As we move through the pandemic, many governments are now encouraging businesses to return to the workplace after months of remote working. In a certain sense, it marks the end of a phase in our year. It’s also an opportunity to take stock of lessons learned and refocus on priorities for the season ahead. We spoke to Devyani Vaishampayan, Managing Partner at The HR TECH Partnership, about how we can best engage and upskill our employees, as well as harness the power of continuous learning.
Covid has needed HR leaders to address several unexpected and diverse issues.
But managing employee concerns and sensitivities will continue to be very important. Many employees are not keen to return to work or prefer working from home. Tracking employee engagement and ensuring it is enhanced will be a big challenge for most employers.
Given the large- scale change in established businesses, it is critical that the emphasis on continuous learning does not reduce. In fact, most of our clients are saying they are planning to protect their L&D budgets in spite of cost pressures. This is because:
As described above, there will be a greater need to upskill employees in a shorter time. However, employers will have to pay greater attention to how employees learn and what they are really interested in (personalisation). Edtech will ensure employees stay engaged. Classroom training will be less relevant with remote workers, so they will need to learn at home. Edtech solutions are also attractive from a cost perspective. Finally, Edtech solutions provide real time data and predictive analytics. Something that’s hugely important during these uncertain times.
The workplace is changing rapidly and HR teams need to start getting more agile in their approach. A big part of this change is the use of digital & AI solutions. These solutions can integrate with any existing HRIS system and require minimal budget and support. The UK is one of the leaders in HRtech & Edtech so HR leaders have a whole range of interesting and innovating solutions to ensure they can provide leaders with more support around strategic support as well as virtual people management.
Definitely yes.
Devyani Vaishampayan is Managing Partner at The HR TECH Partnership, an innovation and investment venture in digital HR startups.
Sometimes, it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. There are so many tasks and responsibilities calling for our attention that every minute counts. Business emails are quickly sent over during conference calls. Multiple tabs are open simultaneously. Distracted conversations happen while sending a text message.
It can feel overwhelming when we try to juggle lots of different things at the same time. In reality, we’re just trying to shift between roles in quick succession. It requires a lot of effort and is incredibly hard to get right.
Over the past 50 years, cognitive scientists have closely studied multitasking and role conflict. Numerous research studies have shown that none of us can truly do multiple things at the same time. If we try to do so, it actually reduces our productivity by up to 40%. We actually get less done, feel more stressed and spend more time trying to switch between our different roles.
Our culture conditions us to ‘separate’ our different roles, identities and actions into different contexts. It stems from the concept of work-life balance. It’s like we see each other as cakes: the more slices we have, the smaller the pieces. The more roles we have, the less of ourselves we can dedicate to each role and the quicker we have to shift between them. It’s as though each conflicting role requires us to give something of ourselves. If we are lucky, there will be something left for us too.
But that’s not the case. We’re more like concentric circles: each role strengthens another. The more identities we have, the more resources we have available to us and the stronger we are.
If you truly want to optimise your time and boost efficiency at work, you need to use a group of skills that we call transilience.
Transilience is the idea that people can unlock resources and soft skills from one role in life and activate them in another. It increases their efficiency across the board. It means taking skills beyond each role, using transilience as a bridge that connects one area to another. It’s a process of experimentation, adopting certain behaviours and continuing to hone them in different contexts. It’s a process that allows us to discover our own talent.
Let’s think about how this looks in practice. Perhaps your child has been training your persuasion skills at home as you’ve helped them to navigate their own priorities. Those same persuasion skills could be applied when presenting a new project to your boss. If you’ve gone through complex problem solving training at work, those skills could help resolve conflicts within the family context. Or maybe you’ve divided and shared housekeeping tasks with your partner, and now you can apply those same delegation skills when organising your team’s workload.
Essentially, the more you use transilience and see it at work, the more it will improve your efficiency and relieve your stress. What’s more, it’s freely available to everyone and can be honed anywhere and any time.
Through Lifeed, we continue to track the progress and results of transilience at work, and the results can be astounding. As part of our programmes, learners can choose which soft skills they want to develop further. A staggering 58% of participants chose to hone delegation, listening and empathy: showing that learners understand the importance these relational skills hold when using transilience.
Our recent surveys also revealed that 56% of people felt that transilience allowed them to use more of themselves at work, with 1 in 2 people discovering ‘hidden’ talents that they hadn’t previously considered using in the workplace. This unleashes a whole wealth of resources and opportunities for businesses, increasing productivity by up to +12% and saving 1220 euros per employee per year.
Over time, this new way of thinking has a tangible impact on team wellbeing too, with 87% of people feeling less stressed and 90% of people saying they have more energy. Inevitably, this causes a positive ripple effect through the business, playing to their strengths as they build an inclusive and welcoming environment.
