Sometimes, organisational restructures are necessary to set a business up to achieve a specific goal. Although change is a natural part of life, many people struggle to cope when forced to adapt to change in the workplace. When people struggle to adapt, they may disengage.
As we normalise remote and hybrid work, maintaining engagement with coworkers and culture feels ever more challenging. But with automation and artificial intelligence becoming commonplace in our daily work lives, it’s more important than ever to remain connected.
Let’s discuss seven techniques you should implement to keep employees engaged during times of change.
1. Approach Employee Disengagement with Compassion
It’s easy to get frustrated with disengaged workers, but it’s essential to remain compassionate when addressing issues related to their engagement. According to a 2024 report by Owl Labs, almost half of remote workers have a hard time fitting into company culture. As a leader, you’re dealing with real people who have real feelings, and it’s crucial to be sensitive to that.
When working with a remote team, you must go the extra mile to ensure your employees feel seen and heard. Do the following to encourage open, compassionate communication:
- Be encouraging (but not pushy)
- Be the first to speak
- Be transparent
- Be honest
- Be clear
An easy way to develop more compassion is to think about how you’d want to be treated if you were in your employees’ shoes.
It’s still possible to schedule meetings or host team-building events and engagement activities while accommodating employees in different time zones. Try choosing a time later in the day for some and earlier in the day for others—a sweet spot, so to speak. For example, if you have U.S. and European employees, you could schedule the event for 3:00 pm UTC. That way, no one has to wake up super early or stay up too late.
2. Be Transparent About the Vision
Restructuring a company can be taxing on a team when they don’t fully understand the vision or strategic company goals that have inspired drastic changes. Poor communication during restructures can cause confusion, which can cause employee disengagement.
It’s vital to be transparent so your team understands the “why” behind the changes you ask them to take on. This will help them adopt your vision and work effectively to achieve your collective goals.
Statistically, leaders don’t do a good job of communicating change strategies with employees (only 42% of employees feel included), although 74% of them think they do. As a result, a whopping 70% of change initiatives fail.
Effective communication is a dialogue, so you should create the space for your team to ask questions and give input as you restructure.
Tools, including AI, can help streamline this process and make communication and collaboration with your remote team simpler and more efficient. Here are some of our favourite AI tools to boost your teams’ productivity:
- Grammarly: Proofreading, spelling and grammatical checks, and plagiarism detection
- ClickUp: Team collaboration and project management
- Asana: Team collaboration and project management
- Hemmingway Editor: Content readability
- Lattice: Performance management
- Slack: Team communication
- Zoom: Video conferencing
- Otter: Audio transcription
With these tools, you can maintain consistent two-way communication with your team(s) so they remain up to date with current expectations and organisational goals.
3. Set Clear Expectations
When restructures happen, people need to understand what is expected of them moving forward. Hierarchy and roles may change, and with that, expectations may shift.
Make an effort to meet with people one-on-one (in person or via Zoom call) to clearly express their role in the new vision and what you expect from them. Individual meetings are crucial since different people will likely be affected by the changes differently.
For most of your team, this is likely reiterating the expectations you set for them when you hired them and possibly introducing them to slightly new processes. However, team leaders and managers may be called to show up and operate at a higher level.
4. Host a Team Retreat or Remote Team-Building Event
Camaraderie in the workplace is a great way to keep employees engaged in the face of change. By facilitating camaraderie among your team, you can foster a strong sense of community that allows people to feel like they belong.
Team retreats and team-building events are great ways to promote camaraderie and employee engagement. They also reduce the likelihood of employee turnover, which is a real concern during restructuring.
If your team works on-site, here are some options for in-person retreats:
- Try a team retreat with an itinerary, such as a journey through history and culture. For instance, Band of Brother Tours in Normandy offers a unique opportunity to bond over a shared history. At the same time, visiting historic cities like London, Dover, and Bletchley Park can inspire and connect your team on a cultural level.
- Or, enjoy a more relaxed setting, such as a fun beach trip to Cornwall or the quaint country of the Cotswolds. Either of these can provide a fun and rejuvenating environment for team bonding.
