How to create a sense of belonging for hybrid workers

A sense of belonging is something we all crave, whether in our personal lives or at work. Connecting with people that share our values and passions makes us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

And for so long, that sense of belonging has come from physical interactions as well as, in recent decades, digital ones.

But then the unthinkable happened, and the world shut down.

I’ve been reading about the future of work and discussing the impact of flexible/hybrid working on belonging with All Things IC’s clients and Comms friends.

I invited Helen Deverell to write for the All Things IC blog to dig deeper on the topic of belonging and why it matters for internal communication. My thanks to everyone who responded to her call for input.

Helen @HelenDeverell (pictured), is an internal communication consultant who specialises in conducting internal communication audits, creating strategies, running workshops, supporting change programmes and delivering internal communication projects, campaigns and materials.

She previously worked in-house and at several agencies. Helen is also a Fellow of the IoIC and regularly blogs about the topic of internal communication.

I’ll hand you over…

Belonging as a business-critical issue

Last year our individual worlds became much smaller and connection with colleagues took place entirely over screens.

In the words of Isabel Collins, Belonging and Culture Consultant: “Our sense of belonging was taken for granted, until it was taken away.”

It’s unlikely we’ll ever go back to having employees full-time in offices but instead have a combination of working at home and in the office – i.e. hybrid working.

So, how do we create a sense of belonging when we no longer work in the same physical space, and what is the role of internal communication within that?

According to Isabel, (pictured), recognising that belonging is a business-critical issue is the first step: “In the freneticism of the first lockdown, organisations’ primary concern was the impact on productivity, but they’ve come to see that the real issue is belonging.

“Humans have a deep, primal need to belong. We can do more together than on our own and go further faster.”

For Isabel, creating a sense of belonging for employees as we move towards new, more hybrid ways of working is underscored by three key things: Connection. Compassion. Confidence:

• Connection is understanding how you can help people feel a part of it, not apart from it when we don’t have physical workspaces.
• Compassion is recognising that we’ve all experienced this pandemic very differently and people will feel a sense of belonging to an organisation that respects and facilitates that.
• Confidence has two meanings: having people you can confide in to provide that sense of morale and mutual support, as well as trust in the organisation and its leadership.

The role of internal communication

While creating a sense of belonging doesn’t sit solely with internal communication (far from it!) we have an important role to play, whether that’s considering the types of channels that can help to facilitate meaningful connection, to listening to employees and feeding their views back to leadership, to creating communication that provides clarity.

And that last point is really important, especially when we’re talking about hybrid working.

What do you mean when you talk about hybrid working? Is your definition the same as your employees? Have you taken the time to understand what employees’ concerns are around it (for example, for some people, home isn’t always a safe or preferable place to work – check out Rachel and Chuck Gose having this conversation on a recent  ICology Live session). You can watch the replay below or online.

To answer those questions, you need to listen.

This is something David Norton from CommsQuest Consulting has been doing with his clients:

“We run listening exercises that encourage employees to speak truthfully about what’s on their mind. We’re good at asking people if they understand the vision of the business but less good at asking ‘how are you?’ When people feel heard, they feel valued and ultimately feel they belong.

“Once we’ve done the listening exercise, we create a narrative in collaboration with leadership that reflects what we’ve heard and offers a postcard from the future – a glimpse of the journey that employees will go on together and a sense of what that destination will feel like.”

Hello, I’m new here

It’s all well and good helping employees reconnect with each other in new ways, but what if you’re one of the many workers who joined an organisation during the pandemic and have never met their colleagues face to face?

Is it possible to feel a sense of belonging to an organisation that’s in a state of flux and is still working out how its culture and ways of working will change as a result of the last year?

I spoke to one senior internal communicator who joined an organisation last July. They said, “My role is built on relationships and I found it harder initially to establish key relationships because I didn’t have those moments where you can ask the sort of spontaneous questions – be it professional or personal – or just get involved in team conversations that ultimately allow you to build connectivity.”

It’s an important point; organisations can create the conditions that allow a sense of belonging to thrive but it’s dependent on certain intangible factors such as spontaneous interactions. And what about if you’re of a more introverted nature – is it harder to connect over a screen?