A lovely birthday cake, that all the guests can’t wait to slice up and try. With each slice that is plated up, the cake gets smaller and smaller until it’s all gone. Now think if you were a cake, how many slice you’d have. You’re probably thinking that you’d give a slice to your children a slice to your partner, a slice to your parents, one to your friends, one to your colleagues. If anything is left over, you might give one to yourself too. It’s a simple metaphor for your roles in life: the more people and activities that you take care of, the smaller the slices are that you can give. If only you could dedicate all your energy to one thing, maybe then you’d have the energy you need. Do you think there’s enough cake for the slices you need? Probably not.
But don’t worry: we’ve got good news for you! This idea of being like cakes has now been overtaken by a new concept. The latest sociological research shows a completely different story. The more roles a person accumulates, the more those roles strengthen each other, transferring energy and skills between them.
Think about the love you give to the people that surround you: it’s not exclusive. We are able to love parents, partners, children. We love them all in different ways, without diluting the love we have for someone else. Love multiplies, it doesn’t diminish. The same goes for the (good) ideas: if I have two apples and I give one to a friend, we’ll have one each. But if my friend and I have two good ideas and we share them with each other, we’ll both have two good ideas. The same thing goes for skills and energy: they multiply so we have more than what we started with.
The latest sociological research shows us that people accumulate different roles. The more they have, the more they strengthen each other, transferring energies and skills between areas.
It changes our perspective of the cake concept. Now, immagine that each guest adds a slice instead of taking one away, making the cake bigger and bigger. MultiMe is a digital product that aims to break down the “cake slices” stereotype that we see in ourselves. Often our companies see us in that way too.
Aside from the metaphor, MultiMe is based on solid scientific research, stemming from multidisciplinary research that continues to become increasingly enriched with new contributions each year. Let’s use another example.
Mark is a firefighter, and he’s also a husband and dad. A fire breaks out while he’s on duty and he needs to tend to it. Once he reaches the scene, he sees that a fire is burning in a house where two adults and two children need to be rescued. In this instance, will Mark behave like a firefighter or a dad? Those who have tried MultiMe know that the question needs to be reframed. Mark will be able to blend his firefighter’s courage with his fatherly love, reacting in a rational way to save people from the flames, as though they were his own relatives, his own children. This is because our different roles don’t erase or exclude others, but rather they enrich each other.
This is an extreme example, so let’s think of something a little more ordinary. The ability to listen and mediate with our children, or perhaps some of the managerial skills we use with our colleagues are a culmination of all our different roles, and we take them with us wherever we go. We are more than the sum of our parts, and MultiMe opens our eyes to this. MultiMe helps us to move from “role conflict” to “role accumulation”.
The tool was created by a scientific team including Riccarda Zezza, Lifeed researchers and the professor Maferima Touré-Tillery, researcher at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It’s the result of years researching “role theory”.
As always, we start with a definition. Roger Barker, one of the founders of community psychology, explains rule theory to be a group of concepts, based on socio-cultural and anthropological facts. It focuses on the way people are influenced by their various social roles and the expectations that accompany them.
“Role theory” includes two different thought and research paths: role conflict and role facilitation. The first studies on role conflict date back to the Sixties, originating with William Goode. He worked on the theory of role strain, suggesting that having different social roles can be challenging as each requires time and energy that are in conflict and cause discomfort. In subsequent studies, the focus moved to the positive aspects of having multiple roles. In the Seventies, Sieber and Marks suggested that our multiple roles boost wellbeing, because the benefits associated with having multiple roles are greater than the stress they create.
Interest in the effects of having different roles has increased over the past few decades. An increasing amount of women are entering the workforce, and more women have reached high-level positions in business. To begin with, organisational studies concentrated on the conflicting work-family relationship, suggesting that women who tried to balance their family and careers suffer from psychological and physical stress. So much so that in the early Noughties a range of studies (such as Ruderman, 2002) highlighted the psychological and skill benefits of “multitasking”.
In the Seventies, Sieber and Marks suggested that having multiple roles can enhance wellbeing, because the benefits that stem from the accumulation of roles usually are greater than the stress generated by the roles themselves.
Faced with qualitative and quantitative evidence, Lifeed research has dug deeper into the concept of “role accumulation”. It moves the focus away from balancing roles to creating synergy between different areas in our lives. Our resources “overflow” into our different roles, but only if we recognise the synergy between the different areas of our lives we can strengthen them by bringing them together.
