Building healthy work relationships is essential for both the employees and their employer when they are building a performance-oriented culture.

Citing several studies on work relationships, SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series shows that high-quality human relationships can impact one’s physical and psychological health, cognitive abilities, thinking capacity, learning, resiliency, commitment, creativity, and organizational citizenship behavior. This means more efficient employee coordination with qualities that support “greater organizational effectiveness and efficiency.”

However, the work setup of most companies changed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. Organizations moved their operations online, forcing employees to perform their duties and communicate virtually. 

Cultivating professional relationships is not easy in such an environment. Employees connecting virtually rather than face-to-face communication have lesser chances of building relationships, according to a study held by Xiao-Ping Chen, the Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Findings showed that it is difficult to understand the nonverbal cues of remote workers, such as facial expressions, hand gestures, silence, or delayed responses. Moreover, most employees struggle with paying attention during a meeting done via video conferencing.

What Organizations Can Do

Increasing resilience in the workplace as people recover from a crisis means giving them purpose and hope, flexibility and adaptability, and connection to their colleagues. Organizations can arrange activities that can help employees stay connected even while working remotely. 

In an interview with CNBC, Jason Fried, CEO of the project management company Basecamp, recommends a daily check-in with colleagues or a time at work where they can share ideas and express support over personal matters.

Meanwhile, education company General Assembly implemented watercooler chat over coffee through video chat rooms. Meg Randall, the director of product delivery for the company’s tech team in New York City, said that those coffee breaks help her mentally start her day. “It’s a small talk that lasts for a few minutes, but it’s a nice ritual if you’re craving that human connection every day, which I have been,” said Randall. 

Trust, transparency, and open communication can also help organizations nurture healthy work relationships. One of the ways this can be tested, particularly between leaders and employees, is performance evaluation. Assessing employee performance has changed due to the pandemic. 

In the online event held by ECCP and HURIS on August 2021, Cristina Mihăiloaie, Business Unit Manager at The KPI Institute, said that the performance criteria used for employee evaluations, whether it involves key performance indicators or not, should be “flexible, easy to adapt to changes, and more focused on the extent to which the role is successfully achieved, compared to looking at operational details.”

“For example, employees who worked from home and multitasked between being a parent and a professional may have missed some meetings, or maybe they seemed more absent during work. Overall, if the output of their job is good, the operational details may be less important,” she said. 

Join Cristina as she delivers the Certified Performance Management Systems Audit Professional Live Online course on 07 – 11 March 2022 / EMEA 18:00 – 22:00 GST and ASEAN 09:00 – 13:00 CST (US).

This 40-hour course will discuss how to diagnose and audit the maturity of performance architectures for five capabilities: strategic planning, performance measurement, performance management, performance culture and employee performance management.

Don’t miss this opportunity to widen your knowledge and experience in employee performance management. You can sign up here.