“I’m quite naturally a talker, so it was easier to barge my way into conversations and get to know people. I imagine that the more naturally introverted would find this situation difficult – it is really hard to find space to speak in virtual meetings due to the nature of them and I can only guess how daunting that must be for some.”

Isabel recommends dedicating time at the beginning of each virtual meeting to allow people to simply chat and catch up. Over the years there has been a lot of discussion about the need to make meetings shorter and more purposeful.

I completely agree with that, but it’s important to remember that the chat around a meeting can be extremely valuable when building relationships.

The role of inclusion and diversity

For many people in our organisations, it didn’t take a pandemic and the dawn of hybrid working to fracture their sense of belonging – often they didn’t have one in the first place.

For Annique Simpson (pictured), Change Comms Business Partner at A2 Dominion, belonging means psychological safety within a team – an ability to be your whole self at work – and seeing people in the organisation that she identifies with.

“For me, belonging goes well beyond whether or not I see my colleagues face-to-face. I want to work for organisations that are intentional and authentic in their drive for inclusion and diversity, that make a public stand for issues I care about, such as anti-Black racism.

Creating a true sense of belonging requires a fundamental shift in culture from how leadership behave to how people are treated when they speak up – working from home is low down the list of reasons for why people might not feel they belong.

“I also think we have to be careful to not over-engineer belonging. It’s a very human thing that needs to happen organically. We can create an environment that fosters belonging, but we need to avoid it becoming a tick box exercise that has no meaning.”

Annique also thinks that internal communication has an important role to play in supporting an inclusive organisation that in turn nurtures a sense of belonging.

“We need to be listening to a broad range of employees and take on board their perspectives about the topics we’re communicating, including and elevating different voices, and challenging ourselves on who we feature in our communications – is it always the same faces?

“We also need to remember that inclusion means different things to different people – and not everyone wants to be involved. As long as the door is always open for them to join in, it’s OK to respect those boundaries.”

Clearly there is no silver bullet when it comes to belonging, especially when the way we work is fundamentally changing. Instead, we need to focus on listening and understanding all our employees, provide clarity on what we mean by both belonging and hybrid working, and communicate with empathy and compassion.

And rather than see this transition as a challenge, Isabel suggests reframing the way we view it:

“Ultimately, the pandemic has given us an opportunity to reaffirm what we belong to, why it matters and how it makes a difference.”

Put like that, it sounds like quite an opportunity.

Post author: Helen Deverell

Thank you Helen and to everyone who contributed to this article.

Find out more about Isabel via her website or On Belonging podcast. You can also find her on Twitter @IsabelBelonging.

Check out David’s website or find him on Twitter @CommsQuestMD

See Annique’s website and you can find her via Twitter @Annique_Simpson.

Want to learn more about belonging?

I recommend listening to Isabel’s recent podcast episode with Professor Emma Parry of Cranfield School of Management.

Emma urges employers to address belonging in this rapidly changing world of work, strengthen communities in hybrid working, ensure psychological safety and values and employees being valued, and extending inclusion to virtual workers like AI and cyborgs.

Learn more about hybrid working

Regular readers of the All Things IC blog will know I’ve been publishing articles and speaking about hybrid working to help internal communicators learn more and make decisions.

• Further reading: Podcast – how to communicate hybrid working
• Further reading: The internal communicator’s guide to hybrid working
• Further reading: What do we need to know about hybrid working?

My new Online Masterclass is available at the launch price of £499 until 30 May 2021: The internal communicator’s guide to hybrid working.

 

From busting the jargon, to understanding how to make changes to your internal communication channels and thinking through the impact on culture, the course has been designed to help you learn at your own pace. It’s full of bespoke videos, surveys, text lessons, quizzes and workbooks.

See the Online Masterclass website to find out more and enrol today.

I hope you found this article useful. My thanks to Helen, Isabel, Annique and David for sharing their insights and expertise.

Are you focused on creating a sense of belonging for your employees? How are you doing that? What’s working? What’s not?

Do let me know what you think, you’re welcome to comment below.

Thank you for stopping by,

Rachel.

First published on the All Things IC blog 13 May 2021.