Role accumulation affirms that people are more than the sum of their parts: having multiple roles can generate resources that can be used in others. The Lifeed method stimulates awareness in people so that they can recognise the positive spillover between different roles in their lives. Lifeed harnesses the learning potential inherent in life transitions (such as parenthood, caring for a loved one, a crisis…), transforming them into tools for professional growth.
That’s how the concept of transilience was born, the combination of two words: transition and resilience (Vitullo, Zezza, 2014). Transilience is a meta-skill (or rather a skill made up of other skills) that we activate when abilities, energy and emotive resources overflow from one role into another. To activate transilience, the individual must be aware that they are like a cake that continues to get bigger rather than smaller.
The Lifeed method evolves with a new tool. MultiMe is an interactive tool that helps people to see how that ‘cake’ gets bigger rather than smaller.
We invite users to complete MultiMe at the beginning and end of our programs. After identifying our individual roles, we then associate three or more qualities to each role. At the end, we’ll discover that some roles have lots of adjectives in common: they overlap at different points. They continue to weave together with the addition of each role.
Having a higher “self overlap” score implies a greater ethical coordination, as professor Maferima Touré-Tillery demonstrates through her research. The more roles that overlap, the more the person tends to behave ethically. They no longer see themselves divided up into different compartments. Think about the impact this could have on a decision maker in a large company. The more coherent they are in defining themselves and their roles, the more they will be able to assume responsibility for the greater good.
The more that roles overlap, the more the person tends to behave ethically. It’s what Professor Tillery from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University shows us in her research.
MultiMe can qualitatively and quantitatively measure the level of “self overlap” and how it enriches a person. It can map participant’s results as aggregated data, objectively evaluating the results of the program. It reveals that we can look beyond the fatigue and time constraints of our roles. Instead, we see how they enrich us.
The numbers back it up: 8.3 out of 10 participants would recommend a friend to try our method. In autumn, we’ll see the first data set from the tool. We’ll be able to evaluate the evolution of our…birthday cakes. And we all know birthday cakes need to be really big!
“Over recent months, Covid has spoken and now it’s time to listen to people”. That was Riccarda Zezza’s opening line at the Communication Forum 2020.
The past season has seen us all experience a transition, triggered by the Coronavirus pandemic. It has revealed that people carry an infinite amount of resources within themselves: all they need is a space to be able to express them. And according to Riccarda Zezza, this can make the difference between businesses treading water and prospering. So it’s important to know how to see what’s inside people: listen to them and stimulate them, understanding what motivates them and what stops them from moving forward. They are key elements for wellbeing and productivity in all roles, across all levels.
Through the pandemic, there’s been an “impact” phase, and now we’re about to start the long neutral phase. This new beginning is uncertain and requires us to redefine our context. Each phase might overlap without a certain boundary. The outcome of the new beginning depends on us, which is why it’s important to guide the transition. To do so, all we have to do is make space for the “seeds of the future” that are already present within us. They need to be seen, recognised and nourished so that they can flourish. The question is: “how?”. “You don’t need to come up with big strategies” says Riccarda Zezza, “you just have to ask new questions and listen to the questions people are asking themselves”.
Lifeed Transitions participants have revealed new skills and awareness throughout the program. They have come up with some interesting responses to the question “What objectives are you setting yourself through this crisis?”. Change, understanding, transition, skills and awareness are the terms most used. This confirms that the “seeds of the future” are already within us. It’s completely valid to decide that you don’t want to “go back” to how things were before the crisis. You need to recognise that transitions are a natural part of life for people, organisations and society. Understanding them allows each person and organisation to not be passive when they come into contact with them.
61% of our webinar participants said that they were worried about the future: 50% are unsure, 34% are scared, 43% feel tired and 74% think that more people will need psychological support.
But we don’t think there’s anything surprising about that: each transition offers an opportunity to learn something new. 56% of participants felt that they had gained greater flexibility and 45% saw new opportunities, while 41% felt that they had learned new skills. Most people feel they have become more flexible in the face of change, more resilient and more creative.
This confirms that we already have the grounds to create positive change. To make sure that those seeds flourish, we need to cultivate them, nourish them, care for them. Lifeed Transitions focuses participants, helping them in this task. These opportunities to positively change and upgrade our thinking come few and far between. In order to achieve the best results, you need to use the right ‘fertiliser’.
Organisations must not ignore or deny that the crisis exists or that it’s happening. They need to accompany people through transformation, to make sure people can move forward. They need to listen to them, help them and give them space to express themselves so they feel an active part of the process, rather than passive spectators.
It’s a chance to feel liberated too. Free “from” something, free from the routine that suffocated us, free from everything that oppressed us “before”. We have the opportunity to finally choose, to be different, to be free to express ourselves in a more linear way. It’s normal to feel afraid or anxious throughout this phase: they are signs of change, suggesting that we’re taking steps towards substantial change. We have been waiting in silence for months: we’ve seen and listened, but now we’re ready to make space for our dreams for the future.
