic days. Following that period, we entered The Adaptation Phase where we started to slowly accept the new reality and created New Normal Engagement Activities.
Your team should also be your priority
As a leader, when the whole team is busy planning and putting a smile on Nakama’s faces, it slipped my mind that it was also important to engage with my own team.
As behind a very fun and exciting event, there are always tense discussions and sleepless nights.
I encouraged my team to schedule 1-on-1 discussion with me at any time if they had a problem or just wanted to talk. I also proposed new rules for our bi-weekly meetings where once a month, someone will share the “Lo harus tau” or “You Have to Know” topic, decide the meeting theme along with the dress code. At the end of the meeting, we will have a simple quiz and choose the best dressed Nakama.
The Importance of Building a Culture
The other thing that I thought also helped us recover from this “WFH Shock” quite fast was the culture that we had built for the past 2 years. A video from Temkin Group about Customer-Centric Culture Change said that “Culture is so important because it frames what employees do when no one is looking”.
Tokopedia’s 3 DNAs (Focus on Consumer, Growth Mindset, Make It Happen, Make It Better) and Tokopedia Care’s FIRST values (Friendly, Proactive, Simple, Trusted) have been instilled in each of Nakama. Thanks to our DNAs that guide our behavior and decision-making, we were able to remain on track and turn this challenge into an opportunity to accelerate achieving our goals.
