The Value of Connecting

A recent survey by McKinsey revealed that those organisations who supported and encouraged ‘small connections’ between colleagues such as giving opportunities to discuss projects, share ideas, network, mentor, and coach, had higher productivity during the pandemic. 

This is hardly surprising. At Thriving People we’ve been helping organisations improve their internal capacity to communicate effectively for over twenty years. For us, at the heart of all good people and change strategies lies the premise that better awareness of self and others leads to happier individuals, higher functioning teams and ultimately, more successful organisations.

Any organisation that manages to improve the frequency and quality of inter-team communication is opening itself up to increased innovation, more effective working and improved wellbeing. These in turn create a culture that is attractive to the best talent who want to stay longer and give more of themselves to the organisation. 

The statistics speak loud and clear. Two thirds of leading organisations reported that these kinds of “microtransactions” increased, while this figure was only 9 percent for those whose productivity was lagging behind. 

If organisations want to maintain these gains as they move towards a hybrid model of working, they will need to ensure that everybody has the right skills to make this happen in an environment where teams and individuals are dispersed geographically. This includes training managers with the soft skills needed to help support improved communications remotely, recognise when levels of wellbeing are slipping and provide the right kind of feedback to remote teams. This is supported by the evidence too, that over half of leading organisations invested in refreshed management training, while only a third of less successful organisations did the same. 

Team members too will benefit from training that helps them understand their own needs and patterns as well as those of their colleagues, giving all the tools to become more emotionally self-sufficient while having more capacity to support their colleagues. In this new world of hybrid working, skills that were anyway needed for sustainable organisational success, have now become even more critical.