Author: Jacob Berry

In uncertain times, change comes faster than anyone can expect. For frontline employees, these changes will feel especially unexpected if their managers and leaders aren’t transparent.

Use these 5 tips to build transparency into your management style:

1. Share updates daily. Use texts, start-of-shift meetings or an email to inform everyone of any new policies or changes, big or small. If there’s nothing new, say that and thank your team for the work they’re doing. Doing this on a regular basis helps build stability.

2. Welcome and answer questions. An “open door” policy is crucial in uncertain times. Let your team know that you are there for them by encouraging questions and answering them with all the information you have.

3. Be honest. When you share daily updates or answer questions, do it honestly. If there are things you don’t know, say so. If there are things you can’t yet share with the team, tell them that, and let them know when they can expect more clarity.

4. Listen to feedback. This will help you understand what your employees want to hear from you. Use an anonymous pulse survey, like those from Butterfly, to encourage a safe space where they can rate the level of support and transparency they feel from you.

5. Manage change together. Involve your employees at all levels in building the processes that facilitate changes. Ask how they think things in your workplace should shift in reaction to new mandates as they are announced.

Be open, honest and willing to listen in an effort to build a transparent working environment. These ideas aren’t only applicable for the current moment; use them to help you engage your essential workforce today and in the future.

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to immediately follow up. The loop is closed in real-time with team members getting meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

Communication is the umbrella under which all of the most important actions a manager can take to engage their essential workforce live. Talking and listening are the bones of building a work environment where employees feel cared for and motivated to be productive, especially in uncertain times.

Incorporate communication into your management style and engage your employees with these 5 tips:

1. 1. Share contact channels. Tell your team members where they can actually reach you when they need you. Give them this information and set the process up to work for you, too. If you prefer texts to phone calls, make that clear.

1. 2. Automate feedback. Open another line of communication, and make it easy to manage. An engagement tool like Butterfly can automatically send pulse surveys as often as daily, encouraging employees to share their feedback and ask for support regularly.

1. 3. Give regular updates. Set a day and time to send a text or email to your team. If you’re still working together in person, this could also be a meeting. This sets their expectations and becomes a third channel for communication.

1. 4. Check in each shift. Any time that an employee is working, you should let them know that you are there to support them. If they have concerns, are feeling overwhelmed, have a solution to a roadblock, let them know you’re around to listen.

1. 5. Be there. Non-verbal communication matters, too. Tell your team that you’re with them, you understand and you’re listening simply by showing up. Only do this, of course, if it is safe and recommended.

More than sending millions of messages that could interrupt the flow of their day, over-communicating is about establishing multiple effective channels and keeping them open. If your employees see this and know it, they can better engage with their job.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.

To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

As teams begin to settle into the reality of working remotely, it’s vital for managers to keep investing in engagement.

Keeping your team engaged even when you’re apart doing more than boost productivity: it reassures them that you’re all in it together. Clear and dynamic communication will ease anxieties and help you all succeed.

Try these five tips and practices to engage your employees remotely:

1. 1. Introduce Your Work Space

Especially in the early adjustment period, be transparent about working situations. Show them your desk (whether make-shift at the kitchen table or in a full-fledged home office) and introduce them to your pets, kids and family. Be the first one to say, “Pardon any interruptions,” so that they know you’re expecting and ok with real-life blending into work life.

2. 2. Have Virtual Office Hours

Block off time on your calendar and set up a virtual “office” where your team members can come to talk with you. Office hours don’t need to be strictly about work; encourage them to come to you if they’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious or need a quick “water cooler” break.

3. 3. Take the Pulse Regularly

Supplement team meetings and (video) face-to-face check-ins with automated pulse surveys from Butterfly. Get feedback instantly on working situations and ask for feedback about what’s working and what isn’t in this new reality. 

4. 4. Eat Lunch Together

In the workplace, it isn’t always feasible to gather together as a team and eat lunch — and it’s something a lot of teams take for granted! Schedule in lunch meetings where colleagues can virtually eat, talk and take their minds off of everything that’s going on.

5. 5. Vocalize Gratitude

Another great practice for any work situation: share praise and thank your team members for their work. Acknowledge that accomplishing things in a remote environment can be really hard, and their ability to power through projects or meet new goals is huge. Say thanks privately and celebrate them publicly. 

