The true leaders have began to shine as we have all progressed to the mandated move to work from home.

Strong leaders personify their organisation’s purpose every day through their actions, method of communication and priorities to the their workforce through this transitional phase.

Usually, having leaders spend time facilitating teams outside their own group sends a powerful message to optimise productivity. Now that the world has shifted to new working model (can you believe it has happened this quickly!?), rethinking purpose can be immeasurably beneficial for the synergistic goals of strategic clarity and employee motivation. It has come to my attention, how does a leader engage their employees at home?

First of all, a company’s leadership team has an important role to play in holding the ranks of management accountable. It is in this time that employees should have a clear focus and understanding on what the company stands for. You, as an employee should be able to answer:

1. If I were to put my company purpose statement alongside a competitor’s could I identify it?

2. If I asked my colleagues, would they all be able to answer what the company purpose is?

3. Do I have all the resources required to deliver the promises to our customers/clients in this new environment?

Now, can you see why is is vital for Senior Management and Leadership teams to play a pivotal role in keeping employees attuned to their organisation’s purpose of existence?

As much as you might try to motivate employers with slogans or extrinsic rewards, you won’t achieve excellence if your people don’t know why they are getting up every day to work all while battling with home schooling, quarantine, stress of how long the pay checks will last. The clearer you are about what value your company creates and for whom the greater your ability to inspire your workers.

What I can’t stress the most on about is, the more you align the right talent, operating model and financial resources to support your purpose, the better able employees will be to deliver on it. Purpose is the key to motivation- and motivated employees are the key to realising your purpose.

Now more than ever companies are struggling to maintain and even generate sustained profitable growth. With layoffs happening, it is imperative to deepen ties with stakeholders and re-define the playing field.

Currently, it appears many companies consider purpose merely an add-on to their strategy, but the most successful put it at their core. The purpose of driven strategy helps companies overcome the challenges of slowing growth and declining profits. It also helps with the essential skills: the people related aspects of running a business, which so proves to be the undoing of leaders.

Even if organisations or business units do manage to define their purpose well, they need to do it properly and translate it into action. Otherwise, purpose and strategy becomes nothing more than nice sounding words.

COMMUNICATE. COMMUNIATE. COMMUNICATE.

The benefits of a communication strategy within an organization during this time are innumerable.

Effective communication strategies will improve the overall productivity of the workforce, create a positive presence for the organization in the market and instil a sense of trust among employees. These factors play a major role in the success of the continued running of the business. The likes of regular two-way calls, check in texts and being accountable for set tasks. Ineffective communication in these times may result in heightened uncertainty and apprehension and therefore poor productivity. Just as vital, is for the employee to communicate home challenges (obviously work settings will be less than optimal) .

Conventional economic logic tends to rely on external motivators when trying to stimulate an individual. As leaders embrace higher purpose, however they recognise that learning and development are powerful incentives.

Employees will still want to think, learn and grow

So how to embrace this? Simple. Unleash the positive energisers. Every organisation has a pool of change agents that usually goes untapped. Spread randomly throughout the organisation are mature, purpose driven people with optimistic orientation. They are open and willing to take initiative. Structuring the organisation to support both socially and financially orientated activities and practicing dual minded leadership will help cultivate and maintain a hybrid culture and give the leaders the necessary tools to productively manage conflicts between goals.

Companies that want to do well in this time should focus on four key management practice: setting and monitoring dual goals, structuring the organisation to support, hiring and digitally socialising and practicing dual minded leadership.

Engage your employees and you will see results compared to your competitor in these downward times.