Employees leave Managers not Companies as often misunderstood, not listened to, or just don’t feel a manager’s behaviour is appropriate to the times we are living in. And research says many people want to work flexibly from home but also want some kind of office culture experience. This is being referred to as the “hybrid work paradox”.
To avoid or rather manage these challenging situations you need to learn empathic leadership now regarded as priceless in a successful hybrid workplace. This is the ability to understand the needs of your employee’s wellbeing spanning mental, physical, emotional and economic health across the whole workforce including under-valued Frontline Workers – using real time data.
Employee expectations are changing, and we will need to define productivity much more broadly – inclusive of collaboration, learning and wellbeing to drive career advancement for every worker with flexibility in when, where, and how people work.
Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft, EMPATHIC LEADER
This might sound like a huge onerous burden with a company to run and product or services to deliver and targets to meet but it can be mastered effortlessly and for free!
Free? Yes! To drive this new style of leadership, with an unusual focus on kindness and an appreciation on how employees are really coping we have, through the lens of Microsoft Teams, fantastic AI enhanced features in Microsoft Viva.
Many of the Viva features are at your fingertips today but have previously been overlooked and underwhelmed in Microsoft Exchange, Workplace Analytics and good ole SharePoint!
However, now intended to support the Employee Experience journey from on-boarding to exit, Microsoft Viva nurtures personal development, learning, employee engagement and advocacy messages from leaders; to how staff collaborate and curate knowledge across the enterprise. Most important of all, how productive they are, as often working from home is now regarded as a normal practice. and ultimately providing the services or products to customers, or internally to other employees.
This new empathic era can be driven by a relatively small group of leaders who demonstrate and encourage “digital wellbeing” as part of an established employee experience.
Digital Wellbeing can be learned as being conscious about the notifications you get on all platforms – particularly on your smartphone. I teach how to remove unnecessary interruptions and help focus on what you are doing at the right time, and in the right digital place.
Stale Hansen, CEO CloudWay, Microsoft RD, Teams MVP, EMPATHIC LEADER
If you want to know more about how Microsoft Viva can help your organisation thrive on empathy and happiness then please join Me, Merethe Stave and Sara Fennah at Teams Nation this Wednesday at 10am sharing Realistic, Optimist and Visionary views on Viva as The Viva Explorers a growing community of like-minded MVPs. This is a discovery session on all the seeded features and what you can do right now with Viva through the lens of Teams, and upcoming premium features on the Viva Roadmaps.
Then also catch Stale Hansen at Teams Nation at 11am sharing “life changing” Digital Wellbeing tips and tricks!
Top empathic leaders in no particular order or merit: Satya Nadella, Stale Hansen (above), Steven Bartlett, Simon Sinek, Jacinda Arden, Bernd Zimmerman, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, The Obamas, Queen Elizabeth II, David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Steve Crook (my husband) … and who would you add?
Discover free MCI Workshops!
MVP, Lesley Crook is a Viva Visionary 
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