Reconnect your team and achieve success

This article was translated from our Spanish edition.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

According to Gallup studies in Mexico, 60% of workers feel disconnected! 28% reject their work and only 12% of workers are completely satisfied with their job. We are talking that this was before the pandemic, now let’s imagine how our collaborators feel at this point in the health crisis we are going through.

COVID-19 seems increasingly controlled, eventually organizations begin to reactivate so we start the “new normal.” The problem here is: How will we reconnect our work teams to cover the quota in productivity guaranteeing their safety?

Taking into account that employees are the most important capital in an organization, returning to work after the pandemic experienced by COVID-19, must offer safety, protection and reliability to employees.

Lack of focus and energy can lead to disconnection, which generates factors such as a bad work environment, low productivity, burnout, poor communication, too much staff turnover and consequently toxic work environments.

Reconnecting with your team involves defining a common goal with a process that specifies the roles and responsibilities of each member to achieve that goal. Listening to and understanding the interests and insecurities of your collaborators can help you build stronger and more loyal relationships, as this has a great impact on their commitment, motivation and effort, which in turn generates positive results.

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Create areas of opportunity

Gallup found that only 13% of workers feel a deep connection to their employer, innovate, and drive their business. 63% are not engaged, they are not happy, they are out of tune, they are office sleepwalkers and they direct little energy to their work; and 24% are actively disconnected, meaning that they practically hate their job. If we add the last two figures we will obtain that 76% of workers around the world are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive.

Organizations must create areas of opportunity that regenerate lost companionship, such as facilitating casual dialogue between collaborators, integrating their ideas into the creation of sanitary measures so that they feel safe, allowing them to share their feelings, generating empathy and gaining trust within the teams. Leaders are crucial to undertake this process of labor reintegration, to facilitate that people can reconnect on a personal and emotional level, achieving a team balance.

Connecting a work team adapting to the new work normality (Face-to-face or Home Office) is one of the concerns of organizations. 56% of employees worldwide who work remotely experience a certain sense of disconnection from their respective companies and colleagues. How can I connect with my team to achieve my goals? Here I share some basic steps you must follow in order to reconnect with your collaborators.

• Prepare your team. Communicate the new modality to your team the following work steps, if they will return to the office, if it will be a home office or will it be mixed.
• It promotes their participation in decision-making. Listen to their arguments and concerns, put into practice the sanitary measures that make them feel safe within your organization.
• Recover socialization among peers. There are people who need more than others to feel close to their colleagues, but for a team to exist it is necessary to create ties with people. And if they will continue working in Home Office it is more important that while they work they feel that closeness to the team.
• Create stimulating experiences. For example, if it is Home Office; hold a virtual meeting once a week to share how they feel or what they have done, if it is reintegration into the office; connect to the workday from a park or cafeteria with wifi. A very useful tool for the Home Office is the so-called “CEO’s Nap”, this consists of a short nap of 20 to 30 minutes at noon, that is, between 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm that helps to recharge the mind and the body without causing lethargy upon waking.
• Value your team. Remember that every human being likes to be recognized and valued his effort, you as a leader must address this need with greater importance, you can get the whole office to recognize it and not only you, send a message to the group informing the good work of Some collaborator and encourage them to congratulate him, you can also do it from your social networks. Doing this continuously reminds employees that they are important in their role in the company.
• Establish challenges and objectives. You must not forget that you must keep your team connected not only at a personal level but also at a professional level, collaborators must keep in mind what the objective of the company is, and make it theirs as well. Also challenging them is crucial, as this motivates them to be more productive and generates that adrenaline and satisfaction for the achievement of goals.
• Set limits. This point is the most difficult to carry out, since normally only limits are set for one of the parties, so that it can be carried out we must create a balance in the limits, not generate micromanagement but neither neglect the deliverables.
• Encourage self-management from day to day. Establishing a work structure and ordering the work we have helps to distribute our energy in each task without concentrating only on one. To regain the ability to concentrate, it will be vital to eliminate distracting factors that do not contribute anything to productivity. Working in uninterrupted blocks dedicated to specific tasks is a breakthrough in leaving the brain fog behind.
• Administrative process . This labor reintegration implies starting over, many of the times we forget that we have a basic tool that can save us from the workload, this tool is the administrative process:
  • Planning; What will you do? What will you carry out? Establish the desired objectives and how they will achieve it
  • Organization: How will you do it? It defines the process and the tasks that will have to be done to achieve the objectives
  • Direction: Who will do it? Define roles, as a leader you must keep your work team motivated so that each task is carried out in the most efficient way possible.
  • Control: Establish times and check that each task is being carried out in a timely manner.

A disconnected computer causes; poor communication, bad leadership, failure to meet goals, burnout, and in some cases even languor. “60% of business problems are the result of poor communication” according to Peter Drucker, the management theorist par excellence.

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Keeping a team connected has benefits such as:

• Higher productivity
• resilience
• general well-being in employees
• Stronger teams are created
• more agile communication
• collaborators more committed to the goals of the organization

According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, 73% of workers consider that relationships of containment, trust and reciprocity generate a feeling of belonging and commitment to the company.

Communicating with your workers, telling them what is expected of them, praising them when they do well, encouraging them to move forward, giving them the necessary tools and the opportunity to feel challenged, are the actions that we could take with our collaborators to give you a more obvious solution. They stop feeling disconnected and find that their leaders care about their needs.

If you want to keep your team connected, whatever the modality, I invite you to know the Happynection that LIVE 13.5 ° has for you. It will be an unforgettable and super productive experience!