In order to build high-performance teams and ensure productivity gains, organisations need to prioritise stability, trust and ‘letting go’. Here’s how HR can help.

Seventy per cent of Chief HR Officers (CHROs) feel they have more opportunities to make an impact now than at any other point, according to Gartner research presented at its ReimagineHR conference in Sydney this week.

“HR’s stock is on the rise,” said Brent Cassell, VP, Advisory, Gartner, as part of the keynote address.

“Long gone are the days of fighting for a seat at the metaphorical table. Now, 83 per cent of HR leaders say they’re expected to do more [and] 74 per cent report that their organisations rely on them more heavily. The bottom line is this: you are now in a position to help organisations to break barriers and unlock new dimensions.”

That will become critical as we look to some of the emerging trends predicted for 2024, including continued incivility, the potential for further economic challenges, a scarcity of talent and skills, continued tension around hybrid and remote work, and further digital transformation.

The good news? The majority of  HR leaders (58 per cent) feel they have more authority to determine strategic priorities for their organisations, meaning they can help steer their organisations in the right directions.

According to Gartner, that means focusing on three key areas:

1. Ensuring stability

Gallup has found that four in five employees feel disengaged and disconnected from their work at the moment, and Gartner found that only around a quarter of people feel connected to their organisation’s culture. 

“And only 16 per cent of them say they know what to expect from their organisations… So when things change, [employees] don’t know what to expect from their employers,” said Anna Krasniewska, Group Vice President, Gartner.

The antidote to this, she said, is stability. 

“Stability isn’t about staying still. Stability is about controlled motion,” said Krasniewska. 

She refers to Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, who took a few years away from the sport to recover after mentally and physically pushing herself to her limits.

“She didn’t lose her ability to do gymnastics, but she did lose that grounding, that orientation. She needs that stability for her own protection. That’s what enables her to have some of the highest scores that anyone has seen in gymnastics.”

We need to create that same stability to ensure for high-performance teams, she said. 

Using the metaphor of a climber scaling a mountain, Krasniewska refers to the ‘handholds’ – the parts climbers grip onto – and said it’s important to build the equivalent for the workforce. Employees need something to hold onto to both help them scale the mountain (i.e. resources and support to tackle big projects), but also to allow them to take a break when they need to.

“It’s about [them feeling] grounded and resting for a moment to figure out their next step.”

In a work context, these handholds – or stability points – might look like:

• Building wellbeing initiatives into the flow of work, rather than making wellbeing an additional task for employees to find time for
• Regular and consistent micro-breaks throughout the day
• Protocols to ensure employees are switching off and recouping while on annual leave

When employees feel a sense of stability at work, organisations see a 61 per cent rise in employee engagement levels.

“That’s enormous. I can honestly say in nearly 20 years of experience in HR, this is arguably the most powerful accelerant of engagement we have ever seen here at Gartner.”

In summary

With this information in mind, Gartner suggests that HR:

• Identify and monitor areas of instability in their workforce
• Invest in ‘handholds’ to help employees recoup and maintain direction amid change

2. Make a culture of trust part of your strategic agenda

Gartner found that 4 in 10 employers don’t trust their employees. “How do you run a business like that? said Cassell. 

It also found that employees don’t necessarily trust their employers either. “I would go as far as to say we’re experiencing a trust crisis,” he said.

For example, Cassell uses employee monitoring as an example, which 71 per cent of employers are said to engage in.

“Some estimate that the market for [employee monitoring] technology could top at $3 billion by the end of the decade.

“There are many good reasons that you might monitor employees: for employees’ safety, for compliance, for making sure that the work you need employees to do gets done. But [we need to] recognise that monitoring employees isn’t and won’t ever be a substitute for trust.”

There are also pretty significant consequences for not trusting employees (move slider to reveal insights).

“These are the very ideas that you need to break down barriers confidently and competently,” said Cassell.

The return on investment when businesses get trust right is astronomical. Gartner found that organisations that place trust in their people increase employees’ discretionary efforts by 39 per cent. 

Separate research from Deloitte has found that employees who demonstrate high levels of trust are 260 per cent more motivated to work, have 41 per cent  lower rates of absenteeism, and are 50 per cent less likely to go job hunting.

