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Responding to Organizational Impacts

The COVID Pandemic

The COVID pandemic, which resulted in most businesses shifting to entirely virtual workforces for the first time, reminded us of the importance of great leadership. It also presented challenges to our own business, as we have prided ourselves on establishing personal relationships with our clients, and we were not certain we could maintain our own effectiveness in a virtual environment.

Rapid advances in technology demonstrated that the capability for a completely remote workforce not only exists but facilitated an actual increase in productivity! In our own work, we found that we were able to expand our reach to new clients across the country and maintain effectiveness thorough strong project management practices and regular virtual meetings, all the while saving valuable time and money for our clients.

The challenge for our clients was balancing an instinctive desire to bring everyone back to the office with employees’ desire to maintain the new remote status quo. There were many competing considerations. Leaders recognized that notwithstanding an initial outlay for remote technology, they saved considerably on overhead costs while workers were all remote. At the same time, they were understandably concerned about the barriers to effective virtual work leadership and management, as well as team cohesion including the difficulty of building and maintaining relationships with teams, effective cross-functionality across the organization, and limited personal contact with clients.

Navigating Change

Our previous work around engagement and our DE&I framework had already laid the groundwork for new approaches. We have long worked with our clients to develop engagement strategies that have appeal across generations as a part of our DE&l strategic planning. This was particularly important to attract and keep Gen Z employees. They were the first generational cohort to be adamant about the desire for work/life balance. Yet, we also recognized the importance of personal interactions in solidifying the relationship between employer and employee. Tactics to bridge this gap have varied across our client-base, but they include hybrid work environments with set “communal” day(s) for all hands on deck, flexible work schedules to include four-day work weeks, and lengthening so-called “business hours” to allow early birds to leave earlier in the day, while those who need more time in the morning to come in later and work later. These are only a few small examples of the innovative thinking happening as we all adjust to this new world.

There is no one size fits all solution to the new work expectations ushered in by the pandemic. However, it has provided unprecedented opportunities for T. H. Easter Consulting as a business and for our clients to rethink the nature of work, and the continued salience of traditional ideas around what makes an organization effective, and finally, the importance of leadership agility in the face of the unexpected.

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Leadership Development
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Employee Engagement
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Change Management

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