Workload Reduction
Fiona Passantino, Early July 2022
During Covid, we all grew used to the erosion of work-life boundaries and the 5% productivity increase. We do more, take on more, work more hours, deliver more. We “engage” by suggesting mindfulness courses or yoga, which we join to be a team player. But the key to post-Covid engagement is conscious workload reduction: creating space for quality results, more creativity and joy that only time can allow. Five ways to lessen the load.
Finding the Funny
Fiona Passantino, Early June 2022
Laughter. We know it reduces stress, eases tension and connects people. Doctors know that laughter helps with pain relief, muscle tension and overall immunity. But joy and laughter in the workplace increases productivity and lowers attrition. Teams that that laugh though stress and strain are more engaged and creative. Five ways to find the funny while still doing serious business.
Navigating the Post-Covid Power flip
Fiona Passantino, Early May 2022
The post-Covid workplace may well be determined the workforce rather than the employer. Culture, engaged leadership, growth opportunities, constant listening and flexible work will become the new rules of the game; four ways to navigate the flip.
The Day the Easter Bunny Came to Work
Fiona Passantino, Late April 2022
The post-Covid office is our playground. We have the chance to rebuild it in a way to meet our needs. Make it fun, perhaps a little silly at times so we don’t want to miss out on what crazy thing might happen next. The Office can offer something the home, with all its comforts and conveniences cannot. We can build a post-Covid workplace that pulls instead of pushes and delights rather than demands.
Handing back 5%
Fiona Passantino, Early April 2022
During the pandemic we saved time commuting, found our focus and got stuff done. Productivity levels increased 5%. When we return to the office, we’re back in traffic again, chatting with colleagues, subject to unplanned interruptions and new impromptu mini-projects. Our office days stretch well into the evening as we catch up on missed mails. Is the next step a conscious workload reduction as we return to work?
The Workation
Fiona Passantino, Late March 2022
A true Workation is a working vacation; leaving one’s city or country for a week or longer, and working fully remotely using the video conferencing and visual collaboration tools that the pandemic brought us. With lockdown measures relaxing, the Workation may be here to stay well after the pandemic fades away.
Understanding Flow
Fiona Passantino, Early March 2022
“Flow” contributes to increased job satisfaction and improvise our mental, physical and emotional well-being which naturally translates to higher levels of engagement and lower churn rates. The average workday, chock with meetings, incoming fire of communication, expectations and deliverables, needs to be carefully choreographed to create that all-important, critical ingredient for achieving “flow”: silence.
Double-Track Listening
Fiona Passantino, Late February 2022
As we enter the Post-Covid period in our history, listening to what we need is more important than ever. Two parallel tracks work. The “Listen and Deliver” tight loop and the slow-burning Deep Listen have very different goals, deliver different data but together form a more accurate picture of the current state of engagement.
Employee FutureMapping
Fiona Passantino, February 2022
FutureMapping goes a step further than #succession planning. It means literally laying out the current org chart against the future state of the organization, asking the question: “This person’s vision, work ethic and ideas align with the future; what tools, training and experience will she need to get us there?”
Six ways to start FutureMapping today.
Exploring New Work Models.
Fiona Passantino, Late January 2022
How do we go back to work “when all this is over”? A full physical return? Fully remote? Leave it up to the team, the individual? Covid has been a long, uncontrolled mass experiment in next-level flex working.
Exploring the many-headed “hybrid” hydra.
NonBoarding.
Fiona Passantino, Early January 2022
Hiring managers have likely worked for a company for longer than three years. If so, they were onboarded in the light, which meant being there physically, going to an office, having predecessors to shadow, a digital services department to visit on the fifth floor and the IT department to ask for help setting up on the second. Onboarding in a fully remote context means mapping hundreds of stakeholders, interests, departments in your head, in two dimensions. Seven ways to get it right in the time of Covid, when new talent has choices.
Here we are, now.
Fiona Passantino, December 2021
As we celebrate our entry into the year 2022, we understand that Covid will be with us for a while. Sharp divides have emerged in our communities along vax/novax lines.
