It has been more than a year since many employees around the country started working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and employee engagement remains an issue, especially during virtual meetings.
“With the switch to remote work, video calls have replaced traditional in-person meetings for many professionals, leading to new types of burnout altogether a la Zoom fatigue,” wrote R. Dallon Adams for TechRepublic.
Virtual meetings, touted as a panacea by many during the earlier days of the pandemic, are now part of the “new normal” for many companies, even for employees returning to the office as businesses incorporate social distancing at work in the face of Delta variant surge.
“In the last year, we’ve witnessed a major shift in the workplace, and at the forefront of that has been the substantial impact of being physically separated from our colleagues,” says Samir Diwan, CEO and co-founder of Polly., an engagement app that works with Slack, Teams and Zoom.
Polly partnered with software companies, including WorkPatterns, Colibri, Fellow, Pledge, Prezi, Rev, and Warmly, for their national study released Aug. 18, 2021, which found that:
The Polly report said that with the country facing what many are calling the “Great Resignation,” this is a critical time for employers to reevaluate how they are meeting employees’ needs across the board to hold onto their top talent, including virtual meetings, which are now a staple of the corporate environment.
“Virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere, and making them more efficient starts with asking some hard questions: If most of my employees aren’t fully engaged during virtual meetings, what’s the real impact on productivity? And more importantly, how do we address it?” Diwan said.
David Rice, writing for the HR Exchange Network, argues that even employees who love their work can suffer burnout when they become disconnected from their company and organizational support.
Factors cited in employee burnout, according to Rice, include:
The HR Exchange Network “State of HR 2020” found that 16 percent of those polled said that the biggest consequence of the pandemic was burnout.
The survey also found that the two biggest challenges to employee engagement were:
The Forbes Communication Council says businesses across all industries have been struggling to keep employees engaged.
“If you are a manager or business owner, showing your employees that you care about them on a personal level is key to fruitful engagement,” said the Council.
Here are 10 of the ways to creatively keep your employees engaged:
“It’s important for leaders to find ways of ensuring high performance and productivity while simultaneously helping team members maintain their energy, drive and mental and physical health,” said the Council.
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