In summary:

Gartner suggests:

• Auditing your company’s current trust gaps (from both an employee and employer’s perspective)
• Prioritising moments to signal trust in your employees because employers/HR need to trust employees before they will trust you.
• If you are going to use monitoring software, clearly explain how this will benefit employees. For example, are you monitoring screen time to avoid employee burnout? Or are you installing cameras in the office to keep employees safe?
• 3. Letting go of the original plan when necessary

A key way of the keynote for HR leaders is to help leaders let go of ideas, processes or behaviours that are unlikely to bring you closer to your end goal, said Krasniewska.

“We hold onto these examples because they served us well at some point. They were comfortable, but that doesn’t mean that’s what we need in order to get to the next step. We need to let go of things that are ‘good enough’ in order to make room for things that are really great.”

Organisations that can effectively let go of restrictive plans are 10 times more likely to say their organisation enables innovation, Gartner has found.

What does this look like in practice? Krasniewska suggests:

• Challenging where you’re looking for talent. Rather than waiting for talent to come to you, learn how to get better at seeking out the talent that you need. This might look like promoting jobs in non-traditional spaces, such as on community job boards, rather than relying on traditional recruitment platforms.
• Letting go of certain requirements when job hunting, such as requesting candidates have a specific degree before applying, or a specific professional background.
• Rethinking retirement – is there a way to offer older workers the chance to continue working at a reduced load, so you can avoid losing important institutional knowledge before an effective succession plan is in full swing?
• Allowing employees to have a say in where they work. Rather than imposing a return to the workplace on them, co-create the hybrid work plan alongside them. What days would work for each team? When does it make sense for them to work collaboratively? What tasks do they deem easy to perform remotely?

A more “radical” approach to letting go that Krasniewska shared was from Shopify, which cancelled every meeting with three or more people invited – all 322,000 hours of them. The hours retained from this meeting purge was the equivalent of hiring 150 new employees.

“This gave employees the chance to rethink the [meetings] that they actually needed. And in order to put a meeting back in the diary, employees [had to interact] with a plug-in tool which calculated the cost of the meeting based on who would attend and how long the meeting would be.”

Since doing this, declining meetings has become so normalised at Shopify that its Chief Operating Officer has said employees have been known to say ‘no’ to some of his meeting invites – which is exactly what he set out to achieve.

As a result of making this bold move in January 2023, as of May this year Shopify was on track to deliver 25 per cent more projects due to the time saved.

Read how Amazon has streamlined its approach to meetings.

Sometimes, managers also need to support their employees to let go. Perhaps there’s a project or product they’ve been working on for some time that needs to be retired. That’s never an easy conversation, said Krasniewska, as it can become quite emotional for them. She suggests doing something symbolic to recognise their efforts and help them gain a sense of closure.

Ice-cream producer Ben and Jerry’s is great at helping its employees let go, she said.

With so many different flavours produced each year, it often has to retire some. Teams of people would work on producing each flavour of ice-cream, so what Ben and Jerry’s did was  create a ‘flavour graveyard’ that acknowledges the ice-cream flavours of the past. It had headstones for each retired flavour and included details of when each flavour was produced.

“This symbolic gesture recognises the contribution of the collaboration of lots of people, so they can move on and make room for more creativity.

“There are ways we can acknowledge that something is passing, leaving or changing, and that this might just be what’s needed in order [for the business] to forge ahead.”

In a more traditional workplace context, this might look like:

• Creating an archive of projects that never saw the light of day
• Hosting presentations for employees to talk through projects they’re proud of (even if they weren’t the most successful in terms of meeting KPIs)
• Creating a recognition channel on your internal communications platform where managers can celebrate the lessons learned from a project that you’re retiring or pivoting on.

Read HRM’s article, The sunk cost fallacy: when is it time to step away from a project?

In summary: 

HR leaders could try:

• Making ‘letting go’ part of your strategic agenda
• Consider a ‘meeting purge’ as we head into 2024
• Audit current processes, such as talent acquisition, succession planning and recruitment to see where you could trial a new approach

HR roles are only continuing to grow in terms of influence, remit and strategic value-add, said Krasniewska.

“You, as HR leaders, have never been better positioned to meet this moment.”

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