I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to all the interviews in this series.
This time it is Dr. Patti Fletcher, VP Brand Marketing and Grant Beckett, VP Product Strategy at Workhuman whose platform "connects teams and strengthens global workforces through gratitude, feedback, and celebration."
They provide plenty of examples of leadership, collaboration and workplace dynamics during the last few months, particularly in the pharma, healthcare and banking sectors. They mention Maslow's hierarchy a couple of times - during the crisis, gratitude and rewards have to aim much lower given fear, grief, loneliness so many of us have encountered. Also, reach low in the organization - Grant provides a great example of a senior doctor complimenting a gardener for the impact of his work on the well-being of patients, while healthcare workers rightly get much of the credit.
Patti also provides some sobering input on how ladies, especially minorities, have slipped significantly in their diversity and equity progress during the last few months. She quotes a BCG study that women are putting in 15 more hours a week than men on "unpaid labor" as they work from home. She says 1 in 4 are thinking of leaving their jobs. I had reviewed her book Disrupters, and Michelle Turman's Jumping the Queue a couple of years ago. Both had described the struggles and the progress and were optimistic in their tone - clearly this year has stalled the progress. So it was good to have Barbry McGann of Workday present on tools like VIBE which help quantify how much further we have to go - see my post here.
Overall, a very interesting perspective on how organizations are dealing with a new set of challenges when it comes to traumatized and yet heroic human beings in the workforce.
