People Management Hacks for the Post-Pandemic Digital Age
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has been a massive challenge for business owners, managers, and employees alike, especially with the rapid transition to remote work. Fortunately, the business world was accustomed to different technology and digital solutions, which made the shift relatively easier.
Overnight, teams adopted cloud-based software for collaboration, storage, tasks, and projects. Similarly, thousands of businesses launched their business websites and optimized their social media accounts to ensure availability and continuity.
Moreover, restaurants adopted a delivery model to keep their kitchens open, whereas retail stores have digitally transformed their service with virtual assistants, social commerce, and mobile applications,
However, people management during the crisis has tested leaders like never before. From Zoom meetings to remote operations, customer service, and onboarding of new talent, many have failed to adjust according to the cultural shift. Consequently, there has been a lot of turbulence due to disengagement, a decline in team performance, employee dissatisfaction, and other issues.
Although things are rapidly getting back to normal, leaders still have their work cut out for them in the post-pandemic digital age, whether they’ve fully embraced remote work or opted for a hybrid model. Therefore, they need to build resilient and highly productive teams no matter the scale of operations or distance.
In this post, we’ll share six people management hacks team leaders, managers, c-level executives, and bosses can use to ensure business growth and stability.
The Need for Leadership and Management Transformation
Before we dive right into the people management hacks, let’s talk about how the business world has changed in the last five decades, not just since the pandemic. Since the ‘50s, management and leadership were about controlling employees through close supervision and corporate dictatorship.
The belief was that if employees were given any freedom or flexibility, they would be unable to maximize productivity. However, we’ve rapidly transitioned into the gig economy with devices that enable round-the-clock connectivity. Hence, the modern workforce, which typically comprises millennials and gen-Xers, is more empowered than their older counterparts.
The biggest example of this empowered attitude is the Great Resignation which saw millions of people exit the workforce voluntarily due to toxic cultures, poor leadership, job dissatisfaction, and poor work-life balance, among other reasons. Most people believe that this phenomenon started during the pandemic.
However, research suggests that most businesses were already dealing with great turnover rates due to the factors mentioned above. In the new age, employees want to decide when and how much they work. More importantly, they don’t want to be monitored 24/7 or micro-managed. They understand what they have to achieve their goals and meet their organization’s objectives.
6 People Management Hacks for Modern Leaders
In the post-pandemic digital age, leaders in every position within an organization need to accept the changes in the workforce and embrace new business technologies, practices, and management strategies to maximize productivity and operational efficiency. So, here are six people management hacks to help you achieve productivity and more:
1. Maximize Freedom to Improve Productivity Using Pareto’s 80/20 Rule
If you’re unaware, Pareto’s 80/20 Rule is a common principle used in business and economics. The principle states that 80% of outcomes or output comes from 20% of causes or input. It can apply to many things. For instance, 80% of sales at a restaurant come from 20% of menu items. Similarly, 80% of all calls are made to 20% of contacts in a person’s list.
You can apply this principle to any organization. Regarding performance, 20% of people in an organization or specific department produce 80% of the results. Therefore, expecting all your team members or employees to achieve exceptional results is unrealistic.
Thus, a great people management hack is to adopt a modified version of Pareto’s principle (20/60/20) to set goals and rewards according to their performances and maximize freedom. For instance, if you have 100 employees, 20 of them are exceptional workers, 60 are average, and 20 are low performers, you should let them decide when and how much they want to work.
By putting the ball in their court, you can ensure appropriate pay and job satisfaction without harming productivity for two key reasons. One, your top performers (20%) will continue to produce 80% of the results. Secondly, your remaining workers (80%) will work with less pressure of constant monitoring, scrutiny, and non-performance and maximize their productivity.
Many companies have understood that maximizing freedom is the key to optimizing productivity rather than the other way around.
2. Get to Know Your Team and Show that You Give a Damn About their Progress and Achievements
Whether you’re leading your team remotely or meeting them occasionally at the workplace, take the time to learn about every member, including their personalities (A or B), likes, dislikes, etc. However, you’d need to improve your emotional intelligence to learn what motivates them and how to get them to perform at their best while ensuring appropriate behavior.
It all starts with a simple conversation in person or through the phone or a video call. The options are plenty. The idea is to learn about their professional goals and, more importantly, their pain points. Do they want better pay, bigger roles, or some time off? Learning these things can improve your relationship with them.
Moreover, you can use their pain points to offer new incentives, suggestions, tips, and valuable insights to help solve their issues and improve their performances. Even if you can’t change anything, at the very least, you can show that you give a damn about their work experience and careers.
3. Set “In the Zone” Times
Every workplace has a certain time slot where employees are most productive, and operations are at full speed. You need to find this time of the day, whether it’s before early in the morning or after lunch. According to a study by the University of California, teams work “in the zone” from 10 am to 2 pm. Therefore, during this time, you should leave your team alone and let them work at full speed.
All meetings, interventions, and non-emergency matters can wait until the zone time is over. The last thing you want to do is disrupt the workflow at optimal levels. It could lead to errors, break the momentum, and frustrate your team unnecessarily.
4. Trust Your Team and Give them More Autonomy
Autonomy has become a trending buzzword in the remote and hybrid business landscape thanks to flexible work schedules, asynchronous communication models, and limited monitoring. Modern employees won’t have it any other way. In the past, trusting teams and giving them freedom was considered dangerous.
To an extent, it made sense. It’s impossible to know if an employee or team member will remain ethical and responsible by getting things on time and not breaking any rules and policies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic gave leaders no choice but to give their teams the freedom they longed for, finally limiting their power and authority.
Research suggests that most employees have responded well to this move and are now acting like ambassadors or even the owners of their organizations.
5. Turn to the Right Technology for Help
Depending on your workflow and operational model (remote/hybrid), you’ll need to equip your team with the right IT infrastructure, software solutions, and training to maintain and improve their performances. Unfortunately, many companies stop after providing a good tech setup, thinking they’ve done their part and that everything else would remain the same.
It will not.
There’s a difference between having a meeting in person and leaving a message on Telegram or Whatsapp. Similarly, many internal processes are interconnected and require a centralized system to ensure smooth collaboration and workflow. Therefore, you must carefully assess your processes and check if your team has the right tools and channels.
6. Communicate Empathetically
According to a Harvard study, companies with empathetic leadership perform better than typical callous corporations with toxic cultures and stressed environments. Therefore, listening with empathy and compassion has become an important soft skill to improve communication, collaboration, and innovation.
Modern employees want to be heard. More importantly, they want to speak their minds without being afraid. So, you need to create a culture that empowers employees to be who they are and get the best out of them. This process will also require you to coach and mentor employees. With guidance, employees can learn from your experience and combine it with their capabilities to offer innovative solutions.
Wrapping Up
So, there you have it – six people management hacks for the post-pandemic digital age. The business world is undergoing a massive transition in terms of technologies, practices, norms, and employee sentiments. Therefore, modern leaders, managers, and bosses must consider every aspect of their operations and do more than offer the best tech solutions to their teams.
You have to empower your team to build a culture in which everyone is passionate about their roles and working at optimal energy levels to ensure continuity, growth, and an increased bottom line.
