One key issue many businesses leaders are having to consider is how to maintain motivation and engagement in ways that they hadn’t before. Productivity, for so long the objection to remote working, has been shown to have been a misplaced anxiety. Quite the opposite – it hasn’t been productivity we’ve lost through home-working, but belonging, community and casual human interactions. The transactional tasks have been completed, it’s the emotional joy that has been lost.

Many of us are grappling with this: how do we navigate home and workplace settings and balance the transactional ‘what’ of work, with the emotional ‘why’. How do we reconfigure to connect people on a human, as opposed to Zoom, level?

Why employees may still be feeling disengaged 

Whilst we’re certainly in a better position now than a few months ago, many employees are still feeling the effects of burn-out or overwhelmed at the prospect of returning to an office, or a mixture of both. This can create a challenge whereby work becomes a conveyer belt of tasks and disruptions - something to survive, rather than somewhere to thrive.

At the crux of it is one underlying theme: day-to-day, remote work can be mundane and boring for many. This can create a negative working environment where employees lose sight of what it is that brings them to work in the first place. With experts preaching that The Great Resignation is in full swing - that is, a wave of pandemic-induced “quits” - employees are generally less likely to stick it out at a company if they feel they’re not being satisfied in the whole, or getting enough out of a job. 

Finding joy and optimism at work is a challenge, but of significant importance, if you’re to keep staff engaged. Ultimately, whatever the industry, daily work life can be stressful and get extremely serious if it’s not balanced out with an element of light-heartedness and excitement. After going through something as uncertain and oftentimes scary as the pandemic, a workplace that can make the ‘have to do’, the ‘want to do’ will succeed long-term and be more equitable. 

 ‘Once size fits all’ doesn’t work anymore 

Before the pandemic, creating a joyful, curious and inclusive office culture was still top of the agenda. However, now with hybrid working models, if employees are unhappy (which as many as 41% still are) and feel that their general working life is feeling flat and without sufficient team-working engagement, then it’s going to be difficult to retain them long-term

Identifying what doesn’t seem to be working anymore is the first step: it’s often the case that businesses will keep processes going because it’s what they’re used to when in reality it’ll now be costing them more than they realise and potentially making staff unhappy too. Solving part of the issue is often as simple as repositioning the context, investing in the right tech or implementing new ways of working to keep morale high.

Of course, listening to employees, understanding their needs and taking into account what works and what doesn’t work for them is also fundamental to creating that hybrid culture that businesses strive for. If employees feel neglected or exploited in today’s climate, it’s going to be difficult to make them feel more engaged. 

Consumer tech teaches us valuable lessons in bringing the joy 

Those who manage teams who have backgrounds in consumer tech, especially gaming and entertainment, have some already in-built approaches when putting together a strategy to unlock joy at work. The good news for those who don’t is that learning them isn’t too difficult either. 

All of us need to understand our impact, to see and measure our progress and to understand that we can incrementally learn and improve – and employees are no different. There are simple ways to achieve this when connectivity and the human element feel dislocated, and it can help to view them through the inter-connected lenses of physical space, organisational structure, cultural behaviours and technology interfaces.

Business leaders need to ask themselves vital questions to be able to bring joy to work. How does the physical office space need to change, to prompt and encourage more joyful human experiences? From an organisational perspective, can hierarchy and ways of working evolve to engineer more connections and opportunities for unstructured interactions? If work has become more transactional and dislocated, how can a new more playful and curious tone be seeded? And now that technology interfaces are more important in a hybrid, less face-to-face world, how can they tacitly communicate and reiterate joy and the celebration of being at ‘this company’ together?

The world of work has experienced a step-change and employers need to respond to that which has been gained and been lost. Remote and hybrid working has ushered in some significant and immediate gains for many, but unless the workplace steps up and addresses that which is missing, we risk a less joyful and more commoditised future.