While drilling down on which employees need more and varied types of support, they can also tailor actions that create widely shared feelings of well-being and cohesion across the workforce. The good news is that with advances in listening techniques, behavioral science, advanced analytics, two-way communication channels, and other technologies, leaders can now address employee experience in a more targeted and dynamic way. The return phase presents an opportunity for companies to rethink the employee experience in ways that respect individual differences-home lives, skills and capabilities, mindsets, personal characteristics, and other factors-while also adapting to rapidly changing circumstances. Fathers working remotely seem much more positive about the experience than mothers are.īut those statistics belie a more fundamental truth about employee experience: even when faced with similar circumstances-more than 80 percent of respondents say the crisis is materially affecting their daily work lives-people have widely varied experiences, perspectives, and outcomes. Parents working from home appear to be faring better than those who are more isolated are. We define “engaged” as having a strong emotional investment in the organization and a willingness to “go the extra mile.”Īnd have a stronger sense of well-being than those in nonremote jobs with little flexibility do. We found that employees working remotely see more positive effects on their daily work, are more engaged, 2Įmployees were classified as engaged, passive, or disengaged based on responses to questions measuring work, organizational, and social engagement.
The primary focus of the research was to determine factors that lead to employee engagement, well-being, and work effectiveness during and after a crisis.
1ĭuring the first two weeks of March 2020, we collected survey data from more than 800 diverse, US-based employees on a wide variety of topics related to employee experience, COVID-19-related perceptions and impacts, and employee outcomes. McKinsey recently surveyed more than 800 US-based employees on a wide variety of topics related to employee experience. However, those needs are evolving, calling for a more sophisticated approach as organizations enter the next phase. As it turns out, most companies did a solid job of addressing their employees’ basic needs of safety, stability, and security during the first phase of the COVID-19 crisis.