15th November 2021
The Great Employee Engagement Divide – Engaging Frontline Workers – Stuart Rhys Thomas
This snippet is part of our Ebook The great Employee Engagement Divide – Engaging Frontline Workers. Advice and suggestions from our Top 101 influencers. You can download the full eBook with all the advice here.
Stuart Rhys Thomas, Founder, Masgroves
The Great Employee Engagement Divide.
The last 18 months has seen one audience “freed” whilst at the same time, another has become “trapped.”
The Great Employee Engagement Divide is not actually a “divide” – it’s a feeling.
Office-based employees have long called for freedom – like the freedom to flex their start and finish times; the freedom to fit in work around family commitments; the freedom to choose when and where they work. Overnight, the pandemic ushered in a tidal wave of freedoms as employers faced a simple choice.
Trust your people – or else.
Suddenly, office-based employees were free!
Free to wear whatever they liked…free to sit the kids, the dog, their granny on their lap in meetings with the boss… free to do anything, as long as the work got done.
All while frontline workers were having their freedom removed.
They had to go to work. They had to take the crap. They had to do what they were told. Working in an environment riddled with uncertainty and at great personal risk. Yet they had to stay.
Today, things have changed and are changing.
Office-based workers will see their new found freedoms ebb away, as the Great Return gathers pace. Frontline workers will see some of their freedoms return – especially the freedom to say no. The divide will close of its own accord.
Want to close it quicker? Try these three things:
Trust people*
Trust people*
Trust people*
*It worked in the pandemic.