With the growing work-from-home experience, it's easy to think that we'll never go back to the "world headquarters" organizational model again. What does that mean for Compensation? You can imagine that the department can continue to work remotely as long as we have shared access to good surveys and well-documented administrative guidelines. After all, we're used to working in small teams across geographies.
However, when you shift the focus to the broad workforce issues of working remotely, the strategy firm McKinsey cautions, "history shows that mixing virtual and on-site working might be a lot harder than it looks--despite its success during the pandemic."
While there is an infinite range of new organizational models from workers "almost entirely off premises" to workers "almost entirely on premises," there is some basic guidance that you can share. That's because all the versions of realignment will affect, ". . . the organizational norms that underpin culture and performance--ways of working, as well as standards of behavior and interaction--that help create a common culture, generate social cohesion, and build shared trust." Since these are at the heart of organizational cohesion, the shifts in foundational norms need to be planned for and tracked, something we haven't necessarily been doing since we got thrown into the Covid world a few months ago.
To create the necessary metrics, we must accept that virtual and on-site employees work, communicate, and build relationships differently than on-site employees. And recognize that if your organization chooses an organizational model with both on-site and remote employees, you'll find yourself with two different cultures which need to be nurtured and managed into unity.
For example, experience shows that in hybrid organizations, in-person relationships ultimately come to dominate causing disenfranchisement for those who work remotely. After all, trust is best built face-to-face, so relationships grow more rapidly and deeply when people are together. To make a hybrid model work, the organization will need to consciously create relationship-building methodologies for hybrid workers. To make pay-for-performance work, we'll have to recognize the differences in competencies and performance targets among the hybrid workers and their managers.
The challenging nature of a hybrid organization has been easy to overlook as we haven't been doing that much hiring or promoting during Covid, however you can easily see that some basic building blocks of culture become more difficult to achieve with remote workers. Integrating new employees into a team and into the organization will need to be orchestrated for remote workers rather than left to chance, as well as the guided "apprenticeships" that offers development opportunities to young professionals. Leadership will need to shift to a more inspirational mode of communication, emphasizing the value of the unique qualities of the individual employee and encouraging growth, learning, and the cultivation of relationships. While experience shows that many CEOs are uncomfortable with this role, this type of communication strategy will be required to help build the needed shared norms across the organization.
As with all of the Covid-related shifts, this is going to be a strange one, unless you realize that while Human Resources' work is actually retrospective (after the event of introducing remote work), our role is to be a FACILITATOR now more than ever--a bit of a contradiction. Rather than waiting to be called on, we need to step forward and act as a strategic advisor and change agent for leaders who haven't yet had these insights about the complexities of a "forever" remote organization.
(To be better equipped with a deeper look at what the near future will bring, read the McKinsey article, which includes pros and cons of specific organizational models.)
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. A former Board member for the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA), Margaret coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.
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