If your team is remote (domestic or international), team-building events and activities might seem more limited, but they can still bring your employees together in fun ways. Here are some ideas:
- Host a group cooking session:
- Send out ingredients and a recipe beforehand so everyone can purchase them and be ready to cook for the meetup time.
- Schedule a time during a “sweet spot” when most people should be able to attend the session. Send invitations to the Zoom meeting via email.
- During the meeting, have a person familiar with the recipe teach the group how to make the dish while everyone follows along and makes their own.
- At the end, everyone shares their version and you take a group photo!
- Hire a team-building activity company:
- A team-building events company will offer various virtual activities and options to choose from. You can choose and schedule the one that best suits your team and budget.
Regardless of how your team works on a daily basis, connecting with and learning more about each other is not only possible but can be a really rewarding experience in the right context. Give it a try!
5. Keep the Company Culture Strong
Even if you restructure your organisation, it’s crucial to maintain a strong sense of company culture. In doing so, you’ll keep your team motivated to stick to your core values and continue to show up with their best foot forward.
A simple way to maintain a sense of company culture is to review objectives in teamwide meetings and match objectives with your core values. Creating a correlation between actions and value-focused outcomes will help your team stay on track.
Another way to maintain a strong company culture is to lead with your brand’s core values at the forefront. For example, if transparency is a core value, be transparent about the structural changes that are happening. Keep your team in the loop and answer questions as they arise. Keeping your hierarchy chart accessible and clear will help your team understand the organisational structure and answer questions as they arise.
6. Reward Engaged Employees
One way to keep employees engaged is to proactively reward good behaviour. Preventative measures like this will help prevent disengagement so things don’t go downhill.
There are many ways to show appreciation to employees doing great work. Rewards, like gift cards, can be small or more significant, like bonuses.
At the very least, call out positive behaviour and acknowledge great work. You can do this both publicly and privately. Public acknowledgement can motivate the entire team, whereas private acknowledgement may feel more genuine and heartfelt.
Another option is to offer to keep the recognition private or share it with the company if the employee wishes. You can send a private message or email to the employee to inform them about the recognition or reward. In the message, ask them if they give their permission for you to share their accomplishment with the rest of the team or company.
That way, they feel a part of the process, receive the appreciation they deserve, and also don’t experience embarrassment if they’d rather keep it private.
This process can be accomplished with a simple form created with an AI tool, such as Writecream or Taskade, or a template and attached to performance reviews or other workflows.
7. Monitor Productivity
Transparency and open, consistent communication are essential during an organisational restructuring. However, it is also important to monitor the impact these changes may have on employees’ productivity.
Software for employee monitoring can provide valuable information on how these changes have affected employees, as well as their productivity levels and overall sentiment, allowing any problems to be addressed in time. This will enable you to assess what sort of intervention is required to get your team back on track.
Supporting your team with the right tools can significantly improve their productivity. Studies show that AI can boost productivity by as much as 14%. Other ways to increase productivity are:
- Only check your messages and email once or twice a day: It takes more than 23 minutes to focus on a task after switching to check on email, Slack, or other messages. To avoid this distraction and wasted time, leave your messages for once or twice daily.
- Taking regular breaks: Doing this can boost your productivity by 13%.
- Don’t work after hours: Employees who work after scheduled hours reported 20% less productivity than workers who left at the end of their work day.
- Limit your meetings: Most people agree that two hours of meetings is too much and feel that 71% of the time spent in those meetings is wasted.
Most employees and managers agree that working in a remote or hybrid environment allows for maximum productivity, but it’s not available for everyone. So, do what you can, and when you need extra support, ask for it.
Avoiding and Combating Employee Disengagement
Although it may be necessary to reach your business’s goals, corporate re-organisation can create chaos that spirals into employee disengagement. If your organisation is facing structural changes, it is essential to be strategic to keep your team (on-site or remote) engaged and functioning at an optimal level.
Author: Guillaume Deschamps – Content Manager, Wordable.io & PR Manager, uSERP.
Photo credit: StockCake
