Engaging and Motivating Employees in Challenging Times Research Paper

Introduction

One of the most challenging tasks for any line manager is to support and engage their employees in a time of crisis to help them adjust their work routine to the new circumstances. Managers widely use different engagement practices for these purposes, including those directed at mindfulness, informal engagement, authenticity, HR partnership, and others. In this podcast, we are going to talk about managing flexible working, which is becoming more popular, especially in turquoise organizations, in order to ease stress and anxiety.

Managing Flexible Working

The first example of challenging times that completely restructured the way of work in most companies is connected with the COVID-19 pandemic. Even now, many employees continue working from home to avoid any unnecessary contact. However, the period of adjustment to flexible working, which is usually implied by remote working along with flexible hours, was rather challenging for managers. According to Toniolo-Barrios and Pitt (2021), such working conditions are typically associated with difficulties with concentration and mental disconnection from the job, which results in lower levels of productivity, motivation, and mental health issues. The successful way of overcoming stress is to practice mindfulness, and the main task for managers is to explore the corresponding engagement practices. Notably, not only specific techniques, such as meditation or breathing practices, can help with the release of anxiety, but the awareness in daily life. A healthy workspace should be created not only at the offices but also at home, and it should be encouraged by managers, as Chahana (2021) argues. Thus, when employees feel that their organization cares about them, it helps to increase both mental well-being and productivity.

Flexible working, which at first seems to favor organizations as agile structure tends to prove their effectiveness, is at least equally beneficial for workers as well. As Torrington et al. (2020) mention, the popularity of such conditions coincides with the increasing participation of women in the childbearing years, single-parent families, and the aging population, allowing them to reconcile their work with personal life in challenging times. Such flexibility includes temporal, functional, and spatial aspects, implying the irregular hours of work, capacity to deal with tasks from different areas and the choice of workspace, respectively (Torrington et al., 2020). However, the primary reason for emerging stress and anxiety connected with flexibility is the feeling of insecurity and blurring work-life time delimitation. Therefore, it is essential to endorse employees ‘home hours and provide some social benefits and protection to increase the feelings of safety and stability (Chahana, 2021). Another critical dimension for managers is to keep viable communication with workers. It includes the precise task formulation and their priority arrangement, encouragement of feedback and one-to-one meetings, provision of professional consultations, and so on (Toniolo-Barrios and Pitt, 2021). Hence, these actions can help avoid employee alienation and reduce possible stress connected with flexible working.

Conclusion

To conclude, it is extremely important for managers to find the right approach to their workers, especially in challenging times. Flexible working, which is becoming more widespread in the modern world, implies not only the benefits but the sense of instability and insecurity, which should be dealt with. The engagement practices include some mindfulness techniques as well as raising awareness, improving work-life balance, and high-quality communication. Such actions tend to result both in enhancing employees’ well-being and in increasing the organization’s profit.

Reference List

Chanana, N. (2021). ‘Employee engagement practices during COVID‐19 lockdown’, Journal of public affairs, 21(4), pp. 1-8.

Toniolo-Barrios, M. and Pitt, L. (2021). ‘Mindfulness and the challenges of working from home in times of crisis’, Business horizons, 64(2), pp.189-197.

Torrington, D. et al. (2020). Human Resource Management. 11^th edn. New York, NY: Pearson.