Employee learnings can also become an opportunity to innovate with the corporate culture. Lifeed Transitions can help companies to build on their existing culture, as an opportunity to grow together. “Crisis” literally means chosen: we can choose to not turn back, but to become new people, new companies that have learned so much and that now can enjoy the results of those learnings.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”. We can learn a lot from this famous phrase by Winston Churchill, helping us to define new approaches and new ways of designing the future.
Our fifth Life Ready Conference took place on 28th May. It’s part of a cycle of live events that draws together ideas, reflections and best practices for journeying through the crisis and establishing the new normal that’s waiting for us after Covid-19. So what do we need to learn in to help us prepare for the changing world of work? What are the soft skills that we need to effectively work through uncertainty and constant change? How can we learn to unlearn in a flexible and quick way?
“We need to unlearn certain things to be able to see the existing model as one of the many options available to us, instead of the only way forward”, explains our CEO Riccarda Zezza. “In our recent surveys, we’ve seen that 91% of employees expect their company to improve their processes based on what they’ve learned over this time”.
We looked at these themes with 6 representatives of large companies, as they now need to influence their business culture and accompany their companies through the transition.
“The need to change doesn’t emerge from the crisis”, states Nicola Spagnuolo, Director of the Tertiary Training Management Centre, an association that unites 9,000 companies and around 24,000 managers. “Companies that shine through the next phase will be those who have already welcomed change.
The ability to change needs to be trained over time. One crisis won’t be enough to make a company revolutionise the way it works. The current situation doesn’t really require us to learn new skills, but to reprioritise the ones we already have. “In order for our approach to move forward, we need to remove any legacies within our thinking so we can ‘reinstall’ our skills”.
“We need to make sure what’s currently being referred to as the new normal doesn’t quickly become a thing of the past”, says Elena David, president of Aiceo, the Italian association of CEOs. “We need to unlearn the false rhetoric that closes around people and their fragility: rather it must become a type of research to open up our cognitive and relational space. And we need to unlearn the power of improvisation to bring value back to our skills”.
“We need to unlearn the rhythms of a world in the hands of men who choose other men. As a woman I would like everyone to learn about a system based on merit and skills. We need courage to do things that aren’t a knee-jerk reaction in times of emergency, but that allow us to truly create change”.
“Businesses need to care for their people, not just listening to them but engaging them”, highlights Isabella Falautano, part of the Board of Directors at Valore D and Chief Communication & Stakeholder Engagement Officer at Illimity.
“In Vuca phases, the CEO also needs to learn how to be a Chief Emotional Officer and know how to authentically stay close by to the people within the business. In the phase between the crisis and the moment where change takes place, it’s important to value the time spent waiting. Waiting helps to scrape away anything that’s superfluous, revealing the essence of the organisation. It’s what’s left, when everything feels uncertain. When you’re in the middle of the delicate waiting phase, it’s important to use your time to plan”.
It’s probably true that small businesses have been the ones that have faced the biggest challenges. They’ve had to leave the beaten track in business and go it alone. “People naturally adapt and evolve. People are at the heart of business. We’re just extended families”. Alessandra Pilia is the Head of Communication at Api, the Small Medium Enterprise Association that represents around two thousand small businesses in the North of Italy, totalling 38,000 workers. According to their recent survey, in times of health and economic crises, 68% of associates are worried about the future of their collaborators and their families.
“Small business owners have found themselves being community managers within their own organisations, using chats and tools that they weren’t used to using to provide information and reassure their employees”. Once more, the focus is the person. “The company doesn’t end with the entrepreneur, but it lives and goes beyond the boundaries of the building. The first innovation manager in the company is the person that accepts that they don’t know everything and unlearns the culture that they have brought with them up unto this point, encouraging collaborators that have the courage to say ‘now we’re going to try doing things in another way’”.
Over the past few months, the crisis has slowed down lots of aspects of our personal and working lives. But it has also accelerated many others. Starting with the decision to abandon plans and behaviours that are no longer relevant. “In situations that aren’t clear, you don’t have the interpretive knowledge to move forward, so you have to keep asking new questions”, says Paola Previdi, CEO of SFC, Confindustria Training Systems.
“Now we’re being asked to reframe problems. To do so we need mixed teams, blending together different specialisms. Those who manage companies must know how to coordinate and keep their collaborators on board. Some companies have implemented remote working as the norm. Lots have used this time to train their employees and rediscover their resilience. In future, ‘normality’ will mean managing exceptional and complex situations. There will be other unexpected things that can come out of nowhere. We need to be able to turn them into our advantage, stimulating our brain with innovation”.
