Leading into 2022

Six tips for making a positive difference to employees

It’s 2022 and our workplace culture is changing. Are you as a leader changing with it?

An article by Sara Keli in digital magazine Leadership Matters discusses with Professor Julia Connell (The University of Newcastle) what’s on the horizon for leaders this year. It suggests six key issues leaders should consider. All relate to leaders “making a positive difference to employees’ lives as well as their organisation and society as a whole.”

A summary of the six issues follows:

1. Hybrid working culture
   It’s here to stay, and even before COVID, studies showed productivity improves by 13 per cent when employees work from home. But it happens where leaders provide effective communication and an inclusive culture.
   
2. Mindful leadership
   Recent studies note leaders are not building a healthy culture, offering career guidance or paying attention to employee mental wellbeing. A bigger problem? Leaders feel they’re doing a good job but employees don’t agree. Leaders need to develop good self-awareness where they “understand the effect of their behaviour on themselves and also on others.”
   
3. Employee career prospects
   It’s been suggested up to 15 per cent of employees will leave their organisation because of a lack of career opportunities. So, leaders “need to pay attention to the career prospects of their employees” and give them “purpose and meaning in their work as well as opportunities to learn, grow and pursue new challenges.”
   
4. Employee wellness
   Leaders need to prioritise employee wellbeing. This is considered the second most important factor employees want from their organisations. Leaders need to provide “dedicated wellbeing programmes and policies, with a focus on work–life balance.” And it won’t hurt to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each meeting checking-in with employees.
   
5. New technology
   Leaders typically don’t have a good understanding of how new technology might affect their organisation and the jobs and tasks of their employees. Greater awareness of technology links also to the previous issues of career prospects and employee wellbeing.
   
6. The bigger sustainability picture
   Planning and modelling a sustainable future shows your organisation is mindful of environmental and social activities. Doing this well is a big factor in attracting employees with the same values.
   

These six issues are not hard to address but will yield tremendous benefits to the leader, employee and organisation. What steps are you going to take to improve in one or more of them?