How are you staying engaged with your remote team? Share your stories with us at remote@butterfly.ai.

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to follow up immediately. The loop is closed in real-time with team members receiving meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

Acknowledgment by a manager means a lot for any employee, however, it means even more to the ones present on the frontline or part of a distributed team. Especially in these uncertain times, recognition from leadership can help make coming into work every day feel more worth it. 

Read these 5 tips to incorporate acknowledgment into your management style and engage your employees.

1. 1. Say Thanks. Simple, but incredibly effective; not forgetting to say “thank you” when someone closes on a project. It is very easy to forget some of the very basic gestures. Try to make it direct and individualized (via text, email, or safely face-to-face) to make every team member feel seen.

2. 2. Listen to (and act on) feedback. When an employee shares their concern, highlights a process that isn’t working, or praises one that is, listen and act. Use a tool like Butterfly to quickly gather insights and gauge how employees are feeling. You may need to make changes you didn’t anticipate to show your trust and investment in your employees.

3. 3. Join them in their day-to-day. Gathering feedback is incredibly important, but it can also help to see what they see and experience each day. Join employees in the thick of the workday to see the challenges and roadblocks that you might otherwise miss. Right now, things are changing quickly, so you may need to do this more than once.

4. 4. Celebrate them. After thanking your team members, take time to regularly call out your team to the larger company. It is very easy for other colleagues, who aren’t directly connected to your team, to be oblivious to your team’s wins. So make sure to not forget to shine a light on your team’s important work and impact for the overall company.

5. 5. Extend perks, if possible. While not everyone is in the office, it is easy to forget that perks that were once available to everyone, are now only for people back in the office. With the rise of the distributed and hybrid workforces it is of the utmost importance that you spend some time thinking about how to extend office perks to everyone across the company regardless of where they work.

In the end, any type of acknowledgment that shows your employees you understand and appreciate what they’re doing will go a long way. 

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to immediately follow up. The loop is closed in real-time with team members getting meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

Positive motivation is a huge driver for essential employees in the frontline workforce. While the current climate makes it difficult to build a calm and comforting workplace, it is vital that employees work from a place of strength rather than fear or stress.

Read these 5 tips to infuse motivational engagement tactics into your management style.

1. Learn what motivates. First and foremost, talk to your employees to find out what is motivating to them. Managing from motivation only works when you know what types of tactics and actions will actually make a difference for your specific team members.

2. Listen to ideas and feedback. Create an open forum and encourage team members to use it! Pulse surveys, like those from Butterfly, can go a long way. Regularly present frontline employees with a chance to share their mood, ideas and feedback. This shows that you care and are listening, and it motivates them to pay close attention while at work.

3. Introduce positive rewards. In many workplaces, productivity is measured and rewarded by how much can get done in a day—which may no longer be a viable motivation for many. Instead, impress the value of the work your team is doing. Stress quality over quantity. Reward them with support, encouragement and understanding.

4. Make changes. Remember those ideas and feedback you’ve started to gather? Use them! Make constructive changes to processes and expectations that will better serve your employees, based on what they’ve told you.

5. Acknowledge initiators. When employees actively engage with feedback and ideas to improve their day-to-day, acknowledge them! Credit the changes to them and thank them for their suggestions, both one-on-one and with the full team. For more acknowledgement tactics, read our earlier post.

Once you know what drives your employees to do their work proudly and with excellence, find different ways to encourage and cultivate those motivations. 

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.

To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

The story focuses on how AI-driven coaching apps are “democratizing leadership training,” making it more accessible for new leaders — especially digital-native millennials — to fill the training gaps in their careers.

Butterfly came to be after our founders first became managers, pushed into leadership with no training and no guidance.

Now, our feedback-driven tools are using machine learning and AI to ensure other managers don’t experience the same stresses to the detriment of their teams.

“The app tracks feedback from users’ employees and uses machine learning to serve up curated tips and articles, says David Mendlewicz, co-founder and CEO of the New York-based company.”

The article helps reiterate how valuable tools like Butterfly are for new managers:

• Nearly half (49%) of employees would rather receive training on the job as needed instead of in a broad-strokes formal class.
• Repetition and reminders are effective at helping people learn new material or develop new skills, like leadership and management.

Read the full article to see the breadth of technologies redefining how managers hone their skills and develop into full-fledged leaders.

[Read The Story]