A recent study found that almost half of UK office workers felt a lack of personal motivation while working from home during the pandemic.
Managing the energy levels of a business is no easy feat in the current climate and disengaged employees, low motivation and rising attrition are increasingly common across many organisations.
The employee engagement epidemic stems from a sustained period of uncertainty, employees taking time to personally reflect on what matters to them most and the return to ‘normal’ not meeting their pent-up expectations – but how can businesses mitigate against this and support employees in the return to work?
Through our experience coaching business leaders and across 11 Olympic games, we’ve developed a framework for leaders to create an understanding of how to enhance and sustain high performance for themselves and their teams.
Rethinking Employee Engagement
It’s clear that the pandemic has forced individual reflection but many businesses are just going on as normal. So what can businesses do to adapt to the new environment, re-engage the workforce and lead the way through the next period of change?
Many businesses make the mistake of running on an endless treadmill – constantly moving forward towards the next goal without stopping to reflect or celebrate successes.
The uncertainty of the last 18 months has only perpetuated this feeling further for employees and this has been a contributing factor for dwindling motivation at work.
In this blog, we’ll explore how businesses can apply the Olympic mindset to consciously reset and inspire greater motivation levels for their organisation while increasing employee fulfillment and productivity.
Pause and Reset
After each Olympic Games is over, there is a ceremonious extinction of the flame and each Olympic athlete and their teams take a couple of weeks off to pause, reset, reflect and recharge. After each Olympic cycle, every athlete is automatically deselected from the games and has to make a conscious decision to opt-in to the next 4-year cycle.
Very few organisations work in cycles, or consciously pause, closing one chapter before moving into the next and the effect of this on employees is demotivating.
Being stuck on this endless treadmill occurs when we haven’t set clear goals, resulting in us spending our time firefighting and just staying upright rather than focusing our energy on working towards our collective goals.
We encourage people to work in sprints with a clear endpoint rather than getting stuck on the treadmill. Not only does this improve performance, but it is WAY more fulfilling.
Re-charge
In sport, we think of our energy and resilience as being powered by inner batteries. We all have different sized batteries and there are activities that we can do which drain us and others that help us to recharge.
By just reflecting on and better understanding our drags and propulsions, we can optimise our working week through modulating our energy and in turn, increase our productivity.
How are you spending energy going forward to create meaningful work?
Resilience is about preparing, recovering and adapting to stress or challenge. We find that a lot of focus has been given to the recovery but very little on adaptation. For many, the return to the office has been about compromise and may have been an anti-climax. But how can we encourage individuals to adapt and re-frame new situations as an opportunity to develop?
Check out our Resilience Coaching programme here.
Optimising Team Environment
Many organisations and employees have had a sense of just getting their heads down and staying afloat during the challenges of the last 18 months.
But have they really adapted to the new environment? Or are we still trying to apply thinking and processes that worked in the past to a changed environment and shifting employee needs?
We coach business leaders and organisations to optimise their team environment to allow people to give their best.
This starts with creating what we call a “challenge state environment” through clear expectations, behaviours and role-modeling. This enables us to unlock individual motivators that enable every team member to contribute in the best way to the overall team or business goal.
This environment is supported by open performance conversations, consciously developing trust within teams, performance mindset, and an understanding of what it takes to win well.
Plan Like An Olympian
Being clear on how you spend energy, what you are trying to achieve and how you get there.
When we don’t have clear goals and milestones alongside a real understanding of identity and contribution, it’s easy to lose momentum and motivation. One of the crucial reasons for this is because there is a disconnect between our day-to-day activity and our purpose.
Click here to read more about how our Fast Track coaching programme can support you in applying this methodology to achieve your Win.
Take Action
It’s time to stop asking employees to run marathons and facilitate a pause. Redefine the way you work. Re-motivate your team. Create momentum.
Whether your team needs a firebreak or you’re interested in proactively supporting employees to increase resilience and create more meaningful work, get in touch with our coaches to find out which of our programmes would be the most transformational for your company.
Speak to our team about how Track Record coaching can create a performance advantage for your organisation.
