We tried something different this week, putting our founder and CEO, Stefan Wissenbach, on the spot with an open mic for a live Q&A webinar, and invited attendees to ask him anything that was on their minds.

The questions we received were split 50/50 between what we would call core employee engagement questions and questions that relate to today’s unique circumstances. Below you will find the webinar replay. Additionally, during the webinar, we shared a lot of different articles, ebooks, white papers, and videos to augment the discussion and provide more detail. You’ll find that list below the video.

 

New threats to company culture

As you’ll see, a number of questions related to the challenges posed by remote work, and two broached timely issues many leaders are facing:

Q: What’s your strategy for preventing burnout from employees that are still working on location and are having to pick up the extra workload of staff that is no longer employed?
Q:
I’m worried about my team overworking at home and getting burnt out. How do you help your employees create boundaries between their work and home life?

In addition to the discussion you can hear on the replay, we also shared our newest white paper, which offers a closer look at these issues.

White Paper: New Threats to Company Culture Post-Covid (UK)

White Paper: New Threats to Company Culture Post-Covid (US)

Here are the other questions for which we provided additional resources.

Q: We are currently planning for growth which will involve a number of people transferring to my company. We have worked hard on our culture and the new staff will potentially undermine our work as those existing team members less secure in the new culture, see the new staff and their beliefs as a route back to the “good old days”. Can you speak about the critical actions to onboard the new team in the first 90 days?

Article: The 4 Stages of Cultural Change for Leaders

Q: Our company is working fully remote right now and may stay that way permanently. What can management do to help encourage productivity?

Article: 3 Keys to Employee Productivity & Retention

Webinar Replay: Keeping Remote Teams Engaged & Productive

eBook: Keeping Remote Teams Engaged & Productive

Q: Our team has a really tight team, but we’re missing the face-to-face collaboration which is something we heavily relied on pre-Covid. It still happens now but less so because of the formality of arranging calls etc, and working in isolation is affecting morale for some. Can you give some advice on how to create teamwork/ collaboration remotely, but in a more natural way?

This story featuring our client Capital Asset Management includes details on the company’s “Collaboration Days” that we thought was genius.

Find communication tools to create strategic changes in your organisation and further boost collaboration in this article from Capterra.

Q: One of our leaders gets very defensive when given feedback, and really shuts down. Is this common? How can we help him become more responsive to what we learn from our surveys?

Worksheet: Leadership Self Reflection Scorecard

eBook: The 7 C’s – The Seven Qualities Leaders Need For Post Covid Success

Q: We are struggling a bit with team engagement now that we have some employees back in the office and some working from home. For example, during our team meeting this week, those of us in the office joined the meeting together from a conference room, and those working from home joined virtually. Even though only 5 people of the 19 team members were in person for the meeting, almost all of the conversation generated during the meeting came from those who were in the conference room despite targeted questions to the remote participants. It was difficult to get collaboration from the individuals who were attending virtually. How do we continue to engage employees during meetings and team building when some of the staff joins together and others join remotely?

Tool: EPIC Meetings

Q: What’s the role of innovation in company culture?

Webinar Replay: Kickstarting Innovation
Article: Creating a Culture that Drives Innovation

In the coming weeks, we’ll expand upon some of the questions and answers from this session. You’ll also see more open Q&A sessions from Stefan in the future!