by Investing in diversity and inclusion
The importance of embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) and prioritizing it at the leadership level will help unleash the potential of your employees, helping to create a better and more engaged workforce. It also helps to increase the company’s earnings.
Addressing inequality within your culture
According to Gallup’s recent report, Employee Burnout: Causes and Cures, “76 percent of employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes, and 28 percent say they are burned out ‘very often’ or ‘always’ at work.” And the top factor causing burnout? Unfair treatment at work.
Leaders have the responsibility to ensure that the workplace is as fair and equitable as possible. It isn’t easy to know where to get started, and I suggest you start with pay. Complete a full assessment of employee compensation, looking at it from all angles such as gender, role and the gap between individual contributors, mid-level managers and executive leadership. Then address the inequalities. There is no reason a CEO should make 350 times more than that of the typical worker or that the sole purpose of your company is to maximize value for its shareholders. These are some reasons we find ourselves in this situation of staggering inequality and deep distrust of our leaders.
Learning to lead several generations
In today’s professional environment, baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Z, and millennials are all working side by side in a multigenerational workforce that boasts different values and working styles. And as people live longer, they’re working more too: Senior employees can easily be 50 years older than a company’s youngest workers, resulting in the need for leaders who are able to adjust their leadership style according to who they’re managing.
Fostering emotionally agile leadership
The frequency of burnout in a business is based on factors that rise and fall on leadership, such as constantly changing or unclear instructions, an unrealistic workload, and low emotional reserves. Burnout has been even more abundantly clear since the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase of engagement to 40 percent for those working in an office and 41 percent for those working remotely before abruptly crashing. Employee well-being and engagement seem to be connected and correlated with causation: engagement decreases burnout, with an increase in productivity and well-being, but when engagement and well-being decrease, burnout increases.
Embracing an experimenter’s mindset
There is no doubt that more disruption lies ahead; it’s the new norm. What you did yesterday will most likely not work tomorrow. Yes, it can change that fast, just as we experienced in March 2020. To be future-ready, you must be willing to try new things, to experiment.
At our company, we are experimenting in all facets of our organization: product development, customer success, digital customer experiences and employee training and education. We have banned the words, we are the expert, and are teaching people how to embrace the learner’s mind and not fear failure. Possessing a learner’s mind does not mean taking significant risks.
