Onboarding in a hybrid workplace

Hybrid workplace…should we stop saying that? more than 70% of the employers are embracing the new way of workplace. This is really helping them in attracting the talent pool. Everyone is talking about great resignation, this is also creating a great demand and the talent is moving for more flexibility and higher pay. 

As employers are recruiting new employees with greater flexibility in work location, how are they planning to maintain the workplace culture?

What does a new employee need to know when they join your organization? Don’t worry I will not repeat the checklist or try to perfect your checklist. I will only focus on the part that has to be different in a hybrid workplace.

Whom should they connect with? Who are the immediate 10 people or less they need to connect with to be successful in their job in the first 30 days? This is very critical for their success. This can be easily accomplished with little planning and an excel sheet.

Next comes the most challenging part…

Once they make the first 10 connections and start learning about their job and company culture they need more connections to stay engaged, create their brand, and to stay productive. This is the most challenging part in a hybrid workplace. Who has the time to make sure that this new hire is constantly getting connected to new people in the organization.

This will create a small bubble where they are only engaged with a few people and their opportunity to make new connections will be limited.

LetsConnectIn.com can help you solve this problem. We recommend forming an organization at a business unit level (with approx 200 / 300 users) and let the roulette run at least twice a month. Users will be paired with someone new every time, and they will get to meet 25 - 50 people in year based on the frequency selected.

This is automated, this runs in the background and sends a calendar invite. Users don’t have to deal with one more app.

LetsConnectIn.com can help you make your onboarding more successful. 

An Atomic Habit - Let's Connect on Tuesdays @ 4 PM EST

  

    For those of you who are reading our blog for the first time, we are on a mission to help people stay connected with their workplace in the hybrid era. I will not waste your time with the stats of how many people want to work from home or prefer hybrid work arrangements. We have been missing and will keep missing many opportunities to meet our colleagues and have random conversations.

    Recently I came to read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, if you haven’t read I would highly recommend it. To make anything a habit there are some very good techniques discussed in this book. Inspired by this book, I have decided that we should give LetsConnectIn roulette a specific time and place to happen.

   Today LetsConnectIn roulette matches a user with someone random in their organization. LetsConnectIn app  sends an email to both users and asks them to connect. We have plans to integrate users' calendars, and create a placeholder on their calendars. With more than 2 decades of experience working for all sizes of employers, I know one thing for sure…most calendars are a mess. It's impossible to find time on many people's calendars unless you try weeks in advance. 

  To make a habit stick you need to define a place and time. If finding time is hard on calendars, what are our options? What if we have a defined time, it's the same time every week across all of the USA. Tuesdays @ 4 PM EST, we will block 20 mins to meet someone new in our organization. We have saved a lot of commute time in this hybrid world, let's use 20 mins of that savings in connecting to our organizations. We need that social capital reserves to get things done.

  LetsConnectIn.com helps people stay connected in a hybrid workplace. To learn more about how LetConnectIn works, click this link. If you have any questions please contact us here.

Connect in 1:1 setting (One to One, not One to Many)

                                  

                                                   

Most office meetings are in a group setting. That is the most efficient way to transmit information or have a team building activity. Is it always the right way to connect with someone? Remember a relationship is a one to one, it's not a one to many. We are not database records, as human beings we define our relationships one to one. Doesn’t it make sense to build them in 1:1 ? This is a very important question we have to ask ourselves in the next normal, where closer to 60% of the workforce is preferring remote work 3 - 4 days a week. 

  In traditional settings when we have meetings as a group, we get to individually engage in conversations with people sitting next to us before and after the meeting. We may be able to connect with others as we are entering or exiting the meeting rooms. We may walk back with them, stop by their office / cube and continue our discussions if time permits. These are not very practical in a hybrid workplace.

 We are trying to mimic the same in a hybrid world, we are conducting lots of town halls, virtual happy hours, game nights. These are really great efforts by leaders to bring their teams together and keep them engaged. There is a major drawback to this approach in the hybrid workplace. Observing these events, you can easily catch a pattern. The same faces week after week on the zoom calls. I call them top 15% , they are socially active or became active in the next normal. Remaining 85% have become passive. They are busy with their work or life, they are still productive at their work. They just show up to look like they have attended. 

 These 85% don’t want to speak up in a public setting, and many times don't know how to interrupt others in a social setting. Eventually they give up. 20 to 30% of this silent majority still enjoy the social meets as they can listen to what the 15% are doing and cheer them on. This could be a problem in the long run. As they silently keep working on their tasks, they forget to interact with others. They will forget others, and others will forget about them. Eventually they can become complete strangers, their interactions may be completely work related. As if they are asking or responding to a machine that speaks a human language. 

 To get things done in a corporate world, you need more than people and tools. You need strong and weak relationships. I am particularly interested in the weak ties, what some people call social capital. This gets depleted as people stop interacting with new people in the workplace. 

 A connect in 1:1 setting helps people let their guard down. There is no one else, both of them have enough control over the conversation. If they have to change direction it's much easier than in a meeting with more people. They have a much better chance of remembering that person’s name, asking what they are doing, connecting at a personal level, sharing family details, hobbies, and interests, etc.

LetsConnectIn.com roulette brings that capability, it connects people 1:1. Try it today, it is very easy to use. Request a free demo using https://www.letsconnectin.com/contact

“Helping Leaders reconnect their organizations in a COVID accelerated digital workplace.”

“Helping people bond with their tribe.”

