We are a Great Place to Work and Covid happened… now what?

This year, Lisbon Nearshore was awarded with the 7th place in the best companies to work for in Portugal. We even got the 4th position for companies under 100 employees! It is an achievement that makes us feel proud of the work we’ve been developing and the experiences we’ve been providing to our employees. But now, a challenging question arises: How can we improve from here? Especially in these uncertain times, where the office is empty or only accessed by a handful of people at a time, how can we ensure our company culture stays relevant in people’s homes, at a distance?

It is time to evaluate the effectiveness of the retention strategies to see if they are still relevant in a post-pandemic setting.

Wellness

In a time where we are mostly confined to our living spaces, away from most loved ones and friends, mental and physical health programs take a crucial importance in the way an organization takes care of its employees. This year and in the years to come, these topics will be on the agenda of companies and governments, and it is essential for your organization to start implementing them into your employee benefits package.

Morale & Engagement

How can we be sure that employee morale and engagement are high without the face-to-face interactions that allowed for problems to be identified and solved on the spot? How can we keep develop our workforce’s skills so that they stay pertinent in an ever-changing industry? Here it is key to virtualize education by providing online trainings and workshops and create online teambuilding events with challenges tackling communication bottlenecks and incentivize assynchronous communication.

Communication

Now, more than ever, organizations must communicate directly and effectively and take decisions by gathering feedback through more centralized means (online surveys to the whole company for example). To keep productivity high, it is also important to foster asynchronous communication. Real-time-all-the-time communication can be a burden on your employees and reduce their productivity by hampering their ability to go into deep work mode (coding, designing or strategizing as opposed to answering emails or responding to slack messages).

The Office

Probably a sensitive topic for some, as there is still a large distrust in remote work(ers), coming back to the office is a decision that will surely affect the morale of your employees. At Lisbon Nearshore, we opted for keeping the office open and making attendance completely optional. We want those who wish to go work in the office (either because their home environment is not optimal or to meet occasionally fellow team members), to do so by their own whim and not because the company is forcing them to. We set in place a system of attendance through Microsoft Teams with a limited amount of desks per office to ensure social distancing.

The pandemic created an absolute and on-going revolution in the way organizations operate. The companies that better adapt and plan for this new-normal will be the winners of the future. For us, the best way to adapt is to continue to create the outright best employee experience we can, to put in place effective and innovative retention strategies, and to keep honouring our stand as one of the best companies to work for in Portugal.