“It seems as though lots of people are looking to return to the world they knew before. They’re suggesting old schemas that are now weaker than ever. But as professionals, we need to reflect on what the future holds”. That’s what Paolo Ravà, President of the Order of Chartered Accountant and Accountancy Experts in Genova says. “We need to look at things with fresh eyes. If managers continue to operate within traditional organisational, legal, financial and governance systems, it will be a failure. Profits must always come first, but they need to be part of a bigger system”.
“We need to talk to our young people about a different profession. Even if it won’t be the middle generation that make it happen. We need to create an agreement between different generations. It’s about helping those who know how to take risks, but also learning to take them ourselves. And get involved in an economy that is based on skills and not relationships”.
As part of the Women in Tech series, our International Advisor Valeria Leonardi spoke on a TechItalia online panel held on 11th June. The event connected around 70 people in business, focusing on resilience and how to engage people in times of crisis. Here’s what the panel had to say.
“It’s true that clients are the lifeblood of a business. But this is not just a challenge: it’s an opportunity to better engage with customers and transform the way we work with them.”
Paola focused on her work in keeping clients engaged during the pandemic. She discussed three key considerations that can really make the difference: business model, commercial and sales.
When considering your business model, there is a general understanding that each company is currently facing the same challenges and market uncertainty. It’s an opportunity to use empathy with clients, engineering the commercial offering to suit their needs and budget. The key is providing value for everybody involved, and adapting as the market continues to change. It’s also a chance to analyse your own business to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth. Finally, when closing sales there will always be new ways to deliver value to clients. Essentially, that is what people will remember about you in the long term.
“It’s important to listen to what people have to say and find new ways that you can meet their needs and add value to what they are doing”
Valeria talked about the importance of listening to people – whether it’s employees or clients – to better understand their needs. Lifeed did this by opening up webinars (originally designed to be delivered solely to clients) to make them accessible to everyone, as well as organising engaging conferences with customers and thought leaders. They touched on key topics for the season, such as Emotional Intelligence, Remote Working and Personal/Professional Wellbeing. The results were strong, with some events hosting over 1,500 people online. These sessions allowed people to open up about their feelings, which helped fuel the development of the latest program offering, Lifeed Crisis. The price point for this program is also more flexible than the other Lifeed solutions, making it more affordable and easier to integrate quickly.
“It’s time to be authentic and return to your own values”
Lu elaborated on how communication has changed through the pandemic. She believes we are living in a very special moment in history, and that’s there’s a delicate balance to achieve through communications. People appreciate companies being able to quickly adapt and engage with their changing perceptions and situations. So how can we ensure our messaging is on point? Lu believes we have to be authentic and return to the core values of the business. This communication filters through into real life too – essentially it’s about walking the walk and leading by example.
“Demand for content has grown massively”
Paola highlighted how the YouTube community grew over 70% in March 2020. The platform growth was so massive that they had to reduce to resolution to avoid overwhelming the global network. This shows two important learnings:
1. Demand for content grew massively and even with the ease of lockdown will decrease but won’t be back at pre-pandemic rates for a while
2. Based on the size of the audience and levels of brand engagement, the Customer Acquisition Cost has never been so low for brands.
“It’s taken time to understand both customer and employee needs and how their perceptions might have changed through the crisis.”
Claudia looked at the ways that Oval Money had engaged their employees over lockdown. They believed it was important to keep team morale high. So, they found new ways to engage with each individual, perhaps in ways that the company hadn’t considered using previously. They decided to do this through holding more team activities, such as online yoga and fitness sessions. It meant that they were able to keep spirits high and avoid quarantine burnout. What’s more, they could help people to feel that they still have team support and rapport.
In terms of engaging customers, she shared that the company have had to listen carefully to what each person had to say. It’s important to act on their feedback, stay close to the community throughout times of uncertainty and create new and relevant content that allow customers to make the best use of resources during this time.
You can read more about TechItalia initiatives here.
We’ve changed our name from MAAM to Lifeed. But we’ve not changed our philosophy. Today more than ever we’re convinced that life feeds education.
We believe that together we can build on the foundations of Life Based Value: offering new ways to connect and new ways to synergise life and work, generating energy and sustainability.
That’s why we created Lifeed. We want to help people to feel seen in all their roles, even at work, and we’re working with companies to make this a reality.
We believe that everyone can improve their soft skills: we use a training method that uses life transitions to reveal each person’s potential.
