Organisations are increasingly adopting or enforcing ‘flexible working’ strategies in the hope of reducing the spread of coronavirus. It will be vital to make the best of working remotely, so we can remain as productive and engaged as possible during this uncertain and unsettling time. 

From our work helping a wide range of organisations to deliver great employee experience across the globe, here are

6 top tips for successful virtual teams:

1. Clarify the WHAT – what are the goals, roles and responsibilities of the virtual team?  Given you are working in isolation, it’s even more important to be crystal clear on what you need to do by when, what your interdependencies are, and what you need to prioritise to ensure good progress is made.  Keep things simple and ensure everyone knows what they are expected to achieve.
2. Clarify the HOW – we often talk about leaders needing to trust and empower their workers, and manage the output, not the process, but with virtual teams there is real merit in managing and coordinating the details of the process you’ll use to complete your work, to ensure alignment across virtual workers.
3. Build a team spirit – when you are working remotely it’s very easy to feel disconnected to the day-to-day hustle and bustle of office life. To counterbalance this, build in set catch up times – ideally on a regular day and time so that everyone knows to keep the slot clear and can look forward to it. Start meetings by focusing on the team members first. It might not be possible for everyone to give a personal update if the team is large – but rotate updates so that everyone has the opportunity to share something about them unrelated to work, as well as something they are working on.
4. Develop shared responsibility – for achieving goals, so that everyone feels equally responsible for the success of the group. This could be role related, or via coaching and sharing knowledge within the team. 
5. Choose reliable technology – that everyone has access to, otherwise you risk alienating members of the team. Reliability of the technology is essential too, so that it’s easy for people to connect without wasting lots of time. It might be that you also need ‘shared drives’ to mitigate against data breaches and to help with file management. Be clear about what you need to manage your virtual teams and choose a system with a proven track record. There are many options!
6. Keep on track – with virtual teams you can’t see how engaged they are feeling or how productive a day they’ve had. Checking in on scheduled catch-up calls, as well as occasional one-to-ones, is essential to gauge how things are going. It’s also a good idea to have some form of milestone tracking. This can be done through simple status updates each week along with a commitment to what will be achieved in the following week, or more visually through a project dashboard. Whatever you decide on, you don’t want it to be too onerous a task for people to keep on top of, or anything that demoralises team members when the main objective is to keep momentum and focus.

How might the loss of face-to-face, person-to-person working affect your employees?

Under any other circumstances we’d also include a seventh point, to build in a face-to-face element. All of our research across the generations shows that the preferred method of communication is still face-to-face. Even the newest generation to enter the workforce, our Gen Zs, have indicated in the latest talentsmoothie Generational Survey that face-to-face is their most preferred method of communication. It helps us to build connections, build relationships and develop trust. All essential for effective team work. We know that having an occasional opportunity to meet is helpful, even for virtual teams. How do you think your teams will fare with enforced virtual working?

What will be the longer term impact of enforced virtual working?

At talentsmoothie, we are always future-focused and curious, so we’re also thinking about how we’ll choose to work once things return to normal. Will we return to our previous ways, or will we retain our move to virtual teams or develop some sort of hybrid?

We’d love to hear your experiences and learnings. 

Wherever we go from here, let’s remember to make the most of the time we are able to spend together – something tells us that’s going to be more of a luxury in the future.

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It’s amazing to think that the term Employee Value Proposition has been around for nearly twenty years. 

Employee Value Proposition (or EVP) is the jargon commonly used to describe the characteristics and appeal of working for an organisation. It describes the ‘give and the get’ between organisation and employee, with the aim of creating a ‘win-win’ solution. When delivered well, this win-win is thought to make for more highly engaged employees, resulting in better financial performance for the organisation. Although it’s hard to put a figure on this, it has been suggested that a company with a well-defined and delivered EVP could add up to 5% to its value. It’s surprising then, that it’s also thought that less than 50% of organisations have a long-term plan in place to support the on-going implementation of their EVP.  

From our experience of delivering EVPs in a wide range of organisations, here are

9 top tips for a successful Employee Value Proposition:

1. Make sure your leaders really want it to work. You need to invest time up front to ensure your leaders understand how important the EVP is to the business. This isn’t an HR initiative – it really is for the business to deliver and keep alive. Senior leaders need to take responsibility, because without their full commitment the EVP will be of limited value.
2. Build it into everyday behaviours and make it stick at the leadership level. When you are doing team updates, start with your people achievements and highlight the behaviours you’ve seen that you value and that demonstrate the EVP, before you talk about the figures and finance. Refer back to your EVP when you speak about people-related issues such as personal development, performance, or people projects – keep your EVP high on the agenda throughout your conversations.
3. Create a common language that people understand and call the EVP a name that means something in your organisation. It doesn’t have to be called an EVP. Be clear about what you want the EVP to achieve and communicate it; the use of a meaningful name could help you do that. Examples that some of our clients have used are ‘People Deal’ and ‘Employee Promise’.
4. Develop the behaviours you want to see that will deliver the EVP and ground it for people so that they understand ‘so what does this mean for me?’. For example, if an element of your EVP is about working collaboratively, be specific about what good collaboration looks like in your organisation. Is it about being pro-active in the relationships you expect employees to build across departments or business sectors, or about sharing ideas in an open way, or about co-creating new ideas with teams you haven’t worked with before, or simply about creating an inclusive and energetic team environment? Maybe a mix of all of them! Your EVP should be clear about what you value and what you want employees to experience. 
5. Create EVP champions across a mix of grades. Lower level managers as well as senior leaders can get involved at the launch, help implement the EVP and sustain its impact.
6. Embed these behaviours across everything. Examples from our clients include:
   • Train managers on the behaviours that underpin your EVP and what it means to them and their teams – build this into manager training. 
   • Link the EVP to performance management and hold leaders to account for delivery.
   • Use the EVP language in internal communications including conferences.
   • Tie the EVP into your employee survey, to measure how well it is being lived across your organisation.
   • Link the EVP to everyday rewards, such as how you thank people for a job well done. One of our clients created thank you cards for employees who demonstrated aspects of the EVP, and recipients were then nominated for a larger Global Award – the reward was something related to their business, in this case travel.
7. Identify your ‘Employee Experience Moments’ to ensure employees can enjoy the best possible employee experience at each point of their journey with you. Good segmented research will tell you if different employee groups value different experiences more than others. Then you can channel the experiences in the most effective and relevant way.
8. Create the processes to support your EVP, for example:
   • Recruitment
   • Induction
   • Performance management
   • Leadership development
   • Career development
9. Create a communication channel to demonstrate the impact the EVP is having, for example, on your intranet or social media channel. This can be used for the launch and to share great employee stories where the EVP is brought to life. Video can be used to explain the EVP journey and make the connection to your business mission, vision, purpose and values, so that the desired outcomes of the EVP are clear, understood and, most importantly, motivational for your people.

The wider value of a successful Employee Value Proposition

When you are confidently doing all or most of these things, it’s much easier to talk about your EVP externally, as well as internally. The positive effect of a successful Employee Value Proposition implementation will radiate out to build and improve your Employer Brand, so that you will find it easier to attract talent as well as retain it.

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