4 Commitments for Leaders to Make
to their People
Sam Kalk • Published on Nov 17, 2020 • 4 min read
When people were suddenly forced to work from home, legacy performance indicators and workplace analytics systems became quickly obsolete and impertinent. Organizations instantaneously lost their window into the day-to-day of their employees.
Digital Accountability and Work-Life Balance
Evidence suggests that organizations are already investing in digital accountability innovations to monitor their workforce. It is imperative for companies that undertake these initiatives to understand the ramifications to their employees’ work-life balance and the “newly blurred distinctions between work and home life”.
Enlightened leaders understand the need for clarity and honesty around use of employee data. Two possible camps arise as a result mainly of company messaging: “data-driven workforce support” or “digital micromanagement”.
Enlightened leaders understand the need for clarity and honesty around use of employee data.
In order to ensure that an organization’s technology stack remains in the “data-driven workforce support” camp, leaders must introduce and explore new KPI’s that promote positive outcomes for remote workers, while divesting from legacy KPI’s that aren’t relevant to the work of 21st century distributed teams.
The front part of this work is completed collaboratively among leaders, but the back half involves implementing technology that can accurately capture and leverage the data necessary to promote positive change.
Leaders interested in creating a high-performing organization need to lead the cultural shift within their workforce to help everyone understand that data and analytics are fuel for the people operation of the organization, not just the revenue operation.
Data and analytics are fuel for the people operation of the organization, not just the revenue operation.
4 Commitments For these Leaders to Make to their People
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I commit to a culture of continuous feedback.
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I commit to prioritizing development and understanding that mistakes are part of growth.
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I commit to a culture of transparency and accountability.
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I commit to align job performance with business performance.
Understanding that the intersection of people, systems, and processes will always create tensions is one of the most important steps for these leaders to take. Confronting these tensions with creative solutions that generate positive outcomes for all three components is the leadership challenge facing us during this pandemic.