We’re not just talking about parenthood or caring for a loved one. Every life event can train our soft skills. Scientific research and social observations have helped us to open our horizons to include all life transitions. They happen on a regular basis. When people see them as opportunities for development, they will feel stronger, with more skills and energy. What’s more, they can apply their learnings in the workplace too.
Over the past few years, we have coined our own terms and talked about new concepts that have become commonplace. So now we’re adding another one to the list with Lifeed: Life Feeds Education. When life meets corporate training, it enriches the way we learn in a way that’s impossible to do in the classroom.
We believe that it’s important to listen to people through every life phase: if you listen carefully to what they have to say, you’ll discover something wonderful happens.
Think you know everything about your company culture, values, objective, climate and relationships? If you haven’t already done so during the pandemic, maybe now is the time to elaborate on them.
From now on, every action will probably have an impact on both the present and future of the company. When the emergency has subsided, people will remember how the company was able (or unable) to manage their organisational, cultural, social and health plans. Think back to the 11th September 2001. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing when you heard the news about the terrorist attack? We’ll bet you remember every single detail.
That’s how our mind works: trauma sets the whole context around itself too. We found ourselves facing this unexpected pandemic, and just like every crisis, it bought us through a transition that makes it difficult to return to the world we lived in before. Everything that made us feel safe has changed. Think relationships with colleagues, staff management and managerial behaviours. The pandemic meant we had to quickly change our habits. Companies that have a well defined company culture have been able to cushion the blow more effectively.
But the crisis forces us to come out of our comfort zones too. Change is often associated to mourning, as it requires us to use the same resources to work through the situation. If it effects everyone, it requires even more effort to get through it. The first step is communication: knowing that other people are experiencing the same difficulties can help us to feel less alone. We now know that our colleagues’ health is a top priority. Self-care and caring for others becomes a key element in company culture. It doesn’t just effect our physical health, but our emotional health too. Anxiety, stress, sleep disorders and cognitive difficulties have become some of the hardest hitting symptoms through Covid-19.
At the beginning of the lockdown, lots of companies were worried about the physical and economic wellbeing of their employees. They often concentrated their efforts on the “here and now”: safety measures, sanitising the environments, activating remote working and guaranteeing economic measures. Everything happened so quickly and unexpectedly that it would have been difficult for anybody to go against those decisions. As we travelled further into lockdown, we saw an increase in needs and requests. We saw how the emergency could go on indefinitely. Some sectors continued to grow, while others were shaken to the core. Schools and nurseries would stay closed, that it was still possible to work from home. Forgoing our commutes created more time for ourselves and for our families, as well as having a positive effect on the environment.
We started to see fewer victims, and so we could also see the positives in the situation. Human beings have an innate ability to adapt to their circumstances: at the end of the day we are animals, and it fits into the context of our biological evolution.
We are more aware of the situation, and many people can feel like “survivors”. Leadership was one of the first elements that needed to changed. In children’s eyes, mothers and fathers became “superheroes”. The same thing happened within companies when looking towards the leaders. But when faced with the pandemic, we don’t necessarily feel like heroes. Sometimes, it leads to recklessness. The middle ground is courage, balancing awareness of risks and tools to safely overcome the situation. So, at the moment, good leaders are taking on a parental-type role. They protect their people and create an open and reassuring environment, highlighting how those transferable skills trained at home can also be useful at work.
The crisis has underlined the elements of company culture that have the biggest impact on the company. An example of this is the new advertisements that have emerged during this time: many of them put the focus on building a “new humanity”. Will we really be better people? It’s difficult to say now. Once thing is certain: we hope companies don’t turn back from their virtuous behaviour during this time. From remote working to digitalisation, from supporting families to making workplaces safe, from communication to sharing strategies, companies have made huge strides ahead. It’s incredibly difficult to double back from this new normal.
Now we’ve analysed these situations, it’s time for the next phase. How can we make sure that we learn from it? No revolution can gain momentum unless it’s guided and applies its learnings. We are sure that the pandemic will have highlighted unexpected talents, new transferable skills and resources that had not been previously considered in the workplace. But as we come out of lockdown, there’s no space for improvisation: it’s time to get organised.
Some companies have felt heroic: think about those who have diverted their production to create face masks, ventilators, medicines and PPE. On the other hand, there are people who have lost their motivation completely: tour operators, service managers, those who have to chase state benefits and can only see a high mountain ahead that they still have to climb. Opposite ends of the spectrum that could both explode at any time, for different reasons. For employees, it’s time to take another look at objectives, engagement, retention and organisational procedures. How?
The data that emerged from our survey across 1,500 workers showed that 69% of people expect their company to make space for people’s thoughts and feelings, in order to facilitate the return to work. 62% of people feel worried about the idea of “returning to normal”, because the future still seems so uncertain. 68% of people feel that good managers need to be good listeners.