Power of random interactions

 

       

Word on the street, offices are going to open up very soon. Many companies have started opening the doors for their executives and are on-track to complete their plans to bring back employees into offices. That is very exciting news to be again in a collaborative space and have in person interactions. One change is definitely going to be normal, that is working from home. Most organizations will provide this option for the foreseeable future, as a perk and to attract and retain talent. Welcome to the next normal which is still under planning, no one knows the long term impacts…

     It's good that many of us will have the opportunity to have some face to face interactions soon. After all, we are social beings. We need those interactions not only to get things done but also for maintaining healthy relationships with people we spend a good chunk of our lives with. Most of us will get to see our immediate team members on a frequent basis, at the same time we will not get to see most of our teammates at organizational level. We will have less opportunities to meet the newcomers. It will be hard for the newcomers to learn about other teams within their organization and build relationships outside their immediate team. We will start forgetting faces that we have not seen in a while, we will have some awkward moments.

    This will become a problem to build and maintain organizational social capital. Let us go back 15 months to early 2020. How were we building and maintaining these relationships with our broader teammates. RANDOM INTERACTIONS!! We did not have to pay attention then because we had hallways, coffee breaks, cafes, social events, and lets not forget our favorite meetings. Just look at your work buddies list. How did you meet them? How will you meet your new buddies, as we will have less of these interactions in the new normal?

   We have some opportunities to handle this situation. We at LetsConnectIn.com have come up with a way to automate these interactions. We are providing a platform for individuals and teams to come together as an organization and create random interactions. We are keeping it simple and random. Keeping it random reduces chance for bias and increases chance to meet diverse individuals as one would in the pre-COVID world. Randomness will increase the inclusiveness of your organizations. 

 Lets keep it simple, let's keep it random, let's connect in! Please visit our site LetsConnectIn and reach out to us at https://www.letsconnectin.com/contact

Why build a “strong” network not a large network?

 We are living in a world filled with multiple platforms/apps that are helping us stay connected. We have hundreds of friends and colleagues whom we are linked through these apps. So we have built huge (volume) networks. We are busy liking their personal posts, re-sharing what they are sharing, once in a while we do say hello. Is this benefiting us? Yes, we can search for anyone we ever met and we ever want to meet. We can see where they are what they are doing, like a research tool. But how will that help us? When did you last put your large network to test? 

 I recently got a chance to put my huge network to test. Guess what, I found out most of those links are just contacts. They are contacts whom I can send a message to. It's closer to throwing darts in the dark, basically old school cold calling The only people that I got some direction or feedback is with a small group of people whom I am really connected with. That made me question, am I doing it all wrong? Am I the only one doing it all wrong? How do I build a strong network? I started researching and came across the Dunbar's number.

 What is Dunbar's number? “Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships” [1]. Robert Dunbar found this in his research, there are many papers and books published by him. It's not that we don’t want to build strong relationships with all the thousands of people who are supposedly connected with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and many more platforms / apps. Our brain has a limit. So we have to play this game of networking within these limits.

 The magic number is 150. So we can really build strong relationships with only 150 people. Then why are we busy accepting everyone who is trying to add us, because we are social animals we want to be nice. If they have to really go out and do something for you, you will not hear back from the contacts you have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Insta, etc. I am not saying leave all the social platforms, just use them what they are good for; research.

 I ran into this problem and I thought there should be a way to network better. Yes there is a way, you have to focus on the relationships that matter. Is there a channel to help us with this, good news is I am building one. I would love to invite you to use ConnectIn. 

https://www.connectinapp.us/

Start small and don't forget the boundary (150 people). Start with 25 people whom you want to build strong relationships with, choose them based on your journey. Set a frequency to connect, the app will send a reminder (right now its only an email). Make that connection happen. Take notes. Yes, this is your personal CRM and it is FREE. You can send your feedback through the app. Good luck in your journey.

 A strong network can help you achieve your goals.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_numbe

How staying ConnectIn is the next normal?

 

Our world is getting bigger.with more technological advancement and we’re consistently finding new ways to connect with each other. With many more businesses and organizations moving to working remotely for the future, we’re learning about how we can stay connected in better ways. People are getting ready for the next normal and what lies ahead in virtual networking professionally within an organization. 

 

Networking with the help of ConnectIn app (www.connectinapp.us)

 

With the ConnectIn app, organizations are able to strengthen their communication and collaborate more easily without having to do a call or use a different platform to share information. We’re in the age where most people have a high-powered cellphone in their pocket that can do most of the functions of any good computer. So, it shouldn’t be hard to find a networking app that helps organizations stay connected.

 

We’re entering the next new normal where there is a need for creativity, accessibility, and innovation in how we communicate to each other. With our app, it will be easier for people to share information and discuss projects with each other from a longer distance. 

 

Challenges with Virtual Networking

 

It will also be easier for people to network within an organization and build their social capital. The next normal is all about understanding virtual networking and being able to advance in one’s career through the internet. 

 

There can be many challenges that a person has to navigate through to understand how to network in the environment of virtual communities. ConnectIn app makes it easier for people to connect with each other and network professionally to help them in the long run for their career. 

 

We understand that with virtual networking, there is a limited number of cues since you’re not networking with people in person. You’re not able to talk face to face. But we still provide you the tools to have great conversations with colleagues. 

 

There’s also the challenge of having a limited amount of space to display your ideas but there is also support with building more concise communication. If virtual networking and communication is something that is new to you, we provide you with the knowledge to be able to navigate the features of the app and gain a better understanding of connecting through apps. 

 

In Conclusion

 

At the end of the day, it’s important to understand that there are organizations and businesses switching to structures that allow employees to connect with each other and other people within their career sector through networking platforms. People are understanding more and more how important it is to utilize the internet and our ability to communicate with each other no matter the distance.

 

While it may feel like there’s a learning curve that you’re afraid you won’t reach, we are here to provide you with support in understanding how to utilize innovative tools to better connect with people in your network. With gaining the right tools, you’ll be ready for the next normal and better understand how to navigate the various challenges that come your way.