But we have the creativity and resourcefulness to re-imagine a future that keeps the best part of what the pandemic gave us.
Why EX is the new CX
Fiona Passantino, December 2021
In this talent-driven market, companies have to evaluate the value they offer their employees. Not just attracting fresh talent but keeping the current workers happy.
Welcome “EX”: the Employee Experience. And it is quickly outpacing CX (Customer Experience), as a corporate focus point in the Post-Covid age.
Flipping the Org Chart
Fiona Passantino, November 2021
The people doing most of the talking and ideation should be the ones out doing the work, interacting with the customer. The people doing the most listening and implementing should be the leaders.
This means that the traditional, top-down org chart needs to be flipped on its head. Seven easy ways to build a high-functioning team.
Another employee survey? Fine. But this time, do something.
Fiona Passantino, October 2021
Post-covid, the Great Resignation. Keeping employees happy and not quitting is now a matter of business survival.
Five tips on making employee engagement surveys work.
Communicating Psychological Safety in the Workplace
Fiona Passantino, September 2021
Constructive conflict is good for a company.
A functional creative process weaves in friction, tension, a clash of ideas and converging solutions. It’s OK to disagree, even in a heated way, as long as we turn it into a constructive process.
The Return
Fiona Passantino, August 2021
At this moment in our history, we have been given a unique, defining opportunity to re-think our definition of the physical office and fashion it into something truly human-centered.
Now is the time to embrace the “New Normal” and design our workplaces with empathy and intention.
Re-inventing the Re-org
Fiona Passantino, July 2021
Imagine your own casually dysfunctional family. At home you have high-performers and low performers, people who are more detail-oriented and those who prefer to see the big picture. There are some who don’t quite fit the group culture and some that are visibly more engaged than others.
The “reorg” is a passive aggressive firing spree that a company engages in when it wants to trim the fat, reduce costs and “go lean”.
Death to the Hostage Video
Fiona Passantino, June 2021
Proof of employee engagement is something freely offered, not asked for. Spontaneously created – short videos showing off new facilities, mom-to-be sendoffs, team acknowledgements, thanks for hard work or extra hours – the resulting videos, memes and giffys are pure gold for employee engagement, employer marketing, onboarding. They are authentic and positive, which is the source of their value.
CSO the CEO’s new BFF
Fiona Passantino, May 2021
As the post-pandemic world rebuilds itself, we will need to get serious about signaling our seriousness about diversity, inclusion and belonging to an ever-wider group of people. Visual communication is the key to speaking to us all; universally understood content that is highly effective and fits our new, digital context in lockdown.
Human2Human Communication
Fiona Passantino, April 2021
As our world becomes ever more complicated and our way of life more fragile, we need the skills of the ancient Storyteller and the tools of the Epic and metaphor to deliver us the information we need to survive as a tribe, and to inspire, to align and to remind us of who we are. In the time of Covid-19 we are deep in an unfolding Epic of our own. Our human ability to be the signal amidst the noise of our current media landscape of pseudo- and hyper-connected social media.
Next-Level Crisis Communication
March, 2021
Covid-19 is exactly the kind of crisis humans have difficulty understanding. Slow-moving yet omnipresent, lethal, silent, invisible. It has made us isolated, disconnected and alone. Our ability to overcome this enemy is based on our capacity to effectively communicate its seriousness and the means to keep it from spreading. This article lays out six easy steps for effective, next-level Post-Covid Crisis Communication for the Next Big Thing.
Communicating Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging
February 2021
Covid-19 has shown us what it means to be isolated, disconnected and alone. As the post-pandemic world rebuilds itself, we will need to get serious about signaling our seriousness about diversity, inclusion and belonging to an ever-wider group of people. Visual communication is the key to speaking to us all; universally understood content that is highly effective and fits our new, digital context in lockdown.
Lessons from Mythology for Post-Covid Communication
January 2021
As our world becomes ever more complicated and our way of life more fragile, we need the skills of the ancient Storyteller and the tools of the Epic and metaphor to deliver us the information we need to survive as a tribe, and to inspire, to align and to remind us of who we are. In the time of Covid-19 we are deep in an unfolding Epic of our own.
