How can we use employee data to shape the future of work?

This is the final piece of our Anxiety and Data Webinar series. On April 16th, we spoke with Liz Guthridge, founder of Connect Consulting and co-author of Leading People Through Disasters, and Dr. Jamie Madigan, Industrial-Organizational psychologist and Product Lead at LeaderAmp in our Webinar, Your People are Dealing with Anxiety. How Can You Help? 

In our last post, we discussed what you should do with data after you’ve collected it. To close the conversation, this post will look ahead at how we can use what we’ve learned to shape the future of work.

To watch Part 4 of the conversation, check out the video linked below!

Humans are creatures of change. Dr. Madigan reminded us that we are naturally learning about and adapting to what can and can’t be done in this new environment, shaped by a global pandemic. Despite how unpredictable the foreseeable future may seem, we can use the data that we collect now to shape peoples’ careers in both the short and long term futures.

For example, working from home may have seemed unthinkable to people with highly site-specific roles, or too many distractions in the home environment. A recent Colliers survey showed that 52% of people are at least as productive, and 24% are more productive working at home than they were at the office. We have found workarounds to the endless context switching between Zoom calls, homeschooling, and cooking lunch, that makes working from home highly plausible as the new normal. 

Liz Guthridge explained how most self-generated insights occur when we are in an environment we feel most comfortable in. With the job market shifting to a work-from-home environment, the capacity for innovation will thrive. In a previous post, we explained how psychological safety is more about the dynamics of a group or environment that someone is in, which allows them to feel comfortable contributing to the conversation or speaking up for themselves. Liz shared suggested posing harder, thought-provoking questions at the end of a meeting so that people have time to take their ideas and mull them over in an environment where they feel psychologically safe before they respond.

In an anxiety-inducing environment, we are able to create environments of psychological safety to mitigate the negative effects anxiety may have in our lives. The process of collecting data itself is a way that we can foster psychological safety – because even when our teams aren’t physically present, it is vital to make space for individuals to feel like their opinions and qualms are valid and respected, especially in times like these. We can use this data to direct us to the questions that will help us determine what can be done next to help ourselves and to help others through these difficult times.

After all, we are a team, and we are all in this together.