The digital program Lifeed Transitions supports companies as they begin to come out of the lockdown phase. The training modules allow participants to work through the crisis and identify the life skills that the experience has revealed. Once they become more aware of their resources, their personal diary section allows them to document the training process before moving onto a corporate room where they can share ideas, thoughts and feelings with their colleagues. It’s here that the foundations are laid for a new vision and a refreshed company culture. For example, by sharing that they are fearful of the future, colleagues take the first step in overcoming that fear. If negative emotions are not worked through, they can be more contagious than the virus itself.
Lifeed Transitions allows them to face up to the change: it allows the entire corporate population to become more aware of new key skills that they have developed throughout the crisis and start to build a refreshed company culture together. Each colleague will find themselves at the centre of the process, becoming a motor for change. The training journey is based on Life Based Learning: throughout the transitions people bring unexpected skills and energies to the table, and companies have the opportunity to improve their processes and innovate.
It also reduces stress levels: people can talk about, share and focus on their fears, uncertainties and dreams, finding new reference points inside themselves. Each module ends with an invitation to contribute to the “collective narrative” together with other people within the company, creating a space for people to enrich each other, generate content for the company, as well as sharing their needs, ideas and thoughts. It means that participants become “authors” of change, bringing value back to their company. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that “nobody can save themselves”.
There’s no doubt about it that previous generations have gone through difficult periods of history. But at least their working lives had some stability to them. We’re talking about a time when the “job for life” existed, something which has now earned its place in the history books studied at school. The stages of life were well defined, and securing a permanent contract marked the beginning of a long-term engagement. If we had talked to those past generations about the scientific literature that surrounds the subject today, they would have probably just smiled. But it’s not to say that they felt more satisfied and fulfilled than the new generation. Nowadays, life transitions are physiological. Even those who have linear careers will most likely still find themselves taking a few internships, apprenticeships and freelance jobs before landing a permanent contract. But even then, they might still change companies.
Life transitions are periods that involve significant changes to your lifestyle. Some examples of life transitions might include the birth of a child, moving house, starting a new job, getting married or divorced, being made redundant, illness or the loss of a loved one. Even the global Coronavirus pandemic can be classed as a life transition – it’s a major change that we’re all adjusting to.
Pier Giovanni Bresciani, Work Psychology professor at Urbino University and SIPLO President (the Italian society of work and organisational psychology) is one of Italy’s leading experts on life transitions. In one of his most famous works (Biographies in transition. Working projects in flexible times. Franco Angeli, Milano, 2006) he rightly observes that these life transitions now occur in a “liquid” social context. The subjective uncertainty that manifests when a company abandons their role in growing with an individual can hardly be replaced by training support at work.
As Bresciani says, people use and mix different elements to face each transition, and these elements make up their own personal resources. That’s why each change, even if positive, is a crucial stage in life. Each ‘movement’ requires cognitive redefinition from the individual. Sometimes it’s incredibly complex: it stirs up anxiety, fear, insecurity and makes us face up to our choices and opinions of ourselves, as well as our opinions of others (or what other people think of us). When leaving the known for the unknown, it stirs up complex emotions that require us to use important personal resources.
Think about parenthood. It’s probably the biggest and most significant transition a person can go through. But parenthood is a transition, which is why we believe that it feeds education. Whatever our role within a company, the learnings taken from this experience can also be applied to the workplace. It’s almost inevitable that parents will have improved listening skills, mediation skills and able to better understand their colleagues. The leadership model, conflict management and time management (and consequently productivity) can change for the better if people are guided to recognise the skills that the transition has strengthened within them.
So let’s take a moment to think about how we define “our experience” in more general terms. It’s what we describe on the curriculum, but it’s also a conversation starter. “In my experience” is usually the beginning of a phrase that’s difficult to counter or reply: it almost can’t be questioned because it’s presented as a fact, rather than fiction. But our experiences are built through each transition. The hardest part is facing it, working through it, putting learnings into action at home and at work, because these experiences give us access to new skills and abilities. These life skills, or soft skills, are hard for individuals to identify and transform into a strength point by themselves. Schools and universities don’t teach us to put them into practice.
With Lifeed the blended training platform that mixes digital sessions with real life practice, life experiences are valued and applied to the working environment, We have developed a range of programs that highlight the enormous development potential that lies in every transition. Having worked with companies for five years, we know that people going through transitions can come out the other side feeling weaker or stronger: it depends how they go through it.
