How 2020 changed the workplace landscape
Insights from the pandemic: data from nearly 35,000 Australian employees
By Chris Fajou
As Australia’s vaccination program progresses and organisations begin to plan for a post-pandemic world, it is timely to consider the lessons learnt from the extraordinary year that was 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed some unprecedented challenges for Australian workplaces and continues to impact businesses and communities. It is easy to assume that coping with a pandemic would have a negative influence on employee’s perceptions of their workplace experience. However, taking the time to test assumptions against empirical data from the Australian workforce gives us reason to pause and reflect on how we have pulled together in the face of these challenges. Voice Project’s 2020 data collected from nearly 35,000 employees reveals some remarkable changes, along with insights for five key areas in the workplace landscape. These changes may set the standard for workplaces to remain competitive in the ‘new normal’
Insights from nearly 35,000 Australian employees
We collected data from 34,854 employees across 131 organisations who conducted an employee engagement survey in 2020. This cohort is consistent with the type of organisations and industries included in our previous year-on-year analysis of engagement survey data. To look at emerging trends, we have compared these results against data collected across the previous five years – from 720 organisations between 2016 and 2019.
Pulling together in a pandemic
With the challenges of 2020, we might have expected lower levels of workplace satisfaction, engagement and wellbeing. However, the data shows satisfaction across each of these broad areas actually increased.
The average staff satisfaction with work practices in 2020 (across all of our 67 engagement survey items) increased by 5% when compared with the previous five years. Meanwhile, employee engagement increased 3%, and wellbeing at work increased by 4%.
While surprising, these shifts are consistent with earlier findings from the data we collected in our specialised COVID-19 Staff Check-In Survey from mid-April to mid-June 2020. At this crucial time early in the pandemic, an overwhelmingly high number of staff felt adequately resourced and supported despite the challenges they were experiencing.
What got us through in 2020
Five areas proved key to supporting staff through 2020. In addition, the graph below shows how a shift in results for specific survey items became notable exceptions to previous year on year trends and showed significant increases. Staff satisfaction with how change was managed during 2020 increased 9% compared to what we have typically observed.
Key areas of focus
1. Technology
With lockdowns and decreased mobility, 2020 was very much the year of the home office and videoconferencing. While the pressure of such an accelerated uplift in technological capability could have overwhelmed IT teams, our data suggests that on average, staff satisfaction with technology increased 9% in 2020 compared to the previous five-year average. A significant portion of this increase was recognition of better organisational use of technology (up 11%). Corresponding with this increased usage, more staff felt they were adequately trained to be able to use these technological systems effectively (up 7%).
2. Resources
Changes in service delivery, whether that be through more stringent health and safety protocols or a move towards remote work, has meant staff urgently required resources to ensure they could continue to serve their customers. Organisations generally responded well to this challenge, with scores on resources increasing 9% compared to the previous five years. Specifically, our data suggests that more staff felt they had access to both the equipment and information they needed to perform their role effectively (up 9%).
3. Leadership
Communication and confidence in senior leadership has been an important driver in maintaining organisational direction and optimism throughout pandemic, and 2020 saw an increase of 7% compared to the previous five-year average. Part of this increase is due to employees receiving more direct communication from senior leadership teams (up 8%). However, our data also suggests an increase in perceptions that senior leaders behaved in a manner consistent with their organisation’s values (up 9%). Challenging situations put a spotlight on values, and tested alignment of decision-making with those values. In 2020, it seems more leaders were able to cut through with clear and compelling rationale for some tough decisions.
4. Cross-unit cooperation
At the height of the pandemic, regardless of industry, different teams were forced to come together to re-evaluate how they would continue service delivery in the face of the challenges of the pandemic. Staff have been exposed a little more to their IT and HR teams, as well as new people or teams they may have incidentally met through wider videocalls. It is therefore no surprise that cross-unit cooperation increased 7% in 2020. Most of this positive change is due to an increased focus in organisation-wide communication and information-sharing (up 13%). Interestingly, perceived support across work units didn’t increase as much (up 2%), highlighting the continued need to provide opportunities for collaboration and cooperation, beyond just knowledge sharing.
5. Recognition
A significant challenge throughout the pandemic has been celebrating the wins, both big and small, at a time where we have been inundated with gloomy messaging and uncertainty in the future. Our data suggests that staff recognition increased 6% compared to the previous five-year average. This positive trend is occurring at both a micro and macro level within organisations: with more staff feeling that their individual contributions are recognised (up 7%), but also perceiving the organisation as a whole celebrates success (up 5% from 2019; five-year data isn’t available). N.B. This phenomenon may be attributable to a bias in our data (toward organisations in frontline industries such as Education, Health and Community Services, 77% of the sample), where their continued contribution to the community was celebrated and highlighted during the pandemic.
What about flexibility?
Given the rapid transition to a work-from-home model of service delivery for a number of industries in 2020, we might have expected that flexibility would have made the list of top five changes. While last year has shown that many industries can optimise their work arrangements to accommodate for a remote work setup, interestingly we didn’t see a significant increase in satisfaction with flexibility (only increased 2% compared to the five-year average). Many organisations have been unclear about whether these new flexible work practices are here to stay, and others are in the process of designing new hybrid work arrangements. It is clear that employee expectations of flexibility have increased and it will become an important point of the employee value proposition for existing and prospective employees.
Looking forward
Overall, it has been particularly pleasing to see organisations not only survive but thrive in light of the challenges of last year. Will these trends prove to be a blip on the radar? As Australia continues its efforts to manage the pandemic, workplaces may be wise to position themselves for the ‘return to normal’ by considering how they can best sustain the changes they have made during the pandemic, and to listen in to the expectations of their employees. Now is a good time to reflect on how to translate any pandemic learnings to sustain a permanent uplift in performance in key management practices.
Voice Project provides research-backed surveys that measure employee engagement, leadership capability and customer satisfaction. These state-of-the-art surveys help organisations get the best feedback to drive positive change. Voice Project works with organisations across the not-for profit, private and public sectors. Get in touch.