Why this, why now?

The Covid-19 pandemic and the approaches taken to manage it have resulted in a huge variety of experiences for people at work and in their to day-to-day life. Some people are facing ongoing job and financial insecurity, some health-related issues, whilst others have newfound freedom and possibility in what the changes have enabled for their work.

We are facilitating ‘Reflect, Reconnect, Reset’ initiatives for organisations to consider:

• What are the shared and different experiences amongst our people?
• How are these experiences impacting our people, both positively and negatively?
• How do we re-engage and re-connect, given these different experiences?
• What implications does this have for the ongoing leadership of transition and change moving forwards?

And ultimately…

• What value and impact can these perspectives and insights offer for our organisation’s strategy, change initiatives and ways of working / culture?

What people are saying?

Some stories we’ve been hearing include:

• “I’m frustrated about working really hard while other colleagues are furloughed.”
• “I’m stressed because I don’t know whether my job is safe.”
• A complete mix of how people feel about going back to the office:
  • “My work space at home isn’t fit for purpose” (space, caring responsibilities)
  • “Why would I go back to commuting – look at the time and money I’m saving”
  • “I miss the social bit of work”
  • “I would prefer to work from home at least 2 days per week”
• “Is anything good going to come of this or are we just going back to the same as’”.

These stories come from a number of different organisations. This is an opportunity to be curious about the stories in your organisation and respond to these experiences in thoughtful ways for staff and for the organisation as a whole

How we do it

Depending on the number of people you wish to involve, we run a number of virtual dialogue sessions, role-modelling best practice ‘psychological safety,’ in order to explore individual experiences. Each session is typically 90 minutes although they can be longer if required. The sessions are interactive and can be repeated for different populations throughout the organisation.

Sessions typically include:

• Pre-thinking (short video or reading matter to begin reflections)
• Semi-structured breakout sessions
• Personal reflection time
• Creative capture of discussion areas (virtual whiteboards).

Our practice is to co-create the content and experiences with our clients. If you have internal facilitators, for example, who are keen to run these sessions and reach a larger population, we can look at how to build and support your in-house delivery skills to achieve this.

We’ll introduce easy-to-use collaborative online tools to support sharing, connecting, and trust in the process and with each other (e.g. Padlet, Miro, Mural).

Key organisational drivers?

This work will have a positive impact on many of the following areas:

• Wellbeing
• Resilience
• Engagement, retention, and loyalty
• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

• Values and culture
• Managing change
• Team performance
• Strategic insights

Benefits for staff

Through participating in Reflect, Reconnect, Reset sessions individuals and teams will be able to:

• Make sense of their experience so far in a way that is engaging and re-builds connections with colleagues and organisational purpose;
• Discover commonalities and connections across different experiences;
• Share collective learning from individual experiences;
• Explore the implications of that learning for individual and team working.

Benefits for the organisation

These sessions will allow for a sense of what now and what next, enabling senior leaders to gain clearer insight into what may be required during ongoing transition and uncertainty, and its implications for the organisation’s future strategy and new ways of working / culture.

Partners