The example we referenced before (becoming parents) talks about a positive change. But not all life transitions are triggered by something positive. Think about the Coronavirus pandemic. It has brought about change, in both ourselves and the world around us, and it will be difficult to return to the world as it was before. But this transition isn’t positive or negative. It depends how you live through it. Lifeed Transitions wants to help companies and their employees take positives from this experience. Risks and opportunities become two sides of the same coin that destiny threw in the air, but we have the ability to decide which side the coin will land on. We are social beings: we can’t do this alone. We need to connect with our surrounding context to make it work.
Lifeed Transitions doesn’t just guide people in terms of managing the transition and harnessing its potential for personal growth, it also creates a starting point for team discussion and growth. Participants can contribute to the bottom-up reconstruction of the new corporate culture, starting with the identification and application of new skills that each person has learned. In this way, the coin will land right way up, creating opportunities. It’s what psychologist and politician David Halpern means when he says “post traumatic growth” rather than post traumatic stress. This example helps us to understand how a painful life event, that we tend to think of as negative, can be overcome and even improve a person’s life, if guided and supported in the right way. When handled in the right way, the crisis can become a bridge that helps us to come out the other side unscathed.
Bridges’ Transition Model teaches us to understand our emotions as we pass through a transition. It takes us through shock, fear, anger. It creates disorientation, mental confusion, frustration or even apathy. If we have the right tools available, we can transform these negative emotions into a new beginning. Similarly, when transitions aren’t managed, the company’s wellbeing will feel the repercussions. If we don’t use different words and break down stereotypes, we could see an increase in stress levels. What’s more, many people could lose their vision within the company.
The people that have been able to overcome the crisis are those who have best adapted to change. For this to be able to happen, we need to fully understand the changes that have happened. We need to understand the skills that we have developed to manage change and how they can be applied at work. It’s only once we have crossed over that bridge, that we suddenly realise we have come out the other side.
So, we need to look behind us to understand the past, including any mistakes that have been made. The present is there for us to fix any mistakes. The past isn’t prophetic: what has happened previously doesn’t need to repeat itself, if we learn to avoid it. By looking to the future, our learnings must become generative, as they have helped us to reach this new phase. Creativity, resourcefulness, being open minded, managing change, vision. These are the skills that our survey participants found themselves using throughout the pandemic. They are important skills for the workplace too.
The Lifeed Transitions program guides participants through the identification phase through self-narration, as well as sharing thoughts through the “corporate rooms”. “Nobody can save themselves” is the first learning that Coronavirus has left us. By discovering our own skills, we can cross the bridge from uncertainty to independence (If You’re Burning Out, Carve a New Path, Harvard Business Review April 2020), balancing out the stress that the crisis itself caused.
It all boils down to resilience. It’s a skill that we can learn and hone. We’re moving from being spectators to protagonists in our own stories. It’s important not to confuse it with resistance: this is simply acknowledging your scars and moving forward regardless. Resilience is the ability to learn from them, identifying and understanding mistakes to transform them into a strength. It allows us to improve on ourselves and face our fears of moving through change, which is completely natural. We can’t learn this by talking about it to somebody else. Transitions reveal meta skills that are in high demand in the workplace. These skills are often difficult to train in the classroom. Skills such as change management, tolerating errors, taking initiative, entrepreneurship, mental agility, leadership, responsibility, self-determination. These skills can all be strengthened through training.
It’s exactly what Lifeed Transitions does. Designed by a scientific team that’s specialised in transitions, it makes space for people to reflect, highlights how their identity changes, reassures them and makes them feel stronger. It benefits everyone because it’s not about how strong the individual is, but about their biological and social context.
Your company needs caring for, now more than ever.
The past year has thrown the concept of work-life balance into the spotlight as a business issue. It’s caused many HR departments to look at how they can make the workplace feel more human, authentic and compassionate, as well as considering work as something that deserves passion, meaning and love.
This transformation and reframing of work-life balance has a lot to do with soft skills. But how many of those skills have people already honed outside of the business world, without considering how they could be applied in their everyday jobs?
Parenthood is a great training ground for soft skills. Many people share in this experience – over a third of the workforce are new parents.
Think of all the new parents that have continued to adapt to new situations since the birth of their children. Their roles are constantly changing as their little ones reach new development milestones. There are so many new questions that they are addressing. They are negotiating in everyday tasks, sometimes making compromises. They are reflecting and learning from mistakes, moving forward together as a family team.
All we need to do is connect the dots and recognize the talents that are already there, right in front of us. When we apply these same skills at work, and vice versa, we optimize the amount of effort used to go about our days. Lifeed learners say this new synergy reduces stress levels by 90%, and 1 in 2 people discover new skills that they can apply at work (Lifeed, 2020).
How can we truly increase employee engagement? Download our infographic to discover the 5 parenting takeaways that will encourage employees to flourish.
